Columns
Marriage enhancement, abortion reduction
By Mark Silk — May 7, 2009
Brody has posted a piece of an interview with Harry Knox, representative of the LGBT community on the OFANP Advisory Council, in which Knox says he’ll bring up with his fellow councilors the issue of gay adoption as part of its abortion-reduction strategy. Here in Connecticut, where we’ve had same-sex marriage for a year, I […]
Catholics Disunited
By Mark Silk — May 7, 2009
Over on God In Government, WaPo’s Jaqui Salmon reported yesterday that D.C. Archbishop Wuerl and Arlington, Va., Bishop Loverde will not be gracing tomorrow’s National Catholic Prayer Breakfast nor the accompanying evening Mass. The keynote address will be delivered by Raymond Burke, sometime archbishop of St. Louis and now Vatican canon law consigliere, who was […]
Hey, bishops!
By Mark Silk — May 6, 2009
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good has stage-managed a petition (see press release after the jump) from Catholic social justice types calling on the Obama administration to support an independent torture commission. While they’re at it, how about calling on the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops to do the same?
Tasked with the Day of Prayer
By Mark Silk — May 6, 2009
The Hartford Courant‘s Susan Campbell has the goods on the National Day of Prayer Task Force. Definitely a bridge too far for even the most evangelical-friendly Obamaites.
As Maine goes…
By Mark Silk — May 6, 2009
…so goes the nation, according to the old saw. All the same-sex marriage dominoes in New England have fallen except New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and the former is teetering. (As in California but not elsewhere in the region, a popular referendum–known as a “people’s veto”–could reverse the decision made in Augusta.) Here are the […]
Richard Land on Torture
By Mark Silk — May 6, 2009
In 2005, Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told the Nashville Tennesseean that it “is permissible to inflict discomfort to gain information that will save lives, as long as it doesn’t cause permanent damage.” In 2007, he wrote on the WaPo/Newsweek blog, “I condemn torture and […]
Day of Prayer
By Mark Silk — May 5, 2009
President Obama’s decision to issue a Proclamation for the National Day of Prayer but take a pass on the East Room festivities laid on by his predecessor seems pretty much of a piece with James Madison’s efforts to walk the line between custom and constitutional mandate in the matter of presidential religious leadership. As Madison […]
Ave atque vale, Jack
By Mark Silk — May 4, 2009
I spent a little time covering Jack Kemp for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution during his unsuccessful presidential campaign for the 1988 GOP presidential nomination. He was a relentless character who attached his personal ambition to economic idees fixes Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in […]
Torture Gap
By Mark Silk — May 1, 2009
Andrew Sullivan, who’s been serving as Anti-Torture Tribune of the Blogosphere, is seriously distressed by Pew’s new finding that the more people go to church, the more likely they are to support torture. I guess this wouldn’t have surprised Torquemada–but to be fair, white evangelicals (as we already know) are more down with torture than […]
Notre Obama
By Mark Silk — May 1, 2009
Catholics may not love Obama as much as Muslims, Jews, and Nones, but a 67 percent approval rating isn’t anything to sneeze at. That’s four points higher than the national approval rating. Given that Catholics supported Obama in the election at just the national rate of 53 percent, it means that he is now outperforming […]
Hispanics support gay marriage?
By Mark Silk — May 1, 2009
According to a new Quinnipiac poll, 27 percent of blacks, 38 percent of whites, and 52 percent of Hispanics support same-sex marriage. The same poll has 48 percent of blacks, 56 percent of whites, and 71 percent of Hispanics in favor of repealing the law against gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. Forty-five […]
Obama Romana
By Mark Silk — April 30, 2009
Yesterday Rome spoke on The 100 Days and found that they were…not as bad as feared. According to the front-page story in L’Osservatore Romano, President Obama has operated with laudable caution, including on matters of ethics and morals. Notably, the pope’s paper found reason to praise the administration’s proposed guidelines for funding stem cell research […]
Doctrinaire
By Mark Silk — April 29, 2009
Today’s Gallup poll on The First Hundred Days suggests that Obama has shrunk his religion gap. Whereas 41 percent of weekly worship attenders and 61 percent of seldom or never attenders supported him just before the election, now the numbers are 69 57 percent and 57 69 percent respectively. Thus the gap between the two […]
Friedmania
By Mark Silk — April 29, 2009
Defending the Obama approach to torture, Tom Friedman claims that 1) prosecuting the malefactors (up to and including George W. Bush) would “rip our country apart”; and 2) torturing was justified because only torture was capable of deterring al Qaeda, an enemy like no other we have ever had. The first claim is guesswork, but […]
But who’s counting?
By Mark Silk — April 28, 2009
Arlen Specter’s party switch leaves just one Jewish Republican serving in Congress–House GOP whip Eric Cantor (R-Va).