On Monday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Mary Fallin, the Republican governor of the state, to reconsider its earlier ruling that the presence of the Ten Commandments monument on the capital grounds violated the state constitution and had to be removed, with the chief justice John Reif writing, “We carefully consider the arguments of the commission and find no merit warranting a grant of rehearing.”
[Read more…]
The statue of Baphomet that the Satanic Temple wanted to place alongside the monument to the Ten Commandments on the Oklahoma capital grounds needed to find a new home after the state Supreme Court ruled that the monument was unconstitutional and needed to come down. They unveiled the one-ton statue in Detroit to the cheers of hundreds of supporters who had been emailed tickets to the event at a location that was kept secret until the end to prevent protestors.
[Read more…]
When the same-sex marriage ruling came out, some of the opponents whined that as a result, those who opposed same-sex marriage because of their religious beliefs would be treated as pariahs and hounded when all they wanted was to be left alone to believe as they wished. Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito contributed to that sense of possible future victimhood in his dissent of the ruling outlawing the state bans on same-sex marriage inObergefell v. Hodges.
[Read more…]
As was inevitable, someone has been taken to court for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and using god as a defense. In a US district court, Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, got all teary-eyed as she explained why her faith required her to deny couples a right they were entitled to by law. (This Davis is different from Casey Davis, a clerk in another county who also refuses to issue licenses.)
[Read more…]
Of all the elements that make up the Catholic church in the US, I am most sympathetic towards the nuns. In their modern incarnation, they seem to do genuine good works among the poor and needy and seem less interested in pushing the church’s official positions against contraception, abortion, and homosexuality, for which lack of zeal they were reprimanded and placed under investigation by pope Benedict though pope Francis has quietly shelved that process.
[Read more…]
The Indianapolis-based Church of Cannabis is giving the New York-based Satanic Temple a run for its money in showing the absurdity of providing all manner of breaks for religious organizations. We already saw that they filed for and were granted tax-exempt status by the IRS. They then filed a lawsuit for the right to use cannabis, using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as the basis for their suit.
[Read more…]
You may recall Casey Davis, the county clerk for Casey County in Kentucky, who decided that his religious beliefs did not permit him to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples but, unlike the clerks in a neighboring county who resigned because of similar beliefs, Davis felt that he had every right to stay in office while not doing his job.
[Read more…]
We have seen how religious individuals and groups are using the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and state versions of it to try and avoid complying with laws that they feel infringe on their religious beliefs, such as issuing same-sex marriage licenses or providing contraceptive benefits in health insurance polices or selling various goods and services to the public.
[Read more…]
The attempts by opponents of same-sex marriage to stall the inevitable continue. There was a pathetic effort by a Catholic youth group called Catholic Vote to produce a video that mimics the It Gets Better Project and video series that encouraged young gay people who felt victimized to not lose hope. The Catholic Vote video shows young people hesitantly revealing their belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, implying that young people who feel that way nowadays suffer the same level of ostracizing that gay teens feel.
[Read more…]
It was bad enough that on June 26, a day that will live in infamy, the US Supreme Court rammed same-sex marriage down the throats of righteous Christians, but just four days later the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled by a 7-2 margin in the case of Prescott et al. v. Oklahoma Capitol Preservation Commission that the Ten Commandments monument that was placed on the state capital grounds in 2012 has got to go. (I had not been aware that someone drove a car into the old monument last November and wrecked it and a new one was constructed and put up this January.)
[Read more…]