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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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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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$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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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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303 Creative Is Not a ‘Religion v. Gay Rights’ Case — But Here’s Why the Christian Right is Happy with the Media Suggesting Just That

…incentive the Christian Right has to keep the focus on religion instead of free speech is because the implications if Smith wins on the free speech argument are, frankly, unthinkable. A win for Smith would bore a hole right in the center of nondiscrimination laws—nondiscrimination laws for all, not just for LGBTQ people—no matter what ADF want us to think. A win for Smith would, by some measures, create an entirely new class of rights: artists who…

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Not All Choice is Free

…services themselves. The problem is that this creates a false distinction between the state as an actor and people as actors. State services are, all of them, provided by organizations and by people. Catholic institutions are claiming an exemption from the obligation to provide such services because they are religiously opposed to them. They are engaging in a selective opt-out, just like the guy from North Carolina. I am not convinced that any of…

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Will SCOTUS’s New Zeal for “Neutrality” Affect its Decision on the “Muslim Ban”?

…to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others. Even if one agrees that this statement displays hostility to religion (I agree with RD’s Dan Schultz that it doesn’t), and even if it had been affirmed by any of the other Commissioners or the multiple judicial bodies that heard the case (it wasn’t), the Supreme Court hasn’t always been so sensitive to government activities that…

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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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Mercy, Justice, and the Telephone Company

…omebody should ask them if just how committed they are to the ideal of the free market. Because the other tension in the nation-state as it has developed is the twin definition of citizenship: on the one hand, citizens are free to participate in the political realm. On the other, they’re free to participate in the economic realm, which is to say, the market. Increasingly in the post-war era, it’s that last definition that has taken precedence, lea…

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Hicksters, Stickers, and Affection: Why I Left D.C. for the Family Farm

…one’s soul. Yes, the Immokalee agricultural workers who pick our tomatoes use their hands every day, work outside, get regular exercise, are free from the restraints of a cubicle, and even live in “tiny home” communities (formerly known as “trailer parks”). It may sound idyllic to the young, well-educated, and the restless masses of yesterday and today. But not many of us are seek employment alongside migrant laborers because of the near constant…

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