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The Incredible Shrinking Free Exercise Clause

…elevant, which is why the Westboro Church case will be decided strictly on free speech grounds and not as a free exercise case.  Smith was immediately unpopular and congressional efforts to overturn it by statute met with limited success, leaving federal government actions that substantially burden religious practice subject to the compelling state interest test, but state and local laws exempt. The funeral privacy interest in Snyder is a generall…

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Capricology: Tattoos, Blood, Cyber-Dating

…rse, those of you who study religion may have a good deal to say about the centrality of free will (i.e. law over code) in different religious traditions. One thing that strikes me week by week is how much the show takes as given our understanding of the digital realm: our ability to think in terms of interfaces, memory, avatars, virtual world economies, and the like. I might contrast that with how fundamentally indecipherable a film like Tron was…

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Dear Scientists: Please Stop Bashing Free Will!

…nce of an immaterial soul? Science has discovered nothing that contradicts free will. To deny free will’s existence is to deny that our conscious, psychological deliberations—Should I ask my girlfriend to marry me? Should I major in engineering or art?—influence our actions. Such a conclusion flies in the face of common sense. Of course, sometimes we deliberate insincerely, toward a foregone conclusion, or we fail to act upon our resolution. But n…

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Gambian Leaders Portray Anti-Gay Law as Defense of Islam, Ugandan Politicians as ‘Christmas Gift’; Global LGBT Recap

…through the parliament. The experts include the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom or opinion and expression, David Kaye; the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai; the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst; and the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of…

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Atheists Support L.A. Pastor Who Faces “Tribunal” for LGBT Advocacy

…es of white American evangelicals) has heightened the stereotype that both African and African descent people are inherently more homophobic than other groups. According to a 2012 Gallup poll, “African Americans are more likely than any other ethnic or racial group to identify as gay and transgender.” But despite the growing support for marriage equality laws in the U.S., there is still little public policy focus on the intersectional issues LGBTQ…

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Indonesian Court Rejects Religious Conservatives’ Bid To Criminalize Gay Sex; More in Global LGBT Recap

…y) or the worship of the occult or the devil should not be broadcast.” The Free to Air Radio Program Code says “information, themes or subplots on lifestyles such as homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexualism, transsexualism, transvestism, paedophilia and incest should be treated with utmost caution. Their treatment should not in any way promote, justify or glamorize such lifestyles. Explicit dialogue or information concerning the above topics should…

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Challenging Both Homophobia in Islam and Populist Bogeyman of ‘The Homophobic Muslim’; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…me-sex marriage, vote no,” said Abbott. “If you’re worried about religious freedom and freedom of speech, vote no, and if you don’t like political correctness, vote no because voting no will help to stop political correctness in its tracks.” Later that day the director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton, wrote that “the marriage plebiscite is a referendum on freedom of speech and ‘safe schools’”. He has lamented the “stolen generation…

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Are We Living in a Simulation? Bad Religion, Bad Media Combine in New Doc, ‘A Glitch in the Matrix’

…lation theory Mystwood is playing with—he is the universe, the universe is code, his code is part of the important bit, it’s all a simulation, and he’s ready to play. And, importantly, the rest of us might not matter. The language of programming in A Glitch in the Matrix is compelling and difficult. On the one hand, it is literal computer programming. On the other, intentional or not, the movie invokes the language of “deprogramming” that was comm…

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Federal Panel Upholds DC Gay Marriage

…Wright’s logic about “our republic form of democracy.” We don’t live in a “republic form of democracy,” we live in a republic. Now, if we lived in a democracy, then we’d all have the right to majority rules, where people could just vote willy-nilly on everybody else’s right to do this or that. But, we live in a republic, which is a representative form of government. The people elect representative bodies that are guided by laws and regulations—lik…

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Vatican Enlists Allies Against Gay Marriage; Iranian Gays Pushed to Change Gender; And More in This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

…n and Tajikistan have also taken similar steps but the two other ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, have not. Kyrgyzstan would, however, be the first of them to ban “gay propaganda” among minors… “We supported this bill, because it reflects the hopes and expectations of our voters willing to protect the traditional family,” Kurmanbek Dykanbayev, one of the initiators of Kyrgyz bill, said. “And from now on, there will…

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