Someone should ask the presidential candidates this:

Will you ensure religion isn’t used as an excuse to discriminate and harm others? You can vote to get that question heard here. Maybe this is one way to remove the clown-car feel of the debates. (Here’s more on the Open Debate Coalition, which is asking.)

Meanwhile, in Missouri:

We are praying for the Great State of Missouri, praying hard. SJR 39 is wrong on every level. Wrong.

On Mississippi’s ignorant new law

This week, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a law that allows people who don’t want to do business with gays and lesbians and other in the LGBTQI community to discriminate and call it “religious freedom.” “Religious freedom,” my ass. Baby Jesus is crying, Mississippi. So in the middle of all this crud, I happened to hear this …

Buh-bye, family values. Helloooo, religious freedom.

This Religion Dispatches interview with Seth Dowland, author of “Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right,” and Eric C. Miller says the battle cry of my people has changed, to: Conservative evangelicals have grown more circumspect about their position as political leaders in the last decade. In his book Age of Evangelicalism, Steven Miller …

Gov. Sam Brownback is a tool

And here is his latest work, an executive order sure to allow more discrimination in the Sunflower State. It includes this: General protection of the free exercise of religious beliefs and moral convictions     The State Government is prohibited from taking any action inconsistent with the restrictions placed upon the State Government by the …

As we all take a deep breath over religious freedom

DickG. sends this, a ThinkProgress piece on the failed attempt by some conservative Christians to infuse the discussion about religious freedom with homophobia. It’s interesting, and contains this: …some sociologists argue that Christianity’s unusual inclusiveness is precisely what helped it to grow so quickly, what with it famously expanding its ministry to both Jews and …

How UConn’s women basketball team could change the world

See if you can follow: 1. Indiana passes a discriminatory law. 2. Connecticut’s Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announces that state employees cannot travel to the state using state funds. 3. UConn women qualifies for the Final Four in 2016. 4. UConn coaching staff can’t travel to Indiana. 5. Basketball changes the world. This isn’t original …

Don’t sign it, Asa

The Arkansas legislature has passed to Gov. Asa Hutchinson a “religious freedom” law similar to the one that has caused the uproar in Indiana and elsewhere. Gov. Hutchinson is a 1972 graduate of Bob Jones University, the ultra-conservative institution of higher learning whose policies (and graduates) would be funny if they weren’t so very sad. …

Where do you fall on the implicit bias scale?

In the journalism ethics class I teach at Manchester Community College, we’ve been talking about implicit bias, and how that affects journalists in their reporting and writing. So the assignment — voluntary though it may be — for today’s class is to go to Project Implicit and take a test. The class was assigned to …

Dear Indiana Christians (a letter from Jesus)

In light of the “religious freedom” nonsense that has gone on in Indiana (and rock on to the people who are protesting this nonsense), I really wish I’d written this letter to Indiana, from Jesus, at John Pavlovitz: Stuff That Needs to Be Said: I’ve seen what’s been going on there lately. Actually, I’ve been watching you …