Category: Religion
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The Ten Commandments in the Classroom
The Louisiana Law Louisiana House Bill No. 71 requires the following text to be posted in all “public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools”: “The Ten CommandmentsI AM the LORD thy God.Thou shalt have no other gods before me.Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy…
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Alabama Declares War on In Vitro Fertilization
Roe still got it right The argument against embryo personhood takes only one sentence: The living cells that are embryos cannot survive outside the womb. Life at conception may be your religious belief, but it’s not mine. And the first clause of the First Amendment says religious belief alone isn’t law. Alabama Supreme Court On…
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Quotations from Speaker Mike
“I am a Christian” “I am a Christian, a husband, a father, a life-long conservative, constitutional law attorney and a small business owner in that order,” Louisiana state Representative Mike Johnson told the Louisiana Baptist Message in 2016, “and I think that order is important.” In 2016 when first elected to Congress Johnson, his wife Kelly, and…
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The Doctrine of Discovery
Christopher Columbus’s first landing in America on October 12, 1492 by Dióscoro Puebla, 1862 (Wikimedia Commons) and White Christian Nationalism Doctrine of Discovery It all began with the Doctrine of Discovery. Before the Spanish started the oldest permanent settlement in North America, St. Augustine in 1565. Before the English arrived in Jamestown in 1607. Before…
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Abortion as a Civil Right
Demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, May 3, 2022 in Washington. (JOSE LUIS MAGANA / AP) Roe v. Wade got it right Legal History The Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade (1973) examined in depth the legal history of abortion. “It perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion…
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An Accounting for Religion
What is Religion? Religion is mostly prehistoric: “The bulk of the human religious experience pre-dates written history.” 30,000 years of pre-history versus 7,000 years written. Prehistoric religious beliefs are credited since 35,000 BC, when burials began to include decoration of the body and accompanying artifacts.[1] Britannica describes religion generally as organized beliefs that guide a relationship…
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Second Class Citizens
Legal Discrimination against Palestinian Israelis Americans are too willing to assume that the only democracy in the Middle East has a written Constitution and Bill of Rights like theirs. The examples below are legal discrimination by the Israeli government. This unequal treatment under the law applies to over 1.7 million Israeli citizens in Israel, more than…
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Cardinal Bernard Law is Dead
It wasn’t that he was a pedophile. He found himself having to manage a difficult situation. It’s not that he himself behaved badly. In my times, there was a different instruction. If something happened in a family, it was the role of the father of a family to hide it. Now it is all about…
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Palestine & Israel
Collected Quotes “If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention” January 22, 2004 Rachel Corrie, 23, before she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza Strip, March 16, 2003. ( REUTERS) The driver dragged his blade over her a second time while reversing back over her body. Corrie died of skull and chest fractures. (International…
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The Middle East and Islam
11th Air Defense Brigade, Bahrain Collected Quotes June 26, 2003 We must not deceive ourselves or the Iraqis or the Palestinians about the joint Arab capabilities to support them or to defend them. 66Sheik Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, king of Bahrain, speaking to his people of defending Iraq, while providing a home port for the U.S.…
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Political Science
Collected Quotes Can Science Conquer Kansas? Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment. — Example of changes to an Environmental Protection Agency report made by White House officials under George W. Bush, June 19, 2003 Political staff are becoming increasingly bold in forcing agency officials to endorse junk science. — Jeremy Symons, a…
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Patriotic Ceremonies
Students pledging to the flag with the Bellamy salute, March 1941 Collected Quotes Exceptions to Majority Rule “No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion . . . To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead…