US Opinion and Commentary

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A Gun Law that Could Have Prevented the Orlando Massacre

Posted June 22nd, 2016 at 4:30 pm (UTC-5)
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Under a GVRO policy, family members and/or law enforcement officials can petition a judge to have firearms temporarily removed from an individual in crisis for a period of one year. This would allow those who are a threat to themselves and/or others the time they need to get help and heal.

After Orlando, Drive Out Hate With Light and Love

Posted June 14th, 2016 at 10:50 am (UTC-5)
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The human reaction is to want to strike back…Dr. Martin Luther King taught us a different lesson…. “Darkness,” he wrote, “cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”

The Muslim Silence on Gay Rights

Posted June 14th, 2016 at 10:02 am (UTC-5)
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No religion has a monopoly on homophobia. The track record of exclusion and outright abuse of gay men and women in the name of God is a depressing reality across faiths. But we cannot use those analogies to excuse our own shortcomings.

Madmen and the Politics of Islamophobia

Posted June 13th, 2016 at 2:32 pm (UTC-5)
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By Barbara Slavin The worst mass shooting in U.S. history – at a gay bar in Orlando, Fla. – brings to mind another slaughter of innocents by a madman claiming allegiance to an ideology: the 1977 killing of 77 people, most of them children at a holiday resort, by Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik. Like Omar […]