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Religious Right in a Froth Over Hate Crimes Legislation

…e American Family Association, Donald Wildmon states: America’s most basic freedoms of speech, conscience and the free exercise of religion are under attack and the time to act is now. If President Obama succeeds with his priority of passing the Hate Crimes law, H.R. 1913 – the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, it could lead to the criminalization of the Biblical view of homosexuality in sermons and elsewhere. An offended homosexua…

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Arcade Fire and the Suburban Soul

…h the one I love but my mind holds the key set my body free, set my spirit free… And a symphonic explosion of sound highlights the climax to “Intervention”: Been working for the church while your life falls apart been singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart The Wilderness Downtown When Neon Bible was released in 2007, lead vocalist and songwriter Win Butler, who has spoken about his Mormon upbringing and religious influences, said that the…

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Spiritualism and Sex Meet Evangelical Censorship, 19th-Century-Style

…lege-educated cohort who would enjoy discussing things like religion, sex, free speech, censorship, women’s rights, blasphemy, and obscenity. It was not finally an audience of specialists I dreamed of but free-ranging brainiacs—in other words, readers with some of the daring spirit of nineteenth-century amateurs. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? I am definitely hoping to offer my readers good, even artful,…

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State-Licensed Ministers Can’t “Pray Away the Gay,” SCOTUS Affirms

…in all 50 states. In fact, even the California minister who filed suit is free to practice the debunked “therapy”—he just can’t engage minors in the practice, and can’t represent himself as a state-licensed therapist offering that treatment. In his ministerial duties he is free to preach about the power of prayer (or, in some cases, more nefarious tactics) to “rescue” people from the bonds of queerness. But what he can’t do, according to the newl…

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This is not a Religion Column: Biblical Capitalism

…ion to what we hope will merely be our greatest recession, the doctrine of free market fundamentalism remains the alpha and the omega of American conservatism. That doesn’t prevent Christian conservatives from favoring government subsidies for the rich; they simply reframe it as God’s will, recruiting the creator as a crony. Biblical capitalism isn’t, ultimately, a supply-and-demand religion. Between business conservatism’s love of laissez-faire a…

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Corporate Personhood Was a Radical Notion… In the 11th Century

…n development as individuals, as well as for social belonging. Much of the freedom Americans enjoy as individuals has evolved in relation to the freedom enjoyed by their corporate organizations, mediated by constraints imposed on those organizations by federal and state governments. As documented in a 2011 article in the NYU Law Review by Darrell Miller, for-profit corporations already possess an impressive list of constitutional rights: some Firs…

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In Order to Move Forward We Must Believe the Unbelievable: Some Choose Death Over Democracy

…he said recently, “My people are happy, and they’re happy, because they’re free.” Our heritage is rife with heroes choosing death over tyranny. “Live free or die,” for instance. See also: “Don’t tread on me.” But nowhere is there a hero choosing death over democracy. We must reconsider the credit we give. In places like South Dakota, individual liberty is being perverted in the interest of the group, of the tribe, of the collective, so that indivi…

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Secure Borders? Not a Chance, Senator

…own spiritual/cultural values. Liberals see porous borders as a symbol of freedom: free movement, free choice, and the free creativity generated by the intermingling of peoples.  To conservatives, the very presence of so many Illegal “aliens” proves that the borders they once imagined as the key to a safe, orderly life have long been crumbling around them. To give undocumented people legal status would be further proof that the nation’s walls and…

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Books Must be Hardbound, Quotes Whole, and Genitalia Scrubbed

…genitalia, they were told that any parody of religious art is offensive and cannot be displayed. The SBAS stall was then removed entirely from a student fair. Publically mocking religious truth claims probably isn’t very productive, and not all government institutions must be “religion-free zones.” But in a democratic society, the same rules must apply to everyone. These cases point to a pattern of de facto censorship of atheism. The good news is…

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Australian Church Nixes Straight Couple’s Wedding Over Their Marriage Equality Support; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…ences such as radical gay sex education being taught in school, threats to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.” At Crikey, Amy Coopes responds to critics within the LGBT movement who dismiss the marriage equality movement as a form of assimilationism: Some in the Yes camp wish to paint this as, quite simply, a question about amending the Marriage Act to allow two consenting adults to marry, and in a sense, of course, that is true. But as wi…

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