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Catholic Archbishop Takes On Jesuit Magazine’s Slam on “Ecumenism of Hate”; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…7% of Australian Christians believe all federal parliamentarians should be free to vote on same-sex marriage as soon as possible. It found support for a free vote is strong across all Christian age groups, but strongest among millennials (aged 18-34) at 86%. It also asked about civil celebrants’ right to refuse to marry same-sex couples. At the moment, wedding service providers such as civil celebrants, or businesses such as florists or caterers,…

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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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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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What’s So Troubling About Funding a Playground? How Trinity Lutheran Undermines the First Amendment

…affirmative, finding that the Missouri policy violated Trinity Lutheran’s free exercise rights by forcing the church to choose between its religious identity and participation in a government benefit program. In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court held “the Department’s policy expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients by disqualifying them from a public benefit solely because of their religious character… such a pol…

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Not All Choice is Free

…seem overdrawn at first glance. There seems to be a fundamental difference between a citizen and/or organization withholding taxes for state services with which they do not wish to be identified, and a citizen and/or organization being asked to provide those services themselves. The problem is that this creates a false distinction between the state as an actor and people as actors. State services are, all of them, provided by organizations and by…

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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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$50 Billion Fundamentalist Free Fall

In the latest news flash that has Wall Street reeling, Bernard Madoff, arguably the most dominant figure at the NASDAQ Exchange, was arrested on one count of Security Fraud by an FBI team investigating the affair. The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched its own investigation, and further charges seem inevitable. The numbers involved are staggering. His company’s value, estimated at some $50 billion is now, by his own admission, based…

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Glenn Beck’s Political Theology

…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…

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Take It Off, Or We’ll Make You: On Sarkozy’s Proposed Burqa Ban

…When you step out in clothing that boldly states your womanhood, you are a free woman. You are no longer a slave to old rules and notions. Modernity is inherently free. Therefore, burqas, veils, and headscarves are now off-limits. Women who appear in public wearing such clothing may be fined, arrested, and/or imprisoned. They may be prevented from attending schools and colleges, and from going to work. (We may make allowances for shoppers, though,…

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Kentucky-Fried Christianity: Governor Matt Bevin Wants to Pray Away Violence in Louisville

…im of bad faith. The conflict over Bevin’s prayer initiative is a conflict between neoliberal, libertarian strands of American evangelicalism, where privilege is accorded to the individual— gifted with free will, deciding his or her own fate—and an American social gospel tradition heavily flavored by the Enlightenment rationality of the Founders, with attention to structures of power as both historically damaging and burdened by responsibilities,…

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