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The Uncertain Post-Obergefell World of Religious Exemptions

…isn’t covered because their boss thinks it’s tantamount to murder–dignity didn’t enter into the equation. We’re focused on the bakers and the caterers, in part because the religious right has made such a spectacle of them, with hyperbolic pronouncements about the end of religious freedom and free speech. It’s easy to forget that in most states, as well as under federal law, LGBT people are left unprotected in public accommodations, housing, and em…

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$50 Billion Fundamentalist Free Fall

In the latest news flash that has Wall Street reeling, Bernard Madoff, arguably the most dominant figure at the NASDAQ Exchange, was arrested on one count of Security Fraud by an FBI team investigating the affair. The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched its own investigation, and further charges seem inevitable. The numbers involved are staggering. His company’s value, estimated at some $50 billion is now, by his own admission, based…

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Glenn Beck’s Political Theology

…oppression cannot be far behind. Conversely, if a God is disclosed who is free to come and go, free from and even against the regime, free to hear and even answer slave cries, free from all proper godness as defined by the empire, then it will bear decisively upon sociology because the freedom of God will surface in the brickyards and manifest itself as justice and compassion. That’s the God I know and love, one who provokes real change on behalf…

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Take It Off, Or We’ll Make You: On Sarkozy’s Proposed Burqa Ban

…When you step out in clothing that boldly states your womanhood, you are a free woman. You are no longer a slave to old rules and notions. Modernity is inherently free. Therefore, burqas, veils, and headscarves are now off-limits. Women who appear in public wearing such clothing may be fined, arrested, and/or imprisoned. They may be prevented from attending schools and colleges, and from going to work. (We may make allowances for shoppers, though,…

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Kentucky-Fried Christianity: Governor Matt Bevin Wants to Pray Away Violence in Louisville

…im of bad faith. The conflict over Bevin’s prayer initiative is a conflict between neoliberal, libertarian strands of American evangelicalism, where privilege is accorded to the individual— gifted with free will, deciding his or her own fate—and an American social gospel tradition heavily flavored by the Enlightenment rationality of the Founders, with attention to structures of power as both historically damaging and burdened by responsibilities,…

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Court Rules in Favor of For-Profit Employer Seeking Exemption from Contraception Rule

…Restoration Act, not on the plaintiffs’ claims under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise, Establishment, and Free Speech clauses. Under that standard, the court determined that the Newlands and Hercules would suffer a substantial burden on their free exercise of religion should they be required to provide contraception coverage under their self-insurance that that provide to the company’s employees, and that the government had not implemented the…

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Obama Administration Gives Free Pass for Faith-Based Groups to Discriminate

…the memo was “based on a far-fetched interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” In a 2010 letter, CARD charged that continued reliance on the 2007 OLC memo “threatens core civil rights and religious freedom protections” and that the administration’s vague case-by-case approach “raises the problem of religious selectivity and provides scant opportunity for transparency or accountability. Following this approach indefinitely whi…

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What the Danish Cartoon Controversy Tells Us About Religion, the Secular, and the Limits of the Law

…in Europe and elsewhere have failed to internalize the democratic value of free speech. Jyllands-Posten, for its part, self-righteously claimed to be heroically rescuing free speech in the face of the fearful self-censorship practiced by Danish writers and artists with respect to criticism of Islam. The incident was portrayed as a clash between the liberal values of an open society and an anti-modern, authoritarian, and superstitious religion. In…

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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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Sanctuary and the Second Amendment: Do Guns Deserve Special Protection?

…Indeed, the tradition of sacred spaces as gun-free (weapon-free, violence-free, force-free) zones makes the use of sanctuary language in recent “Second Amendment Sanctuary” legislation curious. The turn from the use of “sanctuary” from its origins in restricting vengeance, violent enforcement, and weaponry to the protection of gun-keeping within the sanctuary borders, while rhetorically brilliant, feels particularly cynical when research shows th…

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