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What 19th-Century Marriage Controversies Can Tell Us About The Fight Over Gay Marriage

By Eric C. Miller

…ange understandings of marriage. Polygamy (nineteenth century Mormons) and free love (some groups of Perfectionists) were two dramatic attempts to change marriage that were based in religious and often explicitly biblical justifications. Religion can be a malleable tool in negotiating the meaning and significance of marriage in public life. The perceived connection between marriage and the future of the nation also has a long history. Commentators…

The Fire Next Time: Tibetan Protests Spread

By Megan Sweas

…of the city’s Tibetan refugee settlement, personalizing the struggle for Tibet’s freedom. “If I’m not doing anything, I shouldn’t call myself a Tibetan,” the young people told Raha. While uprisings in Tibet in the late 1980s inspired international solidarity movements among young Westerners, recent protests inside Tibet have galvanized a new generation of activists within the refugee community [See here for RD’s previous coverage]. The young refug…

Israel Votes to Limit Sheldon Adelson

By Sarah Posner

…imed at limiting the free distribution of Israel Hayom (Israel Today), the free newspaper owned by American casino magnate and Republican super-funder Sheldon Adelson. The same Sheldon Adelson who, at the inaugural meeting of the Israeli American Council in Washington on Sunday, said, “I don’t like journalism.” Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer explains the anti-Adelson bill that advanced today: The law, proposed by MK Eitan Cabel (Knesset) and sponsored b…

Grassley Staff Memo on Televangelists Makes Clear Religious Right Opposition to Government Oversight

By Sarah Posner

…t of the religious right which deems it an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and religious freedom. The rule, it’s true, is rarely enforced by the IRS, as the memo notes. But if it’s repealed, and churches are free from the possibility of an IRS investigation for endorsing candidates, churches would become even more politicized, and free to use their tax-exempt status to do so. UPDATE: Michael Batts, who has been appointed to lead the EC…

Taking It to the Streets: Anonymous vs. Scientology

By Gabriel Mckee

…t the core of the hacker ethos is the belief that “information wants to be free,” it’s no surprise that the group is so angered by Scientology’s pay-to-pray structure. The Church relies on tightly-guarded copyrights and trademarks, and that defense has made them an inviting target for Anonymous’ information pirates. Time will tell how successful the campaign against Scientology will be, but history has shown 15-year-old hackers to be every bit as…

Here’s What the Court Didn’t Decide in Masterpiece

By Patrick Hornbeck

…sons” and, on the other, “the right of all persons to exercise fundamental freedoms,” including the free exercise of religion. And therein lies a second, likely much less welcome upshot for gay rights advocates. Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court argued that the Civil Rights Commission unfairly treated Phillips in two ways. His first argument, that the commission permitted other bakeries to refuse service to customers who wished to commission…

Oklahoma Bill Would Violate Basic Freedoms, Rewrite the Ten Commandments

By Andrew L. Seidel

…their god to conform with modern morality, Walters and Olsen would do far better to read Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which we celebrate in just a few days. In it, Jefferson slams “the impious presumption of legislators and rulers … who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible,…

Ebola and Us: The American Roots of Liberia’s Trauma

By Peter Laarman

…christianized for its benefit, and our blacks themselves would be put in a better position.” Chief Justice John Marshall wrote: “The removal of our coloured population is, I think, a common object. The whole union would be strengthened by it and removed from a danger whose extent can scarcely be estimated.” (Free blacks weren’t the only danger: during the 1820s a few New York-based colonizationists associated with Columbia College also supported t…

A Bill Passes, Westboro Baptists Shrug

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…the two key issues at stake in its signing: First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and to free speech: I am very pleased to be signing this bill into law. The graves of our veterans are hallowed ground. And obviously we all defend our Constitution and the First Amendment and free speech, but we also believe that when men and women die in the service of their country and are laid to rest, it should be done with the utmost honor an…

Bachmann Weaves Own Salvation Story into Christian Nation Mythology

By Sarah Posner

…settling,” by knowing Jesus Christ “in his fullness” can someone be truly free, free in the way that Jesus intended when he “set captives free” by the founding of the country. It’s all wrong, of course, historically, constitutionally. But Bachmann found the precise sweet spot where testimony and Christian American exceptionalism mythology intersect. Bachmann took her speech even further, invoking the biblical story of Joshua and Caleb, who led a…