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New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

…a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions,” said a YouTube spokesperson at the time. “This can be a challenge because what’s okay in one country can be offensive elsewhere.”  International human rights treaties guarantee all citizens freedom of thought and freedom of expression. But these treaties are binding on states, not on the media corporations that enable the exercise of such freedoms. It rema…

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Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

…can destroy families, poison politics and move many to violence. Perhaps a better course is listening to the faith speaking to us each in our own hearts, calling us to reach for our better selves, rather than internalizing someone else’s fear and the narrow interpretation of scripture they use to justify hate and violence. And while the coincidence of being born under the “Sign of the Beast” in Topeka 666 is still a little unnerving, there are dif…

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Does “Religious Freedom” Deserve Scare Quotes?

…the very least, the clearly coordinated and targeted effort to rebrand the freedom to discriminate as “religious freedom” meets the Oxford English Dictionary’s criteria for the use of scare quotes (emphasis mine): Quotation marks used around a word or phrase when they are not required, thereby eliciting attention or doubts. Increased attention and elevated skepticism are precisely what is required of claims that suggest “religious freedom” cannot…

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Roy “10 Commandments” Moore Doesn’t Want to Reform the Senate, He Has a Higher Calling

…l from Alabama’s Supreme Court—twice. While there is a clear hierarchy and code of judicial ethics for state and federal judges, no such restrictions are placed on Senators. It’s exceedingly rare (though not unheard of) for a Senator to be removed from office by colleagues for some kind of ethical or procedural breach. This reality only adds to the motivation for Moore to stick with the schtick that got him elected, and which demonstrably appeals…

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Trump’s Nominee to Fill RBG’s Seat Is Unfit. By Definition.

…deranged rose ceremony that has become the announcement of a new nominee isn’t just selling their soul to an authoritarian devil, they’re signing it over on camera, for all to see. No principled jurist would accept this nomination. No honest or honorable justice could. The Republicans may not be better than this unseemly, unprincipled exploitation of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, but the next justice must be better. Any nominee Trump approa…

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GMO or No: Problematic Intersections of Religion, Biotechnology, and Food

…and distortion, it generally refers to innate intuitive ability to discern between right and wrong. Moosa argues that Muslim inability to probe scientific data relating to GMOs and to more actively engage in debates is a product of location. With many Muslim communities located in the developing world, it can be politically disadvantageous to argue with potentially life-saving technology. While science and technology are often presented as a panac…

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Op-Ed: The Real Muslims?

…details, and it is always difficult for an outside observer to detect the coded messages of an in-group. (Think of the McCain campaign’s disturbing “The One” attack ad, which basically called Obama the Antichrist—but on a frequency that only evangelicals reared on apocalyptic conspiracy theories could pick up.) Chellew-Hodge quotes the following catechism from an evangelical organization: 1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, au…

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UNESCO on Religion, Culture and SOGI in Asia; Orthodox Family Sues to Stop Cremation of Israeli Trans Woman; Struggles of Iraqi Queer Activists; Global LGBT Recap

…dentifiable group” protected by the hate speech provisions of the Criminal Code. Catholic Church: Francis who? U.S. Bishops stick with culture war political priorities Despite widespread expectations that Pope Francis’s focus on poverty and the environment might influence the political priorities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops, the bishops approved a “Faithful Citizenship” guide for 2016 that continues making the U.S. hierarchy’s polit…

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Conservative Christians Finally Get Serious About Divorce

…imself and his family. At least in those days, the Southern Baptists had a code about divorce, but these days, Southern Baptist churches are routinely led by divorced men—the most famous being Charles Stanley. Despite divorcing his wife in 2000, he remains the pastor at the mega-sized First Baptist Church in Atlanta. Divorce has been a growing problem for the faithful. A Barna poll from 2008 revealed 33 percent of couples overall get divorced. Bor…

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Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

…sts, declining ticket sales and increasingly mixed reviews led to conflict between the various production companies. There’s currently a legal moratorium preventing a fourth installment. Other major studio efforts haven’t cracked the code for commercial success either: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah earned a respectable $100 million, but cost an estimated $125 million to make. Son of God did okay at the box office, grossing $26.5 million its opening week…

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