So far today, they have announced two wins from SCOTUS... the first:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday voted 7-2 to uphold rules established by the Trump administration that would allow employers with sincerely held moral or religious objections to deny their employees access to free contraceptive coverage.
The rules broadened a carve out to the contraceptive coverage mandate included in the Affordable Care Act, the health-care overhaul commonly known as Obamacare. According to government estimates, the religious exemption would lead to possibly as many 125,000 women losing their coverage.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the opinion of the court, wrote that the Trump administration “had the authority to provide exemptions from the regulatory contraceptive requirements for employers with religious and conscientious objections.”
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Little Sisters of the Poor is exempt from an Obama-era mandate to provide contraception in their healthcare plans.
The case, Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, marked the Catholic religious order’s second time before the Supreme Court, after nearly 10 years of legal dispute. It arose when the New Jersey and Pennsylvania state governments sued the Trump administration for exempting the Little Sisters from the contraception mandate.
The exemption, issued in the form of a 2017 executive order from President Trump, stated that the religious order is protected from “undue interference from the federal government.” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recommitted to that position the following year with guidelines exempting religious nonprofit groups from contraception requirements outlined in the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Note: Can anyone here in a concise way, explain the difference between this case, and hobby lobby which was just a few years ago? In a cursory perusal, they look pretty much the same, why would the supreme court take up this case, so close to the last?
The Second Win coming from the issue of Religious Schools being targets of law suits from teacher's whose lifestyle themselves, conflict with the teachings of the schools..
Supreme Court shields religious schools from discrimination suits brought by teachers
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled 7-2 in favor of two religious schools that argued they should not have to face employment discrimination lawsuits brought by former teachers.
The case concerned the “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws that protects religious employers from certain lawsuits brought against them by employees.
The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 on Wednesday in favor of two religious schools that argued they should not have to face employment discrimination lawsuits brought by former teachers.
The case concerned the “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws that protects religious employers from certain lawsuits brought by employees. It was brought by two Catholic schools in California that were hit with discrimination lawsuits by teachers whose employment was terminated.
“The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court.
“Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate,” he wrote.
These religious cases always give me some pause due to the infiltration of Islam and Shari'a Law. We need to work on getting Islam classified as the political system it is, rather than a religion it masks its political processes in.
What say you?
How many Mormons try to cut off your head when you try to criticize them? Haven't seen very many Mormon politicians try to replace the current US government with one based off their own precepts. Great false equivalency though.
If you haven't lived in an area where there's around 1/4 (or higher) of the population as Mormon, then you will never understand just how clannish and how screwed up that cult really is.
For example, a friend of mine was out on his mission (that's basically mandatory) and could not be recalled even though he was still in the US when his sister got married.... so his dad had to put a carboard cutout of Pres Bush with his face taped on it just so he was "there". I had another friend that had his dad die while he was out on a mission, and again, he wasn't recalled. If you compare this to how the average protestant mission type work goes, something critical happens at home (like either event) then you're going to be recalled. On top of that is the treatment of women in Mormonism. Women are basically told to be completely submissive to the husband, and that they will be mothers and give birth to lots of children. They can teach, but they are strongly discouraged from going into STEM because "that's a man's field". They'll never publicly admit it, but it's what their doctrine teaches. And the kicker, Mormonism doesn't follow the Nicene Creed, which (IMO) makes Mormonism not Christian as even the Catholics and Protestants agree on THAT much.
So please, go do your research before you mouth off on something you know nothing about.
Still doesn't mean Mormonism is not a religion, as it most definitely is. I agree it's not strictly a "Christian" faith, but it's christian-like. They produce quality men and women with strong conservative values (minus the flip flop twat Pierre Delecto), so who cares if their beliefs are a bit strange? Nobody is forcing them to be Mormons. I have met plenty of people who have left the faith, so if one chooses to remain it's their decision.
Um, while nobody is explicitly forcing them to be Mormons, there is such an absurd amount of pressure placed on kids that they are flat out expected to do the mission after they graduate from high school, and of all the Mormons in my home town (and I hung out with a lot of them in high school as that's just how things worked out), there was only ever one that stayed a Mormon that didn't go on the mission because of the business ventures he was involved in, and how the mission would have basically completely destroyed everything he had built. There is one other, but IIRC that was because he became an ex-Mormon.
I mean, for the overwhelming majority of the Christina denominations (both Protestant and Catholic) you're free to do as you please as far as membership goes. With Mormons, once you're in, if you leave the price is going to be extremely high, and it's not uncommon to hear people having to give up the entire social side of things AND lose ties to their family because they left. And may God have mercy on your poor soul if you ever get excommunicated, as you would be better off moving to a different state at that point.
It looks Christian, but it operates VERY differently - which is why I called it a cult.
Missions aren't mandatory, just btw.
You do understand that you can request to be recalled for personal events, right? Seems like you're tossing out unverifiable personal anecdotes to try to support your argument, which ultimately means squat.
Women aren't told to be "completely submissive to the husband". Clearly you've never been around very many Mormons, otherwise you'd know how much power a Relief Society President can wield in a ward or branch.
Where's the evidence that Mormonism discourages women from STEM fields? Which part of their doctrine, specifically, teaches such? Surely you have the name of the manual or a verse from one of the other books, no? I'd VERY MUCH love to hear where you supposedly found that out. I also find it incredibly interesting that you make the claim of "they'll never publicly admit it", a convenient caveat for you to throw in there that stands at odds with the LDS church being VERY public about the vast majority of it's views. Hard to "never publicly admit" things when they let anyone come to church.
Why would the Catholic Church get to dictate what group are and aren't Christians, especially when the very origination of the word simply meant a follower of Jesus of Nazareth? Protestants agree that Mormons aren't Christians? Do you have statements of such from the leaders of every single Protestant denomination backing that up? You do understand that nontrinitarianism (AKA rejecting PARTS of the Nicene Creed) is a product of the Protestant Reformation (i.e. the Unitarians)?
The best part is that this objection seems to be based on an autistic interpretation of John 10:30:
https://biblehub.com/john/10-30.htm
Notice how several versions aside from the KJV (the one Mormons use) state "my Father"? The Nicene Creed, and by extension trinitarianism in general, has to not only presume that "I and the Father (or my Father) are one" does not mean "one in purpose", but that every other verse that makes explicit reference to Jesus and God being two different beings (e.g. Matthew 5:16, Matthew 5:45, Matthew 5:48, Matthew 6:1, Matthew 6:4, Matthew 6:6, Matthew 6:8, Matthew 6:9, Matthew 6:14, Matthew 6:18, Matthew 6:26, Matthew 6:32, Matthew 7:11, Matthew 7:21, Matthew 10:20, etc. etc.).
Do the followers of the Nicene Creed think Jesus was schizophrenic, or do they think he just had a habit of referring to himself in the third person (but only sometimes)? The whole point of the nontrinitarian stance in Mormonism is the belief that the nuclear family is the basic foundation of a functional society. Kinda difficult to have a nuclear family if the Father and the Son are literally the same being, isn't it?
Not only are you trying to support your argument with unverifiable anecdotes, but you're quite literally making shit up.
It's personal experience. One was a member of my high school class, the other was a neighbor.
Seeing their seminary coursework back in high school, as they had to take a seminary class while the rest of us non-Mormons didn't. It also meant that their GPAs were artificially boosted because the seminary class took up time... yet didn't actually count towards their averages (which meant they had a smaller denominator than the rest of us in practice).
The overwhelming majority of the Protestant denominations have the Nicene Creed as core to their theology, to the point that whether or not a religion accepts it or not is basically a litmus test if the religion should be considered Christian. Thus, Mormons fail the test and they are not Christians. And for that matter, neither are the Nontrinitarians strictly speaking.
And yet you completely miss the part of John 1:1 where it says
And it's followed up by John 1:14:
And that's 2/3s of the trinity defined to be the same being. The best metaphor we have for what the Trinity is like is water that is ice, liquid, and vapor at the same time - it's three very different substances, yet it's all H2O.
You also really need to take it back to the Greek and look at what the Greek manuscripts are saying, as that's where a site like https://blueletterbible.org/ is helpful because it's got a concordance that's easy to use and allows you to very quickly compare how the various versions correspond to the original Greek. If you're not taking it back to the original texts, you're only doing a shallow comparison.
Um, no, I'm just sharing my own personal experience with Mormonism. If you want to claim I'm making up my own experience... have at it.
Personal experiences count for dick on the Internet. Can't be verified, no reason to believe.
Again, where is the evidence that Mormons dissuade females from STEM fields? It most certainly isn't in the seminary course work, as all seminary is is a study of each of the books, one book per year of high school.
"their GPAs were artificially boosted"
"yet didn't actually count towards their averages"
Those are two contradicting statements. Either you have no idea how GPA works, or you're again full of shit.
So once again, why is the Nicene Creed the litmus test? Again, you'd have to ignore literally dozens of verses in the NT that explicitly illustrate God and Jesus as two distinct individuals in order for the Nicene Creed to be true. The fact that you have to cherry pick this particular reasoning as opposed to the reasoning behind the original usage of the word further proves your ignorance.
Again, your interpretation of John 1:1 and John 1:14 only work if you take them literally. This is the same fallacy that atheists frequently use.
"And the Word was God"
Again, same deal as with John 10:30. John 1:1 and 1:14 could very easily mean that they "were" one in purpose. It's no different than someone saying "Je suis Charlie" after the Charlie Hebdo shootings back in 2015. That literally translates as "I am Charlie". Does that literally mean anyone who says that "is Charlie"? No, it means that they are one in purpose/principle.
Yes, you are quite literally making shit up. Unverifiable anecdotes = making shit up.