Search Results for:

cheap airline tickets to denver colorado from dca phone number 1-800-299-7264

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…

Read More

What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…

Read More

Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

…een working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic reception remained the same. These Greeters, a dusty naked couple, asked me to get out of my car and embraced me, shouting “Welcome Home!” I had crossed the…

Read More

Layoffs on the Religious Right

…the triumphs of many Democratic Party candidates on Election Day from his Colorado Springs, Colorado, headquarters, Tom Minnery, Senior Vice President of Focus on the Family Action, invoked the memory of Winston Churchill while trying to buoy up the spirit of the GOP faithful. “The spirit of Winston Churchill was alive and well on Tuesday night at Focus on the Family Action headquarters,” Minnery said. “You may recall that in the most desperate d…

Read More

The Subway Sandwich Artist Argument; When “Religious Freedom” Isn’t About Religious Freedom

…ps and his supporters are making in Masterpiece Cakeshop, namely, that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s decree that mandated Phillips to respond equally to custom orders for same- and opposite-sex wedding cakes burdened not only his religious freedom but also, and even more so, his freedom of expression. In a series of cases stretching over many years, the Supreme Court has upheld the expressive freedom of individuals, especially artists, ap…

Read More

2023 in Review: Year One Without Roe, GOP Code Red, SCOTUS Gone Wild… and a Ray of Hope

…ally. And while most scholars of constitutional law seem to agree that the Colorado Supreme Court’s reasoning is sound, there is no sure way to predict if the Supreme Court will agree with them. Should SCOTUS let the Colorado ruling stand—by either affirming it or refusing to hear the case—a landslide of similar cases in swing states will follow. But if the conservative SCOTUS supermajority intends to save Trump’s candidacy they will at least have…

Read More

What Masterpiece Cakeshop Oral Arguments Suggest About the Future of LGBT Discrimination

…ociety is clearly continuing to wrestle with an issue on which substantial numbers of Americans continue to differ, usually for religious reasons. Masterpiece Cakeshop gets at a number of disputed questions, but regardless of which way the justices rule, others will likely go unanswered. Beginning to thread this needle will likely be the task of Justice Kennedy, who did not tip his hand in today’s arguments about how he intends to reconcile his la…

Read More

Invited by Allah

…ccurred to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to t…

Read More

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

Read More

Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

…alse—swept through the terminals, sending passengers, law-enforcement, and airline workers scrambling for cover and eventually onto the tarmac. The responding authorities found neither shooters nor evidence of any shots fired. The most likely explanation offered for the panic was that the cheering of Olympics fans for Usain Bolt’s performance in the 100 meters sounded like gunfire. In an episode titled “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” from

Read More