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Category Archives: Civil Rights

U.S. District Judge Rules DOMA Unconstitutional

A just outcome, but I am not sure how I feel about appealing to states’ rights to define marriage for themselves, which could inevitably be used as a justification for individual states to deny gays’  rights to marriage.  The case is about equal rights, not states rights, and should have been settled as such: A [...]

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Gay Rights Advocate Decapitated In Uganda

Unspeakably sad and outraging: A search for a missing pro-gay priest, the Rev Henry Kayizzi Nsubuga, who disappeared almost two and half weeks ago after delivering a scathing speech at St. Paul’s Church, Kanyanya supporting homosexuality in Uganda, led the joint search team of Integrity Uganda and Namirembe Diocese to the severed head of another [...]

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No Preferred Legal Status For Religion

His excellent previous 2 videos on the subject laid out legal arguments that preferred this conclusion. Your Thoughts?

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If Atheists Acted Like Politically Conservative Christians

So well done: Your Thoughts?

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Supreme Court Upholds University Non-Discrimination Statement

Zack Ford explains: Here’s a brief recap of the situation: The University of California has a nondiscrimination policy. If you want to be recognized as a student group (i.e. use the university’s name, access funding for student groups, reserve campus spaces, etc.), you must abide by the nondiscrimination policy. The Christian Legal Society at Hastings [...]

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Rational Passional Persuasion

Andrew writes: So atheists don’t have emotions which inform them of the truth of something? And their rhetoric is completely dispassionate to the point where logic and reason are not fully objective? I have addressed the proper ways to consult the emotions in looking for truth in the post, Disambiguating Faith: Heart Over Reason, so for [...]

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On The "Compassion" In The Catholic Bishops’ Letter To Congress Against Gay Rights

Recently, United States bishops petitioned Congress to not protect gays from being fired for their sexual orientation.  Andrew Sullivan already precisely attacked the bishops’ immoral political calculation by which they explicitly committed themselves to a perverse moral contradiction whereby they simultaneously concede that homosexuality is to a significant extent not a choice and argue that [...]

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Multicultural Human Rights

Johann Hari makes the argument that we have the right to stand up for the rights of those in other cultures without fear that we are not “multicultural” enough: Should you shut up about human rights abuses because they are happening far away, to people you don’t know, who have a different culture or colour [...]

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Follow The Closing Arguments Of The Proposition 8 Trial Today

And you can follow them as they are live-blogged on the Proposition 8 Trial Tracker website, which was an invaluable resource during testimony, filled with fascinating in-depth accounts of the arguments everyday.  They’ve also started rolling already today on their Twitter feed and on their Facebook page. Here is the schedule for the arguments, all [...]

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Iceland Unanimously Approves Gay Marriage

Iceland, the only country in the world to have an openly gay head of state, passed a law on Friday allowing same-sex partners to get married in a vote which met with no political resistance. The Althingi parliament voted 49 to zero to change the wording of marriage legislation to include matrimony between “man and [...]

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Rejecting The Ex-Gay Movement

Michael Bussee co-founded the “ex-gay” ministry Exodus International. In the videos below he explains the problems with the movement and how he came to reject it.  Here are a bunch of the videos, and more can be found on his YouTube channel. Your Thoughts?

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Family Research Council Lobbied Congress NOT To Denounce Uganda Bill

Enraging: Your Thoughts?

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Children Of Lesbians Did Better In Study Than Traditionally Raised Children

Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos (author of Parenting in Planned Lesbian Families (UvA Proefschriften) have the authored the first longitudinal study to track the outcomes of children created through artificial insemination through their teenage years.  The results? The authors found that children raised by lesbian mothers — whether the mother was partnered or single — [...]

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Michael Sandel On "The Lost Art Of Democratic Debate"

A good video from Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, who recently wrote a book on justice for a popular audience, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, and who last year released on YouTube high production value videos encapsulating his lectures for his standard introductory level ethics class at Harvard. You can start watching those videos here. [...]

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Make Homosexuals Marry

Starring Mike White, writer and co-star of two of my favorite movies (The Good Girl and School of Rock), a look at the realities of gay marriage: Your Thoughts?

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8: The Mormon Proposition

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?

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A California Attorney General Candidate Who Supports Gay Marriage

His name is Steve Cooley and he could use your support in a primary for the Republican party’s nomination.  Think about it if you’re qualified to vote for him and live in California: Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley is running for the Republican Party nomination for California State Attorney General. And those readers who [...]

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U.S. Bishops Argue Employers Should Be Allowed To Consider Being Gay A Fireable Offense

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, [...]

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Bill O’Reilly Compares Gays To Al-Qaeda

A little over an hour ago, I posted this McDonald’s commercial, running only in France thus far, which gently sends a pro-gay message.  Little did I know yet that Bill O’Reilly got seriously O’riled up about it tonight: His physical hostility towards such a remarkably understated and delicate ad and his adamant insistence that the [...]

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Justice Stevens's Legacy On Liberty

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 [...]

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American Academy Of Pediatrics Reverses Support For Female Circumcision "Compromise"

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 [...]

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Missionaries of Hate

Do American evangelical leaders really oppose Uganda’s “Kill The Gays Bill”?  What exactly is the extent of their responsibility for the creation of this mercilessly unjust, religiously motivated law?  Mariana van Zeller’s documentary Missionaries of Hate explores the question: Jim Burroway has more interview footage with Ugandan MP David Bahati, who introduced the “Anti-Homosexuality Bill”, including [...]

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Should Religions Be Exempt From Laws Otherwise Applicable To Others?

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 [...]

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The Texas State Board Of Education On Activism

From Dara Lind: Here’s a requirement from the eighth-grade curriculum, under “Citizenship”: The student is expected to…analyze reasons for and the impact of selected examples of civil disobedience in U.S. history such as the Boston Tea Party and Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay a tax. Yes, it’s hilarious that the curriculum glosses over the fact [...]

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"The Closet Game!"

ZJ responds to Steve King’s oblivious and cruel suggestion to the effect that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would not be necessary if only gays, lesbians and the transgendered would stay in the closet: Your Thoughts?

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