Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 how to get free promo code in 1xbet Western Sahara

Corporations, Religious Conscience, Citizens United, and Contraception

…urt. Judge Carol E. Jackson dismissed O’Brien’s claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Free Exercise, Establishment, and Free Speech Clausees of the First Amendment. On the RFRA claim—one that conservative opponents of the HHS rule have portrayed as more or less open and shut—the judge ruled that the coverage requirement does not “substantially burden” (the relevant legal standard) O’Brien’s religious practice: Frank O’Brien i…

Read More

Supreme Court Conservatives Allow Execution of Muslim Prisoner Despite Religious Freedom Violation

…rnment, the First Amendment is important: “the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens …. The Free Exercise Clause bars even ‘subtle departures from neutrality’ on matters of religion.” The Commission was not acting neutrally toward the bakery’s religion. Now, compare this to the short opinion that permitted the execution of Ray, a religious minority. Nothi…

Read More

What 19th-Century Marriage Controversies Can Tell Us About The Fight Over Gay Marriage

…imentation. During this time, for example, Oneida Perfectionists practiced free love (or communal marriage) and Mormons began practicing polygamy. They were certainly controversial during their time (both groups were run out of various communities), but there seemed to be cultural space for experiments in marriage, religion, and public identity. On the other hand, today’s marriage controversies are not only able to incorporate the powerful rhetori…

Read More

The Fire Next Time: Tibetan Protests Spread

…city’s Tibetan refugee settlement, personalizing the struggle for Tibet’s freedom. “If I’m not doing anything, I shouldn’t call myself a Tibetan,” the young people told Raha. While uprisings in Tibet in the late 1980s inspired international solidarity movements among young Westerners, recent protests inside Tibet have galvanized a new generation of activists within the refugee community [See here for RD’s previous coverage]. The young refugees in…

Read More

Taking It to the Streets: Anonymous vs. Scientology

…s to cut into Scientology’s income by making these materials available for free (which otherwise Church members must spend significant time and money to obtain), while shutting down official channels like Scientology.org. The anti-Scientology movement has been around for decades (at least since the publication of Paulette Cooper’s The Scandal of Scientology in 1971), but the early Anonymous demonstrations had little if any connection to existing g…

Read More

International ‘Pro-Family’ Summit Calls for New Anti-Gay Laws: Global LGBT Recap

…man Rights office has produced a video commemorating the first year of its Free & Equal campaign to promote the rights of LGBTI people. According to the video, “In the past year, more than a billion people around the world have read, seen, or heard the campaign’s message of respect and acceptance.” It says UN country teams around the world are preparing or have launched their own campaigns. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is among the human rights advocat…

Read More

Capricology: Week 3: Apotheosis, Anyone?

…tual world, but as someone who teaches about race, and slavery, you can be free even if others don’t think you are, or are worthy of being free. The bigger question that goes alongside of this is: can you become divine if you’re not real? Hmmn. That brings up all sorts of issues, especially if, as it seems presently, the writers are making this new religion suspiciously like Catholicism. I hope that the writers won’t go in the easy direction of co…

Read More

Grassley Staff Memo on Televangelists Makes Clear Religious Right Opposition to Government Oversight

…t of the religious right which deems it an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and religious freedom. The rule, it’s true, is rarely enforced by the IRS, as the memo notes. But if it’s repealed, and churches are free from the possibility of an IRS investigation for endorsing candidates, churches would become even more politicized, and free to use their tax-exempt status to do so. UPDATE: Michael Batts, who has been appointed to lead the EC…

Read More

Historian: Evangelical Trump Fandom is No Deviation

…then, seeking a court, an institution really of the state, to preserve or promote such “freedoms” may be a last resort of conservative evangelicals. And I doubt that, in a dramatically changing and diversifying country, it will bring in substantial political or social rewards. But it may help evangelicals to retain what they have won over the better part of a century and still seek in thousands of small businesses and myriad business activities,…

Read More

A Bill Passes, Westboro Baptists Shrug

…the two key issues at stake in its signing: First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and to free speech: I am very pleased to be signing this bill into law. The graves of our veterans are hallowed ground. And obviously we all defend our Constitution and the First Amendment and free speech, but we also believe that when men and women die in the service of their country and are laid to rest, it should be done with the utmost honor an…

Read More