The other ruling today is a loss for the separation of church and state.

In the church-state case, the court ruled 7-2 that it violates the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion to exclude churches from state programs with a secular intent — in this case, making playgrounds safer.

Missouri’s state constitution, like those in about three dozen states, forbade government [to spend] any public money on “any church, sect, or denomination of religion.”

Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo., wanted to participate in a state program that reimburses the cost of rubberizing the surface of playgrounds. But the state said that was not allowed.

The exclusion has raised big questions about how to uphold the Constitution’s

The Supreme Court has upheld parts of Trump’s travel ban.

The Supreme Court says it will decide the fate of President Trump’s revised travel ban, agreeing to hear arguments over immigration cases that were filed in federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland, and allowing parts of the ban that’s now been on hold since March to take effect.

The case centers on the president’s move to block new visas for travelers from six majority-Muslim countries for 90 days, and to suspend the U.S. refugee program for 120 days. Challengers to the ban said it would harm people who have legitimate reasons to be in the U.S. — including through family ties, work and education.

The justices removed the lower

Brilliant piece in Vice titled Why Can’t My Famous Gender Nonconforming Friends Get Laid? Oooooh gosh I don’t know – is it because they’re famous for smelling funny? Because they’re so frantically busy being famous no one can volunteer to get them laid? Because being famous isn’t automatically the same thing as being sexually alluring?

It’s a cool Saturday night in my East Village apartment, and Alok Vaid-Menon has just created a Tinder account for me, while Jacob Tobia bats their eyelashes in the background.

Poor Jacob, no takers for the batted eyelashes in the background.

Alok and Jacob are two of the most publicly visible gender nonconforming femmes I know. As a performance poet, Alok has just gone solo

Terry Sanderson shared an excellent Times piece (the London one) by Lucy Bannerman on Muslim (and ex-Muslim) women fighting to be heard.

There’s a myth that Aliyah Saleem would like to debunk immediately. It is the myth of the “Muslim community leader”. If we really want to fight extremism, she argues, we should start by puncturing the idea that self-appointed male “leaders” represent a homogenous bloc of British Muslims. “Stop and ask 1,000 Muslims in the street, ‘Who’s your community leader?’ They’ll say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’,” said Ms Saleem, 27, one of a growing number of female activists standing up against Islamism.

After four terrorist attacks in the UK in as many months, she is

What is the US good for?

At present I would say very little. We’re good at some things, but as a country we’re turning out to be decidedly second rate.

America leads the world when it comes to access to higher education. But when it comes to health, environmental protection, and fighting discrimination, it trails many other developed countries, according to the Social Progress Imperative, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

The results of the group’s annual survey, which ranks nations based on 50 metrics, call to mind other reviews of national well-being, such as the World Happiness Report released in March, which was led by Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, or September’s Lancet study on sustainable development. In that one, Iceland,

Morning Star reports:

FACEBOOK stands accused of censoring feminist content after one of London’s most popular left festivals was barred from promoting its page on the site.

The annual Matchwomen’s festival commemorates the 1888 strike by women and girls at the Bryant & May match factory. This week it tried to boost the page inviting people to attend this year’s event, which takes place on July 1 in Camden — only to be refused.

Bewildered organiser Louise Raw was told Facebook would not promote pages that contain “profanity, harassment, or references to your audience’s personal characteristics (such as gender, race, age or name)” — and the page’s repeated use of the term “women” fell foul of the condition, even

Mother Jones reports:

In North Carolina, women can’t legally withdraw their consent in the middle of sex, even if things get violent—and attempts to change that reality at the Legislature aren’t going well.

According to a 1979 state Supreme Court ruling, State v. Way, a man isn’t guilty of rape if he continues to have intercourse with a woman who asks him to stop, so long as she agreed to the encounter at the outset.

Hmm. So once she says yes he can discard the mask of a decent human being and treat her like a prop or a slave or a captured enemy or whatever other abusive fantasy turns him on? No matter how psychotic he may … Read the rest

Via Barry Duke at The Freethinker, a story of a guy on a bus in Istanbul who told off a young woman for wearing shorts during Ramadan.

He said in a statement:

I warned the woman in shorts because it caught my attention that her clothes were too revealing and her crotch was visible; and, I was fasting [for Ramadan]. I said to her: ‘My friend, there is something called manners and morals. Getting on a public transportation like this is not proper.’

So, in response to this, the woman told me ‘not to look, then’… I told her that sometimes people cannot control their desires and told her that her way of dressing turned me on. She huffed

Obama on the Republican plans for the ACA:

Our politics are divided. They have been for a long time. And while I know that division makes it difficult to listen to Americans with whom we disagree, that’s what we need to do today.

I recognize that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has become a core tenet of the Republican Party. Still, I hope that our Senators, many of whom I know well, step back and measure what’s really at stake, and consider that the rationale for action, on health care or any other issue, must be something more than simply undoing something that Democrats did.

We didn’t fight for the Affordable Care Act for more than a … Read the rest

The Committee to Protect Journalists increases its Washington staff by one.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has created the new position of Washington Advocacy Manager to lead efforts to advance press freedom around the world with the U.S. government and other policymakers in Washington, D.C. Michael De Dora will be the first to occupy the post.

“The United States plays an important role in promoting and protecting press freedom worldwide,” CPJ Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch said from Washington, D.C. “It is imperative that press-freedom norms are respected here and serve as a benchmark for other governments. We look forward to increasing our cooperation with partners, policymakers, and lawmakers to promote and protect a free press, in the United States and