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Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

…etter-balanced understanding of the impact of religion on American society today.” But equating “the production of economic value” with “positive impact on society” seems disingenuous. And that apparent desire to overcorrect may have led to the study’s biggest problem. Other than a brief mention in their introduction and conclusion, the study doesn’t consider ways in which religion might detract from economic production. Devoting a half dozen sent…

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Justice v. Revenge: The Question Beneath the Question of Prison Reform

…d vengeance. At least in theory, those principles shape our justice system today. In practice, we aren’t always so guided by calm reason and conscience. For example, while Tsarnaev’s lawyers plan his appeal against the death penalty, he is being held at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, the highest-security prison in the country, which the New York Times called “America’s Toughest Federal Prison.” Most in…

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HHS Issues Proposed Rule Expanding Religious Exemption for Contraception Coverage

…efs; and is a non-profit organization as described in the Internal Revenue Code. Religious organizations protested that this four-pronged test would only exempt houses of worship, but not, say, a church that served people of different faiths through a soup kitchen. Under the new proposed rule (which is still subject to a public comment period), an employer seeking an exemption would only have to meet the forth prong of the test, thus widely expand…

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Israeli Right Demonizes Israeli Left, With American Money

…ustice, immigration, and the environment). Instead they support NIF, which promotes on-the-ground change. But the attack by Im Tirtzu signals an end to business as usual. Following the Money Im Tirtzu calls itself a centrist organization that wants to strengthen political Zionism. But according to an investigative report by Ha’aretz, the movement is funded by right-wing groups and individuals, including John Hagee, the controversial Texas minister…

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Leave Your Stereotypes at the Door: 10Q on “Keeping it Halal”

…? Why? In addition to Mitch Duneier’s Sidewalk, I would say Eli Anderson’s Code of the Street. It’s such a wonderful example of using the ethnographic method to dig beneath common stereotypes and reveal the social dynamics underlying a supposedly well-understood phenomenon. In his case, he’s looking at the situation of inner-city violence among young African American men. By carefully observing, listening, documenting, and then analyzing, he is ab…

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Catholic Archbishop Takes On Jesuit Magazine’s Slam on “Ecumenism of Hate”; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…l power. …Earlier this month, one of the main architects and financiers of today’s “LGBT” activism said publicly what should have been obvious all along: The goal of at least some gay activism is not simply to assure equality for the same-sex attracted, but to “punish the wicked” — in other words, to punish those who oppose the “LGBT” cultural agenda. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out whom that might include. Today’s conflicts over sexual fre…

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Gingrich on “Teh Gay”

…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…

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Why Belief in the Primacy of Language Leads to a Misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins, Islamophobia, and Politics

…than thinking about the self as being a language—as being like a computer code that speaks—we think about the self as a cluster of forces. [These forces] make us what we are, and our decisions come from that rather than from this linguistic layer, which is actually constituted by that more fundamental cluster of forces. That’s what I see affect theory doing: upsetting this idea that human beings start with language and that we do what we do becau…

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Lessons from the Defeat of the Oklahoma Personhood Bill

…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…

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We Would Be Wise to Pay Attention to Trump’s Apocalyptic QAnon Posting Spree

…ind him. He holds in his right hand a ghostly “Q+” (according to some, the code name Trump himself uses when he posts on Q message boards) and the text reads “The World Will Soon Understand/Nothing Can Stop What is Coming,” a direct reference to “The Storm.” As I wrote back in 2020: The QAnoners’ apocalypse, unsurprisingly, is one of political partisan violence, culminating in “The Storm,” when all of the so-called “deep state leaders” will be arr…

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