Octopus Overlords

Five days after Justice Sonia Sotomayor temporarily put on hold a New York state court ruling that directed Yeshiva University to approve an official “Pride Alliance” student club, the full Supreme Court reinstated the state-court ruling for now and directed the university to go back to the state courts to try to obtain relief.

But a dissent by four of the court’s conservative justices indicated that the student club’s victory could ultimately be short-lived. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that, if the Supreme Court were to take up the case on the merits, the university would likely prevail on its claim that recognizing the LGBTQ group would violate its religious beliefs. He was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.

The five-justice majority acknowledged that the case could end up back before the justices after the university jumps through procedural hoops. The majority’s brief order went out of its way to note that the university may return to the Supreme Court if it does not obtain a quick ruling in its favor from New York’s appellate courts.
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Alito, joined by Thomas, Gorsuch, and Barrett, argued that the court should have intervened immediately. “It is our duty to stand up for the Constitution even when doing so is controversial,” Alito wrote. Leaving the trial court’s ruling in place, he wrote, will require Yeshiva to “make a ‘statement’ in support of an interpretation” of Jewish law “with which the University disagrees.” That “loss of First Amendment rights for even a short period,” Alito continued, will permanently injure the university.

Alito, joined by Thomas, Gorsuch, and Barrett, argued that the court should have intervened immediately. “It is our duty to stand up for the Constitution even when doing so is controversial,” Alito wrote. Leaving the trial court’s ruling in place, he wrote, will require Yeshiva to “make a ‘statement’ in support of an interpretation” of Jewish law “with which the University disagrees.” That “loss of First Amendment rights for even a short period,” Alito continued, will permanently injure the university.

Unagi wrote: ↑Sat Sep 17, 2022 10:54 pm Fuck them

LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Sep 28, 2022 7:32 am If natural disaster is God's punishment for x. Is that why so many zealots move to hurricane pathing or are the hurricanes attracted to them?

hepcat wrote: ↑Sat Oct 01, 2022 8:38 pm Are you paraphrasing Mel Brooks?

Voters with no religious affiliation supported Democratic candidates and abortion rights by staggering percentages in the 2022 midterm elections.

And they're voting in large numbers. In 2022, some 22% of voters claimed no religious affiliation, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide. They contributed to voting coalitions that gave Democrats victories in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.

The unaffiliated — often nicknamed the “nones” — voted for Democratic House candidates nationwide over Republicans by more than a 2-1 margin (65% to 31%), according to VoteCast. That echoes the 2020 president election, when Democrat Joe Biden took 72% of voters with no religious affiliation, while Republican Donald Trump took 25%, according to VoteCast.

For all the talk of the overwhelmingly Republican voting by white evangelical Christians in recent elections, the unaffiliated are making their presence felt.

Among all U.S. adults, 29% are nones — those who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” — according a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center. That’s up 10 percentage points from a decade earlier, according to Pew. And the younger the adults, the more likely they are to be unaffiliated, according to a 2019 Pew analysis, further signaling the growing clout of the nones.
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Atheists and agnostics form only a subset of nones and are less numerous than evangelicals. But they are more likely than evangelicals to make a campaign donation, attend a political meeting or join a protest, Burge said, citing the Harvard-affiliated Cooperative Election Study.

“When you consider how involved they are in political activity, you realize how important they are at the ballot box,” he said.

The nones equaled Catholics at 22% of the electorate, though they were barely half the figure for Protestants and other Christians (43%), according to VoteCast. Other religious groups totaled 13%, including 3% Jewish and 1% Muslim.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Sep 28, 2022 7:32 am If natural disaster is God's punishment for x. Is that why so many zealots move to hurricane pathing or are the hurricanes attracted to them?

gbasden wrote: ↑Sun Dec 11, 2022 5:50 am Sure, although it would be awfully hard to argue that God favors the just and punishes the unjust in this world. There are far too many counter examples to take that seriously.

gbasden wrote: ↑Sun Dec 11, 2022 5:50 am Sure, although it would be awfully hard to argue that God favors the just and punishes the unjust in this world. There are far too many counter examples to take that seriously.

Grifman wrote: ↑Mon Dec 12, 2022 4:32 pm This is nuts:

Grifman wrote: ↑Mon Dec 12, 2022 4:31 pm

gbasden wrote: ↑Sun Dec 11, 2022 5:50 am Sure, although it would be awfully hard to argue that God favors the just and punishes the unjust in this world. There are far too many counter examples to take that seriously.

Uh, this is exactly what Jesus is saying, so I’m not sure what/who you are responding to?

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon Dec 12, 2022 5:33 pm It is a known issue in Pakistan, which is what happens when. gods' laws are enshrined in fundamentalist secular law.

gbasden wrote: ↑Mon Dec 12, 2022 8:38 pm

Grifman wrote: ↑Mon Dec 12, 2022 4:31 pm

gbasden wrote: ↑Sun Dec 11, 2022 5:50 am Sure, although it would be awfully hard to argue that God favors the just and punishes the unjust in this world. There are far too many counter examples to take that seriously.

Uh, this is exactly what Jesus is saying, so I’m not sure what/who you are responding to?

I was just having a bad day with the rampant injustices of the world and the meek getting abused by the mighty and had just seen a facebook post about God being just and fair. Sorry for posting my frustrations here instead of on a relative I should have muted a long time ago.

hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Dec 30, 2022 9:44 am I hope that professor sues the school for a mint. I kind of wish he could sue the student that got him fired as well.

Grifman wrote: ↑Fri Dec 30, 2022 3:03 pm The thing is, if it were a fundamentalist Christian that was offended by something done or said by a professor, nothing would have come of it.

On March 7, Oklahoma Christian University fired Michael O’Keefe, a tenured graphic design professor who taught at the university for 41 years.

O’Keefe and his attorney, Kevin Jacobs, a former Oklahoma Christian president, claim the firing was the result of the longtime professor including an openly gay guest speaker in his senior-level “Business of Branding” course.

“I thought it went well,” O’Keefe told The Christian Chronicle. “The next thing I knew, six days later, I was pulled into the office of chief academic officer and legal counsel. I was told I was fired, and my jaw hit the floor.”

The university, which is associated with Churches of Christ, asserts that O’Keefe’s termination stemmed from the content of the speaker’s presentation—and the professor’s alleged subsequent effort to squelch student complaints.

hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Dec 30, 2022 5:51 pm Yeah, I’m not buying into the whole “Christians are persecuted in America” thing. It’s become a tag line for too many right wingers hoping to force bigoted and/or misogynistic laws on everyone else under the banner of religious freedom.

Even though nearly three in 10 Americans claim no religious affiliation — a rate that has steadily risen in recent years — only two of the 534 incoming members of Congress publicly identify as such.

The Congress “remains largely untouched by two trends that have long marked religious life in the United States: a decades-long decline in the share of Americans who identify as Christian, and a corresponding increase in the percentage who say they have no religious affiliation,” said the Pew report, released Tuesday. It was based on a CQ Roll Call survey of members of Congress.

Nearly 88 percent of members of Congress identify as Christian, compared with only 63 percent of US adults overall. That includes 57 percent of congresspersons who identify as Protestant and 28 percent as Catholic, both higher than national rates. Also, 6 percent of members of Congress identify as Jewish, compared with 2 percent of the overall population.

While 29 percent of Americans claim no religious affiliation, they’d have to squint to see themselves reflected in Congress. The only overtly nonreligious members are Representative Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, who identifies as humanist, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, independent of Arizona, who says she’s religiously unaffiliated.

Pew listed 20 other members of Congress as having unknown religious affiliations, either because they declined to answer CQ Roll Call’s query or because the answers are otherwise muddled (such as in the case of New York Republican George Santos, along with much else in his background).
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The Republican congressional delegation is a staggering 99 percent Christian, with the rest Jewish or unknown. Republicans — who have long embraced Christian expressions in their political functions and where an aggressive form of Christian nationalism has become more mainstream — include 69 percent Protestants, 25 percent Catholics, and 5 percent other Christians (such as Mormon and Orthodox).

Democrats have more religious diversity, at about 76 percent Christian (including 44 percent Protestant, 31 percent Catholic, and 1.5 percent Orthodox) and 12 percent Jewish. They have about 1 percent each of Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Unitarian Universalist representation.

But Democrats’ paucity of openly non-affiliated members contrasts starkly with a constituency to which it owes much.

Religiously unaffiliated voters opted overwhelmingly for Democrats candidates in the 2022 midterms. They voted for Democrats over Republicans by more than a 2 to 1 margin in House races, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide. And in some bellwether races, the unaffiliated went as high as 4 to 1 for Democrats.

Authorities have arrested the husband of a woman who worked as a housekeeper for Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell in connection with the slaying of the beloved Los Angeles cleric, officials said Monday.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna identified Carlos Medina as the suspect in the slaying. He did not cite a motive but said a tipster had told authorities Medina was acting strangely after the killing and claimed that the bishop owed him money. Luna said Medina is 65; however, jail records show the suspect as 61. He is being held in lieu of $2-million bail.
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O’Connell, 69, was killed Saturday afternoon in the Catholic archdiocese-owned home in Hacienda Heights where he lived alone. Luna said the bishop was found in his bedroom with “at least one gunshot wound to the upper body.” He said no firearms were recovered at the scene, and there was no sign of forced entry.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a nonprofit entity that it controlled have been fined $5 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission over accusations that the religious institution failed to properly disclose its investment holdings.

In an order released Tuesday, the SEC alleged that the church illicitly hid its investments and their management behind multiple shell companies from 1997 to 2019. In doing so, it failed to disclose the size of the church’s equity portfolio to the SEC and the public.

The church was concerned that disclosure of the assets in the name of the nonprofit entity, called Ensign Peak Advisors, which manages the church's investments, would lead to negative consequences in light of the size of the church’s portfolio, the SEC said.

The allegations of the illicit shell company structure first emerged in 2018, when a group formerly called MormonLeaks – now known as the Truth and Transparency Foundation – claimed that year the extent of the church's investments had reached $32 billion.

The New York Times wrote:The mayor’s closest aide, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, took the stage to declare that the Adams administration “doesn’t believe” in the separation of church and state, characterizing the mayor of New York City as “definitely one of the chosen” as she introduced him.

Mr. Adams clearly had no issue with how Ms. Lewis-Martin, a chaplain, described his views.

“Ingrid was so right,” Mr. Adams said, to the astonishment of some of the religious leaders who filled the New York Public Library’s glass-domed reception hall on Fifth Avenue. “Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.”

“I can’t separate my belief because I’m an elected official,” he continued, over scattered applause.

He went on to suggest that his path to the mayoralty was divinely ordained, saying that when he implements policies, he does so in a “godlike approach.”

NPR's Leila Fadel talks to Rev. Linda Barnes Popham of Fern Creek Baptist near Louisville, Ky., about her church and four others being expelled by the Southern Baptist Convention over female pastors.

Two GOP bills to chip away at the separation of church & state and promote Christianity in public schools are getting a hearing in the Texas Senate this week.

One, SB 1515, would require schools to display the Ten Commandments (King James version) in EVERY classroom.

Every K-12 public classroom in the state of Texas would be required to display these words:

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant."

Yes, please explain that line to a 6-year-old.

The other bill, SB 763, would allow public schools to replace counselors with chaplains (Aka, pastors).

In a news conference shortly after his crucifixion, Enaje said he prayed for the eradication of the COVID-19 virus and the end of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has contributed to gas and food prices soaring worldwide.

“It’s just these two countries involved in that war, Russia and Ukraine, but all of us are being affected by the higher oil prices even if we’re not involved in that war,” said Enaje.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 3:48 pm

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/10/india/da ... index.html