Read an April 27, 2009, interview at ReligionDispatches.org with Leonard Zeskind, author of a new book, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement From the Margins to the Mainstream. Among other things, the book describes the religious roots of the movement.

Read a June 16, 2009, Christiannewswire.com story about a letter from 60 religious conservatives asking senators to filibuster the hate-crimes bill then under consideration for fear it would “criminalize preaching the Gospel and put preachers in the crosshairs.” Among the signers were James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Don […]

Factcheck.org has an analysis to address the concern over whether a hate-crime law covering sexual orientation could lead to charges against pastors who preach that homosexuality is a sin. Factcheck.org says no, but Catholic League head Bill Donohue — who has expressed strong reservations about the bill — disputed that analysis in a news release.

Pamela Cushing is a cultural anthropologist who teaches sociology at King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario. She has studied the L’Arche community, which provides homes for people with intellectual disabilities. She has also written about caregiving, researched social inclusion of people with disabilities and studied the growth of disabilities studies programs in the English-speaking […]

Read an Oct. 13, 2009, blog post at “On Faith” by David Waters about the religiously based opposition to the hate-crimes bill.

John Swinton is a nurse, ordained minister and theologian who teaches at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He has written extensively on the theology of disability; his publications include Theology, Disability and the New Genetics: Why Science Needs the Church (as co-editor) and the article “The Body of Christ Has Down’s Syndrome: Theological Reflections on Disability, Vulnerability […]

In June 2009, the Unitarian Universalist Association launched a campaign against hate crimes called “Standing on the Side of Love.” The campaign was a response to a July 27, 2008, attack on the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church that killed two people and wounded seven. The gunman told authorities he was angered by the church’s acceptance of homosexuality […]

Johannes S. “Hans” Reinders is the Bernard Lievegoed Professor of Ethics and Mental Disability at the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He co-chaired a 2007 interdisciplinary conference, “Learning From the Disabled,” that explored what people who have disabilities can teach those who are not impaired. His publications include The Future of the Disabled in Liberal […]

Xavier Le Pichon is a professor of geodynamics at the Collège de France in Aix-en-Provence. Internationally known for his work on plate tectonics, he founded with his wife the Thomas Philippe House (La Maison Thomas Philippe), a facility in southern France for families of people with intellectual disabilities. The house is named after the Rev. Thomas Philippe, mentor of […]