Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, claims it is: Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4′s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system. Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social [...]
Glenn Greenwald summarizes an atrocity of institutionalized injustice, whereby the executive branch of the United States has the power to abduct and torture innocent people with impunity: The Supreme Court today denied a petition of review from Maher Arar, the Canadian and Syrian citizen who was abducted by the U.S. Government at a stopover at JFK Airport when returning [...]
That’s essentially what New York state senator Jeffrey Klein is arguing when he explains proposed legislation to make vandalizing a house of worship a felony. And I agree with him. Desecrating the grounds of institutions that represent specific subset communities is not simply attacking the specific owners of that property but sending a threatening message [...]
After he drew Mohammed with the body of a dog, an Al-Qaeda front organization put a bounty on Lars Vilks’s head: $100,000 for killing him and $150,000 if it’s a death by slit throat. He was recently attacked at a talk he was giving when he showed photos of his controversy riling drawings. Now he [...]
Saturday I put together a large post highlighting a spectrum of thoughtful and/or provocative opinions on the recently approved plan to build a mosque a couple of blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center in New York. That day, for the sake of balance, I wanted to find someone who could [...]
8: The Mormon Proposition, a new movie out in theaters next Friday and available on DVD in July, explores the way that a tax exempt organization has waged a “secretive, decades-long campaign against gay rights”: Thanks to Richard for the link. Your Thoughts?
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter addressed to the United States Congress people opposing ENDA, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act For the sake of clarity, permit us first to state two basic tenets of Catholic Church teaching on this issue. First, persons with a homosexual inclination “must be accepted with respect, compassion, [...]
Cliff Sloan, a former clerk of retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, makes a four part case that he was the greatest (non-chief) Justice in American history. His second point of evidence is Justice Stevens’s vigorous defense of personal liberty, including his contribution to the long overdue overturning laws criminalizing gay sex: Second, Justice [...]
The American Academy of Pediatrics had proposed permitting American doctors to ritually “nick” the clitorises of girls whose parents want to maintain their customs in America. The thinking was that this compromise would prevent such parents from going underground to have a fuller mutilation of the clitoris carried out instead. Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that [...]
Another thoughtful and passionate debate on this difficult issue from the land down under: Your Thoughts?
Foreign Policy has a profile of Mikey Weinstein who tirelessly works to combat the efforts of fundamentalist Christians to co-opt the U.S. military for purposes of religious recruitment and religious crusades: Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein shares his hate mail with both friends and strangers the way elderly people show off photos of their grandkids. He [...]
Last weekend I discussed the incident in which a teacher accused two other teachers of bullying her over her atheism by threatening to sprinkle her with “holy water” (in the form of a bottle of perfume). I agreed with the atheist teacher’s assessment that she was being bullied but did not think the passive aggressive [...]
ProfMTH explores the issue with a wealth of information, siding against such exemptions: The second video is chock full of legal information. The most interesting bit in here is where he discusses Antonin Scalia’s strong case against religious exemptions and Sonia Sotomayor’s general support for them. 1. Regarding Christian Legal Society v. Martinez– –the decision [...]
South Florida News reports: The district is looking into whether the women at Ely High School tried to bully the counterpart into becoming a believer. “The students whom I interviewed said that’s absolutely untrue,” said Fort Lauderdale attorney Johnny McCray, who represents both teachers, Leslie Rainer and Djuna Robinson. He says the two didn’t have [...]
Below is the just the first two parts of the British documentary “Saving Africa’s Witch Children”, which exposes the horrendous child abuse carried out in Africa under the pretense of exorcism, followed by today’s New York Times article relaying the denials and excuses offered by Helen Ukpabio, a dangerous promoter of these heinous practices: [Helen] Ukpabio’s critics [...]
FOX News’s one passionately sane and moral voice last week went after BP executive Tony Hayward for his flippant attitude towards the ecological disaster his company has recently wrought. The man is an oasis amidst his network’s cynical demagoguery and sincere lunacy. And, of course, there is his passionate denunciation of torture from over a [...]
On the heals of the story we highlighted the other day in which a Saudi Woman attacked a member of the Saudi Commision for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice for harassing her over her clothing, Ashaq Al-Awsat reports another heartening incident along the same lines: Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat- Members of Khobar’s Commission [...]
The Telegraph calls it “burka rage”: A 26-year-old Muslim convert was walking through the store in Trignac, near Nantes, in the western Loire-Atlantique region, when she overhead the woman lawyer making “snide remarks about her black burka”. A police officer close to the case said: “The lawyer said she was not happy seeing a fellow [...]
In late 2008 Harry Taylor was arrested for putting anti-religious leaflets in a prayer room in the John Lennon airport in Liverpool. The specific charge was an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. Here are a few of the images for which he would be going to jail for 6 months were his sentence not suspended for [...]
The Center For Inquiry pays tribute to retiring Justice John Paul Stevens for his record of affirming the necessity of a wall between church and state: He was a stalwart defender of church-state separation, and through his persuasive powers he was often able to garner a Court majority to support a proper reading of the [...]
From Box Turtle Bulletin we get this chilling and revealing video of Scott Lively’s presentation to a Ugandan audience that Lively afterward bragged was a “nuclear bomb.” Here’s just a brief quote from the video which illustrates the depths of his sick, hateful vilification of gays: These are men who don’t have anything…they are so [...]
via Rosi Efthim, Pam’s House Blend, and Friendly Atheist: 120 Clergy from 19 Faiths in the State of New Jersey Monday, January 4, 2010Senate President Richard J. Codey Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts, Jr. The State House Trenton, New Jersey 08625 Dear Governor Codey and Speaker Roberts: We are 120 clergy members across New Jersey from [...]
Retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney: I can’t put my own view any better than David Brooks and Glenn Greenwald already have. Greenwald: The Constitution is grounded in the premise that there are other values and priorities more important than mere Safety. Even though they knew that doing so would help murderers and other dangerous and [...]