religious right

Modesty taught me that my first priority needed to be making sure I wasn’t a “stumbling block” to men. Not being sexually attractive was the most important thing I had to consider when buying clothes, putting them on, maintaining my weight (can’t have things getting tight!), and moving around (can’t wiggle those hips, or let a little knee show). Modesty taught me that what I looked like was what mattered most of all. Not what I thought. Not how I felt. Not what I was capable of doing. Worrying about modesty, and being vigilantnotto be sexy, made me even more obsessed with my looks than the women in short shorts and spray tans I was taught to hate

According to a New York Times article today, the White House has now publicly confirmed that President Obama is considering caving to demands by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and other far right religious groups on the requirement that insurance plans under health reform cover birth control without a co-pay.

Follow Jodi Jacobson on Twitter, @jljacobson

The Department of Health and Human Services has included contraceptive coverage as essential preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, while exempting organizations with an explicit religious mission from having to comply. For some, this exemption does not go far enough. But how far can religious right organizations go in denying their employees access to essential preventive care?

Follow Annamarya Scaccia on Twitter, @sitswithpasta

Deep within America, beyond your typical evangelicals and run of the mill fundamentalists, nurtured within the homeschool movement and growing by the day, are the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements. This is where I grew up.

This article, "The Beautiful Girlhood Doll," by Libby Anne is shared by Vyckie Garrison from her site No Longer Quivering. Libby Anne also writes at her blog, Love, Joy, Feminism. This article first appeared at Butterflies and Wheels.

Fundamentalist Christians are convinced that contemporary American society is the World's Most Spectacular Display of hideously mutated, diseased and anomalous freaks.  "Step right up folks!" the preacher yells, "and witness a grotesque parade of ho-mo-sex-uals, lesbians, Wiccans, radical feminists, godless liberals, secular humanists, and ... (congregation gasps) Muslim extremists!"

The Texas Independent reports today on violations ranging from fire safety to client privacy in Texas’ many “alternatives to abortion” contractors.

Even after the Silsby affair, when ten American missionaries were arrested in Haiti for attempted child theft, the Christian adoption movement is unchastened.

There's one "little" detail in THE FAMiLY LEADER's "Marriage Vow" that critics have overlooked - small, subtle, and yet glaringly obvious once you see it: Simply stated, women who are unwilling to subordinate and sacrifice themselves to populate America’s economic and political war machine are selfish with a capital “I” - s.e.l.f.I.s.h.

When accumulated in one place, the number of lies the religious right tells about human sexuality and gender roles is dizzying.  But countering their lies with facts, while important, is more complex than simply insisting on the facts. 

Follow Amanda Marcotte on Twitter, @amandamarcotte