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The videos, taken from a mobile phone, were first uploaded on YouTube and Facebook last week and were taken down in a few hours. But the videos resurfaced for several hours on June 11. Local Tajik police are now investigating the matter, attempting to determine who uploaded the videos to the Internet. While the imam -- whose name has not been disclosed to the public -- admits to creating the videos, he denies responsibility for making them publicly available.

Meanwhile, members of the community have condemned the imam for making the tapes, writing comments like "Mullahs like you are discrediting our dear Islam" and "He does not deserve to be a cleric. Don't call him a cleric" on RFE/RL's Tajik site.

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Researchers surveyed participants to see how often they had committed crimes in the previous 12 months, and found that loosey-goosey spiritual types (just kidding! you're great!) were more likely to commit vandalism, theft and burglary than religious people; the study also found that agnostics and atheists were less likely than spiritual people to commit such crimes.

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Let's start with the cake. This week, the Colorado ACLU filed a discrimination suit against Lakewood, Colo.'s Masterpiece Cakeshop after the owners refused last year to make a cake for same-sex couple Dave Mullin and Charlie Craig. The ACLU says it has affidavits from two other gay couples who have been likewise refused wedding cakes from Masterpiece.

At the time of Mullin and Craig's thwarted order, owner Jack Phillips told CBS News, "If gays come in and want to order birthday cakes or any cakes for any occasion, graduations, or whatever, I have no prejudice against that whatsoever. It's just the wedding cake, not the people, not their lifestyle." But it doesn't much help Masterpiece's credibility that its owner allegedly didn't blink when recently asked to make a cake for a dog wedding. 

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The women have allegedly been following him for quite some time, as McGill told AL.com on Tuesday: "During the [2010 legislative] campaign, we had two strippers come to my house at 1 o'clock in the morning. Me and my wife both got up to address the situation. They did inform me that they were strippers at a particular club in Huntsville."

McGill would not speculate over why he would be the target of a late night visit from two exotic dancers, though he did report a separate incident in which he was again approached by a stripper in a parking lot: "She thought she had a flat tire and wanted her tire looked at, but she did not have a flat tire."

The woman-who-did-not-have-a-flat-tire then handed one of his employees a business card for a strip club, McGill said.

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For centuries, a dominant majority of Western philosophers and intellectuals have asserted that humans are the “rational animal.” Our ability to reason, so the logic goes, is the one thing separating us from the plethora of other animals on the planet. Instinct, passion, and emotion, traditionally assigned to the animal side of life, often meant that being “good”—being the sort of human who behaves morally—required a removal of the animal or “beastly” nature that resides somewhere deep within our fleshy bodies.

In recent decades, however, this fragile logic has been falling apart. It’s become increasingly clear that while our digital technologies behave quite rationally, they are often deeply cruel. And on the other side of the ledger, the accumulation of data on animal behavior makes it more and more difficult to support the claim that “goodness” is something that only humans exhibit.

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Until it was struck down in 1987, the state's "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act" gave equal weight to the Christian creation story and evolutionary science, mandating that teachers "provide insight into both theories in view of the textbooks and other instructional materials available for use in his classroom."

“There’s no good reason to keep an unconstitutional law on the books,” Josh Rosenau, programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), told Eric Dolan at Raw Story. “But since a law which has been struck down is dead letter, the choice to remove it is symbolic, too.”

But the intent behind the legislature's decision to keep the law intact isn't all that symbolic, as NCSE goes on to note in a release on the vote:

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His response, that women were "designed" to serve their husbands from inside the home, was predictably bananas; but, interestingly, wasn't too far out of step with Pew's own findings about Americans' discomfort with working women and single mothers.

According to the Pew report, 74 percent of adults said that working mothers make it "harder for parents to raise children," while 51 percent of respondents believed that children are "better off" if a mother is home and does not hold a job.

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After lauding Francis' ability to speak in a "language that everyone can understand," the Rev. Thomas Rosica issued a corrective to the pope's homily and suggested that, basically, people misunderstood the pope.

In a message delivered on Vatican Radio last week, the pope said: "The Lord has redeemed all of us... not just Catholics. Everyone!" Adding, in case there was any confusion: "Even the atheists. Everyone!" In response to the homily, Rosica wrote that, while the pope is a gifted speaker, Francis was not rewriting theological doctrine when he made his inclusive remarks:

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In recent moves by Congress to slash $4.1 billion or more from food stamps (otherwise known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) over the next 10 years, Fincher quoted from 2 Thessalonians 3:10:

For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.

Fincher used this line to prove his point that lazy poor people shouldn’t be depending on the government to feed them. Of course, Fincher and his fellows are worried because SNAP rolls have swelled by 70% since the financial collapse back in 2008, causing the government to spend $80 billion* to feed poor people. But instead of curbing the bankers’ economy-destroying ways or ending their corporate welfare, they seek to take it out of the stomachs of poor people.

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Thirteen years ago, I carried a baby into a church and, as her family and friends stood around her, promised to raise her in that church. Four years later, I made the same vow for her sister. And now, in two weeks, my firstborn makes her confirmation. She will be, for all intents and purposes, an adult in the Catholic Church. She will no longer attend Sunday school, and she will be free to make all her own decisions regarding her faith (or lack of it), and her relationship with the church (or her departure from it).

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He knows the interview was a setup because he is an expert who has been doing this "long enough to know that [the exchange]... wasn't natural" and just has really good journalistic instincts in general, OK?

h/t Right Wing Watch

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But, as the New York Times reports, the controversy over the inclusion (or, possibly, the continued exclusion) of gay scouts isn't likely to die down after the final ballot is cast:

Last week the Connecticut Yankee Council promised it would defy national policy in either case, saying it intended to accept gay leaders and would be “open to all youths and adults who subscribe to the values of the Scout Oath and Law regardless of their personal sexual orientation.”

The vote Thursday is expected to be close. Prospects for passage improved when the Mormon Church, the largest single sponsor of scout units, indicated support for limited change, and the Roman Catholic Church, another major sponsor, also said that it would not abandon scouting so long as any new policy applied to youths and not leaders.

Glaad, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and other rights groups as well as internal advocates said that allowing openly gay youths would be a step in the right direction, but only that. They vowed to continue with a public campaign against any discrimination.

Evangelical conservatives, the public spearhead of opposition, said that even the limited opening being voted on would expose youths to immoral behavior and pro-gay politics, ruining a rare bastion of traditional America.

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After spending hours in the personal growth section at Get Lost bookstore, I splurged on a hardback edition of “How to Get a Life That Doesn’t Suck” to add to my already enormous self-help book collection. I also unearthed my dusty deck of Louise Hay’s “Power Thought” cards from my nightstand drawer, buried under mismatched jewelry, the TV remote, miscellaneous receipts to file, and a lubricant that promised to be warming and tropical but was neither.

I sat at my desk writing down affirmations just like Wayne Dyer told me to do:

I, Kirsten, never have to worry about money again. Ten times. Then I looked up to see my parents staring back at me from a silver Pottery Barn frame. My mom wore a silk mango-colored blouse that complimented her complexion; my dad sported a grey suit with a crisp white dress shirt and a navy and green striped tie.  The photograph appeared in the St. Peters Episcopal Church Directory. One of the reasons I refused to call them to borrow money: They would tell me to go to church. The more obvious reason was that it would make me feel like a complete loser.

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As reported by USA Today:

The religious expression case, which comes to the court from the town of Greece, N.Y., focuses on the first 10 words of the First Amendment, ratified in 1791: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

That Establishment Clause was violated, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year, when the Greece Town Board repeatedly used Christian clergy to conduct prayers at the start of its public meetings. The decision created a rift with other appeals courts that have upheld prayer at public meetings, prompting the justices to step in.

Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian non-profit group, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.

In a press release entitled "Prayer will be heard on high," the group noted the high court affirmed the practice of prayer before public meetings in the 1983 case Marsh v. Chambers, in which it cited an "unambiguous and unbroken history" of such prayers.

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The latest, from FRC's Cathy Ruse, is a real doozy. In an editorial for Real Clear Religion, Ruse defends the ban by arguing that gay scouts are already welcome in the organization. That is, as long as they stay in the closet:

[An] important distinction has been lost in the current debate. The Boy Scouts’ long-standing policy does not, by its terms or in practice, exclude people who experience same-sex attraction. Rather, the prohibition is on “open and avowed” homosexuality, and it is that prohibition which will be lifted if the resolution passes.

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And yet Georgian police and government officials have been slow to condemn, and hold accountable, those responsible for the violent mob attack, as the New York Times reports:

On Friday evening, with crowds of men still roaming downtown Tbilisi in search of gays, [Georgia’s prime minister, Bidzina] Ivanishvili promised a quick response to the violence. Yet on Sunday, at a parade for a local police force, he made no mention of either arrests or an investigation. Instead, his comments celebrated the role of the police in preventing worse injuries to the marchers...

Zviad Koridze, a veteran local journalist at the Tbilisi-based Council of Ethics for Journalists, called the slow pace a reminder of the church’s influence.

“The government is acting very carefully, one could say ineffectively,” said Mr. Koridze in a telephone interview. “Everyone is simply waiting. Because in three days they should have made arrests and given some sort of answer to the events in Tbilisi.”

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A graduation is a momentous occasion for graduates and their families, and such a major rite of passage tends to evoke some kind of effort on the part of high school, college, and graduate school leaders (and commencement speakers) to reach for rhetorical profundity.

But what kind of profundity is acceptable in our pluralistic public space? Can a public high school organize a graduation service that appeals to religious themes? Can a religiously diverse private college invite a commencement speaker representing only one of the many religious traditions represented in the room? Or, given religious diversity, should schools try to maintain an air of resolute non-religiosity?

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1) Mitt Romney would win in 2012 and go on to be a two-term president. One week before the 2012 election, Pat Robertson assured viewers that Romney would not only beat Barack Obama for the presidency, but go on to be a two-term president. “Because the Lord told me,” he confidently explained to his guest. So either the Lord is lying to Robertson or Obama is more powerful than God. Or, I suppose, it could be that Robertson himself is a liar, though it’s considered impolite to say so directly.

2) If Obama wins in 2008, the Bible will be classified as “hate speech” and banned from the airwaves. In 2008, Focus on the Family sent out a letter from a fictional Christian in 2012 describing the decrepit, destroyed America that would be sure to exist in four years if Obama won in 2008. Some predictions, such as gays in the military and universal healthcare legislation, came true, but somehow the predicted arrests of people reading the Bible on the airwaves have not come to pass.

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