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Teacher Who Burned Cross into Student’s Arm Fired

By Lauri Lebo

…assault on a student. The litany of Freshwater’s religious activity in the classroom goes back more than a decade and includes him displaying posters of the Ten Commandments and bible versus and teaching students in science class that evolution is a lie. After the parents of Zachary Dennis complained to the district about the burn on their son’s arm way back in December 2007, the district began an investigation, in which Freshwater’s religious pro…

What Does Anti-Christian Even Mean?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…e poor. According to Salon: The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession. The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly…

My Lowest Point

By Amina Wadud

…sts no more than 10 riyal. But this is a moneymaking time for many working-class people in Makkah and Madinah, most of whom are not Saudis themselves. So shops, taxis, buses, hotel staff, and restaurant staff all have a lot at stake in the event of the hajj for their profits. I guess the choices are: find a reduced option, pay as much as you can personally, ignore the cost altogether, or walk. The 50 Riyal bus dropped us off at the opposite end of…

Conservatives Stand Together for Anti-Gay Bigotry

By Sarah Posner

…rights of free speech and religious liberty that are the birthright of all Americans. By joining together in “solidarity” — signatories include usual suspects Republican Reps. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, and Michele Bachmann; Republican Sens. Jim DeMint, James Inhofe, and David Vitter; and probable presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, and Rick Santorum — these groups and individuals are standing together as demonizers of h…

Woe to You, Bryan Fischer

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ificate about the lazy poor, but the reality is, with nearly 10 percent of Americans out of work, there are simply few jobs to be had. Even those who are willing to work for less are finding it more and more difficult to locate a job. Unemployment benefits are their lifeline right now—and a stimulus to the economy, because what they get, they spend on food, their mortgage, clothing, and other goods and services. The rich, however, will take their…

A Philosopher of Religion Calls it Quits

By Julia Galef

…as a fraud and I can no longer take it seriously enough to present it to a class as a respectable philosophical position—no more than I could present intelligent design as a legitimate biological theory. BTW, in saying that I now consider the case for theism to be a fraud, I do not mean to charge that the people making that case are frauds who aim to fool us with claims they know to be empty. No, theistic philosophers and apologists are almost pai…

Anti-Gay Marriage Arguments for Prop. 8 Fall Short

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…e group of citizens and denied them a basic right. “California has taken a class of citizens and put them in a separate category; that is an act of discrimination and there is no doubt that it is discrimination and there is no doubt that it does great harm. Can it be justified under any standard of constitutional analysis? I argue it cannot be justified at the lowest standard of constitutional analysis,” he said. In short, Olson argued, Prop 8 doe…

Updated with Audio: Secular Good, Muslim Bad: Unveiling Tunisia’s Revolution

By Haroon Moghul

…not talking about a religious agenda driving a revolution (even though we Americans appealed to God against the King in our Declaration of Independence), I’m talking about people calling for democratic change. We get so hung up on “secularism” that we miss the larger dynamic between personal piety and political space, and the rise of more and more explicitly democratic movements in the Muslim world. We also miss the fact that Tunisia’s oppressive…

Homeschooling and American Exceptionalism

By Julie Ingersoll

The incoming class of congressional freshmen includes, Jaime Herrera (R-WA), the first homeschooled member ever, and Daniel Webster (R-FL) a homeschooling activist about whom I’ve written here and here. In a press release celebrating the “coming of age” of homeschooling, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine poses the question: “Is Homeschooling Good for America?” which they answer by touting the culturally transformative character of the homeschooling mo…

Note to Religious Liberals: God Does Take Sides

By Daniel Schultz

…to filibuster the START treaty until tax cuts for the upper 2% of wealthy Americans were made permanent. Oh, and like a maraschino cherry high atop a lollapalooza of suck, we find out from Wikileaks that the Obama administration—with GOP help—basically has quashed the investigation into torture by slow-marching it to death. It’s starting to feel a lot like 1983 around here. Or, as one friend put it, “Pretty sure the way I feel about human politic…