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The Contraceptive Mandate and Animal Suffering

…ther blogs has accused Singer of an “advocacy sleight of hand” in equating freedom of religion with “freedom to worship.” Smith and his crowd want not only an expanded definition of what is to be a religion, they want any activity a group or individual claims is “religious” to fall outside the scope of government control. He says “the exercise of one’s religion involves how the faithful live their lives outside of the church, synagogue, temple, or…

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Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril

…ing things like “go back to the Middle East, you pedophiles.” We should be free to criticize all religions, Islam included, but that doesn’t mean we should feel free to deride and scorn its adherents. It should go without saying that this isn’t a problem with atheism, but it is a problem among atheists and it’s one that is being largely ignored. 9/11 is frequently lifted up as the genesis of “New Atheism,” and it’s not uncommon to see people at at…

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Undercover Bosses as Minor Divinities: What Ever Happened to ‘Take this Job and Shove It’?

…t warriors everyday oppression was real and vicious. Perhaps for today’s abused American workers, there is a just-sufficient illusion of freedom to block any incipient struggle for self-respect from gathering force. So yes, it appears that our workplaces will continue to be marked by servility and deference and self-effacement (and treachery and backbiting) for the foreseeable future. And then perhaps something will finally snap and people will ge…

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Is the Satanist Behind 10 Commandments Challenge Sincere?

…legal team. Future plans involve legally ordaining ministers and using the free exercise clause to claim privileges for Satanists. Satanic ministers could, for example, illegally marry a gay couple and then, when the state refuses to recognize the marriage, claim that their free exercise rights have been violated. Other projects involve the Satanic ideal that one’s body is sacred and inviolable. Expressing disgust that corporal punishment is still…

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Impossible Possibilities: Obama and Power

…or the current economic crisis will fundamentally change the principles of free markets, free trade, or transnational corporate dominance that ultimately guarantee a permanent underclass at home and abroad. This is why, aside from skin color and charisma, Martin Luther King Jr. (the actual human rights activist, not the ephemeral color-blind dreamer of American folklore) and Barack Obama have little in common: King desired to revolutionize the wor…

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T-Shirts and Minarets: The Rending of the Social Contract

…so advocate this position. We recognize it as our responsibility to defend free speech because it is also our right. In Europe, the social contracts are more fraught with weaknesses, as witnessed by the recent Swiss vote to ban minarets. As Dan Varisco notes, the question should be “why minarets?” He says: The minaret is, of course, a symbol, but a rather unusual choice. In one sense it is like saying that MacDonalds cannot have a high sign (as is…

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Bipolar Faith, an Autobiography of Race and Mental Illness

…mental health challenge as part of one’s life. I wanted to emphasize that freedom is often hard-won. The final chapter is now named “Free.” How do you feel about the cover? Initially, I resisted having my face on the cover of the book. When the publishers presented the idea to me, I gave them a list of all the memoirs without the author’s face on the cover. They gave me a comparable list of memoirs that have the author’s face on the cover. Betwee…

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How U.S. Conservatives Conjured the Jesus of Their Dreams

…d anti-Black racism that have long marked white Christian nationalism. Because of the way religion works, there’s not the slightest chance that white nationalist True Believers will ever let go of their Republican Jesus, let alone their fictive idea that the country was founded by Christians who intended to create a Christian country. It does no one any good to mock them, but it will do all of us a great deal of good to use our votes and our voice…

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The Religious “Right” to Denounce Homosexuality

…ree speech cases — for Christians, that is. In other words, whereas courts used to determine whether religious action (such as use of public school resources for a Bible club) would constitute government endorsement of religion, religious right legal advocacy has altered the jurisprudence to evaluate such questions based on whether the school’s exclusion of the Bible club constitutes “viewpoint discrimination” or otherwise infringes on the religio…

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The Non-Existent Tea Party-Religious Right God Gap

…u can read more in this piece Julie and I wrote about how this argument is used to promote the idea of militias — one of the many ways the “government exceeds its God-given authority” argument is made.) Reed talked about how God granted people certain rights, and that “people have the right and duty to overthrow that government, by force if necessary,” if it violates those rights. Reed was quick to add that he wasn’t advocating a government overth…

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