So the big news is the Justice Department‘s decision to stop defending the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage (for federal purposes) as between a man and a woman. Attorney General Eric Holder lays out the reasoning here in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. Jeffrey Toobin explains the legal rationale over at The New Yorker. The reaction is as boringly predictable as you’d expect: gays like it, conservatives don’t.
It looks like Maryland will become the next state to legalize same-sex marriage (and then maybe Hawaii?), and Tennessee could become the first state to jail Muslims who follow Shariah law.
Religion Dispatches has a concise roundup of statements made by various religious groups who support the unions in their continuing stand-off with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told the Archbishop of Milwaukee that “your brother bishops stand with you as you share Catholic teaching on workers and unions and call for dialogue, mutual respect and the search for the common good as a way forward in these difficult days” (there’s no URL up yet).
Pew has a new look at the Tea Party: “They are much more likely than registered voters as a whole to say that their religion is the most important factor in determining their opinions on these social issues. And they draw disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants.”
From the Dept. of Bad Ideas, a candidate to become the next mayor of Jacksonville, Fla., joked about bombing an abortion clinic — but later said it was all kosher because he told the joke inside a Catholic Church.
Four years after stepping down as head of a fundamentalist polygamist Mormon sect, Warren Jeffs has resumed the presidency — from a jail cell. Glenn Beck went to meet the old man on the mountain, Billy Graham, and left the three-hour meeting convinced that “the left” and “the average Democrat” is standing on the side of “evil.”
The home-schooled high school wrestler who forfeited a match because has supposed to wrestle a girl explains his decision, and his father said the boy was following biblical teaching. The folks who control the nation’s organ donation network are weighing a proposal to bump younger patients to the front of the line.
Episcopalians in South Carolina have taken steps to further distance themselves from the national church — particularly saying they won’t be bound by new sanctions for rogue bishops and clergy; Bishop Mark Lawrence says he’s ready to follow the guys who rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls “with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other.”
Frank Lockwood has a concise status report on efforts to repeal the Presbyterian Church (USA)‘s ban on gay pastors; both side seem to think the current fifth attempt at repeal could actually work.
It’s a happy 150th to the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, as it tries to become hip(ish). HuffPo compiles its 10 favorite South Park episodes that deal with religion, leading with my personal favorite, “The Passion of the Jew.”
EasyJet apologized to Jewish passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv to London, where the only food onboard was ham and bacon baguettes. Oops.
In the Caucasus, the parents of a 2-year-old boy are fending off reporters who want to see the Quranic verses that supposedly appear on the boy’s skin before disappearing a few days later.
