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Obama Admin Rules Religious Institutions Must Comply with Contraception Mandate

By Sarah Posner

…ted Democrats, but is one piece of a stepped-up campaign to portray public policy they view as being at odds with Vatican teaching on sex, gender, and reproductive issues as an infringement of religious liberty. Just yesterday, Pope Benedict told a gathering of Bishops that “radical secularism” poses a “grave threat” to religious freedom in the U.S. In praising the Obama administration’s position, Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, sa…

Marriage equality comes to Slovenia, continues to spread in Mexico; Civil Union legislation approved in Sicily, debated in Peru; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…benefits to lesbian and gay employees of the UN. More details from Foreign Policy: Speaking Monday morning at a meeting of the U.N.’s main budget committee, Russian diplomat Sergey Khalizov demanded that Ban reverse his decision on the matter, saying the U.N. chief’s action violated a U.N. General Assembly resolution that left it to U.N. employees’ governments to determine whether are eligible for spousal benefits. Moscow has been weighing whether…

Mormons Declare Same-Sex Marriage Apostasy, Deny Baptism to Children of Same-Sex Couples; Colombian Court OKs Adoption Over Church Objections; Franklin Graham Praises Putin’s Anti-Gay Policies; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…is a form of apostasy, which makes them subject to church discipline. The change was bad news for Mormons advocating for a welcoming approach to LGBT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disseminated the handbook changes this week to local church leaders around the world. The goal was to provide clarity to lay leaders who run congregations, church spokesman Eric Hawkins said. But the revisions triggered a wave of anger, confusion and…

Want to Know What Public Education Would Look Like Under Project 2025? Just Take a Look at Oklahoma

By Andrew L. Seidel

…Project 2025’s emphasis on personnel, even quoting the axiom “personnel is policy” in the first substantive note in the 900+ page playbook. Project 2025’s plan for public education includes “sunsetting the U.S. Department of Education altogether” (a goal Trump echoed during his August 12 Twitter conversation with Elon Musk, when he vowed to “close the Department of Education”). That would pave the way to make every state’s public education as woef…

Don’t Ignore the Role of “Christian Values” in Conservative Conspiracy

By Carmen Celestini

…liberals and conservatives taking up sides on the arts, sports and foreign policy.” Indeed, the myriad stories on opposition to LGBTQ rights framed as a grand appeal to the American value of “religious freedom” reveal that many on the right interpret any movement for change as being controlled by a group seeking the elimination of God, country and family. The movement that helped elect Donald Trump didn’t spontaneously erupt during this election c…

Don’t Blame Secularism: Reading Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion

By Jeffrey Feldman

…oday. American attitudes towards Iran and Iraq, not to mention our foreign policy choices, would be much more sound if we spent some time learning how to distinguish between Sunni, Shi’a, and Sufi Islam, and about which political movements in Iran and Iraq believe Muslim clerics should run the government versus those that do not. If we had understood those distinctions in the 1970s, our actions in response to the unfolding Iranian Revolution might…

Sacrifice, Suffering, and Rick Santorum

By Ivan Strenski

…ience, such as his opposition to evolutionary theory, dismissal of climate change and such has bled into his personal life? Did he sneer at medical statistics in favor of throwing up his arms in surrender to “Thy will be done”? Second, I simply cannot fathom why it would be so important for a woman of Karen Santorum’s age—48 years old—to have risked conception, and ignored all the risk factors attendant in conception, just to produce another offsp…

As UN Considers Status of Women, It’s Time for the Vatican to Take Its Rightful Place

By Mary E. Hunt

…Summit in Rome on the “Protection of Minors in the Church” resulted in no policy changes, an outrage to many Catholics who were at a tipping point as patterns of abuse, lack of transparency, criminal collusion, and guilty verdicts against clerics proliferate. A new chapter in Catholic church history is unfolding with lay leadership and an end of clerical hegemony. What do these changes mean for the Holy See at the United Nations, particularly at…

Is Covid-19 Introducing a New Generation to Fears of ‘Jewish Contagion’?

By Amanda Furiasse

…how discourses of contagion might be influencing and shaping public health policy during this historic outbreak. Fears of Jewish contagion have a very long and complicated history with public health and have, at times, played a dominant role in shaping American history and politics. Louis Harap, in The Image of the Jew in American Literature traces the installation of social distancing measures against Jewish contagion to the colonial period. Duri…

Where Do “Sacred” Values Live in the Brain?

By Arri Eisen

…l is right and wrong, or—as is the more commonly understood basis for such policy decisions—do we do what will be best for the most people? How about suicide bombers? Why are they willing to lose their lives for their beliefs? Now, we can begin to better understand the mechanisms of such decisions by combining expertise in religion, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, economics, and even genetics. A Brave New Interdisciplinary World When I see a…