Daily Links: Pressing Questions Edition

Where is Jesus’ foreskin?  Listen to David Farley discuss An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town on NPR’s Rick Steve Show.

Does Daddy Know Best?  Ann Pellegrini on the nature of recent attempts to further limit women’s privacy and reproductive choice.

Are imagination and science really at war? An excerpt from Lawrence Lipking’s “Facts and Dreams” at The New Republic:

To some extent the so-called conflict seems bogus. A benevolent reading of Blake’s proverb [What is now proved was once, only imagined” from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell] might reduce it to common sense, or to a maxim that any scientist might follow in applying for a grant to test an idea. No idea, no funding; no imagined Higgs boson, no CERN. In this respect the hypothetical construct that drives attempts to prove or disprove it is not the opposite of science but its prime mover. Imagination and proof couple together as tightly as mind and body, or as Blake’s visions and the books that he makes with his hands. Great scientists are visionaries, too.

Can Romney break the Hoover Curse?

Is Obama the Devil?  Ok, ok.  Is he anti-religion?  Social conservative Steve Chapman writes at Reason, that Obama hasn’t been all that bad for faith-based organizations, critiques that he’s anti-religious freedom be damned.

Can a woman be feminist and pro-life?

How much money does the state of Indiana give to “family values” organization Indiana Family Institute each year?  Andy Kopsa does the accounting at Nuvo.

What’s so funny about the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia’s recent Fatwa?  Paul Mutter tracks journalist Hamza Kashgari’s extradition for tweeting about Muhammad.

What happens when a Catholic hospital merges with a non-denominational one?

What is informed consent?  Governor Bob McDonnell, who opposes Virginia’s mandate that all women seeking an abortion be given a sonogram (often requiring an invasive procedure), still loses points for allowing that such information is “informed consent.”  McDonnell said, “Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state.”  Sure enough.  But don’t we think pregnant women know they’re pregnant?  How much information must patients be given?  How can the state determine when a patient really understands the procedure they face?  How can a doctor?  These questions are asked and answered all the time.  Check out Thaddeus Pope’s recent notes on a “futile care” case in Canada. Continue Reading →

As Goes Iowa: Asking Presidential Candidates the Right Religion Questions

by Andy Kopsa

Every four years the national political eye shifts to Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.  With the 2012 presidential election only 15 months away, the campaign frenzy in Iowa has already begun.  Local and national media are eagerly following Republican presidential hopefuls as they glad-hand farmers, eat local delicacies and stump, flanked by American flags, through soybean fields.

In February next year, Iowans will head to their local caucus to give a traditionally coveted victory to one Republican who could go on to face President Obama in the general election. That Republican – be it Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich – will need to secure the blessing of the radical religious-political group The Family Leader.

Bob Vander Plaats, the outspoken head of The Family Leader (TFL), is the man The Atlantic has called a Republican political “kingmaker” in Iowa – and the man who The Hill just ranked as having the ability to give one of the top 10 “endorsements the presidential candidates covet most.”

The media has documented his – and the TFL’s – statements about homosexuality (worse than second hand smoke) and women’s role in society (producing lots of babies). Last week TFL made national news again with its Marriage Pledge – already signed by Bachmann and Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania – touting the benefits of slavery to African American families (after vocal push-back, TFL has since removed this from the pledge).  None of Vander Plaats’ work would be half as interesting a story if The Family Leader, a Focus on the Family affiliate, hadn’t been built with over $3 million in federal funds. Continue Reading →

As Goes Iowa:The Family Leader, Religious Politics and 2012

by Andy Kopsa

America’s culture wars are at full throttle: defunding Planned Parenthood, chipping away at a woman’s right to an abortion – and if possible taking away that right altogether, preventing or ending gay marriage (because it could lead to Sharia law), enacting Religious Freedom Restoration Acts to “restore religious liberty” that was never lost.  State after state after state serves as a front on which the Christian Right and their willing Republican legislators wage these wars.  Iowa is a perfect microcosm, an example of the powerful Christian Political Action Committees (PACs) leading the effort.  Iowa’s powerful and successful The Family Leader is a model to which all others can be held.

The Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC), which recently changed its name to The Family Leader*, is the most vocal and political anti-gay organization in Iowa.  As a federally funded chapter of the Family Research Council (FRC), IFPC railed against gay marriage leading up to the 2009 Iowa Supreme Court decision granting marriage equality for same sex couples.  They started the “LUV Iowa” (Let Us Vote) Campaign to bring a Proposition 8-like ballot initiative to the state.  They sent lobbyists to the state capital and held ‘pro-family’ rallies. Continue Reading →

What's In a Title?

Andy Kopsa writes about the awkward title of a fantastic and haunting article by Sarah Blustain at Mother Jones.  Blustain chronicles the work and activism of “pro-life” lawyer Harold Cassidy.  The article was first posted with the title A Pro-Choice Feminist’s Worst Nightmare which has since been changed to The Man Who Loved Women Too Much.

Pro-Life: adj. opposing abortion and euthanasia

Feminism: n. the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes

Absurd: adj. unsound, ridiculous, incongruous

Manipulate: v. control or influence someone in a clever or underhanded way

Pro-Life Feminism: The word you’ve entered isn’t in the dictionary.

Continue Reading →

What’s In a Title?

Andy Kopsa writes about the awkward title of a fantastic and haunting article by Sarah Blustain at Mother Jones.  Blustain chronicles the work and activism of “pro-life” lawyer Harold Cassidy.  The article was first posted with the title A Pro-Choice Feminist’s Worst Nightmare which has since been changed to The Man Who Loved Women Too Much.

Pro-Life: adj. opposing abortion and euthanasia

Feminism: n. the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes

Absurd: adj. unsound, ridiculous, incongruous

Manipulate: v. control or influence someone in a clever or underhanded way

Pro-Life Feminism: The word you’ve entered isn’t in the dictionary.

Continue Reading →

Showing Them to the Dining Room

The Obama administration has failed to regulate discrimination by federally-funded faith-based organizations

By Andy Kopsa

I have been investigating and reporting on an anti-gay Christian political organization, the Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC), for over a year now.  The IFPC, a state affiliate of the Family Research Council*, a premier national anti-gay rights organization, has received over $3 million in government grants since 2005.  When I began uncovering the ease with which the IFPC (and numerous other FRC state affiliates) applied for and received federal funding, coupled with their blatant anti-gay political message, I began investigating the history and mechanics of the faith-based funding system.

I, like many others, anxiously awaited President Obama’s executive order expected to revise George W. Bush’s policymaking and funding criteria for faith-based organizations. But the order released on November 17th offers little in the way of true reform. Instead it is a wordy regurgitation of existing transparency reformations, offers minor tweaks to protections of beneficiaries, does nothing for spending oversight reform and completely eschews legalized hiring discrimination allowed faith-based organizations.

In 2008, then candidate Obama said that although he supported funding faith-based programs, he would do away with hiring discrimination.  However, like so many Obama promises, that is one yet to be fulfilled. Continue Reading →