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Justice v. Revenge: The Question Beneath the Question of Prison Reform

…our brains, which makes the admonition “an eye for an eye” in Hammurabi’s code sound less like savagery and more like a way to keep everybody in check. To punish more than the guilt deserves has been a legal problem, apparently, since at least 1792 B.C.E or so. The distinction between justice and vengeance matters, because vengeance costs an enormous amount to taxpayers, and, as reformers on both sides of the aisle argue, our own moral selves. Pe…

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Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

…Deseret News included Trijicon in the list because the company “inscribed coded biblical references on high-powered rifle sights used by the U.S. military.” That’s it. Other than the founder’s purported religious beliefs, its inclusion is arbitrary. Why not include Ebay, whose founder Pierre Omidyar is a Buddhist, or any of Sheldon Adelson’s businesses? Trying to draw a line between “business with religious roots” and “everything else in global c…

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Is Michelle Obama Out of Line?

…reotypes. Finally, Obama is grievously out of line for violating the tacit code of silence that plagues our country on issues of race, racism, and slavery. Many believe that it is politically incorrect to talk publicly about America’s perennial sins (both past and present) or to speak of America as anything but “the promised land,” or the fabled “City upon a Hill.” This includes bringing up any of America’s contradictions, such as the construction…

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This is not a Religion Column: Biblical Capitalism

…ion to what we hope will merely be our greatest recession, the doctrine of free market fundamentalism remains the alpha and the omega of American conservatism. That doesn’t prevent Christian conservatives from favoring government subsidies for the rich; they simply reframe it as God’s will, recruiting the creator as a crony. Biblical capitalism isn’t, ultimately, a supply-and-demand religion. Between business conservatism’s love of laissez-faire a…

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Secure Borders? Not a Chance, Senator

…own spiritual/cultural values. Liberals see porous borders as a symbol of freedom: free movement, free choice, and the free creativity generated by the intermingling of peoples.  To conservatives, the very presence of so many Illegal “aliens” proves that the borders they once imagined as the key to a safe, orderly life have long been crumbling around them. To give undocumented people legal status would be further proof that the nation’s walls and…

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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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Australian Church Nixes Straight Couple’s Wedding Over Their Marriage Equality Support; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…ences such as radical gay sex education being taught in school, threats to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.” At Crikey, Amy Coopes responds to critics within the LGBT movement who dismiss the marriage equality movement as a form of assimilationism: Some in the Yes camp wish to paint this as, quite simply, a question about amending the Marriage Act to allow two consenting adults to marry, and in a sense, of course, that is true. But as wi…

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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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Spiritualism and Sex Meet Evangelical Censorship, 19th-Century-Style

…lege-educated cohort who would enjoy discussing things like religion, sex, free speech, censorship, women’s rights, blasphemy, and obscenity. It was not finally an audience of specialists I dreamed of but free-ranging brainiacs—in other words, readers with some of the daring spirit of nineteenth-century amateurs. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? I am definitely hoping to offer my readers good, even artful,…

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Global Religious Right Asks ‘How Far Can We Get?’; And More in the Global LGBT Recap

…d to relocate to Romania. They have argued that the refusal violates their freedom of movement within the European Union. ADF International, the global arm of the US-based religious right legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, urged the court not to rule in the couple’s favor, which it said would amount to “EU-wide imposition of same-sex marriage.” Italy: Conservative religious activist charged with taking money to squelch human rights inquiry Bu…

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