The Republic of Ireland is holding a referendum today to decide whether to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. If the vote turns out in favor, it will be a remarkable historical moment. Ireland will be the first country to adopt marriage equality by a popular vote. And though it is close, it does look […]
America woke up today to news of riots in Baltimore. We’ve seen this before, too often. But what bothers me is the inevitable outrage directed at the protestors and rioters, rather than the systematic violence that created them. Riots are not the problem, but a symptom of something far worse. A riot is like a […]
I’m really disappointed in how unenthusiastic the democratic party has been in response to Hillary’s official campaign launch. Unenthusiastic about Hillary, but also unenthusiastic in the primary opposition. Right now, there are a couple of possible contenders for a primary challenge, but we’re mostly taking about them in terms of how they will make Hillary […]
President Obama now publicly supports banning gay conversion therapy in a move that is both common sense and likely to send Christian fundamentalists into a frenzy over the tyranny of the White House’s secular agenda. Business as usual, essentially. Last night the White House released a response to a petition regarding the controversial therapy, citing the […]
The Roanoke Times recently published an article about Nic Jensen and his battle with Southern Virginia University over allegations of sexual harassment from the school’s provost Madison Sowell. There has been discussion about Nic’s supposed activism in some conservative Mormon circles, where critics are basically calling Nic a whiny child pushing an agenda to undermine the religious convictions of a god-fearing […]
This article has been making the social media rounds for the last twenty-four hours. A doctor in Michigan told a lesbian couple she prayed about it, and felt she could not be their infant daughter’s physician. That is plainly horrible. It is tragic that people still let their discomfort with homosexuality to cloud their moral […]
When LDS leaders talk about religious liberty, the examples they share almost exclusively deal with an institution’s liberty to discriminate against individuals, which is really the thing that irks me most. The tension between the church and LGBT groups is really a tension between religious liberty and civil liberty, which, frankly, when those two are at […]
By Cody Ray Shafer Mitt Romney says he wants to fight poverty because he really wants to be president. I’m not suggesting he’ll do or say anything to be president—I would go that far—but rather, that the message is less important to him than is the opportunity to just do it. Romney has a major […]
