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A Religion Scholar Gets It Wrong on Indiana’s RFRA

…s of the United States.” The ACLU often tries to resolve the same tensions between religious freedoms and civil rights that Prothero alludes to. In this instance, the organization, which has a long and impressive track record of work seeking to “guarantee that all are free to follow and practice their faith – or no faith at all – without governmental influence or interference,” came out against SB 101 at both the local and national level. In an op…

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Weeks After Turkey’s Failed Coup, Thousands Have Been Arrested Over a Book

…a network of schools and interfaith centers, and has been known to provide free trips to American academics to show them the Hizmet activities in Turkey. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am one of those academics who have benefited from a casual association with members of the Hizmet movement in the United States. But I didn’t get a free trip to Turkey. In my case I had given talks in spring of 2015, that were jointly sponsored by a Hizmet inte…

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United Nations Affirms the Human Right to Blaspheme

…ecommendations is that controversies over blasphemy are not just conflicts between “free speech” and faith, but clashes between competing claims of conscience. This stance is defended by the International Humanist and Ethical Union and elaborated in my forthcoming book, The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights. The message of General Comment No. 34 is not only a clear condemnation of the blasphemy laws of countries…

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In Order to Move Forward We Must Believe the Unbelievable: Some Choose Death Over Democracy

…he said recently, “My people are happy, and they’re happy, because they’re free.” Our heritage is rife with heroes choosing death over tyranny. “Live free or die,” for instance. See also: “Don’t tread on me.” But nowhere is there a hero choosing death over democracy. We must reconsider the credit we give. In places like South Dakota, individual liberty is being perverted in the interest of the group, of the tribe, of the collective, so that indivi…

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State-Licensed Ministers Can’t “Pray Away the Gay,” SCOTUS Affirms

…in all 50 states. In fact, even the California minister who filed suit is free to practice the debunked “therapy”—he just can’t engage minors in the practice, and can’t represent himself as a state-licensed therapist offering that treatment. In his ministerial duties he is free to preach about the power of prayer (or, in some cases, more nefarious tactics) to “rescue” people from the bonds of queerness. But what he can’t do, according to the newl…

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Is Cardinal Dolan’s Pro-Life Piece More Evidence of Pro-Catholic Bias from RNS Publisher?

…one agrees with him or not is beside the point. Anti-choice Catholics are free to argue goals and strategies, and a religion publication is free to host parts of that conversation. This is about context and consistency. It’s about the fact that Dolan’s piece is, in more than one way, suggestive of the very favoritism that Jones and Russell-Kraft document. First off, there’s history here between Rev. Reese and the Catholic hierarchy. Reese was onc…

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The Battle for the Bible Against Christian Nationalism Seeks to Continue Historic Campaign

…ory of recognizing that the state can use its power to take away religious freedom.” The kind of religious freedom the panelists discussed, of course, isn’t the Orwellian distortion posed by the Christian Right in both its Catholic and evangelical wings, in which religious freedom is invoked in order to justify the oppression of others, but the liberatory idea of religious freedom for all, including the non-religious, that traditional Baptists hav…

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An Abbreviated Guide to 5 Arguments Against Contraceptive Coverage in Obamacare

…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…

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Image of Hubert Aiwanger, Bavaria's deputy premier speaking at a podium.

Holocaust Humor and The ‘Real’ Germany — As Top Officials Shatter Post-WWII Taboos, German Conservatives Follow GOP Playbook and Charge Ahead

…e massively and to destroy me politically. This was intended to weaken the Free Voters and steer votes to other parties,” he says in an interview with the conservative newspaper Die Welt. He also describes the reporting as “bumbling and a bottomless meanness,” and reinforced the message via Twitter, writing, “Smear campaigns backfire in the end. #Aiwanger.” [sic] Unfathomably, he seems to be right about one thing: the allegations, reported and fac…

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Circuit Court Rejects Priests for Life Contraception Challenge

…The court concluded that PFL’s rights are not violated under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and it is still free to hate on birth control: All Plaintiffs must do to opt out is express what they believe and seek what they want via a letter or two-page form. That bit of paperwork is more straightforward and minimal than many that are staples of nonprofit organizations’ compliance with law in the modern administrative state. Religious nonprofi…

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