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Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…, not the fourth century … You’re not free to practice your religion in my airline seat.’ ‘This is male entitlement .. the height of male arrogance.’ One comment referred to this as a ‘back of the bus’ issue; as in, women being asked to move in such circumstances was tantamount to assigning them a lesser status as citizens and lower dignity as human beings. Other readers proposed that airlines set aside special seating for men requiring such accom…

The Key to Understanding the Federalist Society Isn’t Originalism — It’s This 800-Year Old Tradition

By Peter Schwartz

…notions of “human dignity” and “human flourishing,” Catholic natural law—an 800-year-old tradition dating back to Thomas Aquinas—is a lens that offers utter clarity to conservative Catholic jurists, activists, policymakers, and scholars as they observe, describe, and engage the world. The power and sharpness of this lens allow them to confidently snap every human movement—every human desire and motive and act—into its divinely appointed and proper…

Will Texas Really Be Able to Undermine Marriage Equality?

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ghts’ based on relationships that mock marriage,” Carpenter contends: “The Texas Supreme Court’s characterization of same-sex marriages as involving simply ‘sexual relations’ demeans those marriages as much as the opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick (reversed in Lawrence v. Texas) demeaned gay couples’ right to sexual privacy by calling it only a right to ‘homosexual sodomy.’ When certain people see a married gay couple their thoughts drift to sodomy. “…

‘Soul of Yoga’ at Stake in Texas Regulation Push

By Andrea R. Jain

…that require yoga teacher training programs to be licensed by the State of Texas. Until the last few years, Texas approached the regulation of yoga as it approached the regulation of religious institutions and organizations: it didn’t. But in January of 2010, The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) informed the program directors of yoga teacher training programs in Houston and Dallas that they may be running career schools as defined by Chapter 132 o…

The Abortion Debate, Texas Style

By Dhawn Martin

…just getting started. While checking out the latest update from Stand With Texas Women on Facebook, I heard Texas Sen. Donna Campbell on the local news declare that “Democracy was traded for mobocracy” during the successful filibuster. Mobocracy, really? Needless to say, the proverbial line was drawn in the sand, yet again. The orange-clad were directed to arrive at the Capitol the following day, July 2, ready to register their stance on HB2 and,…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

By Lauri Lebo

…xtbooks. As the second-largest bulk purchaser of textbooks in the country, Texas determines what students learn not only in Texas, but in many other states, where districts purchase the same versions. The board members have appointed six experts, and, the choices appear carefully crafted to be fair and balanced to differing views: one side representing a commitment to sound education, and the other side representing an agenda of religious far-righ…

“Traditional values.” Tom DeLay. Jesus loves low, low prices! Just another day in Texas.

By Sarah Posner

…thics, Western Civilization, and American Traditions” at the University of Texas at Austin. One of nine task forces maintained by the TCCRI is one on “Western civilization,” the mandate of which is “to further understanding of Western civilization and American traditions among students at state public schools and institutions of higher education.” “Traditional values” are part of the group’s catchy LIFT acronym (Limited government, Individual libe…

Set to Privilege Christianity in Public Schools, Texas Sends a Message About Who is Welcome — And Who is Not

By Steven K. Green

…tate more clearly, the message that state officials wish to communicate to Texas schoolchildren, which is that Texas is a state for White, heteronormative, conservative Christians. Texas, however, is much more religiously diverse than this message would suggest—and far more diverse than it was when I grew up there in the 1970s. According to the Pew Research Center, only 31% of adult Texans are evangelical Protestant, the constituency that would mo…

Glenn Beck’s Cheap Grace

By Karyn Carlo

…way from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy theories that play into our worst fears and listen, instead, for the diffi…