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The Mistaken Assumption Behind Employers’ “Right” to Not Cover Contraception

…onfusion now dogs the debate over employers’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and the new insurance mandates under the Affordable Care Act, which include birth control. The argument that seems to be winning in court is that employers who oppose the use of birth control for religious reasons should not have to provide it to their workers. Only in a world in which labor has been alienated from production, however, can such an…

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Trump’s Fear and Loathing Won’t Silence The Nation’s Sole LGBT Muslim Organization

…e very survival of minority communities. As MASGD puts it, “none of us are free until all of us are free.” To get a sense of what motivates MASGD’s activism, particularly in the current political atmosphere, I interviewed four pioneers of the American LGBT Muslim movement: Faisal Alam, Urooj Arshad, Raquel E. Saraswati, and Tynan Power. These leaders are members of MASGD’s Steering Committee, and were gracious enough to discuss with me their appre…

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Russian Attack on LGBTs at UN Rejected; Gay Cake Controversy Rages in N. Ireland; Bishop Calls for Marriage Referendum in Puerto Rico; Global LGBT Recap

…reparative therapies that are either forced or coerced due to absence of a free and informed decision-making process, will be made illegal. Furthermore, citizens will not face any form of torture based on sexual orientation. Iran reiterates its commitment to protect those rights of recognized religious, ethnic and sexual minorities that are in accordance with its constitution, and conditions this statement on the fact that some may require amendme…

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Burma’s Spirit Festival, and More in This Week’s Global LGBT Roundup

…o be stripped of almost every privilege, as has happened in France, and be freer to speak one’s mind? LGBT Human Rights and Democratic Values Exiled Russian journalist Masha Gessen published “Why Autocrats Fear LGBT Rights” in the New York Review of Books. She says viewing Trump’s sudden order banning transgender people form the military as a distraction is “not only a grievous insult to transgender people but a basic failure to understand the emo…

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You Are More Than Your Brain: A Revolutionary Theory of Consciousness

…opnik has pointed out, is probably the latest version of this story—a hero freeing human beings from their roles as organic batteries cultivated to power a race of evil machines. There is a more frightening proposition: that other people are in fact shadows cast on the wall. How do we know others are not a dream? Even observable behavior is a poor indicator. Take the fact of Kismet, a robot engineered at MIT to imitate a range of human attitudes a…

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Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

…at teaching this nation’s Christian heritage. “This is a guy talking about freedom of religion as part of the history of the United States,” said Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network. “And what happened to Ann Hutchinson is why separation of church and state is so important. And now they want that example taken out of the standards.” “It’s a perfect example of censoring ideas you don’t like and distorting history to feed an agenda.” Panel Leader…

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Gambian Voters Reject Anti-Gay Strongman Jammeh; Activists Ponder Trump Impact on LGBT Human Rights; Global LGBT Recap

…s a member of the European countries that share common values, such as the free movement of people together with their families.” She said she was confident that the European court would consider free movement “a fundamental right” and recognize a husband regardless of the sex of his partner. Opposition to same-sex relationships is often fierce in Romania, where homosexuality was only decriminalized in 2002. Religious groups want the constitution…

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American Brokenness: A Lament

…ers; and to welcome them with open arms into the shared project of finding freedom, justice, and power together. That, as I always say, does not mean surrendering core principles or compromising them away. The truth, after all, is the truth. But I would love to see a sign at the next health care town hall meeting declaring WE SHARE YOUR PAIN AND WE NEED YOUR HELP. I would love to see Barney Frank or any other Congressperson say to a protester, “I…

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“I Had No Intention to Write Atheistically”: Darwin, God, and the 2500-Year History of the Debate

…onished) result. Dawkins finds this view of life exhilarating. For him, it frees humans from the burden of purposeful design in nature, which he identifies as “the most influential of the arguments for the existence of God.” Unlike the controlling purposes of a designing God, Dawkins exalts, “Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin described, and which we now know is the explanation for existence and apparently pu…

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What’s Behind a Conservative Mormon’s Call For “Religious Freedom” Advocates to “Stand Down” on LGBT Rights

…ucial key to understanding Mero’s perception of LGBT rights and “religious freedom.” As a Mormon, Mero is predisposed to view religious freedom as a shield to defend the outsider, because that foundational principle has proved crucial to his church’s survival. To hear Mero tell it, modern religious freedom issues can be broken down into three concentric rings: the outermost ring is occupied by the institutional church, and concerns itself with wha…

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