At public schools around the country, students, mostly high schoolers, are forming Gay-Straight Alliance clubs. Fundamentalist Christians often freak out over the existence of these clubs, like these people are doing in Winchester, Tenn.
Whenever this happens, I have to explain, once again, who made it possible for students to form Gay-Straight Alliances at public secondary schools.
It was fundamentalist Christians.
I’ve been monitoring the reaction of Religious Right groups to the Supreme Court’s marriage equality rulings. It’s not pleasant, but somebody has to do it.
Religious Right forces have been in a tizzy lately over a rumor that if U.S. military personnel express their Christian faith, it could lead to disciplinary action. But as usual, it seems fundamentalist charges of persecution are greatly exaggerated.
Stanford Law School in California is a prestigious institution with a distinguished past. Founded in 1893, one of its first professors was a former president, Benjamin Harrison.
When the school opened new offices in 1975, another president, Gerald Ford, was on hand for the festivities. On its website, Stanford proudly calls itself “one of the nation’s top law schools.” U.S. News & World Report agrees and ranks the school number two in the nation, behind only Yale Law School.
Religious Right legal organizations claim to be standing up for Christian values and the highest standards of ethics and morality. In fact, several of the groups’ leaders and associates seem to have often fallen short of those ideals.
TV preacher Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), for example, has a complicated – and some say troubling – financial profile.
Iran has sentenced a U.S. citizen to eight years in prison for allegedly threatening national security through his leadership role in Christian house churches, Reuters has reported.
Reports offered little detail of the trial, but Saeed Abedini became an ordained minister through the American Evangelical Association in 2008 and a U.S. citizen in 2010 through marriage, the wire service said.
The Religious Right-allied American Center for Law and Justice represented Abedini in court, but was only allowed to attend the trial for one day to present a defense.
Yesterday, New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously to allow construction of an Islamic center in lower Manhattan. Immediately after the vote, TV preacher Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice announced that it would file suit to block the move.
Why is an organization that purports to promote religious freedom suing to stop construction of house of worship?
TV preacher Pat Robertson and other Religious Right leaders have long been interested in the continent of Africa. They seem to believe that they can find a country there to serve as a laboratory for their misguided social agenda – as well as plunder any wealth the area may have.
It reeks of the worst form of old-style colonialism.
Most recently, Robertson minions have invaded Zimbabwe, a landlocked nation in southern Africa long afflicted with government corruption and poverty.
Last night, Americans United celebrated a decision by a U.S. district court judge who ruled the congressionally mandated National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional.
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, AU’s executive director, hailed the decision as a “tremendous victory for religious liberty. Congress has no business telling Americans when or how to pray.”
