Should a Catholic hospital abort a life-threatening pregnancy or let a pregnant woman die? Should a religious employer allow his employees access to contraceptives or break with healthcare legislation? People and organizations of faith often face moral decisions that have significant consequences. Research in psychology found that religion is typically associated with deontological judgment. Yet deontology consists of many principles, which may, at times, conflict. In three studies, we design a conflict between moral principles and find that the relationship between moral judgment and religiosity is more nuanced than currently assumed. Studies 1 and 2 show that, while religious U.S. Christians and Israeli Jews are more likely to form deontological judgments, they divide between the deontological principles of inaction and indirectness. Using textual analysis, we reveal that specific beliefs regarding divine responsibility and human responsibility distinguish inaction from indirectness deontologists. Study 3 exploits natural differences in religious saliency across days of the week to provide causal evidence that religion raises deontological tendencies on Sundays and selectively increases the appeal of inaction deontology for those who believe in an interventionist and responsible God.

This article is an exploration of how a group of men in the United States create homosocial (as opposed to homosexual) desire through language. In a society in which dominant discourses of masculinity provide competing scripts of male solidarity and heterosexuality, the achievement of closeness among men is not straightforward but must be negotiated through “indirect” means. It is shown how men actively negotiate dominant cultural discourses in their everyday interactions. In addition, a broadened view of indirectness, based on social function as much as denotation, is argued for.This article was initially presented in much shorter and different form at the Second International Gender and Language Association (IGALA) Conference in Lancaster, U.K., in April 2002. I would like to thank the audience there, and in particular Jennifer Coates, for their comments and lively discussion. I would also like to thank Deborah Tannen for her insightful comments and advice, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments strengthened the article considerably. I would also like to thank the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago for inviting me to have conversation about this work in their semiotics workshop, and specifically Lauren Keeler, Jonathan Rosa, and Michael Silverstein. Ultimately, responsibility for the article's contents remains with the author.