Civil marriages will still happen in Iowa

An aftermath of the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision to require the state to allow same-sex couples to marry is reported by the The Des Moines Register as a major story with potentially significant implications when in fact it is not that significant of an issue. At least it’s not significant based on the facts buried in the story. Here, a magistrate, not a judge as the headline inaccurately proclaims, announced that he will no longer perform marriage ceremonies partially in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling.


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Let's work on those analogies

Newsweek has an interesting story about black parents adopting white children headlined “Raising Katie: What adopting a white girl taught a black family about race in the Obama era.” As you may have picked up from the headline, the story struggles a bit with trying to pack way too much into one family’s story. Still, it’s an interesting piece:


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Breaking: Fundamentalists are people too

Several years ago, when I submitted an interview article in the Evangelical Press Association’s Higher Goals Awards competition, my grim (and non-evangelical) judge dismissed the piece because it was a Q&A. Never mind that it was a friendly Q&A with Andrew Sullivan, soon after he wrote Virtually Normal, and appeared in the newspaper of the evangelical ministry Episcopalians United — not exactly Sullivan-worshipping territory.


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Distinctions with a difference

One of the more interesting stories regarding stem cell research is one that has been woefully under-reported. Even though scientists have been performing embryo-destructive stem cell research for a decade, there are no clinically available treatments that have resulted from the research. In the past two years, however, scientists have discovered ways of inducing pluripotent stem cells that many see as more promising.


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Christopher Buckley's wistful nonbelief

I’ve posted before in this space about the tensions between Catholic faith and glamour that existed in the household of William F. Buckley Jr. and his beloved wife, Pat. Now comes a tantalizing excerpt, through The New York Times Magazine, from Christopher Buckley’s memoir, Losing Mum and Pup.


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