Mass incarceration did not come about by happenstance, but was a coordinated and perfected reaction to the successes of the civil rights movement. Jim Crow was made illegal, so a legal means of destroying the black community had to be created.
Jimmy Carter urges religious leaders to repudiate teachings that justify cruelty to women.
Former President Jimmy Carter has urged religious leaders to repudiate teachings that he says justify cruelty to women.
Carter, a Nobel laureate and 39th president of the United States, described in an article in the British newspaper The Observer his “painful and difficult” decision in 2000 to leave the Southern Baptist Convention after six decades.
Carter, who teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., said the decision became “unavoidable” when SBC leaders adopted a new consensus faith statement “quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be ‘subservient’ to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.”
Carter said that went against his belief “that we are all equal in the eyes of God.”
(Source: authorlauralee)
(Source: thechocolatebrigade, via hand-me-downs-et-cetera)
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Hamilton Nolan recently had an interesting idea:
A few weeks ago, I sent letters to every American death row inmate scheduled for execution this year. I asked them about their own survival prospects, their day-to-day lives, and their thoughts on America, its media, and its justice system.
He got his first response, from Brett Hartmann on Ohio’s death row, and posted it over at Gawker. Since most of you likely aren’t in regular correspondence with anyone on death row, I recommend reading it. It’s not a particularly long piece, but it provides a first-hand account of what it’s like to be on death row and it’s written by someone who is facing an execution date later this year.
HT: Flavia Dzodan.
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Call them “unicorners.” A liberal group says it has collected more than 19,000 e-mails requesting Arizona officials to confirm Mitt Romney is not a unicorn. Without such proof, the group Left Action argues with tongue in cheek, Romney may indeed be a unicorn — his dark mane hiding a horn — and therefore ineligible to be on the presidential ballot in November. The farcical campaign mimics efforts by “birthers,” and some top supporters of certain Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, to continually raise the already-settled issue of whether President Barack Obama meets the Constitution’s requirements for citizenship. (via CNN.com)
BREAKING: Boston appeals court finds the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. Will update this post as we get more.
EDIT: The decision is here, in case you’d like to look.
EDIT 2: The law was deemed unconstitutional over the denial of federal benefits. A key couple of paragraphs from the decision:
For 150 years, this desire to maintain tradition would alone have been justification enough for almost any statute. This judicial deference has a distinguished lineage, including such figures as Justice Holmes, the second Justice Harlan, and Judges Learned Hand and Henry Friendly. But Supreme Court decisions in the last fifty years call for closer scrutiny of government action touching upon minority group interests and of federal action in areas of traditional state concern.
To conclude, many Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress’ denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest.
It seems the argument here is not about marriage so much as the violation of rights by unfairly limiting federal benefits to same-sex couples.
(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)
I SINCERELY apologize for neglecting this blog the past few weeks….back in action now :)
(Source: thisis-myurl, via apoetreflects)
