Religion Dispatches
…Christians is not reason enough for a divorce and, more often than not, is code for “serious sin.” Pentecostals have a history of being strict about reasons to divorce, adultery being scripturally the only reason to do so. For those who divorce and who have a denominational affiliation through ministerial license, a divorce can mean, at best, additional scrutiny and at worst, stripping of ministerial credentials. Of course, that never has stopped…
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…oom to announce that Amy would be punished under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which addresses violations of general regulations, for having had sex in a war zone. That night, Amy miscarried alone in her shower. Fearful of the advice of a sympathetic female officer who suggested that Amy might be charged for the abortion as well (she wasn’t), she flushed the fetus down the toilet. “I don’t believe there was ever a life or a s…
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…nd active commitment to “social justice,” something that Beck has said are code words for Communism and Nazism. Look, Frank Capra wasn’t exactly known for his subtle messages. Yet, somehow, Beck manages to reinterpret the movie through an unregulated free-market ideological Ayn Rand prism and message of Christian conservatism. For real? Either Beck has never watched the movie, or he’s so conservatively deluded that he thinks Mr. Potter is the hero…
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…Deseret News included Trijicon in the list because the company “inscribed coded biblical references on high-powered rifle sights used by the U.S. military.” That’s it. Other than the founder’s purported religious beliefs, its inclusion is arbitrary. Why not include Ebay, whose founder Pierre Omidyar is a Buddhist, or any of Sheldon Adelson’s businesses? Trying to draw a line between “business with religious roots” and “everything else in global c…
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…our brains, which makes the admonition “an eye for an eye” in Hammurabi’s code sound less like savagery and more like a way to keep everybody in check. To punish more than the guilt deserves has been a legal problem, apparently, since at least 1792 B.C.E or so. The distinction between justice and vengeance matters, because vengeance costs an enormous amount to taxpayers, and, as reformers on both sides of the aisle argue, our own moral selves. Pe…
Read More…to defend “traditional” marriage and defend “religious liberty,” which is code for defending the religious right’s ability to bully gay and lesbian people at will using God as their shield. But, wait, there’s more. Gingrich has hit the conservative Christian trifecta by sitting down with the Des Moines Register’s editorial board to affirm that opposition to marriage equality stating that there is a “big difference between saying that you’re to ha…
Read More…54 had no legal ramifications: it was not a bill to change the state legal code, as was SB-1433. It also stipulated that the bill would not apply to in vitro fertilization. Well, if any legislators believed this would give them cover, they were mistaken. The pro-personhood folks made it known that a a representative would be bringing a procedural motion to force hearing on SB-1433. Oklahomans for Life sent this memo to house Republicans, stating t…
Read More…on proposed by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. David Fowler, head of the conservative Christian Family Action Council of Tennessee, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, and is one of the bill’s primary lobbyists. In defending the bill’s language, he has tried to draw on comparisons to the famous Scopes monkey trial that took place 86 years ago in his state. “…[T]oday’s evolutionary…
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…rk Kim Davis, and was a central feature of the 2016 Mississippi “religious freedom” bill that’s been put on hold by a federal judge for likely violating the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The failure of both of those cases could eventually spell doom for the Texas bill, but given the GOP control of all of the Lone Star state’s branches of government, it seems unlikely that some silly little constitutional concerns would stand in the way of s…
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…ollowing the Dover decision, the Discovery Institute unveiled its academic freedom campaign, in 2008, complete with a web site providing sample legislation for interested state lawmakers. The institute’s John West made sure to stress that the bills never mentioned intelligent design. But as DI’s past actions clearly indicate, the goal was still to pry open the door for sympathetic teachers to teach intelligent design and creationism. Louisiana, Al…
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