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Indonesian Court Rejects Religious Conservatives’ Bid To Criminalize Gay Sex; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ority effectively prohibits all positive depictions of LGBT lives. The MDA Free to Air Television Program Code states that “music associated with drugs, alternative lifestyles (e.g. homosexuality) or the worship of the occult or the devil should not be broadcast.” The Free to Air Radio Program Code says “information, themes or subplots on lifestyles such as homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexualism, transsexualism, transvestism, paedophilia and inces…

Will SCOTUS’s New Zeal for “Neutrality” Affect its Decision on the “Muslim Ban”?

By Elizabeth Reiner Platt

…ember of Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission it deemed hostile to religion: Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust, whether it be—I mean, we—we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use…

Not All Choice is Free

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…the state to insist on its way, and for them to gain their administrative freedom, would be to abrogate that curious tax exemption for an institution as wealthy as the Catholic Church in a time of real fiscal crisis. But clearly, this would lend itself to the very Big Brother vision of the federal government that created this controversy in the first place. Instead, President Obama, ever the patient compromiser, attempted to create a new distinct…

Glenn Beck’s Political Theology

By Daniel Schultz

…oppression cannot be far behind. Conversely, if a God is disclosed who is free to come and go, free from and even against the regime, free to hear and even answer slave cries, free from all proper godness as defined by the empire, then it will bear decisively upon sociology because the freedom of God will surface in the brickyards and manifest itself as justice and compassion. That’s the God I know and love, one who provokes real change on behalf…

Are Kosher Delis Like Catholic Hospitals?

By Sarah Posner

…other words, Soloveichik charged the administration with trampling on the Free Exercise rights of employers while ignoring the wrong of religious coercion of their employees. Sarna, who writes that he hopes Congress will ignore Soloveichik’s testimony, shines light on how Soloveichik and the other Issa witnesses ignored the Establishment Clause in favor of the Free Exercise Clause: In fact, the government makes no such assumption at all. Instead,…

What the Danish Cartoon Controversy Tells Us About Religion, the Secular, and the Limits of the Law

By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

…in Europe and elsewhere have failed to internalize the democratic value of free speech. Jyllands-Posten, for its part, self-righteously claimed to be heroically rescuing free speech in the face of the fearful self-censorship practiced by Danish writers and artists with respect to criticism of Islam. The incident was portrayed as a clash between the liberal values of an open society and an anti-modern, authoritarian, and superstitious religion. In…

As Far-Right Surges in US and Germany Debate Rages Over Disqualification of Those Who Would Destroy Democracy

By Annika Brockschmidt

…s.” According to section 2, parties that “seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional.” Section 3 excludes from state financing parties that “are oriented towards an undermining or abolition of the free democratic basic order or an endangerment of the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany.” Judgement as to the constitutionality of poli…

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

By Sarah Posner

…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…

Court Rules in Favor of For-Profit Employer Seeking Exemption from Contraception Rule

By Sarah Posner

…Restoration Act, not on the plaintiffs’ claims under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise, Establishment, and Free Speech clauses. Under that standard, the court determined that the Newlands and Hercules would suffer a substantial burden on their free exercise of religion should they be required to provide contraception coverage under their self-insurance that that provide to the company’s employees, and that the government had not implemented the…

“Freedom” vs. “Liberty”: Why Religious Conservatives Have Begun to Favor One Over the Other

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…liberty suggests a “defensive response.” “I think you could say we are all free, but what does free mean? It’s such a general concept,” said Green, noting that liberty can have more immediate and personal connotations, when spoken to the right audience. “That word seems to resonate with a particular segment of society,” he said. It’s very clear which segment that is. Over the past ten years, lobby groups on the religious right have latched onto “r…