Religion Dispatches
…nce of a double standard for abortion facilities; the speed with which the new regulations were handed down and compliance mandated; and the perception that the new regulations are intended to get around federal law), the measure has been controversial. In a recent editorial, the Kansas City Star criticized Governor Sam Brownback for signing the bill, claiming that “[t]he move reflects the same disdain for Kansans that Brownback has shown in other…
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…council meetings. Criminalizing libraries and librarians While most of the new playbook isn’t really new, and simply builds on its original themes, there is one new model bill that bears special attention because it builds out a new dimension of Project Blitz’s religious and political vision, and exposes their view of democratic institutions. Indeed, the bill became infamous months before it morphed into a secret model in the Project Blitz playboo…
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…riages of same-sex couples who get married overseas. According to Gay Star News: Victoria joins the states of New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania in recognizing overseas same-sex marriages – meaning a majority of the Australian states now legally recognize the existence of same-sex marriages in some way. An Australian Jesuit Priest, Fr. Frank Brennan, published an essay calling a proposed plebiscite on marriage equality a “waste of time” that…
Read More…they could not afford oxcarts they pulled handcarts. They did what so many American peoples have done—they moved on and started over. This is a story so many Americans know: from the people of Cherokee, Muscogee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations, forced by government edicts to march the “Trail of Tears”; the millions of African-American migrants who left the violence of the Jim Crow South to build the great industrial cities of the Northeast and Mid…
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…system simply doesn’t work that way. And in the current economic climate, new arguments against the death penalty have begun to appear in some surprising quarters. A new argument for abolition stems from the cost of the death penalty. Capital trials are almost always longer and more expensive; there are more witnesses in general, and bifurcated trials mean you are getting two trials often for nearly twice the price. The mandatory appeals process…
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…hile a hostage. Not that it mattered. ISIS, unlike Ben Carson, treated the American Muslim as an American, which he most certainly was. Beheaded almost a year after his abduction, Peter’s funeral services were held in absentia in November 2014, in his native Indiana, and led by a Syrian imam. I’m sure the Kassigs will appreciate how Carson might think, given their son’s sacrifices for his country, he might not have been entirely American. It’s eas…
Read More…reports BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder. Armenia: Folk dancing group kicks out gay American Kyle Khandikyan, a 23-year old American living in Armenia was kicked out of a folk dancing group after the instructor learned that he was gay. Khandikyan, who currently lives in Yerevan and first came to Armenia through Birthright Armenia as a volunteer with PINK Armenian, was told by the instructor that he did not belong to this “nation,” that he was “not Armenian…
Read More…k, like every other, bringing them forward as the spokesman for the Muslim American community. They shouldn’t be, any more than the president should be reaching out to them and utilizing them, I should say, as his go-to people. Gaffney’s claim that “in fact, any Muslim American organization in this country of any prominence is a Muslim Brotherhood front” is a complete lie. This, too, comes out of the Holy Land Foundation trial — in which the U.S….
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…braves, warriors, and Geronimo are only part of the rich history of Native Americans. Until that history and its lessons are woven into the fabric of the American consciousness, we will continue to squander precious resources around the world failing to hear the same message over and over again. Steven Newcomb, a Shawnee Indian, said it best in a column in Indian Country Today: What the hell were they thinking… the code name was based on an extens…
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…ncerned that they might appear to speak in my name. Rather than accept, as American Muslims, what happened to our fellow Americans of Armenian origin, this organization chooses to (1) challenge the historicity of the Armenian genocide; (2) pander to the increasingly authoritarian Turkish government; and (3) tell Armenians that, in effect, we cannot recognize your pain because someone else won’t recognize ours. The statement opens by recognizing ‘t…
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