Putin Says Communism Comes From the Bible, Compares Lenin to a Saint

Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared Vladimir Lenin to a saint and declared that Soviet communist ideas come from the Bible.

Putin was speaking during a documentary about the recently-restored Valaam Monastery on state-funded channel Rossiya 1, which tells the story of the building—located near the border with Finland—over the years.

Why Houston’s Pastor Subpoenas Have Nothing To Do With Religious Liberty

There has been a new clash this week in the fight over the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), a law that would protect LGBT individuals and other targeted groups from discrimination. The latest hubbub involves the city subpoenaing five pastors for their sermons, which has prompted conservatives to claim that religious liberty is under attack and that the subpoenas are a form of intimidation.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, was on Fox News last night claiming that Houston Mayor Annise Parker (D) is “taking a bulldozer to that wall of separation [of church and state]” and trying to “dictate what pastors preach.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) tweeted that the subpoenas constitute a “march against our freedoms.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called the subpoenas a “grotesque abuse of power.” And Texas Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott (R) wrote to the Houston City Attorney that the subpoenas should be unilaterally withdrawn because they reflect “hostility to religious beliefs.”

Antonin Scalia Says Constitution Permits Court To 'Favor Religion Over Non-Religion'

The separation of church and state doesn't mean “the government cannot favor religion over non-religion,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued during a speech at Colorado Christian University on Wednesday, according to The Washington Times.

Defending his strict adherence to the plain text of the Constitution, Scalia knocked secular qualms over the role of religion in the public sphere as “utterly absurd,” arguing that the Constitution is only obligated to protect freedom of religion -- not freedom from it.

“I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over non-religion,” the Reagan-appointed jurist told the crowd of about 400 people.

Ted Haggard, Mark Sanford and the Politics of Christian Forgiveness

Mark Sanford is back, in case you haven't heard. You know, the South Carolina governor who suddenly disappeared for weeks in June of 2009. He had told his staff, in the formulation that immediately became infamous, that he was off to "hike the Appalachian Trail," then did not answer fifteen cell phone calls from his chief of staff and neglected to contact his family on Father's Day, for he was actually in Argentina with his lover, who is now his fiancée. He then told the Associated Press he could die now, "knowing I had met my soul mate." He also admitted he had "crossed the line" with several other women during his twenty-year marriage. And then, last week, he emerged from the political, um, wilderness to win a sixteen-way primary for the Republican nomination to replace a retiring Congressman in South Carolina's 1st District, an office he held from 1995 to 2001, in a district that went Republican in 1980 and never looked back. Which is to say, contemporary politics' most flamboyant philanderer is almost certainly heading back to Congress—unless Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Stephen Colbert's sister, scores an upset—sent there as emissary of a party that has made "family values" its calling card for over a generation.

North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill

Republican North Carolina state legislators have proposed allowing an official state religion in a measure that would declare the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings.

The bill, filed Monday by two GOP lawmakers from Rowan County and backed by nine other Republicans, says each state "is sovereign" and courts cannot block a state "from making laws respecting an establishment of religion." The legislation was filed in response to a lawsuit to stop county commissioners in Rowan County from opening meetings with a Christian prayer, wral.com reported.

The separation of church and school

I grew up on the west coast, where a religious education is confined to exclusively private schools. But it wasn’t always so. When I was in grade one, Mrs. Yardley would have the class recite the Lord’s Prayer and read bible passages—and, as the only Jewish kid in class, I had to stand out alone in the hallway. It was kind of an intense experience for a six-year-old, so it’s always been disconcerting to me that Ontario has a taxpayer-funded Catholic school system. That feeling has grown exponentially over the past year, as my toddler has begun inching closer to the public-school system.

Harper’s true religion

Does Prime Minister Stephen Harper, like some ancient Roman emperor, make political decisions only after he inspects the entrails of a sacrificial chicken?

I am actually waiting for some political columnist to ask this question.

After all, it’s suddenly the rage for such observers to put forward the oddball notion that perhaps Harper is a devoted disciple of irrational religious practices.

What’s the proof for this extraordinary claim?

Religion’s fair game if it motivates politics

Much has been made of the government’s muzzling of the science community, its low regard for statistics, its hard line against environmentalists.

Because Stephen Harper otherwise appears to be a clear-headed rationalist, there is some wonder about the motivation for these impulses, including the question of whether they are triggered by his evangelical beliefs. The Prime Minister is a member of the Alliance Church, more specifically the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The church believes the free market is divinely inspired and views science and environmentalism with what might be called scorn.

American Family Association Calls For Boycott Of Google Over Company's Support Of LGBT Rights

Supporters of the American Family Association, a conservative non-profit organization whose mission is to "promote the Biblical ethic of decency in American society," are not going be Googling much. Or using Android phones. Or browsing with Chrome. Or checking their Gmail. Or, well, you get the idea.

In response to Google's recently-announced "Legalize Love" campaign, which supports gay rights throughout the world, the American Family Association's Buster Wilson encouraged listeners of his radio show to do their best to stop using Google, Right Wing Watch reports.

The bullies that you are paying for: How the 'Christian' right is making you subsidize their hate

We are all likely familiar with the war that our Conservative federal government is waging on organizations with which it does not see eye to eye.

And most of us have heard the borderline hate speech of Ontario Christian fascist Charles McVety, as when he said, in opposition to Ontario's new proposed anti-bullying law, Monday, May 7, appallingly and revoltingly, that:

Bill 13 "embraces a radical sex education agenda" and children will be taught "about oral and anal sex."

"My daughter is a precious little 14-year-old girl. I beg you not to do this to my daughter," he said. "This bill goes against the Bible. The Bible is a very important document."

You may be less aware of what your tax dollars are subsidizing when it comes to the virulent anti-gay and anti-woman, anti-choice rhetoric that is coming from groups that either are, or claim to be, "charities" under tax law, usually by using religion as the front to circumvent the intent of the law.

New T-shirt: Tolerance is a two-way street

There is a wonderful life lesson being taught at a South Shore school and it goes like this: Tolerance has to work both ways.

The two sides in the Christian T-shirt conflict might want to take a step back and draw a breath. Jesus, who is supposedly at the centre of the controversy, surely would have suggested as much.

William Swinimer, a Grade 12 student at Forest Heights Community School, was suspended for five days last week. While the T-shirt he was wearing has been identified as the major infraction in the dispute, it sounds as though there is a lot more to this story, which has drawn international media coverage.

The slogan, “Life is Wasted Without Jesus,” seems fairly innocuous to me. In most cases, such a T-shirt might prompt little more than a shrug. School boards have rules against offensive messages on clothing, but Swinimer’s T-shirt would surely fall into the low range of potential violations.

But Swinimer told The Chronicle Herald last week that his conflict at school goes much deeper than that.

Proponents Of Euthanasia, Nazi Genocide Use Same Arguments According To L'Osservatore Romano

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Proponents of euthanasia and aborting chronically ill fetuses use the same arguments that were once used by the Nazis to promote their eugenics program of mass extermination, according to the Vatican's semiofficial newspaper.

The article appears on the front page of Saturday's (May 5) issue of L'Osservatore Romano and is signed by Lucetta Scaraffia, an Italian historian who is a frequent contributor to the Vatican paper.

Scaraffia's article comes in the wake of the Italian translation of a 1920 book by two German scholars, Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, that set the ideological foundations for the Nazi program of extermination of disabled and incurably sick people.

The authors of the 1920 book ("Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living") proposed that the lives of the chronically ill or of the mentally and physically disabled were "unworthy of being lived," and should be given a "charitable death."

Scaraffia argues that this mentality can still be seen in the "writings of many contemporary bioethicists, and of many politicians who support legislative proposals of a euthanasic type."

According to the historian, the book is "sinisterly" relevant to contemporary debates, and should "strongly embarrass those who champion euthanasia in the belief that it has nothing to do with Nazism."

"Contempt for imperfect human life, over estimation of the abilities of science" are "still firmly present in our time," she concludes, and this shows that "eugenics is still alive and has not been wiped out together with the Nazi past."

Original Article
Source: Huff
Author: Alessandro Speciale Religion News Service

Women Fight Back as Virginia, Georgia Curb Reproductive Rights: "When We’re Screwed, We Multiply"

hereOn International Women’s Day, we speak with Loretta Ross of the SisterSong Reproductive Justice Collective about the latest wave of legislative attacks on reproductive rights. Virginia has enacted a controversial law forcing women seeking abortions to have an ultrasound. Lawmakers in Georgia and New Hampshire, meanwhile, have advanced new curbs on abortion and contraception coverage. Georgia lawmakers are also considering a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks based on the highly contested notion that fetuses can feel pain at that stage. "In Georgia we got tossed back to the 19th century," Ross says. "Republican legislators really didn’t want to hear from women, they didn’t want to pay attention, and presumed that they could tell us what to do with our bodies again."

Video Article
Source: Democracy Now!
Author: --

Cardinal Dolan Urges 'Freedom Of Religion Battle'

HICKSVILLE, N.Y. -- Cardinal Timothy Dolan called on Roman Catholic worshippers Saturday to become more involved in politics as the church stands against the government in what he called a "freedom of religion battle," as he spoke about the recent controversy involving contraceptive coverage.

Speaking at Holy Trinity Diocesan High School in Hicksville, the spiritual leader of the Archdiocese of New York said the U.S. government is engaged in "an unwarranted, unprecedented radical intrusion." He told the crowd they "live in an era that seems to discover new rights every day."

"We're not trying to impose our teachings on anybody," said Dolan in his 45-minute speech to a packed auditorium of about 1,000 people. "We're simply saying, don't impose your teaching upon us and make us do as a church what we find unconscionable to do."

Some religious organizations protested when President Barack Obama moved to mandate that religious-affiliated institutions such as hospitals and universities include free birth control coverage in their employee health plans.

Obama later said religious employers could opt out, but insurers must pay for the coverage.

Proponents say the plan is a breakthrough for women's rights, but Dolan and other leaders say it violates religious freedom.

Dolan, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told reporters after the speech that they are in discussion with legal experts and constitutional scholars to determine whether legal action is necessary.

Original Article
Source: Huff
Author: AP

Rick Santorum, Meet Hamza Kashgari

President Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religious freedom makes Rick Santorum “throw up.” “What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their case?” Santorum says. It’s a central part of his campaign strategy to distort such things as a Kennedy speech, or an Obama speech, to whip up outrage at the supposed war on religious people in America. Here’s what Kennedy said:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President—should he be Catholic—how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him… I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair.

Marco Rubio's Plan Could Cut Off Birth Control Coverage for Millions

A new bill introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a rising conservative star and leading contender for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 2012, could cut off birth control coverage for millions of women who receive it through their health plans.

Rubio has sold his proposal—introduced Jan. 31 as the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," or S. 2043—as a way to counter President Barack Obama's controversial rule requiring even religiously affiliated schools and universities to offer copay-free birth control to their employees. But health care experts say that its implications could be far broader.

If passed, the bill would allow any institution or corporation to cut off birth control coverage simply by citing religious grounds. (You can read the bill here or in the DocumentCloud embed below.) It has 26 cosponsors in the Senate; a similar proposal sponsored by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) has 148 cosponsors in the House. On Wednesday, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) vowed to repeal Obama's rule, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pointed to Rubio's bill as a potential model for doing so.

In English, this means that no entity has to cover birth control in a health plan if it can point to a religious reason for not doing so. And the entity itself is not required to have any religious affiliation. It could just be a plain old corporation. That means that if the middle-aged white guy who runs your company is religiously opposed to birth control, he can have it stripped out of your insurance plan—even if his Viagra is still covered. You could wake up the next morning and find you're paying full price for drugs that you once got for free or at much-reduced prices.

Shadrack McGill, Alabama State Senator, Says Keeping Teacher Pay Low 'A Biblical Principle'

Someone alert the unions: raising teacher pay will actually make for worse teachers--according to one GOP lawmaker.

Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill said that increasing teacher pay is against "a biblical principle" because it might attract people who otherwise wouldn't do the job.

"Teachers need to make the money that they need to make," McGill said, according to the Times-Journal. "If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach ... and these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em."

McGill's comments came at a prayer breakfast this week in Fort Payne, Ala. State legislators are currently weighing raising teacher pay. One GOP leader proposed raising salaries of newer teachers by 2.5 percent, but critics argue that it isn't fair to longer-serving educators, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.

A recent report might justify critics' worries, showing that Alabama is actually leading the nation in starting teacher salaries, while lagging behind in average teacher pay, the Dothan Eagle reports.

The national average starting salary for a teacher is $39,000. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof has argued that paying teachers more would help attract better people to the profession, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has repeatedly vocalized his assertion that teachers should have salaries starting at $60,000 and the opportunity to make up to $150,000 based on performance.

Original Article
Source: Huff 
Author: Alana Horowitz 

God rules all in 2012 Israel, even the state

Israel: Not what you thought, not what the world thought, not what Israelis imagine themselves to think. Israeli society isn't secular, it isn't liberal and it isn't enlightened.

God exists. Eighty percent of Israeli Jews can't be wrong. And it is precisely for that reason we must say: God protect us from the results of the poll (conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute's Guttman Center for Surveys and the Avi Chai Foundation ). While it is conceivably possible to deal with that burning, wholesale belief in the divine, what do we do with the "You chose us" part? Seventy percent of respondents said they also believed Jews are the Chosen People - and that frightening parameter is only on the rise.

You have to give it to the pollsters. They let the cat out of the bag. To paraphrase the Haaretz advertising slogan from the 1990s - Israel: Not what you thought. Not what the world thought, not what Israelis imagine themselves to think. Israeli society isn't secular, it isn't liberal and it isn't enlightened. Were they permitted to respond freely, it's doubtful that 80 percent of Iranians would say they believed in God; it's doubtful there is any other free nation on the planet, with the possible exception of the Americans, that would produce the same results. But there surely is no other nation on the planet that is so secure in its arrogant certainty that it was selected from all the other nations and raised above them.

The findings of this powerful poll are the most important key to understanding Israeli society and the conduct of its governments. It is the only prism through which it is possible to comprehend the occupation, the racism, the Haredization and the capitulation to the settlers. In our hearts, we think: This is our destiny. If in any enlightened society settlers and the ultra-Orthodox would be treated as marginal, eccentric, messianic groups, the attitude toward them in Israel comes from a very deep place within the "secular" society. If in any enlightened society the occupation stirs protest and revulsion, the attitude to it here is based in a religious belief that justifies all its iniquities.

The Religious Right Roars Back in South Carolina

Greenville


The national media like to cite the fact that a majority of Iowa Republican caucus-goers are evangelical or born-again Christians (57 percent this year) as evidence that Iowa is a bastion of social conservatism. In South Carolina, evangelical Protestants account for not just a majority of Republican voters: they are a majority of religiously active residents in the state. And not all evangelicals are the same. There is a depth and intensity to the social conservatism here. And the candidates are behaving accordingly. They aren’t changing their positions, but they are offering religious frames and justifications for them. After hearing constantly about jobs and the budget deficit, we’re starting to hear a lot more about morality, family and values.

If you drive west on Route 378 from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to the State Capitol in Columbia, you’ll pass more churches than businesses. These aren’t mega-churches in the feel-good Rick Warren mold, with their Christian rock bands and squishy environmentalism. These are typically small, plain white buildings, not much larger than the trailers and ranch houses that surround them, with modest signs advertising their Baptist or Methodist faith. This isn’t the suburban West; it’s the rural South. The gospel churches here preach is old-time religion. In the words of a lifelong resident of the region, “It’s fire and brimstone: repent or you’ll burn in Hell.”

Stop at a convenience store in Marion County, near the Pee Dee River, and you’ll see a few unusual signs. One, in the parking lot, warns that alcohol consumption is prohibited and adds “No Profanity.” (The sign says that the parking lot is under the supervision of the Marion County Police Department. A web search by this reporter could not ascertain what the penalty is for getting caught swearing in a convenience store parking lot.) In the men’s room you might find a strange admonishment on the condom dispenser: Hygeia Corp of Kannapolis, North Carolina, warns you that while they’ll sell you a condom for four quarters, the best way to avoid contracting HIV is to abstain from sex until marriage and to be monogamous within marriage.

Mississippi Rejects Bill to Grant Pre-Embryonic "Personhood," Outlaw Fertility Aid, Birth Control

Voters in Mississippi have overwhelmingly defeated an amendment to establish that a fertilized human egg is a person, despite support for the measure from the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor. If passed, it would have made Mississippi the first state to grant constitutional rights to embryo from the moment of conception. We speak with Diane Derzis, owner of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. She notes supporters had hoped to use the Mississippi measure to mount a legal attack on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that established the right to abortion. "If you make a fertilized egg a person, not only have you banned abortion immediately, you have banned most forms of birth control, as they work by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg. That’s very clear. There’s no two ways about that," Derzis says. Efforts are underway in at least six states, and at the federal level, to adopt similar laws.

Video
Source: Democracy Now!