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Did the Duggars’ Fundamentalism Cause Sexual Abuse? Not So Fast

…dren is worth getting riled up about. Nor do I mean “Let’s be cautious” as code for “Maybe this isn’t an important question.” To the contrary, it’s a vital question. Yet it’s also an easy question to approach in an unhelpful way. Precisely because sexual abuse is appallingly common, compassionate people look for patterns to explain why it happened in this instance and not that one. And that’s a good thing: abuse prevention means recognizing common…

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Mexican Bishops Exorcism Against Equality; African Bishops Oppose ‘Enemy of Human Race’; Israeli Islamic Leader Anti-Gay Op-Ed

…ishable by three years in prison, according to Article 489 of the Criminal Code. The defendants, who retracted their confessions in custody, were not present at the time of the statement of judgment. The story notes that Human Rights watch had called on Morocco to decriminalize homosexuality two months ago after convictions in Al-Hoceima in the northeast. “The debate has, however, increased in intensity with the latest controversy in a country tor…

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White Supremacy, Mental Illness, or Society: What’s to Blame for Religious Violence?

…specific set of institutions and political positions, is regularly used as code for “most of Islam.” And those who obsesses about Islamism often flirt with more bald-faced statements of Islamophobia. Critics of white supremacy and patriarchy, on the other hand, point out that these ideologies are pervasive in the culture at large. The blame casts a wide net, not in order to single out a minority group, but in order to implicate a culture that’s be…

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This is No Ordinary Anti-Blackness — The Racist History of the Pet-Eating Conspiracy

…rity and elicit support from the ancestors and spirits in the struggle for freedom. This liberatory Vodou ceremony has been referred to by Pat Robertson as a “pact with the devil,” which he outrageously blamed for the nation’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake of 2010. The only successful slave revolt in the Western hemisphere produced a proud Black republic—the first in the West to abolish slavery at its founding—and yet, for Haiti “freedom came at a pric…

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Synod or Sin Oddly: Vatican Encourages Catholics to ‘Walk Together’ as Long as the Hierarchy Leads the Way and Decides the Route

…reply to my later email, I was directed to three local parishes in my zip code to find out about attending their listening sessions. A priest from one of the three I contacted replied courteously but had to report that the parish has nothing in place yet. He assured me that they would do whatever the diocese instructed. A recent survey by America magazine staff confirmed my suspicions that the process is off to a rocky start: “Of the 196 churches…

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UPDATE: An Abrupt End to Quebec Separatist Plan to Ban “Ostentatious Signs” of Religion

…f men and women” as the highest human right to which other rights (such as freedom of religious expression) would be subordinated.  From the initial indications from the government concerning this legislative initiative, in May 2013, through a noisy publicity campaign launched in September, to televised public hearings over the winter, and culminating in the stunning electoral defeat of the governing Parti Quebecois on 7 April 2014, the Charter of…

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Lost and Found: Despite the Hope, Morality, and Meaning Inspired by Deconversion, Why is Respect Only For Those Who Find God?

…First, Douthat warns of encroaching “scientism” which, in this context, is code for failing to believe the supernatural truth claims of Christianity. Second, paradoxically, Douthat perceives a tendency among non-religious people to embrace the mystical belief systems that he himself rejects, like astrology or wellness. (So much for scientism!) Yet we don’t see any actual evidence that these trends are as widespread among the deconverted as he sugg…

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Jack Ryan Uses Bible to Exonerate Wall Street, CIA

…pulpy example of a larger pattern of scriptural citation that obscures and promotes tensions between market forces and nationalism, dynamics I discuss in depth in my book, The Babylon Complex (Oxford University Press, 2014). A reboot of the older Jack Ryan series—based on Tom Clancy novels like Hunt for Red October—Shadow Recruit uses an all new screenplay by Adam Cozad and David Koepp. Still, the film is highly reminiscent of the earlier series’…

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Do Not Have Sex with This Man

…families in concrete ways. He’s talking about a “more family-friendly tax code.” He wants the government to pay people to procreate. It’s a “big government” Republicans can get behind—a “baby government.” Though women of childbearing age are the people Douthat wants to get busy getting pregnant, he doesn’t talk about women very much—or the social, physical, and financial costs women still pay for having kids. Douthat blames women without talking…

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GOP Debate Invokes Lincoln-Roosevelt Gospel, Candidates Take Turns Trampling It

…rly Fiorina said, government taxation and regulation crush growth. Her tax code is three pages long. In some contrast, T.R. thought government promotes growth by, among other things, regulating business. Cruz proposes a flat tax 10% so, he said, a millionaire doesn’t pay less than his secretary. Yet Lincoln found that his initial flat tax burdened the lower and middle classes far more than the rich, and he made it progressive. Cruz said his flat t…

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