Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute is putting out her annual call for parents to remove their children from their public schools during next month’s “Day of Silence” (a student-run initiative during which volunteers don’t speak on behalf of the members of the LGBT community who have been forced to be silent about their sexual identities): Read more
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there’s good news in the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFBNP). A month ago, when Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast (another potential church/state violation), he announced that DuBois would be stepping down from his post… which brings us to a major development announced yesterday. His replacement will be Melissa Rogers, former general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Read more
The other day, I posted about how the Kansas City Atheist Coalition was rejected by the organizers of a local St. Patrick’s Day parade out of “respect for the legacy of St. Patrick.” They’re still planning to set up an Ask an Atheist booth nearby the parade route to help dispel stereotypes people may have about them, and my favorite part may be these shirts that the group designed for the occasion: Read more
Guys! Thanks to the crack reporting/content repurposing of Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, we now know that gen-yoo-ine miracles occurred during the production of the History Channel’s Bible docu-drama-thing. Allow me to round them up for you: Read more
Yesterday, the papal conclave elected a new leader for its crumbling, obsolete, and hateful syndicate. Read more
Rather than immediately rushing to analyze Pope Francis’ views regarding homosexuality — as if they should be any surprise — I have found it illuminating to follow the commentary of traditionalist Catholics on today’s events. Michael Brendan Dougherty, writing in Slate, has a quite dour appraisal: Read more
White smoke finally billowed over Vatican City today to announce that Argentina’s Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been selected as the new Pope. There’s already a bit of controversy surrounding his election. As the first Latin-American Pope, Bergoglio honored his Italian and Argentinian heritage by choosing for himself the name Pope Francis I, rather than taking the name Benedict from his predecessor. Some say the name change may signal a “new chapter” for the Catholic Church. But gay rights advocates say there’s nothing new about this Pope’s attitudes toward LGBT people. Read more
Habemus Papem! While virtually all the papabili who went into conclave as potential popes came out as cardinals, one minor candidate — Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires — has become the newest leader of the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church. Read more
Mark Sanford is the former governor of South Carolina who infamously disappeared for several days in 2009 to visit his Argentine lover in Buenos Aires; his befuddled staffers were left to proffer a number of excuses for his sudden absence, most memorably that he’d decided to “hike the Appalachian trail.” Read more
Another survey is telling us what we already know: The number of Americans who are not religious is on the rise. Researchers from University of California, Berkeley and Duke University went through the recently-released results of the biennial General Social Survey and found that… While some types of Americans identify with an organized religion less than others, Americans in almost every demographic group increasingly claim “no religion” since the trend began to accelerate in 1990. … This continues a trend of Americans disavowing a specific religious affiliation that began in the 1950s but has accelerated greatly since 1990. Read more
