Religion Dispatches
…families in concrete ways. He’s talking about a “more family-friendly tax code.” He wants the government to pay people to procreate. It’s a “big government” Republicans can get behind—a “baby government.” Though women of childbearing age are the people Douthat wants to get busy getting pregnant, he doesn’t talk about women very much—or the social, physical, and financial costs women still pay for having kids. Douthat blames women without talking…
Read More…hael Lavers covered the conference. Randy Berry, the special U.S. envoy to promote global LGBT rights, spoke at the gathering that took place at a Tegucigalpa hotel alongside gay Peruvian Congressman Carlos Bruce, transgender Venezuelan National Assembly candidate Tamara Adrián, Costa Rican Deputy Minister of the Interior Carmen Muñoz, Honduran Vice Minister of Human Rights and Justice Karla Cueva, Gonzalo Cid Vega of the Chilean Ministry of Labor…
Read More…ed view of the shari’ah “threat,” saying that he opposed a shari’ah “legal code” but stopped short of a full-on endorsement of shari’ah law bans. (That said, Reed does indeed understand his audience, and its fears.) The composition of the Faith and Freedom panel led me to believe he might have been attempting if not a rapprochement, then at least some balance. Ironically enough, the panel followed one on alleged anti-evangelical bigotry, though fe…
Read More
…ontroversy, America did not practice separation in the sense usually meant today. Since America’s public square always contained references to God and other religious images, it can be said with confidence that at least most leading figures did not see the Establishment Clause as forbidding something like the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or prayers at government-sponsored events. That kind of high wall has never enjoyed majority s…
Read More…uko, the heterosexual executive director of the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum, was part of the case that Sexual Minorities Uganda and the Center for Constitutional Rights have brought against American anti-gay activist Scott Lively, JJuuko sais it could put an end to “evangleicals coming here and importing homophobia,” adding, “You can’t promote hate in other countries. You can’t export hate.” Jjuuko is optimistic about the long-term…
Read More
…mise is that the guard-inmate relationship is always violent, so there’s a code of conduct that is enforced by the inmates themselves. They’re hoping to export this model to Africa and other countries in South America, so they were eager to be able to say that an American sociologist had survived two weeks in one of their prisons as a way of proving that their experimental model works! What was it like? There were three other inmates in my cell, i…
Read More…nce “same-sex attraction” or “same-gender attraction,” while adhering to a code of morality that forbids all sexual contact outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage. Others claim and openly affirm a gay identity while carefully negotiating a path to maintaining church activity and membership. All of these paths entail profound risks, costs, and consequences. All require a level of conscious deliberation on matters of sexuality and spirituality…
Read More
…rly Fiorina said, government taxation and regulation crush growth. Her tax code is three pages long. In some contrast, T.R. thought government promotes growth by, among other things, regulating business. Cruz proposes a flat tax 10% so, he said, a millionaire doesn’t pay less than his secretary. Yet Lincoln found that his initial flat tax burdened the lower and middle classes far more than the rich, and he made it progressive. Cruz said his flat t…
Read More…a to Pharaoh, appeared via videotape at the inaugural Freedom Federation conference last year at Liberty University, saying, “we know you love us and want to commend you for unconditional support for state of Israel,” adding that “Christians and Jews share the same future.” That’s code not only for no state for the Palestinians, but a perpetuation of illegal settlements and purging of Palestinians from occupied land. For Danon, Hagee, and friends,…
Read More…roomful of people, one of whom was Governor Haley Barbour: Few politicians today use outright race baiting, but we see the symbols some use and the phrases they utter and everyone knows what the code is—what really is being said. Oh, and he’s also called attention to how voter ID laws endanger the voting rights of poor and elderly people, and was named a Champion of Justice by the Mississippi Center for Justice. Yep. Classic Dick Molpus. May his t…
Read More