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Anti-Gay Forces On Offense in Europe; ‘African Islam’ Challenged by Extremists; Irish Marriage Foes & ‘Sounds of Sodomy’; Global LGBT Recap

…rminology manipulations used by Catholic church and its allies. “Religious freedoms” is the basic concept used here to try and provide some legitimacy for discrimination and intolerance towards anything other and different, i.e. towards anything that does not fit within their narrow definitions of life and family. Slovakia: Traditionalists ‘On the Offensive’ Cato Institute analyst Dalibor Rohac wrote last week in the New York Times that while “it…

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Rome vs. the Sisters

…rs forced virgins to describe themselves as “brides of Christ” rather than use the male martial imagery they had come to use during the Roman persecutions. The early equality between male and female desert monastics was likewise undercut when eighth century bishops began taking control of women’s monasteries and ordained monks to the priesthood for the first time (but not nuns, of course). And as, throughout the following centuries, groups of dedi…

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

…ting that when voters last made their choice, against Trump, in 2020—he refused to accept it, refused to participate in the peaceful transfer of power, and waged a violent coup, with his supporters trying to hunt down and kill members of Congress, and hang his own Vice president. In the end, the survival of liberal democracies might in no small part depend on the willingness of their courts and other authorities to use the defense mechanisms their…

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

…lloween masks should be similarly avoided by Muslims. Select costumes that use make-up rather than masks. Select costumes that do not use any forms of head-covering (e.g. wigs, scarves, nun’s habit, pirate hat). Dressing up as, say, Whoopi Goldberg may be impermissible because it necessitates dreadlocks. Dressing up as, say, Queen Elizabeth also involves head-wear, and should be avoided. The Muslim-Catholic comparison has already become a sore poi…

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

…hands rest on levers that could combat directly and profoundly the root cause of violence: poverty.” Phelps argues that coinciding with the color-coded areas of the Louisville maps Bevin displayed at his meeting are African-American neighborhoods devastated by decades of national, state, and local policies favoring white communities and leaving black West Louisville to fend for itself. Jim Crow laws. The G.I. Bill. Bank redlining. Social security…

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Glenn Beck’s Political Theology

…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 of those who cannot create it for themselves, one whose love is not threatened by a diverse society, one who wildly and without a doubt free, and calls us to real freedom, which is to live as neighbors, w…

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$50 Billion Fundamentalist Free Fall

…e way the system works. And let us be clear about another worrisome device used to sell this idea: US taxpayers used to receive a report on their yearly earnings and Social Security payments once each decade. In Bush’s first term, the federal government began issuing a yearly report, thereby underwriting the illusion that the recipient personally had some sort of Social Security “account” that he or she could “manage.” It isn’t quite like that any…

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

…ed not—and should not—impose.” (Obama’s “steadfast commitment to religious freedom” has somehow been forgotten in the contraception wars.) In its written answers to Scott’s questions posed at the 2011 House Judiciary Committee hearing, DOJ said that “in response” to the World Vision opinion, the Office of Justice Programs “developed a policy that allows for a case-by-case review of applicants seeking a similiar exemption.” Under the policy, accord…

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

…contemporary Islam, Mahmood argues that many Muslims were not offended because a law against representation of the prophet was broken but because a person they loved and revered was insulted. She considers two possible legal framings of the injury, one as an incidence of racism to be classified as a hate crime, the other in terms of blasphemy and free speech. She then shows how each fails in this case for various reasons, but, that it is, in large…

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Are Kosher Delis Like Catholic Hospitals?

…hypothetical and puts his finger on exactly how it distorts the interplay between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause: The analogy to “forcing kosher delis to sell ham,” put forward by Bishop William Lori, exemplifies the way the problem is misunderstood. In America (unlike in Israel), people have the right to choose whether they want to sell ham and whether they want to consume it; neither option is proscribed. We all might agr…

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