Religion Dispatches
…e strings of his electric bass to bang out a rhythm that sounds like Morse code. When all twelve performers are on stage, the sounds that they make together are nothing less than astonishing. On top of it all rests the falsetto voice of the band’s vocalist, Jón Birgisson, who sings the lyrics with a keening wail: Bakvio sk´yjaból vaknar sól úr dvala Svalar sér vio kalda dropa regnsins leikur sér vio heita loga eldsins Byr til regnboga A rough tran…
Read More…. It’s a legal system, shari’ah law; it’s a financial system; it’s a moral code; it’s a political system; it’s a military system. It should not be protected under the First Amendment, particularly given that those following the dictates of the Qur’an are under an obligation to destroy our Constitution and replace it with shari’ah law.” Bachmann is taking heat from fellow Republicans for her attempted witch hunt of Abedin. But will those Republican…
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…ause it’s the very definition of voter intimidation, which is illegal. The Code of Laws of the United States of America states that: “Whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for, or not to vote for, any candidate for the office of President,…
Read More…hy of international coverage because the Palestinian women had broken “the code of silence” by resorting to Israeli courts. The implications of this juxtaposition of two unrelated events are that Palestinians belong to a backward, patriarchal culture that, rightly or wrongly, is under attack by a modern, “democratic” state with a legal apparatus that supports women’s rights. Others have shown that the New York Times gave disproportionate attention…
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…one has parents worth invoking. And every little step and turn of the talk promotes an etiquette that values open doors and natural achievement. The bride’s genealogy, for example, always precedes the groom’s. The undergraduate degree is one you “graduated from” whereas the graduate degree is one you “received.” Flourishes of detail are unnecessary (the names speak for themselves) unless they don’t. Thus, the employer of one subject is “CytImmune…
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…deed leads to serious consideration for the legitimization of parties that promote the propaganda of paedophilia. Putin also send US President-elect Donald Trump a “very nice” Christmas letter. Taiwan: Marriage equality moves forward in parliament The day after Christmas, amid raucous protests, a parliamentary committee passed the first draft of a marriage equality bill, which is supported by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and President T…
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…—often more adroitly than their modern counterparts. In his Mishneh Torah (Code of Law), Maimonides explicitly advocated the position that women should stay mostly in their homes. The kabbalistic literature now so popular in modern Israel is in many ways worse. We have evidence that in the heyday of Safed in the sixteenth century a “council for rectifying sins” (va’ad le tikun avonot) was established to seek out and corporally punish those who wer…
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…This moved swiftly into the revision of Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code in 1935, which “would amount to a death sentence for gay men,” according to historian Andrea Carlo. The banning of books on the LGBTQIA+ experience and the closing of libraries; the legislation and platforms against transgender healthcare and LGBTQIA+ rights; these all draw from that playbook. All of these components–physical assaults, book banning, and legislation–are…
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…ayer of my persuasion (we’ll call her Petra from Yuma) finds using the tax code to benefit such schools offensive to the First Amendment. In the past, Petra from Yuma could go into court to challenge the tax credit as a form of state-subsidized religion. But Petra (or a Thomas Jefferson redivivus, for that matter) is now out of luck. The core issue is whether providing the tax credit has the exact same practical impact as simply giving tax revenue…
Read More…icrobe cells, mutated cells. We are built, too, of our parents, of genetic code and flesh and blood and bones that grow inside of flesh and blood and bones. So we come again to the parents: “There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer,” Hazel tells us. Green, who is now the parent of two children, told The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot, that his own…
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