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Marriage Vote ‘Transforms’ Not-So-Catholic Ireland; Activist to Malaysian PM – ‘Love Is Not Terrorism’; LGBTs Find Growing Acceptance in Colombia, Not At World Meeting of Families; Global LGBT Recap

…ghout school teaching.” United Kingdom: LGBT equality advocates named to House of Lords Members of the House of Lords are either hereditary peers or life peers appointed by the government. Among 45 life peers announced this week are a number of LGBT equality advocates including the Lynne Feathersone, a former Liberal-Democrat member of the House of Commons who was been described as the architect of marriage equality in England and Wales. Italy: Ve…

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DeSantis is a No-Show, the Right’s ‘Secret Sauce,’ and Final Thoughts on Pray Vote Stand

…rsonally promised him many years ago that “the court will uphold religious freedom and free exercise…but I don’t know if—but if you [faithful Americans] can uphold it in your daily life and culture.” Brownback seems to tell the crowd that weaponizing the “free exercise” clause will remain a crucial tactic for the Christian Right moving forward. “If you want to have a traditional set of values,” he tells the crowd—“if you just wanna claim life is s…

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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…

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Bachmann Weaves Own Salvation Story into Christian Nation Mythology

…settling,” by knowing Jesus Christ “in his fullness” can someone be truly free, free in the way that Jesus intended when he “set captives free” by the founding of the country. It’s all wrong, of course, historically, constitutionally. But Bachmann found the precise sweet spot where testimony and Christian American exceptionalism mythology intersect. Bachmann took her speech even further, invoking the biblical story of Joshua and Caleb, who led a…

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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…

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Who’s to Blame for BP?

…whether we have finally woken up from our dream of perpetually cheap oil, free of all cost, free of all sacrifice. And yet the events in the Gulf call out for confession, for corporate confession and repentance. By corporate I mean BP, of course, but even more importantly I mean our society as a corporate whole. We must move beyond defensiveness and self-righteousness and work toward a cultural consensus that acknowledges the vital work of regula…

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There is No Religious Freedom: A Lesson from a ‘Pastafarian’ Stunt

…ve found another way. The solution is that no one is entitled to religious freedom because there is no such thing as religious freedom. Straining Credulity On what grounds could we conclude that the man in the pasta strainer deserves less deference from the state than the woman in the hijab or the man in the kippa? Is it that their faiths are “real,” and his fake? There are two ways that the state could judge that a faith is real as opposed to fak…

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Gay Black Church: An Interview with Bishop Yvette Flunder

…hat African people would do, because they’re cursed. We still wouldn’t get free. There’s no freedom anywhere. And that it was God’s idea—it was not white people’s ide  it was God’s idea that we be in that place. And there was a church in Welshneck, South Carolina that, when the Emancipation proclamation came and African people were freed, a group of them went to this church and wanted to become members of the church. Now of course they couldn’t si…

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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…

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How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian Worldview”

…, Western, Judeo-Christian culture is collapsing. It is not collapsing because it failed. On the contrary it has given us the freest and most prosperous society in human history. Rather, it is collapsing because we are abandoning it.” And then: b. ASK: What could cause such a dramatic and widespread shift in perspective? (Cultural radicals, people who hate our Judeo-Christian culture, are driving this change.) c. TRANSITION: To fully understand th…

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