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Infuriating: Gov. Chris Christie has followed through on his promise to reject a bill allowing same-sex marriage in New Jersey by quickly vetoing the measure Friday. “I am adhering to what I’ve said since this bill was first introduced — an issue of this magnitude and importance, which requires a constitutional amendment, should be [...]
Archive for the ‘Civil Rights’ Category
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Vetoes Gay Marriage Bill
February 17th, 2012 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Law, Law, Law & Politics, LGBTQAA, Politics, Politics, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Same Sex Marriage, Same Sex Marriage 
Tags: Chris Christie Vetoes Same Sex Marriage Bill, Governor Chris Christie, New Jersey Same Sex Marriage Bill 
9 Comments »Virginia Expected To Allow Religious Adoption Agencies To Discriminate Against Gays
February 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke More special, unconstitutional, protections of religious conscience bigotry, to the exclusion of equal protection: On Friday, the Virginia Senate passed SB 349, which gives private adoption agencies the power to deny the placement of children with same-sex couples on religious grounds. Known as the ‘conscience clause’ bill, the bill allows adoption agencies to deny same-sex couples the [...]
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Law, Law, Law & Politics, LGBTQAA, News, News Discussion, News Discussion, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics Tags: Adam Ebbin, Discrimination Against Gay Adoption, Gay State Senator, State Senator Adam Ebbin, Virginia Law Allowing Adoption Agency Discrimination, Virginia State Senator Adam Ebbin 4 Comments »“Gay Marriage Doesn’t Threaten Our Marriage”
February 9th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Friend of Camels With Hammers George Waye has passed on to me information about a photo campaign by Heterosexuals for Same Sex Equality. Preferably by Valentine’s Day they’d like to get a bunch of heterosexual couples to pose with signs that read “Gay Marriage Doesn’t Threaten Our Marriage”. Here are the founders of the group, [...]
Ellen Responds To The “Million Moms”
February 8th, 2012 Daniel Fincke This organization doesn’t think I should be the spokesperson because I’m gay. For those of you who are just tuning in for the first time, it’s true. I’m gay. I hope you were sitting down. I hate to break it to you this way. I usually don’t talk about stuff like this on my show [...]
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, TV, TV Tags: Ellen Degeneres, Ellen DeGeneres's Reply To One Million Moms, JC Penny, One Million Moms 10 Comments »“What Are The Limits of Church Authority In the Public Sphere?”
February 5th, 2012 Daniel Fincke This is part 2 of a debate with Roman Catholic theology graduate student named Mary. In part 1, we introduced and began to debate the topic of whether or not universities, hospitals, and social agencies run by the Catholic Church should be exempted from laws requiring employers to provide their employees health insurance that covers [...]
Posted in Abortion, Abortion, Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Bio-Medical Ethics, Bio-Medical Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Feminism, Feminism, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Law, Law, LGBTQAA, News Discussion, News Discussion, Personal, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Issues Tags: 1st Amendment, Affordable Care Act, Conscience Exemptions, Discrimination Against Gays, Free Exercise, Freedom of Religion, Gay Rights, Health Coverage For Gay Spouses, Mary C. Young, Pharmacists Rights of Conscience, Relig, Religious Discrimination, Reproductive Rights, Roman Catholic Adoption Agencies Refuse Gay Adoptions, Roman Catholic Charities, Roman Catholic Church 55 Comments »10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Against Bans on Shari’a Law
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Andrew Cohen highlights and explains key sections of a ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (which you can read in full here) that considers attempts to outlaw all use of international law in legal judgments in the United States and which places special emphasis on outlawing considerations of Shari’a law as any [...]
Openly Bisexual and Non-theist Woman (Who Rejected Parents’ Mormonism) Runs For U.S. Congress
January 7th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Kyrsten Sinema is a Democrat from Phoenix who has resigned her seat in the Arizona state senate to run for the state’s new 9th Congressional District. She is a bisexual with a history of advocacy for gay rights. She is also a non-theist of some variety who openly participated in a 2010 event marking the creation [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Law, Law & Politics, LGBTQAA, News, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State Tags: Kyrsten Sinema, Kyrsten Sinema atheist, Kyrsten Sinema non-theist 23 Comments »Is Occupy Wall Street “Doing It Rong”?
November 28th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Crommunist argues no, challenging the historical validity of oft-heard memes how successful protest movements are “supposed to” work: “The Occupy people don’t have a plan! All successful protest movements have clear goals and plans that are defined before the protest starts!” I suppose the second statement there is pure implication from the first. The truth, [...]
Is The Use of Pepper Spray Torture?
November 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Yesterday digby discussed various cases of the use of pepper spray to argue that it is obviously torture. Is it torture? If it is torture but in some cases it could foreseeably prevent an altercation with greater likelihood of long term physical damage could it be justified nonetheless? Is it only unjustified when applied to non-violent [...]
The Moral Toll of Executions on the Consciences of Executioners
September 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Allen Ault is the retired director of the Georgia Department of Corrections and former warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison which handled Troy Davis. Ault oversaw executions for the state of Georgia. He is now Eastern Kentucky University’s dean of “College of Justice and Society” and well-informed from an academic perspective about the [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, News, News Discussion, News Discussion, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Politics, Videos Tags: Allen Ault, Anti-Death Penalty, Death Penalty, Dennis O'Neill, Ed Schultz, Ed Show, Effects of Executions on Executioners, Georgia Department of Corrections, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, Jeanne Woodford, Rachel Maddow, Reginald Wilkinson, Rick Perry, Ron McAndrew, Terry Collins, Troy Anthony Davis, Troy Davis 7 Comments »Clerk In New York Refuses To Sign Marriage Licences For Gay Married Couples
September 18th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Ledyard town clerk Rose Marie Belforti tacitly admits to imposing theocratic law on her constituents in blatant disregard for the actual laws she is tasked with enforcing: That all changed in August when Belforti sent a letter to the Ledyard town board two weeks after the Marriage Equality Act became law in New York, allowing [...]
Did Theocrats Swing Weiner’s District Republican?
September 15th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Robbie George, the conservative Princeton Professor who opposes same-sex marriage, writes of an under-reported influence in Weiner’s Queens district (NY-9): In the run up to the election, a group of Orthodox rabbis, most from Brooklyn, but including others, notably Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and Rabbi Simcha Bunim Cohen, two nationally prominent Orthodox Jewish authorities, published a [...]
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Judaism, Law, Law, Law & Politics, LGBTQAA, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Same Sex Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats 1 Comment »Santorum’s Hypocrisy and Backwardness on Questions of Epistemic Authority
September 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke My thoughts:
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Faith, Faith, Free Speech, Free Speech, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Law, Law, LGBTQAA, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Same Sex Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Teleology, Teleology, Theocracy, Theocracy, Theocrats, Theocrats, Videos Tags: Rick Santorum 5 Comments »The Executive Branch WILL Continue Enforcing DOMA, Just Will Not DEFEND It In Court
February 26th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Get ready for the deceptive meme to come flying your way that the Obama administration is abnegating its responsibilities to enforce law by not enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act. The administration will continue to enforce the unconscionable law, it will only not defend it from legal challenges in court. Others, starting with the House [...]
Posted in Andrew Sullivan, Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Politics, Politics, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics Tags: Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, Eric Holder No Comments »How Would Apostates, Adulterers, And Thieves Fare In A Democratic Egypt?
February 18th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Razib Kahn has a most disturbing chart: Kahn explains the above: On the x-axis you see the proportion who accept that adulterers should be stoned. On the y-axis you see the responses to amputation and apostasy. The red points are the proportion who agree with the death penalty for apostates, and the navy points those [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Free Speech, Free Speech, Law, Law, News, News Discussion, News Discussion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, World Affairs, World Affairs 3 Comments »TOP Q: “Do Children Have Higher Moral Status Than Adults?”
February 9th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In his book Moral Status and Human Life: The Case for Children’s Superiority, law professor James Dwyer argues that children are not merely equal to adults in moral status but actually have a higher moral status than adults. Below is a brief video in which he sketches out the broad contours of his thought on moral [...]
Posted in Abortion, Abortion, Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Bio-Medical Ethics, Bio-Medical Ethics, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Duty, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Law, Law, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Teleology, Teleology, Today's Open Philosophical Question (TOP Q) Tags: Children, Children's Rights 2 Comments »Zach Wahls, Son Of Lesbians, Testifies To Iowa Legislature
February 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
TOP Q: Where Are The Lines Between Peaceable Death Penalty Advocacy And Criminal Incitement?
January 29th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Last week a heinous, conscience-shocking injustice occurred when the brave, openly gay, Ugandan gay rights campaigner David Kato (pictured above) was murdered shortly after a Ugandan newspaper featured him on the cover with the headline: “100 PIctures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak” and the words “Hang Them” next to it. The AP photo of the newspaper [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Bible, Bible, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Civil Liberties, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Free Speech, Free Speech, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Islam, Islam, Law, Law, Law & Politics, LGBTQAA, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Politics, Politics, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Today's Open Philosophical Question (TOP Q) Tags: Death Penalty, Hate Speech 1 Comment »Daily Hilarity: Cranky Puppet John McCain
January 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Let’s All Stand on John McCain’s Lawn www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook Your Thoughts?
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Comedy, Comedy, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Hilarious, Parody, Parody, Political Satire, Political Satire, Politics, Politics, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Satire, Satire Tags: DADT, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal, John McCain, Jon Stewart, Puppets, The Daily Show 1 Comment »Pakistani Governor Murdered For Opposing Blasphemy Laws
January 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Enraging news: Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — The governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province was assassinated by his own security guard Tuesday, according to Interior Minister Rehman Malik, apparently because he spoke out against the country’s controversial blasphemy law. The security guard was arrested, Malik said. The shooting occurred at Islamabad’s Kohsar Market, which is frequented by [...]
Posted in Civil Liberties, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Free Speech, Free Speech, Islam, Islam, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Theocracy, Theocracy, Theocrats, Theocrats Tags: Blasphemy Laws, Pakistan, Rehman Malik 1 Comment »How DADT Made Things Worse For Gays In The Military Than They Were
January 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke A Daily Dish reader’s first hand experience: before DADT the policy was more about conduct at least in the minds of the commanding officers, not the mere mention of the fact that one was gay or had those inclinations. I joined the Army National Guard in 1988 and was called up for a time in [...]
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Military Tags: Don't Ask Don't Tell 1 Comment »Barney Frank Owns Up To The “Radical Homosexual Agenda”
December 22nd, 2010 Daniel Fincke Congratulations to all the brave young men and women who will now be treated as honorably as they deserve by their country with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Hopefully soon the day will come when all our gay fellow citizens will be treated with equal rights under the law and with the equal [...]
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Politics, Politics Tags: Barney Frank No Comments »The Hypocrisy Of Many Against Gay Relationships
December 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke This is awesome: Illinois state senator, Ricky Hendon. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Law, Videos 3 Comments »David Hyde Pierce On His Marriage And Prop 8
October 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke This is a little old and comes from before the landmark Prop 8 ruling of this summer, but it is still poignant: Your Thoughts?
Dan Savage On Gay Adoption
October 15th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A great case is made in less than 5 minutes: Your Thoughts?
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