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Pressure Grows on Obama to Reject Anti-LGBT Religious Exemption

…rates calls made since 2011 for Obama to rescind the Bush executive order. Today’s letter, in contrast to yesterday’s letter from over 50 legal scholars, is more focused on framing religious freedom as a core American value that is protected, rather than endangered, by rejecting the religious exemption. The legal scholars focused more on constitutional law and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in making the case that neither Free Exercise Clau…

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2010: What Did We Believe In?

…c barrel, money rules our lives and guides our actions like no other force today. Unemployment, bailouts, national debt, foreclosures, bank regulation, layoffs, and entitlement programs—the list of economic concerns remains the same since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, but the upcoming social, cultural, and political battles over how best to deal with these concerns cuts straight to the heart of national identity—a point made dramatica…

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Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is: A For-Profit Meditation Studio Opens in New York

…new groups of people. You also make it more available to commodification. Today, a studio like MNDFL can insist that it’s a non-religious space, even as it draws on religious traditions. “The secularization is explicitly designed to make [mindfulness] more marketable,” said Jeff Wilson, a Buddhism scholar at Renison University College in Canada and the author of Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Cultur…

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Religious Freedom Gets Hollywood Treatment

…c partisan José de León Toral. (Incidentally, de León Toral is still being promoted to join the altar boy, José Sánchez del Rio, in the Church’s altars. Pope Benedict XVI beatified Sánchez in 2005, while Pope John Paul II had already canonized 27 cristero martyrs in May 2000, two months before Catholic right candidate Vicente Fox ousted the Partido Revolucionario Institucional from the presidency.) In the bigger picture, then, For Greater Glory’s d…

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A Writer’s Murder Raises Fears of Death-by-Decree

…ions are better than in Saudi Arabia.” He points to the status of women in today’s Iran. More than 60% of university students are women. And, unlike in Saudi Arabia, women in Iran drive. Kadivar delights in telling me that in the holy city of Qom, there are women cab drivers who specialize in taking families on excursions. But most of our conversation was about the murder of Rafiq Tagi. In an open letter to Ayatollah Lankarani, son of the author o…

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Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse

…ghtmares. In somewhat the same way that climate change denialism functions today, the Atoms for Peace campaign merely divided public opinion, allowing some to sleep easy and the most knowledgeable people even more distraught and fearful. Events like the recent reactor meltdown in Northeastern Japan can bring even the sleepers back to the edge of anxiety, and then there’s the persistent fear that a nut job or a terrorist will decide to usher in apo…

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Better Dead Than ‘Fed’: Behind Palin’s Dig at ‘Unbiblical’ Fed

…he money to honor my check? From some depositor who deposited his paycheck today… Fractional reserve banking violates the biblical principle against multiple indebtedness. When bankers violate this law (with the consent of the State), it leads to inflation and economic booms, followed by deflation and economic depressions. In buying and selling bonds and manipulating interest and reserve rates the Federal Reserve, according to North, fraudulently…

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Eyes on the Prize, Rainbow People! A Post-DOMA Challenge

…otection amendments that should cause us take special care about language. Today is not a day to crow about the “new civil rights movement”; it is not a day to say, as one lesbian interviewed on NPR said, “they saved the best for last.” In fairness, the person interviewed was telling an otherwise compelling story about the need for queer people to make common cause with low-wage workers. She and her spouse are small-time farmers in the Central Val…

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Pope Mum on LGBTs in Uganda; Church Defends Anti-Marriage-Equality Efforts in Australia; Cyprus Passes Civil Partnerships; Global LGBT Recap

…sed, arguing that the law would have been “right” fifty years ago, but not today. “As jurisprudence world over is evolving, I think the judgement was not correct and probably at some stage they may have to reconsider,” he said. Bermuda: Court rules for binational couples The Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that Bermuda’s immigration policies promoted discrimination on the grounds of marital status or sexual orientation in violation of its H…

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The Devil is in the Details

Today is my last official day for completing local business before departure. I’ve balanced my checkbook and paid all of my bills except the ones that are automatically paid (which is about the same as being paid, when the checking account from which they are drawn has been balanced). I’ve taken out cash for travel with the knowledge that using ATMs abroad is always a great way to get the best rates. Yep that’s right. The U.S. always considers it…

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