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Blasphemy and Betrayal: The Murder of Salman Taseer

By Anna Bigelow

…pulation traumatized by the upheavals of partition, “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Would that Jinnah had survived longer (he died in 1948) to secure that principle in Pakistani society. Instead, the now over sixty-year struggle to…

A ‘Vows’ Piece in ‘The Times’ Shows How Doctrinaire Christian Celibacy Has Become Compared to its Ancient Roots

By Joseph Amar

…y. Ephrem reminded Covenanters that foregoing sexual intimacy was meant to free them from themselves, not create a privileged class of Christians. ‘Without good deeds,’ he bluntly affirmed, ‘sexual renunciation is worthless.’ Ephrem’s insights could be arrestingly prescient. He warned that if celibacy were to become institutionalized in the church, it could result in great harm. Ambitious churchmen, he said, might use it as a stepping stone to pri…

Bill to Stone Gays to Death Introduced in Kenya

By Peter Montgomery

…not specifically prohibit homosexuality. Buddhist teachings are relatively free of misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. The steps of the Eightfold Path to enlightenment speak about sexual activity. The second step states, “You must renounce all pleasures of the senses.” This is thought to refer to all forms of sexual activity, and imply complete celibacy. The fourth step prohibits “unlawful sexual acts”. Buddhist commentators usually interpret su…

Google-Phonics, Or, ‘What Is the Sound of a Thousand Tech Workers Meditating?’

By Kevin Healey

…um Comedy is Not Pretty, Martin mockingly plays the role of a gadget-happy free-spender in search of the perfect sound system. “I bought a stereo. Wow—two speakers. Wild!” It was great for about a month, he says, until he heard the four-speaker “quad” system. “So I got rid of the stereo and got the quad. And this was the sound I was looking for. So I listened to it a couple of days and I said ‘Hey, this sounds like shit.’” He switches to the dodec…

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…

‘Putin’s Children’ Push ‘Traditional Values’ in Latvia; Jewish Reparative Therapy Group Finds ‘Haven’ In Israel; Sikh Activist in UK Supports LGBT South Asians; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ce laws which further restrict the human rights of their LGBT populations….Freedom of expression and freedom of association are integral in the fight for LGBT acceptance, but in many African states (and beyond) these fundamental human rights are heavily restricted…. Before the continent’s activists can bring about the decriminalisation of homosexuality, they must first secure a platform for discussing the issue free from persecution. In countries…

Capricology: Tattoos, Blood, Cyber-Dating

By Anthea Butler

…m the car so that it can not exceed the speed limit and you take away that free will, except for those who have the capacity to hack the code and reprogram the car. We normally think of robots as almost pure code, yet the scene last week when Graystone orders the Zoebot to rip off her arm raises some interesting stakes in this. It seems to me that people may be treating the Cylons differently depending on what mix of code and law they believe gove…

An Abbreviated Guide to 5 Arguments Against Contraceptive Coverage in Obamacare

By Sarah Posner

…s opposition to the regulation as “because the Mandate threatens religious freedom and proposes a reductionist and harmful understanding of women’s freedom.” Alvaré reprises the “immiseration” theme in the brief, arguing that “even if contraceptives have the indirect beneficial effects HHS identifies, HHS does not indicate the size of these benefits, or whether they outweigh the adverse health outcomes caused by some contraceptives, or the adverse…

Unreasonable Doubt: Vincent Bugliosi Defends Agnosticism

By Eric Reitan

…rtainty, we think it is better to err on the side of letting the guilty go free than on the side of shattering the lives of the innocent. And so, even if we’re pretty confident of a person’s guilt, reasonable doubt is enough to set them free. Or at least that’s how things work in the context of the criminal justice system. On a more personal level, the presumption may well go the other way. Suppose the accused is your Uncle Jack. And suppose the c…

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…