Religion Dispatches
…efforts by proving that children raised by intact mom-and-dad families do better than kids raised by two loving moms or dads. It won’t matter that the study didn’t do that. Blamers Also a safe bet: natural disasters like Hurricane-Superstorm Sandy will continue to be chalked up to God’s anger at the advance of gay rights. So will tragedies like the mass murder of students and educators at Sandy Hook elementary school. But those blamers will sound…
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…criminalization of same-sex relations was removed from country’s the Penal Code in 1951. However, decriminalization alone has not ensured complete freedom for members of Jordan’s LGBT community. Article Six of the Jordanian Constitution protects citizens from discrimination on the basis of race, language or religion, but these protections do not extend to people of variant sexual identity. This gray area is where discrimination still manages to pl…
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…uip in the classroom, a historian’s favorite hand is “the other hand.” For better or for worse, I am professionally trained as a historian. Thus, despite my respect for American-style free speech, I recognize that some states have crafted social contracts that accept greater limitations on speech than we do in the US, in order to protect other democratic values. As both classic liberal and communitarian theorists recognize, fundamental modern demo…
Read More…ght legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom, claims “the future of religious freedom depends on a free pulpit to communicate fundamental, biblical principles to congregations across America” and urges pastors to “join a growing movement of bold pastors preaching Biblical Truth about candidates and elections from their pulpits.” In AU’s letter, executive director the Rev. Barry Lynn argues that “it would be detrimental for our country and the democra…
Read More…e law—neither the Torah nor the laws of the Roman Church. The Christian is free from condemnation, free to obey God joyfully, and free to make individual choices about earthly matters—even including usury (lending money at interest). So thus far it may seem that Calvin put his stamp of approval on the market free-for-all that’s so popular with bankers, business owners, financiers, and Brat voters. In her post on RD Julie Ingersoll helpfully sums u…
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…g that keeps Americans from their hard-won incomes and dreams of financial freedom in a free market is a disgrace, if not downright devilry. Tea Partiers and party-challenged Republicans are basking in the glory of their victories, secure in the knowledge that a message pitting the “little man” against the “big government” resonated deeply and widely for many Americans in the first decade of the 21st century who hate government, love the military,…
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…ars. You, the voters. We believe him against the evidence because it feels better to believe that his life—his survival, bound and tied, long ago—is a testimony to Jesus’ mercy. We feel better believing that nobody would ever, or could ever, lie about loving God, or lie about loving Christ. And despite our own schismatic compulsions (in daily life, in sectarian divide), we like to believe that all denominations look the same in the dark. Finally,…
Read More…d by uncodified Muslim Sharia law, which criminalises same-sex sexual acts between both men and between women. For men, the punishment is banishment for nine months to one year or a whipping of 10 to 30 strokes, while the punishment for women is house arrest for nine months to one year.” According to Stewart, the country rejected international recommendations to improve its treatment of LGBTI people expressed in its 2010 and 2015 U.N. Universal Pe…
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…med in Catholic settings. Although Catholic officials expanded an existing code of medical ethics in 1948 to include directives on contraception and abortion, Catholic hospitals didn’t share a unified ethical code until 1971. Reports of hospitals in some dioceses performing abortions and providing contraception to patients led the USCCB to publish a new version of the ERDs and require every diocese to adopt them. This would prevent what Father O’R…
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…lation theory Mystwood is playing with—he is the universe, the universe is code, his code is part of the important bit, it’s all a simulation, and he’s ready to play. And, importantly, the rest of us might not matter. The language of programming in A Glitch in the Matrix is compelling and difficult. On the one hand, it is literal computer programming. On the other, intentional or not, the movie invokes the language of “deprogramming” that was comm…
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