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Secularism in the US is Larger, More Diverse and More Dynamic Than Ever, But You Wouldn’t Know it From the Media

By Chrissy Stroop

…sts has also been at the forefront of diversifying the secular movement in practicing and promoting a broader, more intersectional approach to secular advocacy. The organization’s staff includes queer people, women, and African Americans in prominent roles. And, as it’s shifted away from Silverman’s “firebrand” approach to anti-religious messaging, American Atheists has begun to robustly and frequently make the case that anti-racist, feminist, and…

Oklahoma Bill Would Violate Basic Freedoms, Rewrite the Ten Commandments

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ed the first such monument in Milwaukee in 1955, but it was later moved to private property so as not to violate church-state separation. A similar bill failed to pass in Texas last year, and it too prescribed the Commandments lite. While it’s tempting to let Olsen off the hook as an unoriginal copyist, he is the author of this bill and ultimately responsible for the content and the scriptural edits. So let’s be absolutely clear: if Olsen’s propos…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

…said Monday through a spokesman, after Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle demanded he take a position on the matter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to buil…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…audiences, though it also hinted at the possibility of constitutionally appropriate study of religion in public education: It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment. However, the abov…

The Catholic Apocalypse Cometh

By Patricia Miller

…re was the usual riff that Obamacare was “socialized medicine,” a stunning number of the comments groused about the birth control mandate. There’s significant evidence from earlier Pew Foundation polling that the Catholic bishops’ opposition to the contraceptive mandate and the subsequent war on “religious liberty” they ginned up was a major factor in alienating white Catholics from the Democratic Party. The number of white Catholics who said the…

Dieting, Sex, Jesus: The Body as Moral Battleground

By Lynne Gerber

…es the moral norms and values which fuel projects of bodily change and its practices provide disciplines that are believed to effect change. And, as in many other areas of life and culture, religious hopes and physical realities are often in a complicated dance. Or, in the words of historian Hillel Schwartz, “In faith (as in dieting), no disappointment, however great, is final.” Is there anything you had to leave out? I left out a lot of interesti…

‘Imagine Better’: Can Harry Potter Change the World?

By B. Howell Belser

…d and highly coordinated network of staff and volunteers who maintain an impressive online and offline presence. There is no question that the HPA would not and could not exist without the existence of the internet and, more specifically, social networking and new media technology. The sheer number of channels through which HPA staff and volunteers reach out to potential members is staggering. They include old-fashioned email lists, the HPA websit…

No ‘Christian Compassion’ in Tony Perkins’ Response to Anti-Gay Bullying, Suicides

By Andrew Marin

…ately the culturally acceptable medium of engagement is to only care about proving the other wrong and yourself right. With correctness comes power. Why would anyone in the LGBT community ever peacefully listen to Tony Perkins or his telling of Jesus and the prostitute, for example, when he hasn’t earned one ounce of credibility or the right, in their eyes, to do such a thing? It’s just another misguided attempt to assert a hierarchal power struct…

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…r a New York Times investigation found claims of sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual relationships in the work place, had already attacked the cartoon. In what can only be described as an attempt to channel Tucker Carlson’s rants over M&Ms’ clothing and Mr. Potato Head’s genitalia, Reichelt had called the cartoon “Zwangs-Maus” (coercion-mouse) in March, because the kids’ show had aired a piece about trans rights. These are attempts to amp u…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…in the Lakota style, not Navajo, which is the tribal affiliation of a good number of inmates in the Arizona prison system (an amazing fact that is a story for another time). So, even though a non-Indian might be compelled to be put on trial for killing people with his “ceremony,” it is Native American religion which will be the defendant in this case. Consider. James Ray’s defense might be compelled to bring in experts to argue that he did the cer…