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Mormons Fight Marriage Equality in Mexico; Is Catholic Church Italy’s Anti-Gay NRA?; Nigerian Anglicans Cut Ties With UK Diocese; Global LGBT Recap

…d and punished. This fact clearly shows the intention of the government to promote a witch hunt against homosexuals rather than its stated objective of protecting traditional ‘natural’ marriage between a man and a woman. The Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act is fundamentally an attack on the civil and human rights of all Nigerians. This law goes against all provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights of which Nigeria is a signa…

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How to Prevent Ethnic Cleansing in Syria

…icts can be resolved, tempered, or contained. Already, the region is split between alliances of powers, and lacks mechanisms by which countries can talk to one another. Democracies are far better at this than autocracies, but either way the Arab world needs a rejuvenated Arab League as the consequences of allowing local disputes to spill out of control are terrible to contemplate. The Iraqi Civil War was bad enough, but imagine if it grew to inclu…

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‘Religious Freedom’: Constitutional Principle or Electoral Politics?

…hat is political, but respectful of the constitutional limits on religious freedom. It has correctly taken the position that public policies established to serve the common good require a clear and narrow definition of what is and what is not a religion. We do not just abandon the common good to unexamined claims that a public health or education provider is required by faith not to comply.  We are prepared to give an actual religion an almost fre…

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Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

…and plentiful, and the collapse of the licensing laws insured a degree of free speech hitherto unknown in the British Isles. The World Turned Upside Down would prove so enduring that it has been an English folk ballad for more than 350 years. The song’s opening verse, “Holy-dayes are despis’d, new fashions are devis’d. /Old Christmas is kicked out of Town” remains pertinent. It seems that a supposed “War on Christmas,” whether real or imagined, h…

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NC’s Gay Marriage Ban: “It’s Going to Hurt the Church”

…hing of a “toxic and counterfeit gay-affirming gospel” to being injured by the church as a child. “In some ways he’s right,” Bakker told me in response. “It’s called empathy.” He continued: “Every time someone accuses me of cheap grace, I go back and say no, it’s free grace. Grace is free. The reason I understand the Bible the way I do is probably because I interpret through the pain that I’ve been through. But it’s not me compromising. I know wha…

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Joe Miller’s Anti-Gay, Anti-Islam Advisor

…f Carolina students are better prepared to enter this University, they are better citizens for it.” Ah, but being better informed citizens was actually anathema for Moffitt and his genius friends who apparently saw this as a threat to Christianity. At the time, Moffitt told the PBS program Religion and Ethics Newsweekly that the assignment of this academic text constituted proselytizing and “I don’t think that Islam is a religion of peace.” Did Mi…

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Turn On The News: This Isn’t a Split, It’s a Tiny Sliver of Conservatives Walking Out the Door — Introducing A New Media Criticism Column

…If I can get comfortable with the idea that religion shouldn’t be given a free pass, reporters can surely get there. Which brings us, unfortunately, back to Kathryn Post’s piece. I’m afraid it doesn’t pass many of the tests laid out above. The trouble starts immediately, with the headline: “Reformed Church in America splits as conservative churches form new denomination.” The first two paragraphs then inform us that 43 out of 1,000 congregations…

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“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

…ting new people, and the “unitive” purpose of fostering love and closeness between a heterosexual married couple. It did so partly to correct a prevailing notion that any non-procreative sex was a sin—even, for example, sex between a married couple where one or both partners were infertile.) Yet even with all their emphasis on procreation, ancient theologians didn’t bring much rosy optimism to pregnancy and childbirth. To the contrary, many though…

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Searching in Vain for a “Pure” Elie Wiesel

…one another to task. But we would expect all of us (including Wiesel!) to betray our better selves on a regular basis. For those of us who are humanists or social scientists, we might research how such betrayals—or, for those of us who love jargon, “dialectical reversals”—occur as a matter of course when we live out our commitments among people who disagree with us. And all of us might come to realize that our acts of solidarity, whether with som…

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Trump, Islamophobia, and the Philly Pig’s Head Incident

…sconced in the U.S. Constitution which guarantee legal protections for the free exercise of religion. The nation’s stated commitment to religious liberty was largely inspired by Philadelphia’s founder William Penn. As a Quaker who experienced imprisonment and persecution in Anglican England, Penn established his colony as haven for religious freedom. While colonial authorities in Massachusetts either exiled or put to death those who deviated from…

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