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Fear Not, The IRS Isn’t Colluding With Angry Atheists

…tive legal and religious groups that the agency is attempt to stifle their free speech. Through efforts such as Pulpit Freedom Sunday, pastors openly flout the law. Enforcement of the rule, and the revocation of a participating church’s tax-exempt status, though, could trigger a constitutional challenge to it. The rule against politicking, though, isn’t aimed at suppressing free speech but at ensuring that taxpayers don’t subsidize political activ…

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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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Some Christian and Muslim Leaders Urging ‘No’ Vote in Australian Mail Ballot on Marriage Equality; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…f Taiwan not having to deal with religious or cultural stigma and, echoing Jordanian Queer Muslima, about Islam being a barrier to acceptance of LGBTQ people. “According to a poll conducted by Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCR) in 2013, around half of Taiwanese support same sex unions whereas 75% of the opposition came from the Christian community. In addition, there are also Taiwanese who oppose same-sex unions on the gro…

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“Mitt Romney Style”—A Virtually Religion Free 2012 Contest?

I recently beheld what I believe to be confirming evidence that the 2012 general election has delivered far less religion drama than many of us expected: The CollegeHumor video “Mitt Romney Style,” a political parody of South Korean PSY’s global mega K-pop hit “Gangnam Style,” which is itself a send up of the lifestyles of Seoul’s rich and famous. “Mitt Romney Style” features a Romney impersonator obnoxiously flaunting his wealth.  There are hors…

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Sanctuary and the Second Amendment: Do Guns Deserve Special Protection?

…Indeed, the tradition of sacred spaces as gun-free (weapon-free, violence-free, force-free) zones makes the use of sanctuary language in recent “Second Amendment Sanctuary” legislation curious. The turn from the use of “sanctuary” from its origins in restricting vengeance, violent enforcement, and weaponry to the protection of gun-keeping within the sanctuary borders, while rhetorically brilliant, feels particularly cynical when research shows th…

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The Bad Religion at the Heart of GOP Healthcare Policy

…poor and without health coverage, that’s all about you. We wash our hands. Free markets: If you are poor, you are perfectly “free” to sleep under a bridge, in the immortal words of Anatole France. But the wealthy are totally free to suck up health care resources via tax-favored health savings accounts. And it goes without saying that the insurance companies and health providers are totally free to suck out your blood. State authority on insurance…

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The Uncertain Post-Obergefell World of Religious Exemptions

…isn’t covered because their boss thinks it’s tantamount to murder–dignity didn’t enter into the equation. We’re focused on the bakers and the caterers, in part because the religious right has made such a spectacle of them, with hyperbolic pronouncements about the end of religious freedom and free speech. It’s easy to forget that in most states, as well as under federal law, LGBT people are left unprotected in public accommodations, housing, and em…

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On Religion, Abortion, and Politics: Dr. George Tiller’s Christian Ethics

…For All One of Luther’s most popular writings is his pamphlet called “The Freedom of a Christian,” in which he declares that a Christian is free from all earthly authority through the power of the gospel, which establishes a reconciled relationship with God—a quite subversive political orientation since it relativizes all earthly authority. At the same time, this gospel creates in the believer a desire to serve the neighbor, not to satisfy any la…

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White House Unveils Contraception Accommodation Plan [UPDATED]

…The catch here is that there’s a difference between “revenue neutral” and “free.” By one report’s measure, it costs about $21.40 to add birth control, IUDs and other contraceptives to an insurance plan. Those costs may be offset by a reduction in pregnancies. But unless drug manufacturers decide to start handing out free contraceptives, the money to buy them will have to come from somewhere. Where will it come from, since neither employers nor emp…

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Obama Administration Gives Free Pass for Faith-Based Groups to Discriminate

…the memo was “based on a far-fetched interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” In a 2010 letter, CARD charged that continued reliance on the 2007 OLC memo “threatens core civil rights and religious freedom protections” and that the administration’s vague case-by-case approach “raises the problem of religious selectivity and provides scant opportunity for transparency or accountability. Following this approach indefinitely whi…

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