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Marriage Debate in Australia Shifts To Push For Religious Exemptions; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…ces when Parliament attempts to legislate protections for basic rights and freedoms, such as freedom of religion. “The Government is particularly concerned to prevent uncertainties caused by generally worded Bill of Rights-style declarations. “This will be a timely expert stocktake to inform consideration of any necessary legislative reforms.” LGBTI activist Rodney Croome called for LGBTI representation on the panel, saying, “Genuine religious fre…

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Dispatches from the Beltway: Beyond the Graying and Greening Religious Right

…ke just one example, James Dobson’s sprawling conglomerate has its own zip code in Colorado Springs and a larger monthly print circulation than the New York Times) and argue that it will not so easily wither on the vine. The most jaded on the left simply assert that the religious right is the truest expression of the heart of the evangelical community and is thus here to stay. If the argument that “the era of the religious right is over” depended…

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Talmud v. Torture: The Jewish Case Against “Enhanced Interrogation”

…dictates of the prophetic voice through a regimented system of behavior: a code of conduct thoroughly imbued with an ethos and a morality. The most articulate condemnations of torture that Judaism has to offer are therefore presented most effectively as deeply spiritual legal analyses. The best of these, in recent years, was composed by Rabbi Melissa Weintraub for Rabbis for Human Rights, an international organization focusing on a number of progr…

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Final (Probably) Thoughts On The Aqua Buddha Ad

…alizers like to impose their views on everyone else, but make sure they’re free to mock that very moral code. Democrats fear that argument. That’s why their approach has been, especially since about 2006 or so, to try to make themselves out to be the “authentic” Christians who truly care about their neighbors and all that. The Aqua Buddha ad may have been a bad strategic move in Kentucky; we’ll never really know. But Conway — without, as far as I…

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‘Religious Freedom’ for Atheists

…sents a much different global reality. Here the value at stake is not just freedom of speech, but freedom of conscience. The real contest is not between atheists and believers, but between those who affirm the equality of all persons of conscience and those who deny it. Aan was arrested in a small town in West Sumatra on January 18 after a number of local residents assaulted him at work in an act of self-styled vigilantism. They were reacting to s…

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A Real-Life Truman Show?

…hrough the gate leading to the water, one must punch in a combination pass code. The town’s elegantly manicured gardens belie its state’s housing market collapse. But just outside of town, realtors advertise “Free Foreclosure Lists!” Sitting along a commons of lush grass, an attractive young couple casually dressed in designer sunglasses, khakis, and expensive sandals led a group of fair-haired children in prayer. The young blond woman urged the c…

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Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religion?

…d back in 2014, defended itself by invoking section 18 of the Human Rights code, which allows a religious group to restrict participation to the faithful. So while AA presents itself to the public as a “spiritual” program, distinguishing itself from “religious” groups, it nevertheless claimed “religious” legal status in order to protect itself. Although the definition of “religion” is generally assumed in common parlance, it is not in any sense ea…

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Excerpt: The Christian Roots of Zionism

…conveyed this view in a very concise and pithy manner. The idea was first promoted by Christians. In 1853 Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper) wrote that Palestine was ‘‘a country without a nation’’ in search of ‘‘a nation without a country.’’ He made this observation during the Crimean War, when the continued viability of the Ottoman Empire came into question. With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, continued Turkish rule in Palestine came…

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The Facts About ‘Sharia’ May Surprise You

…taken out of their ancient context and tacked onto existing Western civil codes and enforced by the government. That is not shariah, which has a sophisticated legal methodology of application. That’s just making up Islamic-sounding laws and calling it “shariah law.” The shariah-based legal system, which had operated for a millennium, was dismantled under Western colonization of Muslim lands, starting in the 18th century. Nearly 90% of Muslim land…

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There’s Nothing Wrong with ‘Prayer’; But There’s Every Reason to be Skeptical of Pence’s Coronavirus Prayer Circle

…that words like “regular,” “real,” and “normal,” in this context are often code for “conservative white Christians”? Might Merritt have devoted a thought or two to the possibility that American criticism of “thoughts and prayers” responses to real-world problems have everything to do with the fact that right-wing Christians—white evangelicals above all—constitute the one demographic that stands in the way of us seriously addressing our gun violenc…

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