Daily Archives: October 13, 2009

Times Record News: “If researchers want to uncover the roots of America’s bitter divisions on abortion, the first thing they should do is ask millions of citizens this question: How often do you attend worship services? This has been a consistent pattern in recent surveys and it can be seen in most pews, from conservative evangelicals to liberal mainline Protestants, said Greg Smith, senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The pattern is especially clear among American Catholics.”

Associated Press: “President Barack Obama has nominated a Minnesota policewoman to become the first openly gay person to serve as a U.S. marshal.”

Christian Post: “A Coptic Christian man was reportedly arrested, abused and forced to pay a large sum of money for rescuing his 20-year-old daughter from her Muslim husband, who was said to be holding her against her will in Alexandria, Egypt.”

BBC News: “Far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders has won an appeal against a Home Office decision barring his entry to the UK. The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruling overturns a government decision that led to Mr Wilders being turned back at Heathrow in February.”

Fox News: “A 17-year old girl who fled from her home, fearing her Muslim parents would kill her for converting to Christianity, must go back to Ohio, a Florida judge ruled Tuesday.”

Associated Press: “The anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern blacks during the civil rights movement, a high-ranking Mormon says in a speech to be delivered Tuesday.”

Des Moines Register: “Keith Ratliff, president of the Iowa-Nebraska chapter of the NAACP, endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats today, citing the Sioux City businessman’s position on the same-sex marriage debate as ‘an important factor’ . . . Vander Plaats has said he would issue an executive order staying same-sex marriages in Iowa until voters had the opportunity to vote on a referendum to amend the Iowa Constitution.”

Legislative Gazette: “The court will first hear arguments in a case involving Westchester County’s right to recognize marriages of same-sex couples performed in other states. The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund is challenging that right, claiming County Executive Andrew Spano’s 2006 executive order declaring Westchester’s recognition of out-of-state marriages unconstitutional.”

LifeNews: “Officials at a Pennsylvania school targeted a middle school student who came to class wearing a pro-life t-shirt with the message, ‘Abortion is Not Health Care’ . . . Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit in federal court last week against the West Shore School District for prohibiting the student from wearing the shirt. ‘Pro-life students shouldn’t be censored for their views,’ ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman told LifeNews.com on Monday.”

Philadelphia Inquirer: “A western Pennsylvania town will pay a church $100,000 to settle a feud created after it forced the parish to stop housing the homeless.”

Mansfield News Journal: “Shelby’s chief administrator said he is giving serious thought to vetoing an ordinance passed Monday at council permitting prayer at the start of council meetings.”

PR Newswire: “Citing ‘serious and irreversible harm to teens,’ the American Civil Liberties Union asked an Illinois court to strike down a newly effective law that prevents teens from having an abortion unless they notify a parent or go to court.”

Associated Press: “Increased contraceptive use has led to fewer abortions worldwide, but deaths from unsafe abortion remain a severe problem, killing 70,000 women a year, a research institute reported Tuesday in a major global survey.”

California Catholic Daily: “Four Catholic High Schools in the Archdiocese of San Francisco are scheduled to host a performance of the condom-endorsing sex-education play Secrets. The play was written by openly lesbian playwright Patricia Loughrey . . . The play depicts a teenager who is HIV positive. Some content in Secrets was considered, by the Fremont, California Unified School District, to be sufficiently graphic to require that a permission slip be signed by parents before their child would be allowed to see it.”

Helen M. Alvaré writes at the Culture of Life Foundation: “I would suggest that any response to these issues must ‘put the baby back into sex.’ By this I mean that men and women need to acknowledge the overwhelming importance of heterosexual relations’ orientation to the procreation of children – helpless creatures who require decades of intensive labor, a lifetime of interaction, and who apparently come into the world with an inbuilt desire to remain connected to both their father and their mother.”

UPI: “A 17-year-old Utah girl was released from jail after a judge ruled she had not attempted murder when she paid a man to beat her to kill her late-term fetus.”

New York Times: “Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.”

The New York Times Room for Debate blog asks a panel of medical experts this question: “Should the United States move beyond recommended guidelines for fertility treatments to impose stricter regulations on I.V.F. procedures? Should transfers be limited to one embryo at a time?”

National Law Journal (Law.com): “From the conservative Liberty Legal Institute in Texas to the liberal American Civil Liberties Union, the groups are backing Children’s Rights Inc. in New York, in Perdue v. Kenny A., which the justices will hear on Wednesday. The high court case asks whether an attorney fee award under a federal fee-shifting statute can ever be increased above the basic fee calculation because of the attorneys’ outstanding performance and the results they obtained.”

LifeSiteNews: “The University of Notre Dame gave financial assistance to five students to participate in Sunday’s national gay rights demonstration, which was organized in part to advocate homosexual “marriage,” a campus newspaper has reported.”

Associated Press: “Russian gay rights activists are denouncing the planned closure of Moscow’s oldest gay club. The city has ordered the club shut down by Nov. 15 for reasons of immorality.”

BBC News: “A group of well-known Russian singers and writers has called for an end to discrimination against gay people. They met after a local official tried to close Moscow’s longest-running gay club, Dusha i Telo, where many of the artists have performed.”

Guardian: “The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.”

Orlando Sentinel: “City leaders today will consider rewriting zoning rules to say that strippers, adult bookstores and X-rated movie houses can only do business in industrial areas.”

Daily Princetonian: “A lawn display advocating against abortion was vandalized last Wednesday and Friday evenings, University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said. The posters were on the north lawn of Frist Campus Center for Respect Life Week, organized by Princeton Pro-Life.”

Chicago Sun-Times: “A Geneva High School teacher is being accused of making anti-gay and racist comments in his classroom. Dave Burk, who teaches consumer education, is accused of making the comments by his students during an Oct. 5 lecture on tax money involving the National Endowment for the Arts.”

Associated Press: “Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe broke with her party Tuesday and said she will vote for a Democratic health care bill, handing President Barack Obama a much-sought boost in his quest to expand access to medical coverage to all Americans.”

SALVO Signs of the Times: “We seem to be entering an era in which humanity is viewed as irrelevant by many very powerful political and cultural forces. Does human life have intrinsic moral value simply and merely because it is human life? Our answer to this question will tell us all we need to know about what sort of society we’ll be looking at in the next couple of years.”

Washington Examiner: “First, the committee — controlled by majority Democrats, of course — inserted the hate crimes measure into the House bill, where it had not been before. Then lawmakers made some crucial changes to Brownback’s amendment. Where Brownback had insisted, and the full Senate had agreed, that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights, the conference changed the wording to read that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights ‘unless the government demonstrates … a compelling governmental interest’ to do otherwise.”

Liberty Counsel: “Some of the nation’s largest multiracial, multiethnic, and multigenerational faith-based and policy organizations, representing more than 30 million people, went on record to voice opposition to any healthcare bill that funds abortion, violates conscience, rations care, or limits freedom.”

Salt Lake Tribune: “In a meeting with gay-rights activists last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized the LDS Church for backing a ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in California, saying the leaders of his faith should have stayed out of the contentious political fight.”

USA Today: “Americans use specialty license plates as mobile billboards for all kinds of causes, but in New Jersey, New York and Illinois, motorists can’t use the forum to voice their stand on the abortion debate. Efforts to secure ‘Choose Life’ license plates have hit roadblocks in each state, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this month not to take up an appeal from Illinois abortion opponents sets the stage for continued state-by-state legal maneuvers.”

Jurist: “The legislation allows an individual to undergo a sex change at age 18, and allows the person to change his or her name and sexual identity on any official documents, including those dealing with marriage and travel. The bill must now be signed by President Tabare Vazquez in order to take effect.”

ADF allied John Anthony Simmons appeared on Truth for Our Times with Tamara Scott to discuss this: NH court orders home-schooled child into government-run school.

The mp3 runs just over 22 minutes.

New York Times City Room: “New York’s highest court will hear arguments Tuesday in a pair of cases that could have implications for the pitched debate over same-sex marriage in the state . . . The opponents are represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., which argues that both orders were ‘illegal, unconstitutional, and resulted in the unlawful disbursement of public funds,’ according to a summary of the cases provided by the Court of Appeals.”

Politics on the Hudson: “The state Court of Appeals today will hear two cases on whether Westchester County and the state legally extended government benefits to same-sex couples married in other states. The Alliance Defense Fund of Scottsdale, Ariz., is challenging the governments’ decision to give equal benefits to gay couples, saying same-sex marriage is illegal in New York.”

OneNewsNow: “The Montana Supreme Court has granted parental rights to a non-parent . . . Austin Nimocks, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, tells OneNewsNow that Montana’s highest court decided to uphold the demands of a legal stranger. ‘What the Montana Supreme Court did was give a third party — the parent’s former roommate and girlfriend — parental rights…,’ says the attorney. ‘And it runs contrary to clear precedent dating back several years in Montana and the United States Supreme Court. [It's] a very, very disturbing decision.’”

UPI: “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill requiring California to recognize marriages performed in states where same-sex marriage is legal, his office said . . . Jim Campbell, a staff attorney with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, said the case to overturn Proposition 8 can be dismissed on legal grounds without a trial, the newspaper said.”

“The [New York] Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments Tuesday by the Alliance Defense Fund of Scottsdale, Ariz., contending [government] benefits are unlawful in New York, which does not permit same-sex marriages.”

San Diego Union-Tribune: “The high court was set to hear arguments about the presence of a Latin cross on a rocky promontory in the Mojave National Preserve, placed there as a war memorial in the 1930s. The issue is familiar to San Diego residents, who have endured nearly 20 years of litigation over the Latin cross atop Mount Soledad in La Jolla . . . ‘My guess is that case will be decided on very narrow grounds, and any decision will not have much impact on the Mount Soledad case,’ said Joseph Infranco, a senior attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund.”

Philadelphia Inquirer (Mercury News): “The legal showdown over California’s ban on gay marriage heats up again this week as a federal judge considers a bid to short-circuit the challenge to Proposition 8, the voter-approved law that halted same-sex weddings in California . . . Prop 8 backers say the case can be dismissed on legal grounds, without the need for trial. ‘They simply can’t win under relevant controlling law here,’ said Jim Campbell, staff attorney with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund.”

WorldNetDaily: “A Christian middle-school student is suing his school district after a principal ordered him to remove a T-shirt bearing the message ‘Abortion is not health care’ on the day of President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren . . . ‘These are highly unconstitutional policies that demonstrate that there’s a widespread need for schools to be educated about the First Amendment,’ ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman said in a statement.”

Arizona Capitol Times: “Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will be hearing cases once more, sitting in for two days on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. One case involves a right-to-life group that operates at Arizona State University . . . [Heather Gebelin Hacker] said, ‘Pro-life student groups shouldn’t have a price tag placed upon expression of their beliefs. Forcing any student group to pay for insurance in order to exercise their right to free speech guaranteed under the First Amendment is unconstitutional.’”

UPI: “A California judge will consider a motion from Proposition 8 backers to halt a trial and end efforts to overturn a law against gay marriage, an attorney said. Jim Campbell, a staff attorney with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, said the case to overturn Proposition 8 can be dismissed on legal grounds without a trial, The San Jose Mercury News reported.”

Roger Magnusson, The Traditional Account of Ethics and Law at the End of Life – and its Discontents (October 12, 2009). Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2009, pp. 307-324; Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 09/114. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1487860

“For the past thirty years, the Melbourne urologist Dr Rodney Syme has quietly – and more recently, not-to-quietly – assisted terminally and permanently ill people to die. This paper draws on Syme’s recent book, A Good Death: An Argument for Voluntary Euthanasia, to identify and to reflect on some important challenges to what I outline as the traditional account of law, ethics, and end-of-life decisions.”

Martin Guggenheim, Texas Polygamy and Child Welfare (September 17, 2009). Houston Law Review, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1474983

“This article explains why the child welfare process was used in the 2008 San Angelo, Texas raid on the FLDS community which resulted in the removal of more than 400 children from their families. It argues that the criminal justice system, not the child welfare system, should be the preferred means by which state officials attempt to prevent the practice of polygamy. The criminal justice system contains many more time honored protections of civil liberties than the child welfare system.”