Daily Archives: July 22, 2009

ABC reports: “On the heels of perhaps the most controversial gay rights incident in El Paso, city leaders are now putting forth a plan that would benefit gay couples. By the end of July, City Council is expected to decide whether to extend benefits not just to same-sex partners of city employees, but also to heterosexual couples in committed relationships.”

Randy Pate writing at the The Foundry (Heritage Foundation): “The Alliance Defense Fund announced today that a lawsuit had been filed in federal court on behalf of a Catholic nurse who says her employer, Mount Sinai Hospital, forced her to assist in performing a late-term abortion in spite of her strongly held religious beliefs against abortion.”

INFORUM reports: “The city of Fargo is asking for the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging its display of the Ten Commandments by the Red River Valley Freethinkers. The city argues that the Freethinkers lack the legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of the display, upheld in an earlier court challenge by the group.”

LifeNews reports: “‘Pro-life nurses shouldn’t be forced to assist in abortions against their beliefs,’ [Bowman] said. ‘Requiring a devout, Catholic nurse to participate in a late-term abortion in order to remain employed is illegal, unethical, and violates her rights of conscience.’

‘Federal law requires that employers who receive funding from tax dollars must not compel employees to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, but this nurse’s objections fell on deaf ears,’ Bowman added.

‘Chasing away workers from the health care field is disastrous health care policy,’ Bowman continued. ‘An individual’s conscience is likely what brought them to the health care field. Denying or coercing their conscience will likely drive them right out.’”

Jennifer Ditchburn reports in The Canadian Press: “A gay and lesbian arts festival that was told it met all government criteria under a new tourism stimulus program learned Tuesday it was rejected for funding.”

Madeleine Baran reports at Minnesota Public Radio: “The St. Paul City Council is expected to adopt an ordinance today allowing domestic partners to register with the city. Under the ordinance, same-sex or opposite-sex couples could apply for a certificate showing that they are in a committed relationship.”

LifeSiteNews reports: “An anonymous lesbian couple have won the right to in vitro fertilization (IVF) paid for by the National Health Service (NHS) after a legal battle with their local health trust, which initially refused them the service because they were of the same sex and the child would by fatherless.”

Jim Ash reports in the Tallahassee Democrat: “Now a candidate for U.S. Senate, Crist hinted today that he might support lifting the ban. At first, Crist said it would be the Legislature’s responsibility to change the law. When pressed on whether he would support the effort, Crist said, ‘I’d have to think about it.’”

“After that incident, Governor Jan Brewer signed the Students’ Religious Liberties Act (H.B. 2357) last week. . . . The bill still allows parents and students to file a lawsuit, but only after following first an administrative remedy through the school principal and district superintendent.”

North Caroline Family Policy Council: “The proliferation of pornography in the United States is endangering children and families, and federal efforts to combat it need to be expanded, according to the hundreds of pro-family advocates who sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Erik Holder last week. The joint letter to the newly-appointed Attorney General, which was dated July 15, was signed by Alan Sears, CEO and General Counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, and nearly 400 pro-family advocates, including North Carolina Family Policy Council president, Bill Brooks.”

The Cost of Low Fertility in Europe: “We analyze the effect of fertility on income per capita with a particular focus on the experience of Europe.”

J. K. Choksy and Nina Shea write at National Review Online: “Thus Iran’s Zoroastrians, Jews, Mandeans, Christians, and Bahais are subordinated and indeed treated as a fifth column by the revolutionary Islamic Republic. No matter that most of these religious groups were established in Iran before Islam arrived there; none are accepted by Iran’s Shiite rulers as fully Iranian. With the recent controversial presidential election, the scapegoating of non-Muslims as agents of the United States, Israel, Britain, and the deposed monarchy reached new heights. Seven Bahai leaders and two Christian converts are in prison and will soon be put on trial for their lives, while other non-Muslims are suffering intensified government repression.”

Matthew J. Franck writes at Public Discourse: “Millions of Americans believe that states can prohibit abortion in the third trimester, yet current Supreme Court jurisprudence has manufactured a right to unfettered abortion right up to the time of the child’s birth. How did Americans become so confused on this issue and how did the Supreme Court end up where it has?”

Jenna Chandler reports in the Porterville Record: “At their regular city council meeting, former mayor Cameron Hamilton proposed that they show adamant opposition to a bill circulating among state senators. The bill, No. 54, proposes that same-sex couples married outside the state and before the passage of Proposition 8, are warranted the equal recognition as married spouses in California. This time the vote was not unanimous. By a sliver, they allowed Hamilton to draft a resolution to approve, or disapprove, at a future meeting.”

Colleen Raezler reports at the Culture and Media Institute: “More weddings take place in June, July and August then at any other time of the year. It provides networks a perfect hook from which to hang feature stories about long-married couples in rewarding relationships, and what it takes to form a successful, satisfying and strong union. Instead, CBS and NBC appear to have a fascination with the breaking, rather than the making, of marriages.”

Gail Heriot, law professor at the University of San Diego and member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer: “The proposal’s most significant effect would be to allow federal authorities to reprosecute defendants who have already been acquitted in state courts. This is hardly cause to support the bill; indeed, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights opposes it for exactly this reason.”

Catholic News Agency: “Another California school district has voted to preserve a policy requiring students to have parental permission to leave campus for any reason. Changes to the policy would have allowed students to leave campus for any reason, including “confidential medical services” such as abortion.”

Tim King reports at Salem-News.com: “A protest this afternoon in Portland will address Oregon’s ban on religious dress among teachers in the state’s schools. An interfaith group will hold the peaceful protest to draw attention to a law that could have, but ultimately failed to… allow teachers religious freedom on the job.”

“Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit Monday against Mount Sinai Hospital on behalf of a Catholic nurse who was forced to participate in a late-term abortion under the threat of disciplinary action, including possible termination and loss of her license.”

Lee McGuire reports at KHOU: “A group of 30 women, many of whom have had abortions, went to city hall Tuesday. They asked the mayor and council to pass an ordinance that would toughen restrictions on abortion providers.”

Michael Foust reports at Baptist Press: “The poll shows that by a margin of 49-41 percent, New Hampshire likely voters disapprove of the law that made the state the sixth nationwide to legalize “marriage” for homosexual couples. Ten percent are undecided. The poll was conducted by Research 2000 for the liberal blog DailyKos.com, a fact that conservatives say only adds to the poll result’s validity. The polling company interviewed 600 likely voters from July 13-15.”

PinkNews reports: “Following the condemnation of British ambassadors for promoting gay rights in eastern European countries such as Poland and Bulgaria, openly gay Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has suggested those in Arabic and Asian countries should follow suit, PinkNews.co.uk can exclusively report”

LifeSiteNews reports: “The Mexican government is distributing millions of pamphlets to children and adolescents in public schools, informing them of their ‘right’ to receive the abortifacient “morning after pill,” after sexual intercourse.”

LifeSiteNews reports: “A British journalist and activist has come under fire from a homosexualist activist for revealing the names of key figures involved in a deliberate long-term plan that resulted in the success of Britain’s “gay rights” movement. Nicholas De Jongh, a theatre critic, playwright and homosexualist activist, accused journalist Matthew Parris of ‘blowing’ the confidentiality enjoyed for four decades by a small cadre activists who brought the movement to its maturity in late 1980s Britain.”

Jan Crawford Greenburg reports at “Legalities” (ABC News): “Calling her Judiciary Committee testimony ‘evasive, lacking in substance and, in several instances, incredibly misleading,’ Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl said he will vote against Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.”

LifeNews reports: “‘I’m pro-choice, but I think we also have the tradition in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care,’ [President Obama] said. ‘My main focus is making sure that people have options of high quality care at the lowest possible price.’”

Dan Eggen and Rob Stein report in the Washington Post: “A group of conservative Democrats led by Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio) proposed a compromise Tuesday that would neither require nor bar private insurers from offering the procedure as long as no federal funding is used; another group of Democrats and Republicans is holding a news conference today to call for an explicit ban on funding.”

Associated Press: “A sex offender’s bid to overturn the state prison system’s pornography ban was ended Monday by the state Supreme Court, which sided unanimously with the Department of Corrections.”

WYMT reports: “An update to a story we brought you three weeks ago in Jackson County about a lawsuit over the ten commandments being on display in the courthouse. The ten commandments are no longer on the walls inside the courthouse. County leaders removed the commandments in response to a lawsuit.”

Howard Friedman reports at Religion Clause: “In Connor v. Archdiocese of Philadelphia, (PA Sup. Ct., July 20, 2009), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that civil courts have jurisdiction over a suit growing out of the expulsion of a 7th-grade student from a Catholic parochial school.”

“The court also concluded that the charter school is, under Minnesota law, a part of the state public education system, albeit a part that has considerable autonomy; the First Amendment thus applies to its actions.”

WorldNetDaily reports: “Gov. Sarah Palin has signed a joint resolution declaring Alaska’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution – and now 36 other states have introduced similar resolutions as part of a growing resistance to the federal government.”

OneNewsNow: “‘It’s defined throughout the code — spouse as between a man and a woman,’ [Kiska] explains. ‘It forbids these backdoor, so-called same-sex “marriages” where Romanian citizens or foreigners come into the country and ask that their marriage be recognized by the country. It also does the same with civil unions.’”

Lawrence D. Jones reports in the Christian Post: “The problem, says ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman, is that the guidelines had been sent to every school district but didn’t make it into the hands of school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. ‘As a result, some schools have practices that are in direct violation of the guidelines and the U.S. Constitution,’ adds Cortman, whose Christian legal group often intervenes in religious liberty cases.”

Shore News Today: “In February, lawyers for the Alliance Defense Fund filed suit in federal court here against the City of Wildwood and on behalf of Eric Wollod, who was stopped from distributing religious literature without a permit in June 2008. ‘Free speech does not have a price tag,’ ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster asserted in describing why ADF believed the city must abandon its permit requirement.”

Chuck Colson writing in The Christian Post: “To help schools honor students’ religious liberties, Gateways to Better Education and the Alliance Defense Fund have launched the National Free to Speak Campaign. The campaign’s goal is to promote greater awareness of the U.S. Department of Education’s guidelines on student’s freedom of religious expression. Every teacher, parent, student, and concerned citizen needs to know about the religious liberty of students, as outlined in these guidelines.”

Out & About reports: “Nashville’s Metro Council has passed on first reading an ordinance filed by at-large Council member Megan Barry that would add gender identity and sexual orientation to Nashville’s current non-discrimination clause for Metro employees. The vote was 24 to 9.”

Constitutional Commentary: “The establishment of a state church, as is the case in most of Europe, or the privileging of a religious tradition, as is the case in Israel and elsewhere, does not, according to Greenawalt, entirely disqualify you from membership in the company of liberal democracies or necessarily imply that you do not practice a reasonable degree of toleration and accommodation of religious difference. Professor Greenawalt’s view is, however, that, for good reasons, rooted both in history and in contemporary realities, it is the American way to understand disestablishment and separation as necessary for true religious freedom and, by implication, full membership in the universe of liberal democracies. He also seems to believe that disestablishment has largely worked in the United States. It is messy, but it works. This volume demonstrates the workableness of disestablishment in the United States, given a particular understanding of what religion is.”

Rutgers Law Review: “For my contribution to this Symposium, I reflect on the changes in the legal and political landscape of America that relate to LGBT people and ask whether the advances that have been achieved are the result of LGBT people–and the organizations that represent them in the political and legal realms–seeking the right to marry.”

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review: “When the liberty to freely express oneself is at odds with another’s right to freedom of religion, we are confronted with the classic dilemma of choosing between two equally fundamental, constitutionally and internationally protected rights. The contours of the said two rights however, are far from clear. Whilst freedom of expression is not an absolute right, its limits are controversial. Equally, while it is undisputed that freedom of religion is an internationally protected human right enshrined in various international instruments, there is no comprehensive international treaty which addresses as its subject the content and extent of the right of freedom of religion, thus it is uncertain whether it entails the right to have one’s religious faith and symbols protected from insult.”

Valparaiso University Law Review: “Additionally, courts, especially when dealing with license plates, should adopt the following four-factor test when analyzing a compelled subsidy speech issue: (1) determine the purpose behind the license plate; (2) determine who maintains editorial control of the message on the plate; (3) determine who is identified as the actual speaker of this message-government or private actor; and (4) determine who is held accountable for the speech. Moreover, this Note advises future legislators, who are considering similar license plates, to demonstrate a clear secular purpose and to classify the plates as specialty license plates that require individual owners to pay an additional fee.”

Rutgers Law Review: “This Note tracks the development of RLUIPA and focuses on its application in New Jersey, one of the nation’s most densely populated and religiously diverse states. Given the land use challenges that it already faces, the Garden State provides a unique context for a case study on RLUIPA’s impact.”

Shore News Today reports: “In February, lawyers for the Alliance Defense Fund filed suit in federal court here against the City of Wildwood and on behalf of Eric Wollod, who was stopped from distributing religious literature without a permit in June 2008. ‘Free speech does not have a price tag,’ ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster asserted in describing why ADF believed the city must abandon its permit requirement.”