Daily Archives: October 16, 2009

Christian Post: “‘We are truly grateful for the generous and selfless service provided by our dedicated allied attorneys in the battle to protect and win back our religious liberty both home and abroad,’ said ADF Senior Counsel Glen Lavy, who is also vice-president of alliance coordination and funding.”

WPRI: “The Providence City Council approves a new ordinance to prevent minors from working at adult-entertainment businesses.”

Law Library of Congress: “On October 2, 2009, the Minister of Health Care and Social Services of the Russian Federation announced a government decision to extend the ban on human cloning for another five years. This ban was introduced in 2002, and it expired on June 23, 2007. Even though the moratorium has been formally lifted since then, no work on human cloning has been authorized in this heavily regulated field.”

Politico: “At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform.”

ADF attorney Austin R. Nimocks appeared on Super Talk Mississippi to discuss this story: GLSEN founder overseeing safety of nation’s schools?

The MP3 runs just over 23 minutes.

East Valley Tribune: “The registry, as envisioned by proponent Denise Heap, chairwoman of the East Valley LGBTQs for Change organization, would allow for hospital visitation rights and the right for a registered individual to be able to make medical decisions for a partner.”

ADF attorney David Cortman appeared on WTBN-AM Drive Time with Bill Bunkley to discuss this: PA school bans ‘Abortion is not Healthcare’ T-shirt, ADF files suit

The MP3 runs just under 15 minutes.

Helen M. Alvare writes at Culture-of-Life.org: “Counterintuitive as it seems, then, a possible means of helping to curb our nonmarital pregnancy rates is to ‘put the baby back into sex.’ It is a means of helping men and women view each other as gifts; not instruments, not enemies, not subordinates; a way of putting first things first and; the well-being of children before our own selfish impulses.”

Hat tip: Institute for Marriage and Public Policy

The Guardian: “‘It’s madness not to support marriage’, shadow families minister tells Conservative conference.”

D’Vera Cohn at Pew Research provides this report and statistics on marriage and divorce in the states and in the nation.

ADF attorney Erik Stanley appeared on the Michael Medved Show to discuss hate crimes legislation pending in Congress and the threat it poses to religious freedom.

The MP3 runs just under 35 minutes.

California Family Council: “Sunday night, as the constitutional deadline for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign or veto bills approved by the Legislature approached, the governor signed two pro-homosexual bills into law that dishonor California families and voters; and does a disservice to students. Over the objections of tens of thousands Californians, Governor Schwarzenegger approved Senate Bills 54 and 572, authored by Senator Mark Leno, an homosexual San Francisco politician.”

CNSNews: “The actual ‘legislative language’ of the bill–the words that would become the law of the land if the bill were enacted–is not available to the public and apparently has not even been written

CNSNews: “A coalition of liberal sex education advocates says the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress will end support for abstinence-only programs that emphasize marriage and heterosexual relationships.”

Legal Blog Watch: “According to its Web site, Law.Gov is an effort to create a report documenting exactly what it would take to create a distributed registry and repository of all primary legal materials in the United States.”

Politico: “The appointment of retired Marine General Clifford Stanley as Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness is being hailed by a key group that represents gay soldiers as a major advance toward repeal — suggesting the White House is moving closer to backing legislation that would reverse the measure.”

Pat Buckley: “The two Irish Government coalition partners Fianna Fáil and the Green Party have announced a revised programme for government which commits them to enacting ‘The Civil Partnership Bill,’ which is expected to come before the Dáil (The Irish Parliament) on November 2 and be enacted by the end of the year. This Bill is a direct attack on the institution of marriage and the family. It also contains provisions that would severely restrict the rights of religious believers in the areas among others, of conscientious objection and freedom of speech.”

The Independent: “The Church of England conceded yesterday that its involvement in a controversial New York property deal now on the verge of default has left it at risk of losses that some estimates put at tens of millions of pounds.”

BBC News: “The boy, 14, was told not to carry the 5in (12.7cm) kirpan at the Compton School in Barnet after governors ruled it was a health and safety risk. Under Sikhism the sheathed scimitar is one of five “articles of faith” that must be carried at all times.”

Dakota Voice (Christian Post): “Antonio Peck, the student, had drawn a poster with several religious figures with the words, ‘The only way to save the world,’ for an art project that had to show understanding about the environment. Antonio meant to express his belief that God is the only way to save the environment, according to his legal representative Liberty Counsel.”

Alan Keyes writing at WorldNetDaily: “Obama (and organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign) claim to act out of consideration for human rights. But they are indifferent to the natural tie between parent and child that arises from procreation. Claiming to respect the subjective human values that arise from sexual relations between people of the same sex, they insist that society cease to respect the objective obligations that arise from procreational relations between people of different sexes. But can a just society do so?”

ADF attorney Mike Johnson appeared in a News14 report about the Forsythe County prayer litigation. Fox News carries this related video report (mp4).

The MP4 runs just under 2 minutes.

Protect Marriage Washington . . . said it will appeal Thursday’s federal appeals-court ruling that cleared the way for public release of the names . . .

How Appealing links to a media report and the ruling.

CNSNews: “Despite the legalization of contraception in France in 1967 and its widespread use in the country today, the number of ‘unplanned pregnancies’ there is 36 percent, according to a new study.”

Catholic News Agency: “Delivering an acceptance speech for a GLSEN award, a wealthy homosexual activist has attacked Catholic leaders, saying they are among his movement’s ‘greatest adversaries.’ He called on his allies to combat ‘head-on’ religious organizations opposed to homosexual causes and to take ‘active measures’ against them.”

WSAW: “A suburban Milwaukee 14-year-old could be charged with child porn after authorities say dozens of nude photos of his classmates were found on his cell phone and I-Pod.”

Telegraph: “Leaders of the centre-right EPP grouping in the European Parliament say there should be compulsory classes for 14-year-olds in all member states.”

AP: “Queen Elizabeth II formally opened Britain’s new Supreme Court on Friday in a ceremony attended by high court justices from the United States and around the world.”

Washington Times: “A surprise decision by the University of Notre Dame to send five students to last weekend’s gay rights march in the District has produced fury among alumni still smarting from the Catholic institution’s invitation to President Obama in May.”

Christianity Today: “However, Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, believes that the provisions do not offer anything new that isn’t already protected under the Constitution. ‘While the wordings are nice, the amendments are really meaningless,’ Stanley said. ‘Treating them as a panacea that would treat the problems of the hate crimes law would be wrong.’”

The Guardian: “Lisbon treaty has been eight years in making and is on brink of coming into force, but not if Klaus gets his way.”

Reuters: “Irish President Mary McAleese signed the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, completing Ireland’s ratification process two weeks after voters approved the pact in a referendum, her office said in a statement late on Thursday . . . ”

Arizona Republic: “A 17-year-old Phoenix girl was sent to prison Thursday for running a child-prostitution ring that recruited and pandered girls as young as 14.”

Telegraph: “The secret to sex appeal lies with the tampering of pheromones, creating a ‘sexual tsunami’, according to new research.”

Carson Holloway writes at Public Discourse: “To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, civilization can only be preserved by people who care about things higher than civilization. The ancients teach us that music is essential to fostering our love of those things, and hence to the preservation of civilization.”

Jonathan Rogers writes at National Right to Life’s News and Views: “According to information gleaned from (where else?) the Internet, in the month of July 2009, almost 370 million people worldwide visited the social networking site Facebook, ‘up 155% from July 2008.’ Fred Wilson describes Facebook as the “fourth most popular web site in the world after Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo,” so it’s not surprising he calls it a ‘global juggernaut.’”

Rep. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to comment, ‘I think we’re seeing a common DNA run through the Obama nominees, and that’s the ACLU chromosome.’

László Blutman, In Search of a Legal Definition of Religion (2009). Americana, Vol. V, No. 1, Spring 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1487466

“In recent decades, the problem of defining religion for legal purposes has become more acute with the growth in the number of nontraditional religions, religious sects, and belief systems in American society. The spread of heterogenous but possibly religious phenomena has multiplied the problems flowing from the lack of clear definitional guidance on the conceptual boundaries of religion. On what criteria can a federal court apply legal provisions relating to religious matters if no definition of religion is available. Legal theorists have made serious attempts to provide an adequate definition of what religion is for First Amendment purposes, and the Supreme Court’s and other federal courts’ efforts have been manifested in a string of cases in the context of the First Amendment as well as in statutory interpretation. These efforts should not be seen as entirely fruitless, but they have not provided a generally accepted legal definition of religion. The aim of this paper is to identify the causes of this failure. The first two parts of this paper are expository in nature, summarizing the judicial and theoretical efforts to define religion in U.S. constitutional and federal law. This may provide an appropriate basis, in the third part, both for outlining the underlying and dominant contradictions of this definitional problem and for presenting some suggestions to overcome these contradictions.”