Search Results for:

800-299-7264 Jetblue Airlines Toll Free Number Flight Reservations

The Fire Next Time: Tibetan Protests Spread

…ts could douse the flames.  As an Indian who has worked for Students for a Free Tibet, Raha has seen young refugees who were more interested in hip-hop culture than Tibetan culture reconnect with their roots in recent years. Since March 2011, 29 people inside Tibet have protested China’s increased repression by lighting themselves on fire. Their photos hang on posters in the center of the city’s Tibetan refugee settlement, personalizing the strugg…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

Taking It to the Streets: Anonymous vs. Scientology

…s to cut into Scientology’s income by making these materials available for free (which otherwise Church members must spend significant time and money to obtain), while shutting down official channels like Scientology.org. The anti-Scientology movement has been around for decades (at least since the publication of Paulette Cooper’s The Scandal of Scientology in 1971), but the early Anonymous demonstrations had little if any connection to existing g…

Read More

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…

Read More

The Theological Hijacking of Religious “Freedom”

…law is being used to legislate a vision of freedom that defines religious freedom as “freedom from.” Unlike the early American Baptists, who faced serious persecution, these advocates seek to use the law to protect their vision of worship in the workplace as a purity ritual. It is a vision of religious expression free from interference in the form of difference, free from the conflicting demands of our common lives, and free from any obligation t…

Read More

Gun Owners of America Celebrates Defeat of Gun Control Amendments

…of bright ideas like we don’t want guns around children, so let’s have gun-free school zones. Do you know where most of the mass murders have occurred in the United States? In gun-free zones. There’s an exception or two but typically it’s where the bad guy has reason to think he’ll have a monopoly of force. It has to be one of the most stupid laws on the books, and yet we’ve had so much inertia because we don’t want guns around children especially…

Read More

What 19th-Century Marriage Controversies Can Tell Us About The Fight Over Gay Marriage

…ange understandings of marriage. Polygamy (nineteenth century Mormons) and free love (some groups of Perfectionists) were two dramatic attempts to change marriage that were based in religious and often explicitly biblical justifications. Religion can be a malleable tool in negotiating the meaning and significance of marriage in public life. The perceived connection between marriage and the future of the nation also has a long history. Commentators…

Read More

Supreme Court Conservatives Allow Execution of Muslim Prisoner Despite Religious Freedom Violation

…rnment, the First Amendment is important: “the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens …. The Free Exercise Clause bars even ‘subtle departures from neutrality’ on matters of religion.” The Commission was not acting neutrally toward the bakery’s religion. Now, compare this to the short opinion that permitted the execution of Ray, a religious minority. Nothi…

Read More
Two people on a podium with a board that reads "Project 2025 kills democracy"

Project 2025: How Trump Loyalists and Right-Wing Leaders Are Paving a Fast Road to Fascism

…who “purvey” it to be classified as sex offenders.[58] It turns out that “freedom” for Project 2025 activists is only freedom to live in alignment with their religious worldview: “When the Founders spoke of ‘pursuit of Happiness,’ what they meant might be understood today as in essence ‘pursuit of Blessedness,’” the report declares, adding, “That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants e…

Read More