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Fed. Court Rules Prop. 8 Unconstitutional

By Peter Montgomery

…ated the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The decision, affirming an August 2010 ruling by US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, will almost certainly be appealed to the US Supreme Court. Today’s ruling states: All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of ‘marriage,’ which symbolized state legitimization and societal recognitio…

Among the Problems with Trump’s Proposed Ban: Who is a Muslim?

By Michael Schulson

…urity and immigration officials,” reported NBC News over the summer. In an August speech, Clinton asked “How would [the ban] actually work?” and sketched out a scenario that echoed the court hearings of the Naturalization Law era: “What if someone says, ‘I’m a Christian,’ but the agent doesn’t believe him? Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?” So what would Trump do? Recently, Trump’s campaign seems to have moved toward what may be th…

LDS Church Issues Statement Against Qur’an Burning

By Joanna Brooks

A few weeks ago, in the heat of August, I wondered about what appeared to be a lagging LDS response to simmering anti-Muslim sentiment in America. Certainly we can do better, I wrote. And we ought to, given similarities in the historical contours of anti-Mormon and anti-Muslim prejudice. Now, the LDS Church has responded to calls (reported by Sarah) for religious leaders to speak out against Islamophobia and the planned September 11 Qur’an burnin…

Knights of Columbus: Jousting to “Preserve Marriage”

By Kate Childs Graham

Not only do they run your local parish bingo and dress up in flashy outfits—they also play right-wing politics. On August 20, 2008, the Knights of Columbus donated $1 million to support California’s Proposition 8, which will appears on the 2008 ballot. If passed, it will amend the state constitution by adding the phrase: “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Proposition 8 was introduced by an organization…

What American Flag-Worship Looks Like to a New Citizen

By Rosalind C. Hughes

…s. As Jeffrey Owen Jones writes: In Bellamy’s later accounts of the sultry August evening he composed the pledge, he said that he believed all along it should invoke allegiance. The idea was in part a response to the Civil War, a crisis of loyalty still fresh in the national memory. As Bellamy sat down at his desk, the opening words—”I pledge allegiance to my flag”—tumbled onto paper. Then, after two hours of “arduous mental labor,” as he describe…

‘A Slice of Heaven’: Lakota Look to Buy Back Stolen Sacred Lands

By Johnny P. Flynn

…akowi (the Seven Little Girls). The area up for sale this coming Saturday, August 25 is in the shadow of a mountain the Wasicu (white people or, literally: ‘takers of the fat’) call Old Baldy, which figures into Lakota mythology and has been sacred to the Lakota since the Before Time. Pe’sla is part of a complex of sacred sites which include Devil’s Tower in Wyoming and various other sites in the Black Hills, all of which link to Lakota mythology…

Trump Evokes MLK at Biker Vet Rally

By Paul Harvey

…pposedly have given him at other events, the highlight here was Trump’s comparison of his appearance on the mall to that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in August 1963, delivering the “’I Have a Dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.” This event would have been like that one, Trump averred, if only the masses of bikers had been allowed to enter the mall area: “I thought this would be like Dr. Martin Luther King where people were lined u…

On Women’s Equality Day, Going Back to the Sacred Texts of Feminism

By Betty M. Bayer

…markers in the longer march to women’s equality might belong to another galaxy entirely. There is, as I’ve suggested, a kind of “present absence” of feminist voices, review and analysis. There are, of course, plenty of feminist scholars, politicians, economist,s and religious thinkers; so many, in fact, that one could fill entire panels and news programs regularly with a range of women and political feminist views. One has to ask—especially in th…

Gay Judge’s Prop. 8 Decision Holds

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ling against the ballot measure because the judge in the case is gay. Last August, Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Prop 8, which repealed the legalization of same-sex marriage in California by defining marriage as between one man and one woman. In his opinion, he wrote: “Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private…

Right Wing Christians and Radical Feminists Form an Odd (Transphobic) Couple

By Sunnivie Brydum

…n behaving inappropriately in a gender-segregated space. I haven’t run the numbers, but it’s fair to say that it’s safer to share a bathroom with a trans person than to meet the president-elect. On the more serious side, law enforcement officers, city commerce officials, and sexual assault experts from around the country have soundly rejected the claim that allowing trans folks to use the facilities that best match their gender identity leads to a…