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State-Licensed Ministers Can’t “Pray Away the Gay,” SCOTUS Affirms

By Sunnivie Brydum

…in all 50 states. In fact, even the California minister who filed suit is free to practice the debunked “therapy”—he just can’t engage minors in the practice, and can’t represent himself as a state-licensed therapist offering that treatment. In his ministerial duties he is free to preach about the power of prayer (or, in some cases, more nefarious tactics) to “rescue” people from the bonds of queerness. But what he can’t do, according to the newl…

Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

By Bruce Ledewitz

…ar. When Thomas Jefferson first proposed the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1777, he stated that this right of individual conscience must be extended to everyone, including: “the Jew, the Mohametan, and the Hindoo.” Jefferson was not arguing the demographics of majority and minority religions, but first principles. It took time to advance them, even then. James Madison as governor of Virginia managed to push Jefferson’s bill through the…

The Next Islamists: The Wide Green Smudge That’s Changing Our World

By Haroon Moghul

…l part because America is not the threat it once was. When, on July 17, Ayatollah Rafsanjani rose to deliver his long-awaited Friday sermon, some of his supporters responded to Basiji chants of “Death to America” with counter-chants of “Death to Russia.” If Islam can mean democracy, then the enemy of Islam is not the West. Members of the Green Movement asked why Iran’s Islamic government cares so passionately for Palestinians, but refuses to exten…

Kuwait “Morals Committee” Announced Deportation of 76 Gay Men; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…just laws wherever there is a Christian presence because ‘Until we are all free, we are none of us free.’” Anglican Communion: Gay couple’s church wedding expected to rile Communion’s conservatives The first wedding by a same-sex couple in an Anglican Church in Britain is expected to further exacerbate tensions within the Anglican Communion. Excerpts from The Guardian’s Cathering Pepinster reporting: The first gay Anglican wedding in Britain took…

Circuit Court Rejects Priests for Life Contraception Challenge

By Patricia Miller

…The court concluded that PFL’s rights are not violated under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and it is still free to hate on birth control: All Plaintiffs must do to opt out is express what they believe and seek what they want via a letter or two-page form. That bit of paperwork is more straightforward and minimal than many that are staples of nonprofit organizations’ compliance with law in the modern administrative state. Religious nonprofi…

Image of Hubert Aiwanger, Bavaria's deputy premier speaking at a podium.

Holocaust Humor and The ‘Real’ Germany — As Top Officials Shatter Post-WWII Taboos, German Conservatives Follow GOP Playbook and Charge Ahead

By Annika Brockschmidt

…e massively and to destroy me politically. This was intended to weaken the Free Voters and steer votes to other parties,” he says in an interview with the conservative newspaper Die Welt. He also describes the reporting as “bumbling and a bottomless meanness,” and reinforced the message via Twitter, writing, “Smear campaigns backfire in the end. #Aiwanger.” [sic] Unfathomably, he seems to be right about one thing: the allegations, reported and fac…

Founder of Liberal Mosque in Germany Under Guard After Death Threats; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…his year’s Pride celebration in Bogotá chose as its theme, “Secular State, Free Beings.” According to Sentiido, “It is a way of remembering that Colombia’s Political Constitution respects and protects freedom of worship, but does not support that some religious and conservative leaders try to have the law sanction what is sin for them.” (Translation by Google.) Church of England: Synod rejects conversion therapy; conservatives angered by invitatio…

Global LGBT Recap: Francis’s First Year; Homophobia and Development; African Activists Push Back

By Peter Montgomery

…ampion open government and civil society and fight corruption. We bolster freedom of assembly and a free press…. At times, we are compelled to make tough choices when the immediate need to defend our national security requires us to work with governments that do not share our fundamental commitment to human rights. No one knows that better than all of you. We look to you to strike the extremely difficult balance that both preserves critical bil…

The Penis+Vagina Monologues

By Sarah Posner

…ally the inaccurate descriptor. After all, Arizona already has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act; SB 1062’s supporters even described it as a way of closing that statute’s alleged “loopholes.” What’s more, since Arizona, unlike its neighbor New Mexico, doesn’t recognize sexual orientation as a protected class in its anti-discrimination laws, all the photographers and bakers and everyone else in Arizona were already perfectly free to turn LGBT pe…

As Court Prepares to Rule on Sacred Apache Site, Religious Freedom Faces an American Right Prized Above All Others

By Dana Lloyd

…he First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993). This case has precedent working against them, however. In Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, the U.S. Supreme Court declared constitutional a plan to build a road and log trees in the High Country in Northern California, an area sacred to the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa peoples. Forty…