Tag Archives: Fred Phelps

Is America ready for an honest conversation about abortion yet?

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In this season’s eighth episode, Boston Legal – the relentlessly liberal ABC dramedy starring William Shatner and James Spader – lobbed an absolute bomb at those of us on the pro-choice side of the Roe v. Wade question. The bunker-buster was posed, predictably enough, by Crane Poole & Schmitt’s resident conservative, the gleefully Republican Denny Crane, portrayed by Shatner. BL fans know Crane to be positively Cheney-esque in his politics (although he did finally cross the aisle to vote for Obama because even he couldn’t stomach four more years like the last eight), and he routinely plays the straw man for the passionate liberalism of Spader’s litigator par excellence, Alan Shore.

This time, though, Crane (who’s battling through the early stages of Alzheimer’s) breaks through to a moment of pristine, Emmy-worthy clarity. Read more

Our latest tragic shooting: who’s to blame?

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Another church shooting, this time in Knoxville. By now you’ve probably read the accounts and know that the shooter, Jim Adkisson, was motivated by, among other things, an apparent hatred of “liberals.”

Before diving too much deeper, there are a couple things we can probably safely say about Adkisson. First, these weren’t the actions of a rational man. Rational people don’t wade into crowds of people attempting to kill as many as possible.

So whatever else may have been at play, and no doubt the causes were many and complex, let’s be clear that we’re dealing with a disturbed individual. Read more

Can the center hold?: a response to Pastor Dan

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Pastor Dan has an absolutely must-read piece on faith and politics over at Street Prophets, and while I feel wholly inadequate for the task of matching the depth of his analysis, he raises a number of issues that got me to thinking. So to use a sports analogy, he’s just crushed an overhead at me, and I’m going to see if I can get a racquet on it in hopes of lobbing something weak back over the net.

For starters, his thoughts on the history and function of civil religion are spot-on, and as I consider how dramatically our culture is changing, they lead me to an obvious conundrum. Read more

The banshee screams for loon meat: Warren Jeffs heads to the bighouse

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The gig is up for Warren Jeffs.

ST. GEORGE, Utah (Reuters) – U.S. polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed “prophet” of a sect of breakaway Mormons, was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 years to life in prison for having forced a 14-year-old girl to marry her first cousin.The leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, received five years to life for each of two felony convictions on charges he was an accomplice to rape. The sentences will be served consecutively and a state board of pardons will ultimately determine how much time he spends in prison. (Story.)

The FLDS features all kinds of oddness, including “blood atonement” (“the extrajudicial killings of certain sinners”), “child brides, rabid racism, multiple wives, and a secretive, religious dictator” (that’d be our boy Warren, by the way). Read more