Research

Using the "War on Drugs" to Arrest Pregnant Women

The War On Drugs, launched in 1971 by Richard Nixon, has been repeatedly exposed as a failure. Yet, the same failed tactics used to fight drugs continue to be used to retain control over women’s reproduction. Drug laws are increasingly being…

Article

GOP Lawmaker Reveals ALEC-style Group Pushing Model Anti-Worker Bills

Even as ALEC, the infamous bill-mill that produces right-wing model legislation for state lawmakers, hemorrhages corporate members and is discredited as a neutral voice in politics, other groups are adopting its tactics. PRA interviewed one…

Article

The Long Hurricane - 10 years later

Survivors' Village at St. Bernard Projects, New Orleans.

It’s been ten years since the Category 3 hurricane named Katrina came ashore in Louisiana, causing over 1,800 deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. Five years after the storm, Political Research Associates published the below piece in…

Article

Anti-Death Penalty Activism Reinforces Racist Status Quo

While abolishing the death penalty would clearly be a positive step forward, it is a limited and inadequate objective — particularly if achieved without any meaningful discussion of the racism and structural inequalities that produced and continue…

Article

World Congress of Families to Feature Anti-LGBTQ Family Scholars

One of the leading exporters of U.S.-style culture wars—the World Congress of Families (WCF)—is hosting an international gathering of right-wing scholars and activists in Salt Lake City, Utah later this year. It will be WCF’s first major conference…

Article

Big Questions About Templeton

How the Philanthropic Giant Legitimizes Faith Healing

Templeton has sought to create a rapprochement between science and religion. This article traces the impact of the Foundation by exploring a slice of its influence on research into the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements.

Article

When Anti-Abortion Propaganda is Accepted as Investigative Journalism

One of the underreported aspects of the current smear campaign against Planned Parenthood is the coarsening and polarizing of our civil discourse that usually accompanies discussions of the culture wars. This has been especially glaring because the…

Article

Catholic Democrats & the Group Behind the Anti-Planned Parenthood Videos

Anti-abortion Catholic Democrats have long sought to cast their cause as progressive, but their actions have taken them into common cause with the Religious Right. This tendency has been on display during the brouhaha over the publication of the…

Article

Beyond the Hate Frame

An Interview with Kay Whitlock & Michael Bronski

What is called “hate violence”—violence directed at vulnerable and marginalized groups—is not abhorrent to respectable society. On the contrary, respectable society has provided the models, policies, and practices that marginalize people of color,…

Q&A

Charleston & Chattanooga

How “Hatred” Hides History

The Charleston and Chattanooga shooters had very similar lives and stories. Yet one’s actions are labeled as terrorism, and the others’ as “hate.”

Article

HR Lobbying Group Leading the Charge Against Labor Department's Overtime Expansion

With few exceptions, it’s been decades since U.S. employers have had to sit across the bargaining table with their employees’ unions. Now that workers have less ability to protect their own interests, they are more vulnerable to the tricks…

Article

White House Fails to Reveal Faith-Based Initiative Budget, Though Some Agencies Will Share Theirs

President Obama may not have continued George W. Bush’s over-reliance on religious organizations to carry out the functions of government. But six years into the “most transparent administration,” the activities and budget of the White House…

Article

U.S. "Army of God" Operative Plasters Kenya with Anti-LGBTQI Posters

Jonathan O’Toole—an American anti-choice activist based in Nakuru, Kenya—makes no secret of his opinions about President Obama. “I hate Obama, I hate his guts,” he told me in a recent interview. “I’m against him. I’m his enemy.”

Article

The Past Repeats

Christian Right Turns to Nullification to Counter Marriage Equality

Last year in The Public Eye magazine, Rachel Tabachnick and Frank L. Cocozzelli warned of the trend on the religious and political Right toward the use of “nullification” as a means of resistance by states to federal laws of which they do not…

Article

Latin America in the Crosshairs

Alliance Defending Freedom Takes Aim

ADF, an Arizona-based, right-wing religious legal organization, has, in the last decade, made a dedicated push to grow its international portfolio. Having made significant inroads domestically, they moved into Europe, Eastern Europe, and Southeast…

Article

Neo-Confederate South Loses Again – This Time to Free-Market Neoliberalism

After nine Black churchgoers were gunned down in Charleston, South Carolina, the Confederate battle flag is driving a wedge between neo-Confederates and free-market neoliberals.

Article

When the Exception Is the Rule: Christianity in the Religious Freedom Debates

The 2014 case of General Synod of the United Church of Christ v. Cooper was a landmark event because, although the case was ostensibly about opposition to marriage equality, the decision upheld foundational notions of religious equality and equal…

Article

Religious Right Leaders Strategize

Who Needs SCOTUS When You Can Control Everything Else?

NAR is a hierarchical network of “apostles” that seeks to “remake the theology and structure of Christianity in a theocratic mold.” (See PRA’s profile of NAR.) Just four years ago, Religious Right leaders were reluctant to openly affiliate…

Article

Charleston Massacre An Attack on Christianity? Yes, But Not How the Christian Right Says

Immediately following the mass murder some Christian Right leaders jumped onto the airwaves to claim the shooting was an example of the campaign against religious freedom in America. It turns out they were onto something, just not what they had…

Article

The Art of Activism: Asad Badat

Asad Badat, the artist behind the cover of the Summer 2015 issue, says he’s always seen himself as “a passionate observer who has romantic eyes for beauty.” Recently, though, he’s departed from this observatory position, opting instead to use his…

Search

Research