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Kagan: Establishment Clause Is “Hard”

…s that there needs to be some “play in the joints.” There needs to be some freedom for government to act in this area without being subject to a claim from the other side – some freedom for government to make religious accommodations without being subject to Establishment Clause challenges, and some freedom on government’s part to enforce the values of the Establishment Clause without being subject to Free Exercise claims. That’s not to say how an…

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Vaccine Mandates are Constitutional; Religious Exemptions are Unnecessary and Harmful

…emptions are not constitutionally required. People are fond of saying that freedom isn’t free, but nor is it absolute. And thinking in constitutional absolutes is killing Americans. Literally. The claim that the Second Amendment protects a sacred and unlimited right is a legal narrative recently invented, deliberately advanced, and grossly manipulated by the NRA—and it’s killing Americans. The Supreme Court’s political manipulation of the constitu…

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Secularist Activists Are Being Murdered in Bangladesh: An Ongoing Crisis Causes Many to Flee

…secular and democratic Bangladesh, where people have secure life and enjoy freedom of speech, freedom to publish, and freedom to express.” Still—what has he and his family lost? And what is Bangladesh losing as a result of this unchecked mayhem? Who Will Remain? As the attacks illustrate a deep problem in Bangladesh, these two stories illustrate a deeper success: since February 2015, more than a dozen writers, publishers, and activists—and, in som…

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The Next Islamists: The Wide Green Smudge That’s Changing Our World

…: The Rise of the Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean For Our World (Free Press, 2009) and Ben Simpfendorfer’s intriguing The New Silk Road: How a Rising Arab World is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009). The Wide Green Smudge Simpfendorfer, fluent in Arabic and Chinese, is Chief China Economist at Royal Bank of Scotland, and has lived throughout the Middle East. He brings a casual language that make…

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Gun Ownership as Sin—A Strategic, Secular Proposal for Gun Reform

…d own” but “keep and bear”) arms. Guns are “necessary to the security of a free State,” the Amendment tell us. Indeed we first won our national freedom and security with guns. Our Revolution began, Emerson’s myth-making poem tells us, when “embattled farmers” collectively fired a single “shot heard round the world.” We had no need of professional soldiers; just ordinary folks like you and me who were brave enough to demand freedom at the point of…

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A Hidden Amy Coney Barrett Answer on COVID That Should Scare Every American

…public health restrictions on places of worship. Do states infringe on the free exercise of religion when they selectively restrict a religious gathering as a matter of enforcement discretion? RESPONSE: The Supreme Court has explained that “[o]fficial action that targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment cannot be shielded by mere compliance with the requirement of facial neutrality” and that “[t]he Free Exercise Clause protects against…

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Morality Police, Jihadists, Religious Competition, Grindr, & Americans Abroad: Global LGBT Recap

…is may be the first time news has broken of women being arrested under the codes’ prohibition on lesbianism in Malaysia, said Justice for Sisters’s Thilaga Sulathireh. Scotland: Clergy Leaving Church of Scotland; LGBTs Debate Leaving UK The Scotsman reports this week that two more clergy members have left the Church of Scotland in protest of the denomination’s “continuing drift” from the Bible, including the naming of gay clergy. They have applied…

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Don’t Blame Black Voters: The Obama Non-Effect

…merican celebration over President-Elect Obama amounted to, “Free at last, free at last—whoa, whoa, [referring to an image of two men holding hands]—where are you two going?” Tragicomic, indeed. I understand that emotions over the passing of Proposition 8 in California are high. Seeing as my household was among those that opposed the measure, I am personally frustrated with the cultural anxiety, ignorance and/or intolerance that animated the vast…

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American Infidel: Robert Ingersoll Was the “Great Agnostic” of the (Last) Gilded Age

…and music, was devoted to his wife and daughters, and gave his money away freely. Jacoby makes a convincing case that Ingersoll belongs to the egalitarian and humanistic thread of American secularism rather than Social Darwinist thread. And, in fact, Ingersoll stoutly rejected the contempt for the “lower orders” (immigrants, people of color) that was being shown in the 1880s and onward by leading Darwinists like Herbert Spencer and William Graham…

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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ramadan

…n’t get anywhere on time, except for sundown, when it’s a kind of punctual free-for-all. But then there’s that one guy who, despite being just as capable of hearing the adhan (call to prayer) as you or I still breaks his fast (iftar literally means ‘breakfast’) early. Doesn’t he have that cheesy adhan alarm clock that they used to sell at ISNA, which for those who don’t know is, along with Star Trek conventions, the world’s largest gathering of vi…

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