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Challenge to ‘un-Africanness’ of homosexuality; LGBT Catholics in Africa face church cooperation with persecution; lesbian cartoon project debuts in bangladesh under shadow of violence; Global LGBT Recap

…ing Dhee, we want to shape perception of LGBT people, because we should be free to choose whom to love,” Mehnaz Khan, one of the four content developers of Project Dhee, told the AFP news agency. The project was launched on Sept. 05 at Dhaka’s British Council, under tight security to avoid any protestors. “We don’t want to be stuck inside boxes anymore. We want our mind to be free,” Bangladeshi social activist Khushi Kabir told Dhaka Tribune. The…

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Orthodox Church’s Authoritarian Anti-LGBTQ Statement Poses Serious Threat to Academic Freedom

…he OCA, the Synod of Bishops have the authority to restrict their right to free academic speech and thought. Academic freedom, which was arguably founded in Medieval Christianity, has always been subject to institutional affiliation. But the OCA document doesn’t specify who might be at risk. Does it pertain to OCA lay members employed at institutions and/or writing academic articles for publications unaffiliated with the OCA? There is (or at least…

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Corporations, Religious Conscience, Citizens United, and Contraception

…urt. Judge Carol E. Jackson dismissed O’Brien’s claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Free Exercise, Establishment, and Free Speech Clausees of the First Amendment. On the RFRA claim—one that conservative opponents of the HHS rule have portrayed as more or less open and shut—the judge ruled that the coverage requirement does not “substantially burden” (the relevant legal standard) O’Brien’s religious practice: Frank O’Brien i…

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Supreme Court Conservatives Allow Execution of Muslim Prisoner Despite Religious Freedom Violation

…rnment, the First Amendment is important: “the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens …. The Free Exercise Clause bars even ‘subtle departures from neutrality’ on matters of religion.” The Commission was not acting neutrally toward the bakery’s religion. Now, compare this to the short opinion that permitted the execution of Ray, a religious minority. Nothi…

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The Fire Next Time: Tibetan Protests Spread

…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…

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Israel Votes to Limit Sheldon Adelson

…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…

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

…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…

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Taking It to the Streets: Anonymous vs. Scientology

…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…

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Stem Cell Chronicles: Why Politics and Science Most Certainly Should Not Be Separated

…commitments. The lifting of the ban was a crucial moment in the defense of free speech and the exercise of free expression, said the President. This kind rhetoric is maddening to conservatives and rightly so; it places their moral concerns on a back burner, by suggesting that the articulation of such concern makes one anti-scientific. Don’t get me wrong: President Obama is surely right to announce, and in bold terms, that the nightmarish condition…

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Oklahoma Bill Would Violate Basic Freedoms, Rewrite the Ten Commandments

…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,…

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