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What’s So Troubling About Funding a Playground? How Trinity Lutheran Undermines the First Amendment

By Elizabeth Reiner Platt

…affirmative, finding that the Missouri policy violated Trinity Lutheran’s free exercise rights by forcing the church to choose between its religious identity and participation in a government benefit program. In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court held “the Department’s policy expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients by disqualifying them from a public benefit solely because of their religious character… such a pol…

‘Atheizing’ the Dead, Religious Doughnuts, & Tax-Free Witching

By Michael J. Altman

Inspired by Mormon baptism practices, Atheize the Dead offers to convert your deceased loved one to atheism. The Hartford, Connecticut city council found itself in hot water when it proposed a Muslim invocation for one of its pre-meeting prayers. After its website was inundated with protests against the planned invocations, the council decided to cancel prayers of any sort at the meetings and will open with an “interfaith moment of silence.” Dona…

Sanctuary and the Second Amendment: Do Guns Deserve Special Protection?

By Rosalind C. Hughes

…Indeed, the tradition of sacred spaces as gun-free (weapon-free, violence-free, force-free) zones makes the use of sanctuary language in recent “Second Amendment Sanctuary” legislation curious. The turn from the use of “sanctuary” from its origins in restricting vengeance, violent enforcement, and weaponry to the protection of gun-keeping within the sanctuary borders, while rhetorically brilliant, feels particularly cynical when research shows th…

“Freedom” vs. “Liberty”: Why Religious Conservatives Have Begun to Favor One Over the Other

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…liberty suggests a “defensive response.” “I think you could say we are all free, but what does free mean? It’s such a general concept,” said Green, noting that liberty can have more immediate and personal connotations, when spoken to the right audience. “That word seems to resonate with a particular segment of society,” he said. It’s very clear which segment that is. Over the past ten years, lobby groups on the religious right have latched onto “r…

The Bad Religion at the Heart of GOP Healthcare Policy

By Peter Laarman

…poor and without health coverage, that’s all about you. We wash our hands. Free markets: If you are poor, you are perfectly “free” to sleep under a bridge, in the immortal words of Anatole France. But the wealthy are totally free to suck up health care resources via tax-favored health savings accounts. And it goes without saying that the insurance companies and health providers are totally free to suck out your blood. State authority on insurance…

“Mitt Romney Style”—A Virtually Religion Free 2012 Contest?

By Joanna Brooks

I recently beheld what I believe to be confirming evidence that the 2012 general election has delivered far less religion drama than many of us expected: The CollegeHumor video “Mitt Romney Style,” a political parody of South Korean PSY’s global mega K-pop hit “Gangnam Style,” which is itself a send up of the lifestyles of Seoul’s rich and famous. “Mitt Romney Style” features a Romney impersonator obnoxiously flaunting his wealth. There are hors…

White House Unveils Contraception Accommodation Plan [UPDATED]

By Sarah Posner

…The catch here is that there’s a difference between “revenue neutral” and “free.” By one report’s measure, it costs about $21.40 to add birth control, IUDs and other contraceptives to an insurance plan. Those costs may be offset by a reduction in pregnancies. But unless drug manufacturers decide to start handing out free contraceptives, the money to buy them will have to come from somewhere. Where will it come from, since neither employers nor emp…

Obama Administration Gives Free Pass for Faith-Based Groups to Discriminate

By Sarah Posner

…the memo was “based on a far-fetched interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” In a 2010 letter, CARD charged that continued reliance on the 2007 OLC memo “threatens core civil rights and religious freedom protections” and that the administration’s vague case-by-case approach “raises the problem of religious selectivity and provides scant opportunity for transparency or accountability. Following this approach indefinitely whi…

Court Rules in Favor of For-Profit Employer Seeking Exemption from Contraception Rule

By Sarah Posner

…Restoration Act, not on the plaintiffs’ claims under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise, Establishment, and Free Speech clauses. Under that standard, the court determined that the Newlands and Hercules would suffer a substantial burden on their free exercise of religion should they be required to provide contraception coverage under their self-insurance that that provide to the company’s employees, and that the government had not implemented the…

Will SCOTUS’s New Zeal for “Neutrality” Affect its Decision on the “Muslim Ban”?

By Elizabeth Reiner Platt

…ember of Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission it deemed hostile to religion: Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust, whether it be—I mean, we—we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use…