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How the Politics of the 1890s Explain the GOP’s Health Care Woes

…uld loosen the hold of Eastern financial interest over interests rates and free up credit for small businesses and farmers. The Democrats opposed tariffs both as an imposition on the functioning of the free market and as a way to starve the federal government of revenue so it couldn’t do things like expand infrastructure. Throughout much of the 1880s, the Democrats used a series of procedural maneuvers to hamstring Congress, delaying progress on r…

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The ‘Dreher Affair’ Highlights the Right’s International Networks

…ed by televangelist Pat Robertson. The Anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom has set up shop outside the US as well, dubbing its coordinating international body Alliance Defending Freedom International. The Polish Ordo Iuris, a right-wing catholic organization which leads a crusade against abortion, is likewise well connected on an international level with German pundit Birgit Kelle, a regular on the anti-abortion circuit, having recently sp…

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This Year in Satanism

…o groups. SEPTEMBER September was a busy month. The Satanic Temple filed a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained a file of communications from citizens regarding their plan to erect a Baphomet statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma capital. Sadly, almost none of the angry writers or callers seemed to understand that the issue at stake was the establishment clause and whether any religious group should be able to have monuments on capital…

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Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

…mediating theological conversations. This has given artists and audiences free rein to reach more deeply into their Christian heritages and memories to grapple with holy mysteries that were once closely managed by the church. The resulting shift means that artists are more likely to resist the concept of grace than the concept of sin: their defiance of the holy is not in the tone of repentant fear so much as a kind of performative dismissal of th…

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A Scholar Responds: Scripture as a Weapon

…as follows: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. Tempting as it might be to explore the reason why “Militia” and “State” and “Arms” are capitalized but “the people” are not, I want to emphasize what seems critical to the invocation of the Second Amendment by the NRA. They focus on the conclusion, and ignore the reasoning which led to it. The…

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Speaker in drag addresses audience.

Constitutional Attorney Changes into Drag During Talk on Cancelation of West Texas A&M Drag Show

…nts are correct about what the law and Constitution require—their right to free expression was violated—and that Wendler and Kacsmaryk are wrong. After providing an overview and history of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state in US constitutional law, Seidel moved on to discuss the Christian Right’s abuse of these key concepts. He noted how the weaponization of “religious freedom” as a bludgeon for Christian supremacy, in tan…

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God’s Obituary: A Humanist Response to Mass Murder

…r in this world without cosmic aid that can protect us from us. Appeals to free will (as my comments are bound to generate) might not be a limitation God imposes on God’s self. It may simply be a weak way of saying we are in control, or what the late William R. Jones—philosopher of religion—called the “functional ultimacy” of human activity in the world.  These profound moments of tragedy slowly kill God, making it so difficult, if not useless, to…

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Why So Many American Christians Don’t Understand Protest

…s that these protests—against black death, for black life, for justice and freedom for all people—were disrespectful, disruptive. They shouldn’t inconvenience others by blocking interstates, interrupting games. Yet in Luke 4, Jesus stood in the synagogue, echoed the words of the prophet Isaiah that the oppressed shall be free, and proceeded to be disruptive. In response to the media attention Kaepernick’s actions garnered, Franklin Graham stood be…

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As Funny as the Times Will Allow: Obama on Late Night TV

…agedy, but it exists in uneasy relation to morality. Comic artists must be free to offend, free to be mean. This doesn’t mean that there should be no restriction on what the comedian can say, by the way; not at all. Comedians, like all artists, need constraints in order to show off their creative virtuosity. It is the audiences that need to restrain themselves; they need to permit themselves a laugh. Or not. The question, then, is not whether it w…

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Romney’s Debate Coach and his Religion Answer

…inciple. As I wrote at the time, Romney had a conundrum: needing to defend free exercise of religion (an in particular, his religion), but realizing that the Republican base demands the “Judeo-Christian” answer. Given that many conservative evangelicals don’t even think Romney’s religion is part of Christianity, when he gave the “Judeo-Christian” answer last night I cringed—because he didn’t balance it with a free exercise answer. In other words,…

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