Religious Freedom and Discrimination

New Yorkers Fight Back Against Pamela Geller's Latest Subway Ad Campaign

New York City's undisputed bigot queen, Pamela Geller, took to the subways again recently, releasing another set of anti-Muslim ads. Nothing new here, really, since her last set garnered national attention and, well, Geller loves national attention. (And to be fair to Geller, with whom we sat down a ... More >>

Neo-Nazis Next Door? Here's a List of New York's Hate Groups

When details began emerging about the Oak Creek, Wis. massacre, reports indicated that the suspected shooter, Wade Michael Page, was a white supremacist and had played in a neo-Nazi band called "End Apathy." The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, had been keeping tabs on Page s ... More >>

Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Fights Obama's Birth Control Mandate in New York

Uproar over Barack Obama's Health and Human Services mandate, which basically requires that insurers provide contraception, has hardly come to an end, and a major pro-religion advocacy group has taken the battle against the birth control clause to court. This law firm, the Becket Fund for Religiou ... More >>

Ask What Rick Santorum Will Do to Your Country

In 1960, during his Democratic campaign against Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy made his views on the First Amendment's establishment clause known to a group of Texas ministers by saying he supported an "America where the separation between church and state are absolute." That tidbit of jurisprudence ... More >>

Rick Santorum Thinks The Separation of Church and State Is Nauseating

​Rick Santorum wants religion to play a bigger role in U.S. politics and the total separation of church and state makes him want to hurl. On the campaign trail today, Santorum emphasized his feelings about secularism -- that he finds it barf-worthy, according to The Associated Press (via Was ... More >>

Are the Mets Not Playing Kosher?

If some can claim that Barack Obama violates religious freedom by forcing insurance companies to provide birth control, then what can we call the situation developing at Citi Field? Yesterday, Judge Jack Weinstein tossed out a lawsuit brought by Kosher Sports against the New York Mets for prohibiti ... More >>

Liberal Catholics Support Barack Obama's Birth Control Compromise

​When Barack Obama changed his polemic policy that employers cover contraception -- so that insurance companies, not businesses, have to provide free birth control coverage -- it didn't do much to appease conservative White House opponents. Instead of celebrating the compromise -- meant to p ... More >>

Pillheads: On Contraception Issue, Rightbloggers Baptize Insurers and Defend the Faith

On Friday the Obama Administration revealed its compromise with religious organizations, such as Catholic hospitals, who didn't want to offer birth control in their health insurance plans. The orgs won't have to pay for it if it offends their beliefs, the President said -- the insurers would be obl ... More >>

NYCLU: Allowing Church Worship In Public Schools Violates Religious Freedom

The fight to block churches from using public school space got support today from the New York Civil Liberties Union, which says the policy is a threat to religious freedom. The Civil Liberties Union is arguing in testimony today that these kinds of arrangements between religious organizations and ... More >>

Electeds Protest Mayor's Ban On Religious Institutions Using Public School Space

Sam LevinProtestors earlier this month speaking out against Bloomberg's plan to ban religious institutions from public schools​They're back! And a bit louder this time. Elected officials and religious leaders rallied yesterday to protest Mayor Mike Bloomberg's ban on religious institutions u ... More >>

Religious Leaders and Electeds Protest Mike Bloomberg in the Rain Prior to State of the City

The rain didn't stop a group of religious leaders and elected officials from rallying outside Morris High School in the Bronx today before the mayor's State of the City speech. Around 100 protestors were fenced in a block away from the school chanting under a sea of umbrellas. They had trekked to th ... More >>

GOTTA HAVE FAITH

Like Big Love, except theatrical

France's Burqa Ban Goes Into Effect; Two Women Are Arrested

​In the fall of last year, France's Senate overwhelmingly passed a law banning the wearing of the Islamic full veil in public. That law went into effect today, with two veiled women arrested soon after -- not for wearing the garments but for participating in an unauthorized protest, reports CN ... More >>

Sidebar: Bookworms

White-nationalist reads in the United States and Europe reflect anti-migrant hatred in a grim economy

Did Omar Rivera Pee in the Al-Iman Mosque in Astoria?

​On Wednesday, we reported the story that Rachel Barenblat, a rabbinical student from Western Massachusetts, had raised $1,180 through her blog and social network to donate to the Al-Iman Mosque in Astoria, into which a man, Omar Rivera, had allegedly stormed and urinated on prayer rugs in lat ... More >>

Abe Foxman is Confusing Us by Being Sensible, Admirable, and Nuanced

​We've noted Abe Foxman -- the Anti-Defamation League's very public, very loud, very condemnation-happy public face -- as an "known racist" and egomaniacal asshole" here. We're not the only ones who aren't fans of his: one ADL award-winner, Fareed Zakaria, recently returned a $10,000, five yea ... More >>

More Mosque Violence: Fire at Tennessee Islamic Center Ruled Arson

​To many, the stabbing of a New York City taxi driver by a deranged passenger who first asked if the driver was a Muslim seemed like a culmination of weeks of irrational debate about the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque." Now, federal officials are calling a fire at an Islamic center in Tennessee ... More >>

David Paterson, Rudy Giuliani Join Forces on Brave Mosque Stance: 'Don't Build It Here!'

​The emerging new political credo shaping up around the downtown mosque is "No, We Shouldn't," and it has strong bi-partisan support. On the left, Governor David Paterson was on WNYC radio's "The Takeaway" this morning complaining that the situation is "getting more and more out of hand every ... More >>

Ground Zero Mosque Story Confirms It: Conservatives Are The Honky Party

Last week we considered whether conservatives and their host body, the GOP, were attacking non-white Americans so much that they now constituted America's Honky Party. We did not then spend much time on the almost-not-quite-at-Ground Zero Mosque controversy. But President Obama's recent defense of ... More >>

Mosque Fever Puts Mike Bloomberg Down in the Polls, But Up With the Voice. 'Thanks a lot,' Says Mayor

​Just how heavy a lift Mike Bloomberg took on last week when he ferried over to Governors Island to put the downtown mosque debate in the context of this city's great tradition of religious freedom came a little clearer yesterday with the new polls: He's way down. For the first time in five y ... More >>

TURKEY TROT

Channel your inner pilgrim . . . or turkey vulture

Altared States

Young Jean Lee tries a different kind of play revival

Putting God in His Place

New Jersey student-warrior for the Constitution gets a death threat

'The Optimists'

Time for a Prayer Circle

Clinton and Kerry launch an unlikely crusade for religious freedom at work

Thomas or Scalia? You choose.

Walking the Plank

Spreading The Word

Religious Studies gets a second life. What does the Supreme Court think?

State to Church: I Want a Divorce

By the Power Vested in Us: Civil Unions for All—Gay or Straight. Blessings Optional.

God Is Not in the Constitution

The Government Cannot Endorse Any or All Religions

Church and State Separation in Crisis

Does God Need Tax Money to Teach?

Your Taxes for Church Schools?

Will God Set the Curriculum?

Attila the Shrub

Republican Party Shows True Colors With Conservative Platform

Exposing the Voucher Spin

Public Money Is for Public Schools

Giuliani vs. Thomas Jefferson

God Will Be the Curriculum