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Feb 7th, 2012
Posted by Alicia Gay, ACLU at 12:09pm

ACLU on Today: Birth Control Rule Does Not Put Religious Liberty at Risk

This morning Laura Murphy, Director of our Washington Legislative Office appeared on NBC’s Today to discuss the recent controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s announcement that it would keep in place a proposed rule that ensures that new insurance plans include coverage of contraception.

The powerful lobbying arm of the Catholic Church, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has repeatedly made claims to the press and their constituents that the rule violates their religious liberty. During her appearance, Murphy made it clear that religious liberty is not at risk. What is at stake is the guarantee that everyone is treated fairly and can live their lives free from discrimination. 

On Today Murphy said, “People are not being forced to adopt a new set of religious beliefs by this rule. They can practice their religion as they see fit, they can choose not to use birth control.”

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And she’s right.

The ACLU has always been a strong advocate for religious freedom. For nearly a century we have defended the rights of all religious believers – from majority and minority faiths alike – to practice their religion. And to be clear, the rule does not require religious institutions like churches or synagogues that hire people of the same belief for the purposes of advancing that faith to purchase birth control coverage for their employees. Moreover, clergy remain free to espouse their beliefs, and individual women remain free to follow those beliefs or not, according to their own conscience.   However, the fundamental promise of religious liberty in this country doesn’t create a right to impose those views on others, including ignoring civil rights laws or denying critical health care.

One thing the Bishops and other religious leaders aren’t talking about is women’s health and that is at the heart of this issue as well. We know that the vast majority of women will use birth control in their lifetimes. And we know health care matters for women– be she a scientist at Norte Dame or a janitor working at St. Vincent’s Hospital – access to affordable birth control is essential for women and their families.

True religious freedom gives everyone the right to make personal decisions, including whether and when to use birth control based on our own beliefs and according to what is best for our health and the well-being of our families. It does not give religious groups the right to impose their beliefs on others.

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Tags: birth control, Catholic Church, contraception

Jan 28th, 2012
Posted by Ian Thompson, Washington Legislative Office at 3:46pm

New HUD Rule Delivers for LGBT Americans

Last year, we told you about a proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regarding equal access to HUD housing programs regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Among the key requirements of the rule is a prohibition on inquires regarding sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as a prohibition on using sexual orientation or gender identity as grounds for decision-making in Federal Housing Administration (FHA) programs. Additionally, the rule brings the definition of “eligible families” into the 21st century by including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). 

This afternoon, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that the final rule will be published in the Federal Register early next week, meaning that it will take effect in just a little over one month from today! Needless to say, this is a tremendous step forward in efforts to stamp out discrimination against LGBT people in housing.

Of critical importance, the rule will require all organizations that operate HUD-assisted or HUD-insured housing facilities to serve LGBT Americans looking for shelter and housing—including religious organizations. As a coalition of more than 30 civil rights organizations (including the ACLU) wrote to HUD last year, once a religious organization chooses to provide housing services or programs with the aid of federal funds and benefits from HUD, it cannot shield itself from traditional safeguards that protect civil rights in the provision of those services. Those religious organizations that provide wholly private housing services will be unaffected by this new rule.  We are pleased that HUD said that all organizations must provide equal access to HUD housing programs and did not sanction the use of religion to discriminate. 

As Secretary Donovan stated last year at the time of the publication of the proposed rule, “This is a fundamental issue of fairness. We have a responsibility to make certain that public programs are open to all Americans.  With this proposed rule, we will make clear that a person’s eligibility for federal housing programs is, and should be, based on their need and not on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The ACLU could not agree with Secretary Donovan more strongly. This new federal rule will move us one step closer to an America where decent, affordable housing is available to all Americans.

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Tags: Housing, HUD, LGBT

Jan 21st, 2012
Posted by Dennis Parker, Director, ACLU Racial Justice Program at 08:49am

Remembering Dr. King's Dream as Voters Go to the Polls in South Carolina

Today voters are going to the polls in South Carolina to exercise their most fundamental democratic right: the right to vote. This week we celebrated the life and work of Martin Luther King, and in doing so we recall his championing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Recognizing the pitifully low number of blacks who were eligible to vote at that time, Dr. King believed that until all African Americans were able to participate in the electoral process, there could be no real justice in this country.

Forty-seven years later, we are seeing the resurgence of efforts to enact laws that will have the effect of reducing the number of black people participating in the election. So instead of moving closer to the all-inclusive democracy King dreamed of, we are seeing steps which are calculated to fragment the nation along racial lines. We see this in the thinly veiled, coded references designed to gain support by appealing to uglier, racial feelings. In a sense, the discussions surrounding the South Carolina primaries may be a portent of the coming campaign and the likelihood that King’s dream of a unified country may ever be achieved. Trying to gain political advantage by balkanizing the country may yield short term victories but bodes ill for the country as a whole.

The fact that Martin Luther King seems like an increasingly distant historical figure is only partly explained by the relentless passing of time. The rest can be explained by the limited way in which his life and work is often described. King is most frequently linked with his protests against segregated buses and lunch counters and other examples of apartheid that seem far removed from the present era, a time when an African American occupies the nation’s highest office.

Any complacency about society’s success in addressing the most obvious forms of discrimination is unwarranted. In fact, significant parts of King’s dream remain unrealized and seldom commented upon. Throughout his struggle, King emphasized economic inequalities in American society. In his “I Have a Dream Speech” he railed about the fact that, a hundred years after emancipation, African Americans still lived “on a lonely island of poverty.” He complained that the passage of a century did not change the fact African Americans “still languished in the corners of American Society.” On the day he died, he was protesting the mistreatment of Memphis sanitation workers, a mistreatment that was in part economic.

What would the Martin Luther King who was concerned with the economic justice make of the fact that, in a period of general economic crisis, African Americans are hit twice as hard, enduring an unemployment rate twice that of the nation as a whole? How would he regard the 20 to 1 white/black wealth disparity, a disparity far worse than when he was living? What would he think of the explosive growth in the number of black men incarcerated since his time? How would the man who said “we cannot be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity” view the draconian and unfair policies which push black children out of schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems?

Most topically, what would the man who dreamed of African-American inclusion in the political and social life of the country make of the role of race in the discussions during the 2012 election year? At a time when race still figures prominently in American life, discussion about it is either suppressed or used as a tool of fear to manipulate voter emotion. Now that economic issues have eclipsed the fear of rising crime, the spectre of Willie Horton has given way to the image of the lazy black person living off unemployment. No doubt he would share the view that talking about black people living off of other people’s money or suggesting that poor black children need to learn the “habit of work” is a calculating and cynical view given the unavailability of employment opportunities for poor black adults and the harsh realities faced by those who can find jobs but who need to work multiple jobs to scrape by.

If King were alive today, he would be continuing the struggle for racial justice and we must too. In the end, we honor him most not by celebrating his achievements but by fighting to achieve the unrealized parts of his dream.

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Tags: Martin Luther King Jr., racial justice, voting rights

Jan 8th, 2012
Posted by Zachary Katznelson, National Security Project at 10:38am

Injustice at Guantánamo: Past and Present

Image, left: Lakhdar and Yusuf (born 8/2010) - September 2011

This Wednesday marks 10 years since the prison at Guantánamo Bay opened. Today in The New York Times, Lakhdar Boumediene reflects on that anniversary and tells the harrowing tale of the seven and a half years he spent imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. Mr. Boumediene always maintained his innocence, fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court in a case that bears his name, and ultimately won his freedom before a federal court in Washington. Today, he lives in France with his wife and three children.

Mr. Boumediene’s personal experience goes to the heart of what is wrong with Guantánamo. Originally from Algeria, he became a Bosnian citizen and worked there for the Red Crescent — the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross. In October 2001, he was taken away from his wife and two daughters, arrested and falsely accused of being an al Qaeda operative. After three months of investigation, Bosnia's highest court found there was no evidence against him, but instead of tasting freedom, he was kidnapped by the United States government, trussed up and flown to Guantanamo. There, he was brutally treated, beaten, subjected to extreme temperatures, forced to stay in painful positions for hours at a time, sleep deprived and beaten. His wife and young children were never allowed to visit and their letters were either rejected entirely or heavily censored. Mr. Boumediene went on hunger strike to peacefully protest his incarceration without charge. He was force-fed for two years.

Boumediene in Paris weeks after his release from Guantánamo — Spring 2009

Still, somehow, Mr. Boumediene maintained the strength to fight for his freedom. In his historic 2008 case, Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners like him must have a meaningful opportunity to challenge their confinement. Months later, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. had no credible evidence against Mr. Boumediene and ordered him set free. It turns out the government’s entire case relied on a single unnamed informant, whom U.S. Embassy officials in Bosnia had found untrustworthy at the time Mr. Boumediene was originally seized. Yet he remained imprisoned for seven and a half years. He was finally reunited with his family in France in May 2009.

In his op-ed, he writes:

“Some politicians say that people in Guantánamo are terrorists, but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children’s lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again....I’m told that my Supreme Court case is now read in law schools. Perhaps one day that will give me satisfaction, but so long as Guantánamo stays open and innocent men remain there, my thoughts will be with those left behind in that place of suffering and injustice.”

While Mr. Boumediene is finally free, over 170 men remain in Guantánamo, stuck in a limbo created by the politics of fear that surround anything to do with terrorism. The majority of Guantanamo prisoners have been unanimously cleared for release by the United States intelligence and military communities, but remain incarcerated, to the cost of over $70 million a year. The reason is politics and failure by all three branches of government to act to bring an end to Guantánamo. It is a lot easier to bang the drum of fear than to sound the call of justice.

 

Taken the day before release, the only known photo of a prisoner and lawyer at Guantánamo - May 2009

I had the honor of interviewing Mr. Boumediene last week, and our conversation will be available online later this week as a podcast on the ACLU’s website. It is a unique opportunity to hear the words of a man who has actually experienced Guantánamo Bay from the inside, with all its failings and profound ugliness. We ask that you stand today with Mr. Boumediene and call upon the U.S. government to finally end the blight on our reputation — and our security — that is Guantánamo Bay. Join us in asking President Obama to keep his promise to close the prison camp by charging and trying the prisoners who are there, or sending them home.

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Tags: Close Gitmo, Close Guantanamo, detention, Gitmo at 10, guantanamo, indefinite detention, Lakhdar Boumediene

Dec 25th, 2011
Posted by Alicia Gay, ACLU at 07:33am

12 Days of Religious Liberty - Day 12

During what is often referred to as the holiday season, a variety of cultures and religions honor an equally diverse number of both religious and secular traditions. Christmas, Hanukkah, and Bodhi Day are just some of the religious holidays that are celebrated this time of year. And for many who don’t subscribe to a particular faith tradition, the season is still seen as an occasion to gather with friends and family.

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No matter why you are celebrating this holiday season, we can all celebrate living in a country where religious freedom is a fundamental value. The First Amendment's Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses not only protect the right to believe (or not to believe), but also the right to express and to manifest religious beliefs.

In honor of our country’s proud history of promoting religious freedom, and the ACLU’s commitment to protecting the rights of all religious believers to practice their faith, this holiday season we are highlighting 12 cases we have brought on behalf of a variety of faiths defending religious liberty and the right to religious expression.

Twelfth Day: Standing Up For Christmas
Invariably during the run-up to Christmas, the ACLU is wrongfully disparaged for waging a mythical "War on Christmas." In fact, the ACLU zealously defends the right of both non-believers to practice no religion at all and religious believers, including Christians, to practice their religion freely. And the ACLU’s zeal certainly does not take a vacation during the holidays.

In 2003, The ACLU of Rhode Island interceded on behalf of an interdenominational group of carolers who were told they could not sing Christmas carols on Christmas Eve to inmates at the women's prison in Cranston, RI. Because of our efforts, the prison relented and the prisoners were treated to caroling.

That same year, the ACLU of Massachusetts sued on behalf of a group of high school students who were disciplined by school officials for distributing candy canes with religious messages just before Christmas. The students, members of the school’s Bible Club, each received a one-day suspension for handing out the candy canes. The ACLU argued that the school’s actions interfered with the free speech rights of public high school students under both state law and the First Amendment, which proects their speech as long as it does not disrupt the educational process.

Religious expression is a valued and protected part of the First Amendment rights guaranteed to all citizens.  Christmas is pervasive in our society, both publicly and privately, and, except when the government is being used to promote and favor religious beliefs, it is entirely constitutional. Read more…

See previous days »

For more instances of the ACLU rigorously defending the rights of all religious believers to practice their faiths, please visit our website.

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Tags: 12 days, Religion

Dec 24th, 2011
Posted by Alicia Gay, ACLU at 10:23am

12 Days of Religious Liberty - Day 11

During what is often referred to as the holiday season, a variety of cultures and religions honor an equally diverse number of both religious and secular traditions. Christmas, Hanukkah, and Bodhi Day are just some of the religious holidays that are celebrated this time of year. And for many who don’t subscribe to a particular faith tradition, the season is still seen as an occasion to gather with friends and family.

?

No matter why you are celebrating this holiday season, we can all celebrate living in a country where religious freedom is a fundamental value. The First Amendment's Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses not only protect the right to believe (or not to believe), but also the right to express and to manifest religious beliefs.

In honor of our country’s proud history of promoting religious freedom, and the ACLU’s commitment to protecting the rights of all religious believers to practice their faith, this holiday season we are highlighting 12 cases we have brought on behalf of a variety of faiths defending religious liberty and the right to religious expression.

Eleventh Day: ACLU Helps a Prisoner Receive Proper Religious Diet
Around the world, many people of faith abide by dietary guidelines that are dictated by their religion. The ACLU supports the rights of individuals to worship as they see fit, and that includes the ability to access a diet consistent with one’s religious beliefs.

Officials at the Teller County Jail in Colorado determined that prisoners could not have “certain religious articles or diets.” That decision prompted one inmate, a practicing Seventh-Day Adventist to reach out to the ACLU of Colorado. The prisoner had repeatedly requested a diet in accordance with his religious beliefs, but was repeatedly denied. For months the inmate was unable to eat portions of the regular prison meals that would have violated his religious tenets, and as a result experienced health problems and lost significant weight.

The ACLU wrote a letter of inquiry which resulted in a revision of the jail's policy to allow for religious accommodation. Read more…

See previous days »

For more instances of the ACLU rigorously defending the rights of all religious believers to practice their faiths, please visit our website.

Learn more about religious liberty: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Tags: 12 days, Religion

Dec 23rd, 2011
Posted by Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 2:51pm

This Year in Civil Liberties: 2011

2011 was certainly a year in which a number of the issues the ACLU works on really disturbed our blog readers. To sum up the year, we present you with some of the top issues from the past 12 months by taking a look at our most popular blog posts.

National Defense Authorization Act
This past year, there was no topic hotter on the Blog of Rights than the National Defense Authorization Act. In May, we blogged about the vote in the House of Representatives on a troubling expansion of war authority. Though the House passed the NDAA with the provision to authorize worldwide war, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed its version of the bill without that provision. Unfortunately, this version did include provisions for indefinite detention.

Outraged by indefinite detention provisions that would allow this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world, blog readers took action to ask their Senators to vote against the provisions. Despite our efforts, both the House and Senate passed the NDAA with the indefinite detention provisions. As I write this, the NDAA is sitting on the President’s desk. According to reports, the President's advisors are recommending that he not veto this legislation despite earlier promises to do so. We need to tell the President to listen to the American people.

FBI: If We Told You, You Might Sue
In May we blogged about some documents released to us by the government as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. In the documents, the government explains that it doesn't want you to know whether your internet or phone company is cooperating with its dragnet surveillance program because you might get upset and file lawsuits asserting your constitutional rights.

Tennessee Principal's Reaction to GSA T-Shirt Raises the Question: Who's Really Causing the Disruption Here?
Blog of Rights readers were also heated about Tennessee Principal Maurice Moser, who threw a fit in school about student Chris Sigler’s Gay-Straight Alliance t-shirt. Opposed to allowing a GSA at the school, Moser charged into Chris's economics class, interrupted the students in the middle of taking a test and ordered everyone except Chris to leave.

License Plate Scanners Logging Our Every Move
Last month, we found out that the District of Columbia is engaging in widespread tracking of citizens’ movements using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). It has now become clear that this technology, if we do not limit its use, will represent a significant step toward the creation of a surveillance society in the United States.

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Dec 23rd, 2011
Posted by Rebecca McCray, Criminal Law Reform Project at 2:31pm

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discoursethat we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No
In this powerful editorial, Paul Butler explains why jurors in marijuana cases should exercise their right to vote “not guilty.” A staunch advocate of jury nullification, Butler suggests jurors who willfully ignore the law in unjust cases are part of a proud American tradition.

Almost 1 in 3 U.S. Youths Arrested by Age 23, Researchers Say
A disturbing new study in the journal Pediatrics revealed that nearly 30 percent of young Americans will be arrested by the time they turn 23. Coming into contact with the criminal justice system at a young age can set off a cascade of collateral consequences for youth, such as unemployment and a greater risk of family conflict.

Awaiting Trial and Unable to Make Bail, Women Spend Holidays in Prison
A series of work by photographer Clara Vanucci documents an annual holiday party for women in jail at Rikers Island. They are part of a program that offers counseling and activities for women who have been victims of domestic violence and arrested on charges related to their abuse.

How Do You Hold Mentally Ill Offenders Accountable?
According to Jon De Morales, director of California’s Atascadero hospital, “There are criminals who happen to exhibit symptoms of a mental disorder," and "there are mentally ill people who happen to have committed crimes. They all end up in the same place.” Some argue this shouldn’t be the case. This article examines the complex problem of protecting both those who work with the mentally ill, and the mentally ill themselves.

“Realigning” Criminal Justice in California: Real Reform, or Shifting the Deck Chairs?
Professor of Criminology Elliott Currie reflects on and reviews California’s criminal justice realignment efforts in 2011. Currie suggests that while the effort to redistribute California’s prisoners is a “generally reasonable intervention” in the chaos of the state’s overcrowded system, it fails to address “the ongoing crisis of the communities from which the great bulk of the prison and jail population comes.”

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Tags: death penalty, juvenile justice, overincarceration, overincarceration clips

Dec 23rd, 2011
Posted by Galen Sherwin, Women's Rights Project at 10:13am

Madison School Board Rejects Sex Segregated School

Early Tuesday morning in Wisconsin, the Madison School Board voted 5-2 against a proposal to start a charter school that would have segregated students on the basis of sex, relying on a model of “gender specific” instruction.  The vote marked the culmination of a year-long advocacy campaign in which ACLU-WI collaborated closely with numerous allies.  

The proposal was defeated largely on grounds that the school was to use non-union teachers with little school board oversight.  Although those issues predominated at the hearing, the ACLU of Wisconsin made sure that the school board could not ignore the gender equality issues. 

As ACLU-WI ED Chris Ahmuty explained in an op-ed published Monday:

The proposal still fails to explain why or how sex segregation would close the racial achievement gap, raises serious questions about the equality of opportunities to be offered to boys and girls, and falls far short of satisfying the requirements of federal law.

Though the revised proposal promises identical curriculums for boys' and girls' classes, the Urban League has recently confirmed that it supports "gender specific" teaching methods — or the theory that boys and girls learn so differently that they require different teaching styles.

Although this may sound relatively benign, most people would be shocked at what it actually looks like in practice: Boys are allowed to toss footballs and jump and run around during academic classes, while girls sit quietly in circles and work collaboratively; teachers shout at boys and speak softly to girls; boys are presumed to be more interested in subjects like hunting or sports, and girls in relationships and beauty.

These are nothing more than archaic sex stereotypes, repackaged as "science." Such stereotypes limit opportunities for boys and girls alike, and they have no place in publicly funded schools.

They are also unlawful. The Supreme Court has held that educational institutions can't structure their programs based on overbroad generalizations about the different talents and capacities and preferences of men and women. Officials, including the school district and the Department of Public instruction, have recognized that sex segregation is legally risky, but have otherwise punted on definitively determining the plan's legality, deferring to future decision-makers. But the buck stops here; the School Board cannot afford to take gender equality equally lightly.

Madison clearly cannot afford to ignore racial inequality in education, and the board’s vote should not mean the end of that aspect of the debate.  But as Chris explained, “coeducation didn't cause the racial achievement gap, and programs that reinforce stereotypes about boys and girls will certainly not fix it.”

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Tags: sex-segregated schools, single-sex education

Dec 23rd, 2011
Posted by Alicia Gay, ACLU at 09:47am

12 Days of Religious Liberty - Day 10

During what is often referred to as the holiday season, a variety of cultures and religions honor an equally diverse number of both religious and secular traditions. Christmas, Hanukkah, and Bodhi Day are just some of the religious holidays that are celebrated this time of year. And for many who don’t subscribe to a particular faith tradition, the season is still seen as an occasion to gather with friends and family.

?

No matter why you are celebrating this holiday season, we can all celebrate living in a country where religious freedom is a fundamental value. The First Amendment's Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses not only protect the right to believe (or not to believe), but also the right to express and to manifest religious beliefs.

In honor of our country’s proud history of promoting religious freedom, and the ACLU’s commitment to protecting the rights of all religious believers to practice their faith, this holiday season we are highlighting 12 cases we have brought on behalf of a variety of faiths defending religious liberty and the right to religious expression.

Tenth Day: A Mosque in Maine
Zoning regulations must not restrict religious expression, and the ACLU has fought on behalf of various religious groups to ensure they have the ability to worship freely in their communities.

The Maine Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the City of Portland on behalf of the Portland Masjid and Islamic Center, a group of Muslims seeking to build a mosque. The group had collectively purchased a small building, a former television repair shop, to use as a community center for prayer and education. Existing zoning laws classified the building as part of a residential and commercial zone. Religious activities were prohibited.

In response to the MCLU’s legal and advocacy efforts, Portland amended its land-use ordinance, and the Portland Planning Board granted approval to the project.

The mosque now primarily serves as a religious and cultural center for Muslim families who came to this country from Afghanistan fleeing religious persecution following invasion of their country by the Soviet Union. Read more…

See previous days »

For more instances of the ACLU rigorously defending the rights of all religious believers to practice their faiths, please visit our website.

Learn more about religious liberty: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Tags: 12 days, Religion

 

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