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The Big Lie Misrepresentation in Louisiana “Seal of Confessional” Case

By Jason Hines

…again. In this latest episode, according to bloggers at Hot Air and the American Conservative, “[t]he Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional,” and “Fr. Bayhi will have to go to jail to protect the seal of the confessional.” These pundits can, to some extent, be forgiven for these misleading statements since the Catholic Church’s Baton Rouge Diocese has made some fairly alarming…

In a Time of Chaos and Misrule, Mardi Gras’ Subversive Message is Virtually Meaningless

By Ed Simon

…relationship to Lent, but the more elemental, emotional, universal contact between the life of Fat Tuesday and the austerity of Ash Wednesday. Beyond the liturgical calendar there’s something intrinsic about those eternally nestled days, the ways in which we can measure the extremities of human experience between the lushness, the decadence, the celebration of Tuesday and the death of Wednesday. “Eat drink and be merry,” somebody once wrote. From…

A Public Monument to Atheism—In Florida

By Becky Garrison

…think they’ve found a clever way to bring the Commandments in through the back door by invoking a “free speech zone.” They have to understand what that means—free speech means free speech for everyone. Those courthouse plazas may get awfully crowded….

Jerusalem Honors Right-Wing Mogul Sheldon Adelson

By Diane Winston

…pointed out earlier this year, Israel HaYom’s competitive tactics—offering free papers and slashing ad costs—have undercut two of Israel’s moderate newspapers. Was it economics then or politics that shaped the Jerusalem Post’s coverage of the luncheon? Unlike the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, both of which highlighted Adelson’s inflammatory descriptions of Palestinians and his attacks on peacemaking efforts, the Jerusalem paper offered…

Eat, Pray, Trash: What the Critics Don’t See

By Ben Brazil

…e the industrializing West has become increasingly “inauthentic,” Latin America, Africa, and (especially) Asia have been deemed “authentic.” Dean MacCannell noticed just this projected sort of authenticity in his 1976 The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. But even before the Beatles went to India, elite Westerners had begun juxtaposing the “spiritual” East to the “materialist” West, a move that (as post-colonial critics have pointed out)…

Obama Inaugural Address Challenges Tea Party History

By Julie Ingersoll

…oint: Seneca, Selma, and Stonewall. Indeed, this narrative places women, African Americans, and LGBT Americans as well as immigrants, the poor, children, and others at the center of the unfinished story of the expansion of freedom to all. Articulated beautifully in the speech, the narrative was echoed in every aspect of the ceremony. One of candidate Obama’s strengths in the first campaign was his ability to invoke these powerful mythic themes (th…

White Nationalist Ideology Shines Through at Elite MAGA Conference: Inside NatCon Part II

By Ben Lorber

…n’s moves to roll back LGBTQ rights in what he calls “America’s citadel of freedom—the free state of Florida, proud to be a refuge of sanity in a world gone mad. We’re holding down the fort.” Indeed, in a national climate where solid majorities remain opposed to the Supreme Court’s gutting of Roe v. Wade, Hazony and others clearly perceive states like Florida to be a laboratory for battle-testing their Christian nationalist vision. “People say ‘lo…

Does God Hate Health Care? How About Public Schools? Or Bridges?

By Joanna Brooks

…wrong for people who share the same borders to pool their resources to blunt the human costs of structural economic adjustments. Where is this taught? Moderate religious voices have a role to play this campaign season in reminding voters across the spectrum that somewhere between the kingdom of God and the principles-neutral free market is a common place where we actually live, and somebody’s got to pay for it. *Correction: This post originally no…

Does Traditional Christian Marriage Just Mean “Not Gay”?

By Daniel Silliman

…ple for ignoring those advice guides, though, or for asking for a ceremony free of Bible verses and prayers. It seems likely that if they did, some straight couples wouldn’t qualify for marriage at the Hitching Post. At the same time, the 15 same-sex couples that have been turned away by the Knapps might have been fine with those things, but they still wouldn’t have had a wedding traditional enough or Christian enough for the Hitching Post. In the…

Why Scientists Should Be Agnostic: Or, Why Lawrence Krauss Is Still a Windbag

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…than a coherent thesis. In one bizarre example, Krauss attempts to connect free inquiry, atheism, and speaking out in the name of science. Noting first that “[s]cientists have an obligation not to lie about the natural world,” he chastises those who “remain silent rather than pointing out contradictions between science and religious doctrine.” It’s not enough to work in the lab, apparently—scientists must also be in the business of smashing idols….