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Gun Owners of America Celebrates Defeat of Gun Control Amendments

…of bright ideas like we don’t want guns around children, so let’s have gun-free school zones. Do you know where most of the mass murders have occurred in the United States? In gun-free zones. There’s an exception or two but typically it’s where the bad guy has reason to think he’ll have a monopoly of force. It has to be one of the most stupid laws on the books, and yet we’ve had so much inertia because we don’t want guns around children especially…

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The Theological Hijacking of Religious “Freedom”

…law is being used to legislate a vision of freedom that defines religious freedom as “freedom from.” Unlike the early American Baptists, who faced serious persecution, these advocates seek to use the law to protect their vision of worship in the workplace as a purity ritual. It is a vision of religious expression free from interference in the form of difference, free from the conflicting demands of our common lives, and free from any obligation t…

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Why Hobby Lobby is a Pandora’s Box: Ginsburg v. Alito

…why. This was not a First Amendment case. It was filed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Understanding this will require a little legal history but I promise to keep it brief. Prior to 1990 The Court ruled on First Amendment Free Exercise claims with a test known as the Sherbert Test. Constitutional rights are not absolute (think laws against human sacrifice). Essentially an infringement on Free Exercise was permitted if: 1) ther…

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DeSantis is a No-Show, the Right’s ‘Secret Sauce,’ and Final Thoughts on Pray Vote Stand

…rsonally promised him many years ago that “the court will uphold religious freedom and free exercise…but I don’t know if—but if you [faithful Americans] can uphold it in your daily life and culture.” Brownback seems to tell the crowd that weaponizing the “free exercise” clause will remain a crucial tactic for the Christian Right moving forward. “If you want to have a traditional set of values,” he tells the crowd—“if you just wanna claim life is s…

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Here’s What the Court Didn’t Decide in Masterpiece

…sons” and, on the other, “the right of all persons to exercise fundamental freedoms,” including the free exercise of religion. And therein lies a second, likely much less welcome upshot for gay rights advocates. Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court argued that the Civil Rights Commission unfairly treated Phillips in two ways. His first argument, that the commission permitted other bakeries to refuse service to customers who wished to commission…

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Stem Cell Chronicles: Why Politics and Science Most Certainly Should Not Be Separated

…commitments. The lifting of the ban was a crucial moment in the defense of free speech and the exercise of free expression, said the President. This kind rhetoric is maddening to conservatives and rightly so; it places their moral concerns on a back burner, by suggesting that the articulation of such concern makes one anti-scientific. Don’t get me wrong: President Obama is surely right to announce, and in bold terms, that the nightmarish condition…

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Orthodox Church’s Authoritarian Anti-LGBTQ Statement Poses Serious Threat to Academic Freedom

…he OCA, the Synod of Bishops have the authority to restrict their right to free academic speech and thought. Academic freedom, which was arguably founded in Medieval Christianity, has always been subject to institutional affiliation. But the OCA document doesn’t specify who might be at risk. Does it pertain to OCA lay members employed at institutions and/or writing academic articles for publications unaffiliated with the OCA? There is (or at least…

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There is No Religious Freedom: A Lesson from a ‘Pastafarian’ Stunt

…to flourish.” The religious are free, but not because they enjoy religious freedom. They are free insofar as all are free. In a liberal society, we all inhabit an equal space of personal and associative liberty in which to worship, blaspheme, or just fix our suppers. As Sullivan notes, forsaking religious freedom for an equality-based approach would not only “end discrimination against those who do not self-identify as religious or whose religion…

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Here’s What the Court Didn’t Decide in ‘Masterpiece Cakeshop’

…sons” and, on the other, “the right of all persons to exercise fundamental freedoms,” including the free exercise of religion. And therein lies a second, likely much less welcome upshot for gay rights advocates. Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court argued that the Civil Rights Commission unfairly treated Phillips in two ways. His first argument, that the commission permitted other bakeries to refuse service to customers who wished to commission…

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Is Christianity Simply About God Entering the Uterus of a Jewish Virgin?

…selves. God had to create a space between Himself and us, in which we were free to chart our own path, to mature in our own way, to tell our own stories. Hopefully, these stories would be love stories that would eventually bring God’s creatures back to Him: fully formed selves who were Other than Him, but united with Him and each other in love. But our freedom carried with it the capacity to do otherwise. It carried with it the capacity to reject…

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