Mark Twain said of Wagner’s music that, “it isn’t as bad as it sounds.” But these decisions were worse than they sounded. Some of our friends have sought gamely to pretend that the political contest will go on, contesting marriage state-by-state. And indeed it must. But we will have to summon our genius to find different paths. http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/the-court-and-marriage-the-culture-war-deepens/print.html Read more

Today’s sex ed curricula are based on the widely-accepted teachings of depraved human beings. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/07/10408/?utm_source=RTA+Grossman+Sex+Ed&utm_campaign=winstorg&utm_medium=email Read more

Prohibiting religious schools from using public facilities would not protect religious freedom; it would encourage further discrimination against religion and religious people. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/07/10377/?utm_source=RTA+Lewis+NYT+Religious+Liberty&utm_campaign=winstorg&utm_medium=email Read more

Ryan Anderson On almost every campus I visited, including elite law schools like Stanford and NYU, students came up to me afterwards to say that they had never heard a rational case for marriage. The Lefties would tell me that they respected the argument—and frequently weren’t sure why it was wrong, even when they continued to insist that it was wrong. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/07/calling-and-witness-holiness-and-truth?utm_source=RTA+ADF&utm_campaign=winstorg&utm_medium=email Read more

Almost half a century ago, a young reporter from Germany arrived in still-glamorous Saigon to cover the Vietnam War over a period of five years. In this memoir he now tells the story of how he fell in love with the Vietnamese people. He praises the beauty, elegance and feistiness of their women. He describes blood-curdling Communist atrocities and fierce combat scenes he had witnessed. He introduces a striking array of characters: heroes, villains, statesmen and spooks, hilarious eccentrics, street... Read more

By RYAN T. ANDERSON The Heritage Foundation Fourteen months ago, President Obama was a bigot. Now he is simply wrong. That’s what you have to believe to agree with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion for the Supreme Court on the Defense of Marriage Act. http://www.kansascity.com/2013/07/10/4338184/civility-bullying-and-same-sex.html?utm_source=RTA+Civility&utm_campaign=winstorg&utm_medium=email Read more

Nussbaum often writes as if the tension between revealed religion (especially Islam) and liberal democracy is more a chimera than a reality, and as if she is oblivious to the theological requirements of separation of church and state. As a result, The New Religious Intolerance disappoints precisely where scholarly illumination is most urgently needed. It fails to engage the Islamic tradition in a candid dialogue, and never attempts to account for the genuine conflicts between Islam (and even the Catholic... Read more

Peter Berger Robert Wuthnow says modern believers maintain a creative tension between the worldviews of naturalism and religion. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/november-web-only/peter-berger-reviews-robert-wuthnow-god-problem.html?start=1 Read more

I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white. Apparently other Americans also recognize that the sources of racism are different today from what they were in the past. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racists, while 24 percent of blacks think that most whites are racist. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/07/09/who_is_racist_119139.html Read more

W. Bradford Wilcox A new study suggests that men are more likely than women to be not “completely committed” to their partners. http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/07/men-and-women-often-expect-different-things-when-they-move-in-together/277571/ Read more