Daily Archives: November 10, 2008

Equality California has launched an online petition:  ”I demand my equality back. I commit to getting marriage equality back on the ballot if we don’t win in court.”

Links to the filings in the litigation have been posted on the California Supreme Court’s website.

CNSNews reports: “Nearly 90 percent of American Muslims supported Democrat Barack Obama on Election Day — and did so on the basis of economic and foreign policy concerns, top Muslim groups said in Washington, D.C., Friday.”  

CNA reports:  Intellectual heavyweight, Professor Robert P. George, has received an appointment as a member of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) . . .  As a member of COMEST, Prof. George will join …

The ADF Alliance Alert will not be published tomorrow, Nov. 11, as we honor our Nation’s Veterans.  

The ACLU reports: “The American Civil Liberties Union commends the Obama-Biden Transition team for including sexual orientation and gender identity in its non-discrimination policy as it prepares to assume power in January.”

VolunteerTV.com reports: “Volunteer TV has found out a lot more about the raid on a adult bookstore, we first told you about Saturday night. Officers arrested 15 people, after breaking up what they called a “meet and greet sex fest” …

What happened with the California Supreme Court ruling this year was a redefinition of marriage as an institution. Government, it is worth remembering, didn’t create marriage. Marriage is a universal public institution that has been defined for thousands of years as a sexual union between a husband and wife. It’s based around the ideas that babies are created via intercourse, that procreation is necessary for the survival of society and that babies need fathers as well as mothers.

The Phoenix Business Journal reports: “Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.”

Virtue Online reports: “Two Episcopal bishops and the head of The Episcopal Church’s gay and lesbian organization, Integrity, blasted voters who backed a successful ballot initiative to ban gay marriage in California and three other states.” Virtue Online also reports: …

How Appealing links to several articles discussing this topic. 

LifeNews.com reports: “Votes Yes for Life leader Leslee Unruh is not letting a second defeat of a state ban on most abortions deter her enthusiasm for pro-life activism. She and other pro-life advocates who worked for Measure 11 plan to …

LifeNews.com reports: “Respected Christian preacher Billy Graham has been an advisor and spiritual helper to presidents dating back to President Eisenhower. He is ending that relationship due to his age and health concers. Meanwhile, Graham’s son mentioned Obama’s pro-abortion position …

ADF-allied attorney David Dye, along with the Alliance Defense Fund, is representing a Perry County man in a parental custody battle over his daughter with the husband of his deceased ex-wife.

A medical procedure, known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), combines genetic testing and assisted reproductive technology (ART) to enable parents to screen their potential children before implantation for genetic or chromosomal characteristics.

The positive effect of religion in the real world, to my mind, is tied to this last, community component—rather than a belief in constant surveillance by a higher power. Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others.

Frustrated advocates adopted an “Oregon-plus-one” strategy, believing that if only a second state legalized assisted suicide, it would put the winds back into their sails. That theory is about to be tested.

NPR “Tell Me More” reports:  ”A roundtable of guests familiar with Proposition 8 discuss why the provision failed, sparking an emotional reaction.”

The Providence Journal reports:  ”You can’t buy a new car. In Maine, Minnesota and Colorado, plus 11 other states and assorted counties, at least 80 million Americans can kick tires on Sundays but can’t sign on the dotted line. Even …

Mercury News reports:  Antelope Valley Union High School District trustees have voted narrowly to defeat a plan to place the words “one nation under God” on a boardroom wall. The phrase, contained in the Pledge of Allegiance, was at the …

The Telegraph reports (includes video): “Israeli police have broken up a brawl among rival monks in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed the site of Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection.”  Haaretz (also includes video); Once again, monks come to blows …

In Colorado and South Dakota, pro-lifers were divided . . . In California and Washington pro-lifers were heavily outspent. Moral to this story: Pro-lifers must be united and they must be competitive in fundraising.

The Olympian reports: “Some major health care providers say they want nothing to do with the doctor-assisted-suicide law that Washington voters approved Tuesday. Others say they are reserving judgment.”  

The AP reports:  Even as voters in California banned same-sex marriage in a tight referendum, Tuesday’s election opened the door for the same debate in New York. The pending shift in state Senate control away from Republicans removes one clear …

The AP reports: “About 300 gay-rights advocates fanned out along sidewalks leading to Saddleback Church in Lake Forest to voice their anger of the church’s support of Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment approved by voters Tuesday that overturns a state …

The Center for Immigration Studies has posted this report indicating that Arizon’a Chief Justice has banned certain words from the courtroom.  The report concludes:  As private enterprises, newspapers can publish whatever they so choose. But to suggest that attorneys representing …

With U.S. commentators focused almost exclusively on the Presidential and Congressional elections, turning only to other matters as and when they seemed likely to influence the polling, it is unsurprising that recent events here in Britain have gone largely unremarked.

Pro-lifers lost big and marriage proponents won handily in this week’s election. The most dramatic pro-life loss, of course, was the presidency.

Instapundit links to Aaron Hicklin’s (editor of Out Magazine) article in The Guardian: For months, pro-gay marriage campaigners fretted that a big turnout for Obama would tip the scales in favour of Proposition 8 because it would bring out record …

Oral arguments are scheduled for Wednesday. Jay Sekulow of ACLJ will be arguing for the city.  ACLJ offers this update. More information and links to case filings:  Pleasant Grove City, UT v. Summum (07-665), on whether donated monuments displayed in public …

Law and politics always follow and reflects culture—they do not create culture. This has been the case throughout history.

OneNewsNow.com reports: The Alliance Defense Fund has dismissed a lawsuit against a Wisconsin school for retracting a discriminatory policy against a Christian club.  Open Door Church of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, ran into opposition from the school when it tried to …

Liberty Counsel has issued this press release that begins: “Today Liberty Counsel is filing a motion to intervene to defend against three lawsuits filed at the California Supreme Court by same-sex marriage advocates. The lawsuits, which were filed last week, are asking …

Currently, the Internal Revenue Service has placed itself in the role of evaluating the content of a pastor’s sermon to determine if the message is “political.” We need to ask: Where did this authority come from?

John Podesta: “We’re looking at — again, in virtually every agency to see where we can move forward, whether that’s on energy transformation, on improving health care, on stem cell research.”

He also predicted that the 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who have already wed would not see their marriages nullified by the initiative.

This is a major loss on the Gettysburg-type level for the other side,” said Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal group that has been at the center of the legal fight over same-sex marriage.

After setting the originalism “stage” and discussion of some of its tribulations, the article turns to the problem of constitutional silences.

As the abortion debate rages on in the United States, access to so-called “emergency contraception” has emerged as a highly contentious and controversial issue perched on the sidelines.

However, opponents of the UVVA believe that its hidden agenda is to expand fetal rights so drastically that they begin to override the rights of a pregnant woman recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.

American civil marriage is, to be sure, a secular institution. But the claim that it is a “wholly secular institution” suggests that religious arguments about civil marriage are just confused, guilty of a category mistake.

The Court determined that this right to privacy encompasses a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy. In Roe v. Wade, the foundation of abortion jurisprudence, the Court detailed a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy