The Texas Freedom Network has been stepping up efforts to protect the right of families to direct the religious education of their own children as the religious right’s assault on that freedom moves into high gear. The latest example of the right’s increasingly aggressive campaign: an Ohio teacher has filed a lawsuit claiming that public […]
Religious Freedom
Stoking the Fires of Hate
One of the things you can safely bet on when it comes to the religious right: the worse the fund-raising goes, the more extreme the language gets. Oh sure, it’s not unusual to see nonprofits raise alarm levels in an effort to raise more money. But the religious right seems especially adept (and shameless) in vilifying their vicims, especially gay folks. Case […]
Stem Cell Funding Ban Is Dead!
Texas Monthly’s Burkablog is reporting that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, has given up trying to include a ban on public funding for embryonic stem cell research in the state budget. Patricia Kilday Hart writes that Ogden announced this morning that a House-Senate conference committee “couldn’t come to a consensus” on whether to […]
Dragging Churches into Partisan Politics
The Internal Revenue Service has ruled against a complaint filed by the Texas Freedom Network asking whether a tax-exempt, nonprofit foundation improperly sought to mobilize conservative pastors for partisan electoral purposes beginning in 2005. In January 2008 we asked the IRS to investigate whether the Houston-based Niemoller Foundation improperly engaged in partisan political activity on […]
Helping the Blind to See
The religious right in recent years has repeatedly argued that embryonic stem cell research isn’t sound science and has been a waste of time and money. Last week, for example, the Family Research Council once again argued that embryonic stem cell research “has not successfully treated a single person for any disease.” In testimony before Congress […]
