Lauren Nelson is an advocate and aspiring ally focused on intersectional justice. When she's not gabbing on social media or chasing after her precocious seven year old, you'll find her researching and writing extensively on the subjects of politics, policy, culture, neurodiversity, and faith for The Friendly Atheist and Rethink the Rant.
In celebration of God, Guns, and Country, one opportunistic Tennessee gun store owner, looking to cash in on the surge in gun sales that inevitably follows mass shootings in the U.S., is offering a discount to lure in customers. But not just any customers. This discount applies only to Christians: Read more
John Kasich was never going to be the Republican nominee for president. The Ohio governor is currently polling at the bottom of the pack alongside Mike Huckabee in the latest PPP poll, and his most recent maneuver probably won’t help. What’s his sin? Telling the Religious Right to read their bibles. Read more
Bobby Jindal is a joke of a politician. He’s run his state of Louisiana into the ground and continues a presidential campaign with less than one percent of GOP support on a platform that says immigrants need to assimilate better. He’s long been the discount store version of Mike Huckabee’s fire and brimstone, so the idea of him Bible-thumping for attention is far from surprising. In a post for the conversation website Red State, though, Jindal has sunk to new and deplorable lows. He starts out predictably, booming about “cultural decay” and “rot.” He says our boys will “never become real men,” complains that video games are poisonous, laments how God is absent from the family, and claims gun control doesn’t matter. It’s the same old culture war routine he’s been delivering for a decade now. But then he makes a sharp turn towards ugly. After pounding out his list of what really ails this country, he takes aim at the shooter’s father: Read more
Many of the GOP presidential candidates have managed to muck up their public responses to the Oregon college shooting. Jeb Bush told us “stuff happens.” Mike Huckabee told us the shooting was a product of sin. Most of the rest hypocritically pointed to the state of our mental healthcare system. Dr. Ben Carson was no different, but he’s been far more concerned with preaching than politicking. Ignoring reports that the shooter did not, in fact, target Christians and the slew of information suggesting there were very different motivating factors that pushed him to commit his dastardly deed, Carson posted online a picture of himself holding up a sign declaring, “I AM A CHRISTIAN.” Read more
