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Supreme Court OKs State Funding Scheme for Religious Schools and Bars Challenges

…taining favorable tax treatment from the state for advancing a religious cause? If I know Petra’s views as well as I think I do, I doubt that Justice Kennedy has won her over. Petra will argue that any tax subsidy for religion, in a closed system where the power to tax is limited, violates the non-establishment clause. Petra will also argue that the principle of taxpayer-supported universal public education is severely undercut if more and more ta…

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Rage Against the New Age Machine: Three Days at the Osho International Meditation Resort

…not have AIDS, a lengthy registration and payment. Although Osho’s guesthouse and “multiversity” accept credit cards, the registrar requires cash for the resort’s day passes, food and other amenities. Discovering that I lacked the rupees to cover the class’ costs, a serene blonde volunteer taxied me to an off-campus cash machine. Each time the ATM refused my request, my adrenaline surged. I knew Citibank could be unreliable, but why was a peace-a…

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6 Reservations About U.S. Intervention in Libya

…ish the judge could act with more discretion. But that discretion itself causes the greater danger; hence the wisdom of our political system. Because, in the aggregate, the presence of such checks and balances ensures a more just society for all; maybe not immediately, but over time.   So too with our government and our foreign policy. While, yes, it is true that consulting with Congress may have caused us to intervene far too late, or not at all,…

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Progressive Christian: Wallis “No Longer Speaks for Us”

…endorsed the message of the Believe Out Loud video. Sojourners thought it better to promote the video that way—”in an editorial context.” King’s original post has a pretty active comments section—much of it critical of Sojourners, some supportive. Although criticism—on or off its own pages—doesn’t appear to be pushing the group toward any capitulation, or, as McLaren makes plain, towards any activism on LGBT rights. Mark Silk notes that while Soj…

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What This All-Star Christian Movie Gets Wrong About Christianity

…e. I have not been able to find reference to them in the criminal or civil code of Illinois, where the movie is set. I did learn that many EMTs in Chicago are employed by private companies, in which case such an employee would not be violating the establishment clause by proselytizing.) This is the movie’s big theological problem: a firm certainty that if it seems Christian to you, it probably is Christian, and is therefore a good thing in exactly…

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How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

…end up, in other words, as Nones. The economists involved in this study focused on the zip code where a clergy sex scandal had occurred. They found a “large and statistically significant effect” on charitable contributions in those zip codes after a scandal, and not only to Catholic-based charitable organizations. The researchers theorize that perhaps once a person stops attending church, the social pressure to be charitable declines. Interestingl…

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Justice v. Revenge: The Question Beneath the Question of Prison Reform

…rent. Justice is meant to be impersonal, balanced, and fair to both the accuser and the accused. Revenge is red-blooded, vindicating, even pleasurable: think of the phrases “sweet revenge” and “just desserts.” When we have been wronged, our inclination is to blame and punish out of all proportion to the offense, reacting with what Locke called “the passionate heats” of our will. There’s some evidence that even thinking about revenge activates the…

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Alums Speak Out Against Anti-Gay Christian College

…ban is not on being gay but on the “practice”—just as there’s a ban on sex between unmarried straight students. In Higa’s 22 years at Westmont, she said, the school has not expelled anyone for being gay. A straight, unmarried couple left, she said, after they refused to live apart: “They understood what they had agreed to and they dropped out.” Alum Melissa Durkee said it’s hard to know what the school might consider “practice.” “Is ‘homosexual pr…

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Mexican Bishops Exorcism Against Equality; African Bishops Oppose ‘Enemy of Human Race’; Israeli Islamic Leader Anti-Gay Op-Ed

…errible mixing’ … sick is to call for the downfall of Syria (sic.) not because its regime is undemocratic, but because its president is Alawite. What is sick, and nothing but sick, is that you don’t respect people and impose your opinions on them.” The Jerusalem Post reported that on Monday, June 15, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation “voted down a bill that would make it illegal to discriminate against LGBT people in any way.” The legislat…

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Australian Prime Minister, Church Leaders Resist Marriage Push; South Korea’s Anti-Gay Christians Block Pride Parade; Morocco Arrests Men for ‘Obscene Act’ of Kissing; Global LGBT Recap

…that there had been calls for the judges to resign after they “ruled the abuser’s acts should not be considered ‘gravely dangerous’ in legal terms because the boy already ‘was making a precocious choice’ of his sexuality, an apparent reference to homosexuality.” Cambodia: LGBT magazine debuts NCB News’s Kristi Eaton reported from Phnom Penh this week on Q Cambodia, a print magazine directed at LGBT people and their allies, the first in “a country…

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