Jessica Ahlquist was right. The sectarian banner that hung at Cranston West High School in Cranston, Rhode Island, should not have been there. Its presence there was both unjust and illegal. And, being unjust, it was also a sin. The First Amendment is very clear. It defends the free exercise of religion and, therefore, also forbids the establishment of religion. To establish any particular sect — to privilege it with official state sanction — is unfair to everyone who is... Read more
Cora Currier: “Banks Colluding with Insurers to Rip Off Homeowners, Lawsuit Alleges“ A federal judge in Miami on Tuesday opened the door to a class action against Wells Fargo. More than 20,000 Florida homeowners can now sue Wells Fargo and an insurance company, QBE, for allegedly overcharging for insurance. More than $50 million in insurance premiums are at issue, according to American Banker. The suit itself, filed last year, is sealed, but the judge, Robert Scola, laid out the allegations... Read more
If I wanted to pass a law explicitly for the purpose of denying civil rights to one specific minority group, would that be constitutional? No. No it would not. Thus though the Defense of Marriage Act is still the law of the land, it’s an illegal law. Two federal judges have now said so, as Andrew Rosenthal reports, “Blatantly Unconstitutional Law Ruled Unconstitutional“: [Bush appointee U.S. District Judge Jeffrey] White is the second federal judge to find that Section 3... Read more
“These children have faces, they have names, they have moms and dads, and they were all under five years old.” “Wait for it. … Wait for it. … Tee-hee!” “It’s not about your right as a gay person to dignity. It’s about our right to declare that you aren’t worthy of it.” “Here’s someone whose career was derailed for being blasphemous. Well, as it turns out, she was right.” “An elderly lifelong bachelor who lives with hundreds of other old,... Read more
For the past five years, I’ve been part of a big Catholic family, even before I married into it. Due to lease logistics, I moved in with my future father-in-law for the five months before my wedding. Three of us lived in that house: me, Pop and my wife’s Uncle Joe, a retired priest. We joked that it was our bachelor pad — the widower, the celibate and the fiancé. I stayed in a room that had once belonged to... Read more
If this be a method, there’s madness in it. I don’t get up early enough or stay up late enough to keep track of every strange, foolish, insultingly ludicrous, blasphemous or fantastical thing my former senator, Rick Santorum, has been saying lately. The Republican presidential candidate has produced such an astonishing string of wild accusations, pure hokum, and fringe lunacy that it all sort of bleeds together at this point. And he’s produced so much of it that no one... Read more
How can Mitt Romney recall childhood memories of Detroit’s Golden Jubilee? That event, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the American automobile, took place June 1, 1946 — “fully nine months before Romney was born.” David Barton offers one explanation. “Biblically,” the fraudulent non-historian says, “life begins before conception.” This may also explain why Barton himself is able to “remember” things like what a devout, prayerful Christian Thomas Paine was. Speaking of Romney, Buzzfeed speculates that his “trees are... Read more
Burning kittens is wrong. It is cruel, it is illegal and it is, quite simply, evil. No one should burn kittens. I am, unambiguously and without qualification, opposed to burning kittens. I am also confident that you are opposed to this too. And that latter point is why I cannot join the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition. The AKBC, again, is on the correct side of this issue. Its members, quite rightly, are vehemently opposed to something to which they ought to... Read more
Jesse Curtis: “A lot of Christians don’t care about poor people“ What I hear from evangelicals a lot is that it is the church’s job, not the government’s, to care for the poor. I would dispute the either/or proposition contained in that argument (after all, the laws God gave Israel included government mandated redistribution of wealth) but for our purposes, let’s accept the premise. It is the church’s job, period. But here’s the thing … many of our evangelical churches... Read more
1 John 2:7-11 Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever... Read more
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