Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 how to use 1xbet free bet promo code Laos

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

…us law against LGBT people in the modern world; and that President Yoweri Museveni used in a ceremonial signing of the anti-gay bill in Uganda. This year Gambia’s president Yahya Jammeh called for gay people’s throats to be slit. Alimi says it was a huge task to prepare to teach a course on pre- and post-colonial sexual orientation and sexual identity in Africa. In digging up facts I found that, while many Africans say that homosexuality is un-Afr…

Read More

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,…

Read More

Romney’s Christian Nation Conundrum

…that. Indeed the Republican Party’s official position is that the balance between promoting free exercise of religion and prohibiting religious tests for office “has been distorted by judicial rulings which attempt to drive faith out of the public arena.” What would be an appropriate public expression of faith in the public square? In the Republican Party platform, public display of the Ten Commandments and student-led prayer in public schools, b…

Read More

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

…at it does because they worry that liberal guilt regarding Liberia might cause us to foolishly admit more of “them”—the Ebola- contaminated ones—to our homeland hospitals. I say that it matters because, as a practical matter, our shared history with Liberia ought to make it possible for us to be more strategically helpful in the Ebola crisis rather than pretend that Liberia is a place we know nothing about. To engage with an aggressive disease-con…

Read More

How America’s Charismatic Christianity Helped Fuel the Fantasyland Presidency of Donald Trump

…, but there was certainly a great amount of freedom—and not just religious freedom. There was freedom to sell anything you want, to buy anything you want, to be anything you want, to believe anything you want, and to create any kind of religion you want. You may be persecuted for that, as the Mormons were, but if you’re willing to take on that risk, go nuts! So, yes—because we could, we did. That’s part of it. But I’m skeptical that this fully exp…

Read More

Why Hobby Lobby is a Pandora’s Box: Ginsburg v. Alito

…why. This was not a First Amendment case. It was filed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Understanding this will require a little legal history but I promise to keep it brief. Prior to 1990 The Court ruled on First Amendment Free Exercise claims with a test known as the Sherbert Test. Constitutional rights are not absolute (think laws against human sacrifice). Essentially an infringement on Free Exercise was permitted if: 1) ther…

Read More

‘Restart the Economy’ is a Prayer to a Conservative God Who Demands Human Sacrifice

…and plunging the country I love into a Great Depression, I’d happily die.” Better for a whole lot more people to suffer and die than for the free market to be stifled any further. It’s the economy, stupid! Given the prevalence of religious voices among support for Trump, perhaps we could think about our situation with the ethics of religious responsibly as outlined above. A simple translation of “restart the economy” suggests itself: the economy o…

Read More

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…

Read More

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

…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 ECFA commission Grassley requested, reiterated that both the ECFA and Grassley agree on the “principle that less government is better,” adding that the “overarching principle is the independence of the church from the government and the independence of the government from…

Read More

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

…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…

Read More