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Why Won’t Conservatives Call Gay-Bashing a Hate Crime?

By Eric Reitan

…what some opponents of the Mathew Shepard Act have claimed, people remain free to harbor and even promulgate heterosexist and homophobic beliefs. But to admit that gay-bashing is a hate crime is to admit that it is fueled by broader cultural forces and teachings. It is to take a step toward admitting that what is being taught by some religious communities—perhaps even one’s own—may play a role in promoting real evil. It is to take a step toward a…

The Legacy of Bush, Gambler of Other People’s Fortunes, Is Still With Us

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ire Middle East. He saw himself as a man of vision, a figure of great historical moment and a sure-handed gambler with other people’s fortunes. The market in which he believed so strongly has proven to be far more of roulette wheel than he realized. The Middle East he asserted American military power to transform has indeed been transformed—into a highly unstable zone that now runs from western Pakistan to the Mediterranean Sea. It is as if a blin…

Barack Obama, Pro-Life Hero

By Eric C. Miller

…ought to be a sacred liberal right, the widespread deployment of religious freedom arguments indicates a weak rhetorical posture. In each of the cases mentioned above, opponents of a particular piece of legislation embraced religious freedom only after other strategies failed to persuade. Such arguments thus served as a sort of fallback position, allowing their advocates to re-frame the debate on terms entirely separate from the practical merits o…

As Hobby Lobby Heads to SCOTUS, Let’s Ditch Kosher Butcher Analogies

By Sarah Posner

…about Hobby Lobby’s RFRA case, pointing out that “protecting the religious freedom of employers under RFRA presents a risk of imposing significant costs on employees.” In any case, as Marty Lederman has explained, the Court has never recognized a religious freedom infringement claim by a for-profit entity: In their scores of briefs, the plaintiffs and their many amici fail to cite a single case, apart from the current contraception coverage litig…

Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…octrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was free from Original Sin, is not a doctrine shared between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact, it’s only been an official part of Catholic teaching since 1854. While the Eastern churches agree with Catholics that Mary was free from personal sin, the fact that the Eastern church has never accepted Augustine’s teaching on Original Sin means that the doctrine is superfl…

Fighting Demons, Raising the Dead, Taking Over the World

By Bruce Wilson

…of the late 1980s through the early 1990s, a group of quintessentially American tinkerers grafted new practices of ‘spiritual mapping’ and ‘spiritual warfare’ onto a peculiar and radical theological substrate emerging from the Latter Rain and healing revivals that burst out in Canada and North America during the late 1940s. They molded their hybridized new Christianity into a standardized package of ideas and practices such that, by the late 1990…

A Love Letter to #Exvangelicals and Those Deconstructing Their Toxic Faith

By Andrew L. Seidel

…dation, Black Nonbelievers, the American Humanist Association, Hispanic American Freethinkers, American Atheists, the Center for Inquiry, Ex-Muslims of North America, and many more, including hundreds of amazing local groups that offer a more intimate and familiar community. Many of these local groups, such as the Atheist Community of Polk County (Fla.), are filling the community and service space that has been, until recently, monopolized by chur…

Liberals Enabled Bishops in Contraception Battle

By Sarah Posner

…th states held that there was no violation of the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. That’s because the law doesn’t “substantially burden” anyone’s religious practice and is one of general applicability that was not targeted at infringing a particular religious practice. To permit religious beliefs to “excuse compliance with otherwise valid laws regulating matters the state is free to regulate,” would, the California Supreme Cour…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…sh Rite and a lodge brother of Peter Solomon, which is highly unlikely. American Freemasonry, including the Scottish Rite, has always been unofficially segregated. In the 1780s, Prince Hall, a black Bostonian, was initiated by some Irish soldiers. The white lodges in Boston refused to accept him, so he formed his own black Masonic lodge, which gave rise to a separate “Prince Hall” branch of Masonry for African-Americans. In the world of The Lost S…

The Religious “Right” to Denounce Homosexuality

By Sarah Posner

…fy all your innermost desires: Jesus Christ.” The Secular Coalition for America and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have both raised constitutional concerns about Strong Bonds. But the retired chaplains’ complaint — that they would be forced to teach marriage-strengthening classes to gay and lesbian people — is a prime example of the “collision course” the religious right has created between the separation of church and state and the eva…