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Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

…n to a related for-profit entity (an arrangement that raised eyebrows of tax experts), but that other “experts” in spreading Islamophobia draw big salaries from their nonprofits. Other frequent witnesses in Islamophobic documentaries, including Woolsey, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have had financial stakes in companies that profit from consulting on homeland security and counter-terro…

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Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

…uchin this past Wednesday, declaring unconstitutional a provision of the tax code that’s made it possible for clergy to enjoy higher standards of living than their salaries might suggest. At issue is section 107 of the U.S. Tax Code, which contains two subsections pertaining to “the case of a minister of the gospel.” (The term was originally intended to refer only to ordained Christian clergy, but its meaning was later expanded by the Internal Rev…

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Why We Can’t Afford to “Wait And See” How Trump Dismantles LGBT Rights

…costs for LGBT people are a result of some abnormal activity. (Yes, that’s code for anal sex. Or gender-affirming surgeries. Or marrying the person you love most in the world, if that person happens to have the same gender marker as you.) Given that it took the president-elect more than three weeks—and upwards of 700 documented hate-crime incidents—to “denounce and reject” the hatred his scorched-earth campaign emboldened, I have zero confidence t…

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Capricology Week 5: Fathers, Funerals, and the Ethics of Gaming

…villain, commit atrocities on other players, and in the process, begin to experiment with and potentially exorcise the darker side of her own personality? Or, should she become one of the good ones, going out to do heroic deeds, sharing the loot with others in her party, rescuing those in distress and helping newbies learn to play, and developing a sense of responsibility and accountability to others in her guild? Should she design an avatar that…

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Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

…which are not and why, if we relate these ideas to the students’ own life experiences, what will happen? Actually, the experiment already has been done in public high school science classrooms. And the results: students learn to appreciate science, its value, and how it works without rejecting or having to choose one worldview or another, and they learn the relevant science better than in a traditional science classroom. Is it worth rethinking sci…

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The Deadly Burqini, Or, What Exactly is an “Islamic Swimsuit”?

…ainst those offences. In my opinion, given how I perceive swimsuits, it’s extremely unfair and sexist to require women to dress in such attire. The choice to wear a burqini, or long swim shorts, or such swim attire should be equal rather than either banned or inferior among choices in a pluralistic society. The only conditions should be floatability, safety and hygiene. Aesthetic considerations for women’s swimsuits are anti-feminist and Muslim wo…

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Conservative Judge Suing ‘Daily Beast’ for ‘QAnon-linked’ Headline Thought QAnon Pod Was ‘Aimed at Christian Audience’ — Spoiler: It Was

…courts to decide. I’m no lawyer or legal expert, so my opinions on such matters should of course be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, I would absolutely not bet in Judge Patrick’s favor, knowing what we do about her fondness for conspiratorial and explicitly QAnon-linked “prophets” and the broader interplay between QAnon conspiracies and conservative Christian beliefs in American society. On the other hand, given the number of judges D…

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Does NIH Head Francis Collins Believe in Intelligent Design?

…happiness achieve it. But there’s a tension in the natural order of things between what promotes happiness and what morality demands. Hence, unless there is a supernatural order of things bringing happiness to the morally good, the highest good is little more than a pipe dream. But reason demands that it be more than a pipe dream. And so reason demands that we posit a supernatural power. Put simply, we have to suppose that moral heroes who risk th…

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Pope Francis Has Painted Himself into a Corner on Women Deacons

…faced with a reality that many in his institution prefer to ignore: rank sexism without reasonable explanation. The women raised rational and respectful questions with regard to their work and status. It is unclear if they spoke also on behalf of women not in religious communities, though one hopes so. Since they are doing ministerial work of the diaconal sort (prevented from priestly work by Canon Law), it was logical that the women would inquire…

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After Roe: 3 Troubling Trends from the ‘Compassionate’ Anti-Abortion Crowd

…we couldn’t understand why someone in his position could waste time with tax codes when there were so many babies to save. By the end of the session, our local representative was visibly shaken. I wonder whether he ever agreed to speak at a parochial school again. That episode has been at the front of my mind since news broke of the Dobbs decision, “among the Court’s worst decisions in history.” While there would never be a good time for the Supre…

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