Jul 6th, 2014 12:32 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Well, at least I have confirmation that I wasn’t exaggerating yesterday when I said Alito lied in the Hobby Lobby ruling. Dahlia Lithwick and Sonja West at Slate say the same thing. They say it with considerable heat and energy.
…moments before they adjourned for their summer recess, the justices proved they can act quite quickly and recklessly when it comes to violating the terms of a controversial opinion they handed down only days earlier. It’s as if the loaner car the court gave us in the Hobby Lobby ruling broke down mere blocks from the shop.
In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court ruled that it was a “substantial burden” on the religious
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby
Jul 6th, 2014 11:07 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Tour de France? All very well but why is it men only? The BBC asks.
Former Olympic champion Nicole Cooke says it is a “scandal” there is no longer a Tour de France for women, blaming sexism in cycling.
The men’s race, which starts in Leeds on Saturday, is now an iconic event, but the women’s Tour last ran in 2009.
(Sigh – there’s that dopy use of “iconic” again.)
“It’s a scandal there isn’t a Tour for women at the moment,” the 31-year-old said in an interview with BBC Breakfast.
“In the 1980s, there was a women’s Tour de France. It was held over the same stages as the men’s race. They celebrated with equality.
“Since then, women’s
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 6th, 2014 10:20 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The speakers, left to right, up to down:
Tawfique Chowdhury
Bilal Philips
Yasir Qadhi
Abdur Raheem Green
Sajid Umar
Waleed Basyouni
Alaa Elsayed
Yahya Ibrahim
Abdul Nasir Jangda
Omar Suleiman
Bilal Ismail
Yusha Evans
Hamza Tzortzis
Navaid Aziz
Daood Butt
Abdur-Raheem McCarthy
Shady Alsuleiman
Fatih Seferagic
Mohammed Zayara
Mulsim Belal
BBps
Bilal Philips
Yasir Qadhi
Abdur Raheem Green
Sajid Umar
Waleed Basyouni
Alaa Elsayed
Yahya Ibrahim
Abdul Nasir Jangda
Omar Suleiman
Bilal Ismail
Yusha Evans
Hamza Tzortzis
Navaid Aziz
Daood Butt
Abdur-Raheem McCarthy
Shady Alsuleiman
Fatih Seferagic
Mohammed Zeyara…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 6th, 2014 10:06 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Another fun event for your participatory pleasure: the Night of Power Conference.
The Night of Power Conference – The first-ever global online video conference organised by Mercy Mission, to be held on the 27th Night of Ramadan 1435 A.H. (2014).
The Event shall be streamed LIVE, featuring over 20 world-renowned Islamic figures, for 36 consecutive hours! The theme of the Conference, ‘Spiritual Journey with the Qur’an’ aims to revive the Ummah through knowledge and action.
Behold the over 20 world-renowned Islamic figures. [click to embiggen to get the full effect]
Um…… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 5th, 2014 6:14 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
There’s a thing, or at least a website, called Christian Medical & Dental Associations. Who knows, maybe it is just a website, with no actual members at all. Anyone can set up a website and call herself an Association of something or other, provided (I assume) she doesn’t steal the name.
Anyway this Christian Medical & Dental Associations has a Moral Complicity with Evil Ethics Statement. It defines its terms right at the beginning, in the first paragraph.
Moral complicity with evil is culpable association with or participation in wrongful acts. Evil is defined as anything immoral or wrong based on Biblical principles. Questions about moral complicity with evil can arise in regard to an individual’s relationship to
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 5th, 2014 5:40 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Guest post by Leo Igwe
The recent approval by Pope Francis of the practice of exorcism has dealt a heavy blow to efforts to combat witch hunting in Africa.
At a time when the UN and the international community are exploring ways of tackling horrific abuses related to belief in witchcraft, the papal recognition of the association of exorcists comprising 250 priests in 30 countries is a huge setback. It dims the prospects of making witch-hunting history in Africa. In fact, the Vatican’s approval of exorcism will end up legitimizing this abusive process. Going by the current trend in witch persecution, the region is going to experience more witch hunts, not less.
This is because millions of Africans are Catholic. … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 5th, 2014 5:35 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Exactly. David Ropeik writes today July 5 at Psychology Today that the theocratic Supremes can’t be trusted, because they’re dishonest. Yes they are.
…more and more, trust in the most important part of that system, one of the basic foundations on which this great nation rests, is being eroded. The U.S. Supreme Court is supposed to be the final neutral arbiter of what is and what is not legal, but more and more the 5 person conservative majority on the court is undermining trust in the nation’s highest court, and ultimately the very fairness of how America works, by appearing to decide cases based on their personal ideology rather than an objective consideration of the law.
Just Thursday, and to
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby
Jul 5th, 2014 4:48 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Let’s go back to February 2012 for a sample of the rhetoric used by the Catholic theocrats to demand special exemptions from ordinary secular laws. A Catholic priest at the top of Human Life International made a statement.
We at Human Life International stand with the Catholic bishops and a diverse group of organizations and individuals in rejecting the false compromise offered by the Obama administration in an apparent attempt to gain wider acceptance of the mandate that requires free coverage of contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs.
Having closely examined all available information on the compromise, we are appalled at the cynicism displayed by both its content and the means by which it was announced. The original unjust mandate
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby
Jul 5th, 2014 4:18 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Here’s a piece of news I missed, despite (I thought) paying close attention:
Less than a day after the United States Supreme Court issued its divisive ruling on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, it has already begun to toss aside the supposedly narrow interpretation of the decision. On Tuesday, the Supremes ordered lower courts to rehear any cases where companies had sought to deny coverage for any type of contraception, not just the specific types Hobby Lobby was opposed to.
Ho.ly.shit.
I’m dumbfounded. They really are opening the door to letting godbotherers do everything they can to impede women’s access to contraception, including getting extra special gift-wrapped gold-plated exemptions from ordinary laws that apply to everyone else.
Justice Samuel Alito,
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby
Jul 5th, 2014 11:53 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Another article by Leslie Griffin on the Supremes and Catholic moral theology. There’s some overlap with the article I posted about yesterday.
I never expected to see Father Henry Davis’s Moral and Pastoral Theology (1935) cited in a Supreme Court opinion.
But there it was in footnote 34 of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in which the Court ruled that two non-Catholic families, the Greens and the Hahns, were not required to comply with the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Father Davis was an English Jesuit and famous moral theologian who died in 1952 at age 85. The string cite quotes Father Davis’s text as follows: “Cooperation occurs ‘when A helps B to
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby
Jul 5th, 2014 10:57 am |
By Ophelia Benson
In January, the columnist Jamie Stiehm wrote in US News & World Report:
Et tu, Justice Sonia Sotomayor? Really, we can’t trust you on women’s health and human rights? The lady from the Bronx just dropped the ball on American women and girls as surely as she did the sparkling ball at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Or maybe she’s just a good Catholic girl.
The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let’s be forthright about that. (The other three are Jewish.) Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is a Catholic who put her religion ahead of her jurisprudence. What a
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 5th, 2014 9:42 am |
By Ophelia Benson
How did we get here?
Wikipedia gives one quick rundown.
Other Catholic justices included Pierce Butler (appointed 1923) and Frank Murphy (appointed 1940). Some accounts note that Sherman Minton, appointed in 1949, was also a Catholic; however, during his time on the Court he was a Protestant, though his wife’s Catholic faith was noted at the time in relation to the notion of a “Catholic seat”.[71] Minton joined his wife’s Catholic faith in 1961, five years after he retired from the Court.[72] Minton was succeeded by a Catholic, however, when President Eisenhower appointed William J. Brennan to that seat. In fact, Eisenhower intently sought to appoint a Catholic to the Court—in part because there had been
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 4th, 2014 5:58 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
By way of refreshment – a bit of John Cleese and Michael Palin attempting to argue with Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood the Bishop of Southwark about the merits and blasphemous nature of The Life of Brian. Muggeridge is extraordinarily rude and unpleasant, and Stockwood carries on like a Monty Python character himself.
Michael Palin was here on a book tour about 15 years ago and he gave a talk at a bookstore, with Q&A. During the Q&A he talked about this encounter, and said that it made him uncharacteristically shirty (his word). I can see why – Muggeridge and Stockwood breezily accuse them of lying, just for one thing. They’re poisonous. Dear dear Christianity, so bad for the character.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 4th, 2014 4:33 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Getting sick of Hobby Lobby? You know how it is – there are some subjects I’ll just keep poking at for days.
Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, has a post at Scotus blog. The NWLC filed an amicus brief in support of the government.
Taking as a given the companies’ sincere religious beliefs that certain forms of contraceptives cause abortions (even though scientifically and medically inaccurate as outlined here), the majority seriously errs by then also taking as a given the companies’ claim that the insurance requirement for their employees imposes a substantial burden. According to the majority, the burden is substantial because the companies say it is. The majority undertakes no legal analysis of
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby
Jul 4th, 2014 4:09 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
And of course just as everyone predicted, Hobby Lobby is only the beginning. The camel is halfway into the tent already, and there’s a whole long line of camels streaming toward the tent even now.
In a short, unsigned opinion, the court said that Wheaton College in Illinois, at least temporarily, does not have to comply even with compromise provisions in the law that the college says still violate its religious beliefs.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the action cast doubt on the very accommodation the court’s majority seemed to endorse Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which concerned businesses that objected to providing birth control that offends the owners’ beliefs.
“Those who are bound by our decisions
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby
Jul 4th, 2014 3:06 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Originally a comment by Seth on It turns out nice people are Nazis!
It’s not true, in general, that ‘nice people are Nazis’. But the converse was true; i.e., the average Nazi was a ‘nice’ and ‘good’ and ‘decent’ person, as measured by the standards of their peers. Upwards of five hundred thousand people (only half of them Germans) were involved in the Holocaust (which rendered extinct approximately twelve million people, about half of them Jewish); by far, the vast majority of these people were ‘just doing their jobs’, being nice and agreeable, attempting to make the world a better place. That was their intent (and the stated intent of every single National Socialist). That is one major reason why … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB
Jul 4th, 2014 12:00 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
More brilliant commentary on Hobby Lobby, this from Leslie Griffin, who co-blogs with Marci Hamilton, under the banner
Advocating for religious liberty, women’s rights and children’s rights
By “religious liberty” they don’t mean what The Catholic Five mean.
Today, in an ironic and shrewd decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, five male Catholic Supreme Court Justices aided the project of the U.S. Catholic bishops to impose their opposition to all contraception on all American women. The opinion was ironic: four Justices who previously ruled that Congress lacked the authority to pass the Affordable Care Act required the government to pay for contraceptive services. The decision was shrewd; the Justices promoted contraceptive restrictions in two cases where the plaintiffs (the
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby
Jul 4th, 2014 10:02 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Marci Hamilton on the Hobby Lobby ruling.
It is simply a fact that five male Catholic Supreme Court Justices have now transformed what is already a bad law into a truly dangerous one, all for the apparent purpose of undermining women’s access to contraception. Whatever the legal reasoning, the optics are very bad on this one, and whether intentionally or not, they stoke the perception that the Justices are in league with the Catholic bishops in the latter’s attempt to turn the clock back on not just Roe v. Wade but also Griswold v. Connecticut, as Leslie Griffin argues here.
Oh surely not. Just because they’re all Catholic and…
…wait…
This is, in fact, a sly opinion that
…
Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Hobby Lobby