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Finding Nonreligious Happiness at the RNC

By Peter Montgomery

…Church of Scientology of Tampa, but fine print on the back cover insists that the booklet’s content isn’t religious: This may be the first nonreligious moral code based wholly on common sense. It was written by L. Ron Hubbard as an individual work and it not part of any religious doctrine. Any reprinting or individual distribution of it does not infer connection with or sponsorship of any religious organization. It is therefore admissible for gov…

Pastors Urged to Defy IRS to Defeat Evil, Hitlerian Obama

By Peter Montgomery

…the day in 1954 when the “Johnson amendment” language was put into the tax code was the day that “changed America” and set the stage for bad Supreme Court decisions and everything else that has gone wrong since the 1960s. Pulpit Freedom Sunday participants agree to preach political sermons, send them to the IRS, and dare the agency to sue them. The Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund) has offered legal help to c…

Are Social Issues Non-Issues?

By Jay Michaelson

…nd one veiled reference to “religious freedom” from Romney. Insiders know that the latter is code for exempting individuals and institutions from following government mandates on health care and provisions on anti-discrimination. But to the middle, Romney’s comment surely passed under the radar. And as for Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, even Paul Ryan is for that now. All this in the shadow of an unprecedented legal war against women’s reproductive choices…

Well, It Would Have Been a Good Religion Question…

By Sarah Posner

…, could he possibly come out in favor of arresting women for praying? Or even, with a straight face, say it was a matter of local concern that he wasn’t going to comment on, when he otherwise has (albeit in a perfunctory way) called for the promotion of women’s rights in other parts of the Middle East? And since Obama was promoting the rights and freedom of religious minorities last night, wouldn’t this case fall under his concern? There are good…

Do Not Have Sex with This Man

By Sarah Sentilles

…orkers the United States will get “knocked off its global perch.” Because that’s what’s at stake, ladies and gentlemen—American domination. So, my (heterosexual) compatriots, take off your clothes, take off your condoms, take out your IUDs and diaphragms, stop swallowing your birth control pills, have your vasectomies reversed, quit it with the rhythm method, and do the hard, hot, steamy work your country needs you to do: reproduce. And then do it…

Why I’m Grateful for 2012, The Rapture, and other Millennial Delusions

By Jay Michaelson

…butor to the universe.” I swear I’m not making that up. The reasoning (if that’s what it is) is similar to New Thought / Law of Attraction / Teaching of Abraham / The Secret / est / Landmark Forum gobbledygook: you create your own reality, and your thoughts impact the universe. This is how, we’re told, a great Rainbow Bridge is going to manifest on December 21: we’re going to manifest it. It’s also why the Maharishi once tried to get one million p…

HHS Issues Proposed Rule Expanding Religious Exemption for Contraception Coverage

By Sarah Posner

…requirement, a religious employer would have to meet a four-pronged test. That test required an employer to show that “inculcation of religious values” is its purpose; that it employed primarily people who share its religious beliefs; that it primarily serves people who share its religious beliefs; and is a non-profit organization as described in the Internal Revenue Code. Religious organizations protested that this four-pronged test would only ex…

Rome vs. the Sisters

By Marian Ronan

…ons. No doubt there is some truth to this analysis. But it’s worth noting that the Vatican launched the investigation that culminated in this document in January 2009, more than a year before Congress passed the ACA. Given the speed with which Rome does things, it’s more than likely that while the sisters’ support for the ACA contributed to the harshness of the statement, it by no means caused it. Indeed, Pope John Paul II mandated a previous inve…

Pope Tweeted into Retirement

By Rachel Wagner

…d appeared the year before, and Mark Zuckerberg was feverishly writing the code that would become Facebook. YouTube was just an idea, and wouldn’t appear online in any form until 2005. John Paul did embrace social media as it existed then. He was the first pope to use SMS to send out a daily message to Catholics in 2004, after brokering a deal with Verizon—one of the first troubling commercial agreements between the Vatican and communications comp…

May We All Be More Like Dick Molpus

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…nwhile, Molpus just keeps saying gutsy things—like when he told a roomful of people, one of whom was Governor Haley Barbour: Few politicians today use outright race baiting, but we see the symbols some use and the phrases they utter and everyone knows what the code is—what really is being said. Oh, and he’s also called attention to how voter ID laws endanger the voting rights of poor and elderly people, and was named a Champion of Justice by the M…