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Pussy Riot Members Sentenced to 2 Years for Offending Russian Orthodox Church

By The Editors

…elicitous saying, Putin’s third term has a good chance of being known by a new aphorism: “Prison is better than stoning.” I would like you to think carefully about the following reflection by Montaigne from his Essays written in the 16th century. He wrote: “You are holding your opinions in too high a regard if you burn people alive for them.” Is it worth accusing people and putting them in jail on the basis of totally unfounded conjectures by the…

Muslims in America, Fifty Years Later: New Poll Shows Pride and Optimism In the Face of Bias

By Edward E. Curtis IV

…ties on the whole found the strength to believe in a better future. Muslim Americans also report that the number of non-Muslims who have been kind to them has risen in the past year. They believe in the American dream by a greater percentage than non-Muslim Americans. Over nine out of ten Muslims say that they are proud to be American. The question this poll raises for non-Muslims is: over the next fifty years, will our actions strengthen or weake…

Liberty University’s In-House Conversion ‘Therapist’ Retires, But Will the Christian School Cease This Discredited Practice?

By Lucas Wilson

…by all reputable scientific and professional organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric—and the list goes on (and on). But like many fundamentalist institutions, Liberty sees no issue with this bogus practice. Instead, the university finds much to celebrate in regard to Emerick’s attempts to fight against homosexuality. In fact, in Liberty’s official announcement…

Who’s Scared of Polygamy? A Restrained Case for the “Slippery Slope” Argument

By William E. Smith

…oss Douthat argues, in a surprisingly sympathetic and nuanced piece in the New York Times from a person opposed to polygamy, that the “new permissive consensus” built over the years by social liberals, most strikingly around same-sex marriage, is the primary driver for this uptick of support for polygamy. Douthat points to cultural developments such as the airing of certain TV shows (e.g. Big Love and Sister Wives), the growing polyamory movement,…

Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

By Haroon Moghul

…istory lesson, nor an appeal to specific verses, but a calm perusal of the newspaper. How can the Arab world, for example, technologically progress when its most populous state was kept under our thumb for decades? It is easy for Americans to forget that we supported Egypt’s dictator for thirty years, and happily welcomed Qaddafi back into ‘civilization’ when he realigned his policies with our own—not in the area of human rights, but ‘counterterro…

Catholic Church Bans Gay Film: This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…censored and they have used their power to paralyse the distribution. Who knew the Catholic Church was a dominant owner of movie theaters? AFP offers some explanation: The large number of Italian cinemas owned by the Church are a legacy of the days when every parish had its own cinema and local priests controlled projections, regularly cutting sections of films they deemed unsuitable for parishioners. Most of these cinemas are now rented out to op…

More than Half of Mississippi GOP Primary Voters Believe the President is Muslim

By Sarah Posner

…ondents believe interracial marriage should be illegal; 24% of evangelicals did. Sixty-six percent of respondents in Mississippi do not believe in evolution; among evangelicals that number jumped to 74%. Of all the respondents, 29% believe interracial marriage should be illegal; among evangelicals that number was 33%….

For Buddhism, Science is Not a Killer of Religion

By Paul Wallace

…htenment Types On the surface, Buddhism can look pretty messy. There are a number of conflicting stories about the founder of the tradition. Many Buddhists consider Gautama Buddha to be divine, a savior of humanity, but some don’t. Some Buddhists barely think of him at all. And, despite scientific cosmology, there are a large number of mortal creatures—most of them non-human—inhabiting a spectacular 31-tiered cosmos, from the hell beings and hungr…

Bishops’ Advice on Planning Cheap Dates: No Sex

By Kate Childs Graham

…have a pillow fight, recount stories of how you met, plan for the future. Number 8: Cheap gift challenge. Head to your local department store and challenge each other to come up with the most romantic gift possible. Two requirements: It can’t cost more than $20, and it must be used that night. Number 10: Find-My-Heart treasure hunt. Cut out some paper hearts and hide them around your home. On each heart write an endearing statement about your spo…

Is Torture Utilitarian?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ms. And that leads to some very bizarre moral reasoning. Utilitarianism is number-crunching, but of a very peculiar kind; in its crudest forms, it seems to imply that you can measure pleasure and pain, and that by maximizing the pleasure of the greatest number of people, you may be able to justify the infliction of pain on a select few. We see that strange logic at work in these memoranda. First, the CIA justified waterboarding with the “ticking t…