Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Opponents Block Washington Gay-Marriage Law
posted on June 8, 2012On Wednesday, gay-marriage opponents blocked a new Washington state law that allows same-sex marriages to take place. Slate’s Elizabeth Hewitt reports on the effort, which garnered enough signatures to force the law to face a referendum in November. “[T]he amount of signatures on the filing all but guarantees that Referendum 74 will be on the ballot this fall,” she writes. “Until then, same-sex marriages in the state are on hold.”
Can Mitt Romney Match Wisconsin’s Scott Walker?
posted on June 7, 2012Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin’s recall election on Tuesday could provide “a template for Republicans looking ahead to the presidential race,” writes The Washington Post’s Dan Balz. The defeat of Governor Walker’s challenger, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, might mean that tough times are in store for Democrats this fall, perhaps even for President Obama. Balz notes, “Both sides will examine the results for clues as to whether Wisconsin, which hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1984 but has been fiercely competitive in two of the last three elections, will again become a true battleground.”
Jewish Groups Split on School Bullying
posted on June 7, 2012At The Jewish Daily Forward, Naomi Zeveloff writes about an emerging split between two of America’s leading Jewish advocacy groups over how public schools should draw the line between what constitutes bullying and freedom of religious expression. Marc Stern, the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) general counsel, argues that “speech is presumably protected unless school officials can show that it is disruptive or that it damages or infringes on the rights of others.” Stern’s comments follow the publication of a new report, co-produced by the AJC, intended to help schools differentiate between harassment and free speech. “The Anti-Defamation League countered by slamming the AJC report,” writes Zeveloff, “noting that schools should first and foremost focus on preventing bullying, which it says almost always involves physical or verbal targeting of vulnerable students.”
Read at The Jewish Daily Forward
Nuns, Rebuked by Rome, Plan Road Trip to Spotlight Social Issues
posted on June 7, 2012A group of Catholic nuns is planning a two-week long bus trip that will take them from Iowa to Virginia. The New York Times’ Laurie Goodstein reports that, along the way, the group plans to stop at “homeless shelters, food pantries, schools and health care facilities run by nuns to highlight their work with the nation’s poor and disenfranchised.” According to Goodstein, the impetus for the “Nuns on a Bus Tour” was the “blistering critique of American nuns released in April by the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which included the accusation that the nuns are outspoken on issues of social justice, but silent on other issues the church considers crucial: abortion and gay marriage.”
Muslims Sue to Stop NYPD Spying Program
posted on June 7, 2012Muslim civil rights activists have filled a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department, “the first legal challenge against the NYPD’s alleged spying and profiling of Muslim Americans in the New York City area,” reports Religion News Service’s Omar Sacirbey. The suit contends that the NYPD’s surveillance program violates Muslims’ rights to freedom of religion and equal protection under the law. “It saddens me that despite serving my country, the NYPD leadership views me as a suspect because of the way I pray,” says the lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, Farhaj Hassan, who is an active U.S. Army National Guardsman.
Alabama Pastor’s Take on Latest Anti-Immigrant Legislation
posted on June 7, 2012At Sojourners, Tommy Morgan writes that the current debate over immigration is just the latest in a long, and troubling, history of Americans’ poor treatment of immigrants. Morgan, the pastor of Grace Christian Church in Helena, Alabama, links the current maltreatment of Hispanics with other immigrant populations, who like “[t]he Chinese were encouraged to come to America because their labor was needed … But after the great expansion of railroads was completed, they were loathed, and laws were created to keep their wives and families from coming here.” According to Morgan, history is repeating itself. “The very people who have harvested our food, built our homes and served us over the past 30-plus years, we now declare criminals.”
Must Civilizations Clash?
posted on June 7, 2012For The New Republic, Barry Gewen reviews Daniel Philpott’s new book, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation. Gewen asserts that Philpott’s new work “can be read as a book-length response” to the “clash of civilizations” thesis, made famous by the late Samuel Huntington. Philpott argues that emphasizing religions’ shared “common ground” (especially the common grown of the three Abrahamic faiths) can facilitate culture-based reconciliation, and forestall what Huntington predicated was the inevitable clash of cultures. “Just and Unjust Peace is a book of optimism, of hope,” Gewen writes, “of insistently seeing the glass as half full. Humane but not fatuous or sappy, it is the exit ramp off Apocalypse Highway.”
Philadelphia Archdiocese Says it has Spent $11.6 Million in Legal Fees Over 21 Months
posted on June 7, 2012The Associated Press’ Kathy Matheson reports on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s financial statements. According to these documents, which were released Tuesday, the Archdiocese has spent $11.6 million on legal fees in less than two years, most of it on priest sex abuse cases. Yet this sum does not include the costs of the ongoing trial of Monsignor William Lynn, “charged in a groundbreaking conspiracy and cover-up case that is now in a jury’s hands,” writes Matheson.
Atheism to Defeat Religion By 2038
posted on June 7, 2012At the Huffington Post, Nigel Barber predicts that, as the world grows richer in the coming decades, it will also likely become less religious and more atheistic. “If national wealth drives secularization,” as Barbar believes it does, then “the entire world population … [will] cross the atheist threshold by about 2038.” Barber sees nothing to fear in this coming atheistic world. “Godless countries are highly moral nations with an unusual level of social trust, economic equality, low crime and a high level of civic engagement.”
Court Won’t Revisit Gay Marriage Case; It May Go to Justices
posted on June 6, 2012The New York Times’ Ethan Bronner reports that on Tuesday, a federal appeals court in California declined to review its recent ruling overturning California’s voter-approved ban against same-sex marriage. The likely next venue in the continued litigation over same-sex marriage is the U.S. Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court is widely thought to be divided 4-to-4 on the question of same-sex marriage,” Bronner writes, “with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy considered the deciding vote.”