Click here to view full article at www.bpnews.net ARLINGTON, Va. (BP) — A U.S. Air Force colonel and devout Christian suspended and denied promotion after refusing to affirm same-sex marriage has won a legal appeal to reverse the disciplinary actions against him. Leland Bohannon Col. Leland Bohannon was restored today…
Recent Articles of Interest
Click here to view full article at religionclause.blogspot.com From SSRN: Josef Hien & Christian Joerges, Dead Man Walking: Current European Interest in the Ordoliberal Tradition , (EUI Department of Law Research Paper No. 2018/03 (2018)). Robert T. Miller, What is a Compelling Governmental Interest?, (Journal of Morality and Markets, (Forthcoming)).…
The House of Commons debates freedom of religion or belief
On 1 March, the House of Commons held a debate in Westminster Hall on freedom of religion or belief (FORB), introduced by Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP), Chair of the All-party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief, which – he pointed out, “speaks on behalf of those with…
Law and religion round-up – 11th March
IICSA begins hearings on the Church of England, Ireland clears the way for a referendum on abortion and the President of the Supreme Court tackles the vexed question of niqabs in court. Lady Hale on religious dress The Supreme Court website has posted the text of Lady Hale’s Sultan Azlan…
“Religious Exemptions” (Vallier & Weber, eds.)
It is difficult to pinpoint precisely when the debate about religious accommodation became the single most important topic in academic and legal debates about religious freedom, but two things are nearly certain: (1) it has now decisively displaced the issue of religious displays and religion in public as the preeminent…
Lee v McArthur: the Gay Wedding Cake revisited
In a guest post, Dr Michael Arnheim, Barrister at Law and Sometime Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, offers another view of Lee v McArthur & Ors [2016] NICA 29 and the forthcoming appeal. Introduction What is the point of yet another article on the “Gay Wedding Cake” saga? Just…
Bowman, “Christian: The Politics of a Word in America”
Recently I have written about what I have termed “anti-Christian identity politics,” an emerging style of political identification and argumentation in an increasingly fragmented country. Here is a new book by historian Matthew Bowman, Christian: The Politics of a Word in America (HUP) that explores political divisions among groups that…
Balancing Religious Freedom Rights is not “Discrimination”
Australia is in the middle of a debate as to the extent to which religious freedom rights should be accommodated in legislation introducing “same sex marriage” (SSM). Those who object to this idea tell us that: Christian conservatives – following the lead of their counterparts in the United States –…
Rogan, “The Moral Economists”
I don’t know too much about the subject, but the description of this new book on the history of economics from Princeton University Press caught my attention. The Moral Economists: R.H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E.P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism , by Cambridge historian Tim Rogan, recounts the criticisms…
Religious Challenge To Missouri Informed Consent Abortion Law Goes To State High Court
In Doe v. Greitens , (MO App., Oct. 3, 2017), a Missouri appellate court transferred to the state Supreme Court an appeal in a religious freedom challenge to the state’s abortion Informed Consent Law. Missouri’s law requires that a person seeking an abortion first receive a booklet containing specified information,…
“Christianity and Natural Law” (Doe, ed.)
Within Christian thought, natural law is typically seen as a Catholic concept, indeed, as a concept that distinguishes Catholicism from other Christian communions, like Orthodoxy and Protestantism–the former of which rejects natural law as too cerebral and the latter as too optimistic, given fallen human nature. A new collection of…
Free speech and vilification in the marriage law postal survey
Australia is involved in a debate about whether same sex marriage should be introduced. The question is being put to the electors in the form of a voluntary postal survey, the question in which is simply: “Should the law be changed to allow same sex couples to marry?” The original…
Farrelly, “Anti-Catholicism in America: 1620-1860”
Hostility to Catholicism is one of the hearty perennials of the study of law and religion in America. I have recently argued i n this piece that there was an important shift in the political rhetoric of the late 19th and early 20th century from accentuating anti-Catholic to anti-Christian themes.…
Dismissal for opposition to same-sex adoption: Mr R Page
Is opposition on grounds of conscience to adoption by same-sex couples protected by equality legislation and the ECHR? That was the issue before the Tribunal in Mr R Page v NHS Trust Development Authority [2017] UKET 2302433/2016 . The background At the time of his appointment as a Non-Executive Director…
New paper: “The Two Separations”
From the Law and Religion Forum: Here’s a new paper of mine, The Two Separations . Here’s the abstract: There is nothing self-evidently attractive about separation — whether of church and state or anything else — as a model for individual or collective life. Pursuing separation is not like pursuing…
Hyde, “Civic Longing”
In a recent paper , I argue that the ambit of civic identity among Americans is shrinking, which is one reason for the rise of identity politics, including a particular variety of anti-Christian identity politics. In Civic Longing: The Speculative Origins of U.S. Citizenship (Harvard UP), Carrie Hyde, a professor…
Recent Articles of Interest
From SSRN: Marc O. DeGirolami, On the Uses of Anti-Christian Identity Politics , (Religious Freedom and LGBT Rights: Possibilities and Challenges for Finding Common Ground (Robin Fretwell Wilson & William Eskridge eds., Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming)). Adam Hersh, Daniel in the Lion’s Den: A Structural Reconsideration of Religious Exemptions from…
Review of NT discrimination law- guest blog
The Northern Territory government has released a discussion paper called Modernisation of the Anti-Discrimination Act (Sept 2017). It invites comments by 3 December 2017. You can almost get the tone of the paper from the title! After all, who in this fast-changing age could oppose anything called “modernisation”? But there…
Reluctant Judge Holds Cross On County Seal Is Unconstitutional
In Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. v. County of Lehigh , (ED PA, Sept. 28, 2017), a Pennsylvania federal district court held that a large, central Latin cross in the seal and flag of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania violate the Establishment Clause under the Lemon test and the endorsement test. However…
DOJ Supports Christian Baker In Amicus Brief Filed With Supreme Court
In an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 7 in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice sided with the Christian bakery owner who refused to design and create a cake for a same-sex wedding (full text). Some 15 other…
Copson, “Secularism: Politics, Religion, and Freedom”
Until the modern period the integration of church (or other religion) and state (or political life) had been taken for granted. The political order was always tied to an official religion in Christian Europe, pre-Christian Europe, and in the Arabic world. But from the eighteenth century onwards, some European states…
Appeals Court Refuses To Order Recusal of Fundamentalist Christian Judge
In Ex parte Tiara Brooke Lycans, (AL App., July 28, 2017), an Alabama appellate court refused to issue a writ of mandamus ordering a trial judge who also serves as a preacher of a fundamentalist Christian church to recuse himself in a divorce action in which the wife, a lesbian,…
Religious Freedom protections in new same sex marriage proposals: too few, too narrow
The debate over same sex marriage in Australia has been re-ignited by news that some members of the federal governing Liberal/National Party (LNP) coalition are proposing, contrary to their party’s policy, to introduce legislation in Federal Parliament this coming week to redefine marriage to extend it to same sex couples.…
Law and religion round-up – 24th September
A fe excepts rom the Law and Religion Blog UK’s roundup: Doug Chaplin: Living comfortably: the fiction of a stipend? which Gary Alderson conveniently summarizes as “a blog post on the recent press reports that Church of England stipends are enough to live on basically pointing out they are, as…
Why the constitutional treatment of religion in Great Britain matters in religious disputes
Two high-profile cases concerning the approach of public authorities towards religion and identity, where the care and future of looked after children were concerned, have featured this summer. Firstly, a Sikh couple were denied the opportunity to adopt a white baby by Adopt Berkshire, the Windsor and Maidenhead council-run adoption…