Gallup publishes an annual survey each October on attitudes toward the death penalty. The January 2013 survey shows the consistency of general support for capital punishment: 63 percent in favor of the death penalty. The poll also shows Republicans and Independents are much more likely to support the death penalty than Democrats. But when given the choice […]

Suman Raghunathan is executive director of South Asian American Leading Together. The organization links to civil rights groups, immigrant rights groups and South Asian groups.

Brian D. Lepard is a law professor at the University of Nebraska; one of his specialties is international human rights law. He wrote In the Glory of the Father: The Bahá’í Faith and Christianity. He also served at the United Nations Office of the Bahá’í International Community.

Factnet.org posts a Church of Scientology opposition page.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established as an independent body by the Church of Scientology in 1969 “to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights and to clean up the field of mental healing.” The commission maintains a museum in Los Angeles and has chapters in 16 states and 34 countries. Contact through the website.

Davison M. Douglas is director of the Election Law Program at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. He wrote the essay “‘Christian Nation’ as a Concept in Supreme Court Jurisprudence” for Religion and American Law: An Encyclopedia.

The Rev. Lewis V. Baldwin is a professor emeritus of religious studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He edited the book The Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.: The Boundaries of Law, Politics and Religion.  

Read an October 28, 2009, story on CNN.com about President Obama signing a bill that makes it a crime to assault someone based on their sexuality or gender.