Religion Dispatches
…were agitating as early as 2007 about the supposed caliphate’s threats to Western Civilization and “Christendom“) is defending Beck. Just last year, at his Restoration Weekend, Horowitz’s Freedom Center hosted Christians United for Israel’s John Hagee, long a crusader in this supposedly epic battle, who told the audience: [W]e must snap out of this politically correct fog and admit that we are at war with radical Islam. This is a war of survival….
Read More…id showcased anti-LGBT rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Mexico: President promotes constitutional guarantee of LGBT equality; Mormon Church objects As Mexico’s complicated march toward nationwide marriage equality continues, President Enrique Peña Nieto wrote in Huffington Post about initiatives he introduced in May to establish a constitutional right to marry, “independently of gender identity or sexual orientation,” as part of a broader effort…
Read More…n of “marriage culture” and “historical understanding” (mostly provided by Western men) to interpret it for us so as to turn it into common sense. Which brings us to the real issue here: common sense. Anderson wants make a common sense (and ostensibly religion-free) argument for one-man-one-woman marriage. But common sense has always been a matter of definition and redefinition. In some times and places, it is or has been common sense for men to o…
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…ating my religion,” you should feel free to tell them that their religious freedom ends where your own religious freedom and moral autonomy begin. The fundamental fact remains that you haven’t asked them to change their mind about anything; you’ve only asked them to leave you alone. If we want to have a functional pluralist society at all, we need people, broadly, to respect such boundaries. Stalking and harassment shouldn’t get a pass simply beca…
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…e, at least according to the conventions of 19th-century North America and Western Europe. It afflicted well-off women who were, it just so happens, enjoying increased education, paid employment, and declining fertility. And it just so happens that the cause of hysteria was thought to be “overcivilization.” In good 19th-century colonialist fashion, there was a not-so-subtle racial and sexual hierarchy at work here. You didn’t want to be primitive…
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…icals could contribute to in other ways: the Secular Student Alliance, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Black Nonbelievers, the American Humanist Association, Hispanic American Freethinkers, American Atheists, the Center for Inquiry, Ex-Muslims of North America, and many more, including hundreds of amazing local groups that offer a more intimate and familiar community. Many of these local groups, such as the Atheist Community of Polk County (…
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…sed to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself the Free State of Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free State of Jones.” By February 1864, Davis despaired: “Public meetings of treasonable character, in the name of state sovereignty, are being held.” Thus states’ rights as an ideology was contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul. What mobilized the…
Read More…is at the heart of both the arguments to allow gay marriage and those that promote the traditional definition of marriage,” he said. He also asked the Legislature to consider freedom of religion when moving forward with legislation to reflect the Supreme Court’s decision. South Africa: Call for inclusive sex education Advocates for sexuality education in South Africa are urging schools to move beyond the “when a boy loves a girl” narrative that is…
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…I would like to go swimming but not in a one-piece from Wal-Mart. You are free to disagree with me, but I am also free to feel the way I do. There are people who feel free to go to work without deodorant, or underwear, or appropriate coiffure, with worse consequences than a burqini might have on others. I wish people would take up arms against those offences. In my opinion, given how I perceive swimsuits, it’s extremely unfair and sexist to requi…
Read More…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…
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