Daily Archives: December 1, 2009

Reuters: “A gay Argentine couple vowed to keep fighting for the right to get married after a last-minute court ruling dashed their plans to hold Latin America’s first legal same-sex marriage on Tuesday.”

David Balch writes at the Monterey Herald: “In her Sunday guest commentary, Pacific Grove attorney and ACLU board member Michelle Welsh cited an impressive display of cases to support her position that the ACLU is not ‘anti-religion.’ But she is cleverly arguing a bait and switch . . . Welsh’s examples concern the ACLU’s free exercise lawsuits. But it is the ACLU’s establishment clause lawsuit, which she doesn’t address, that have earned it the ‘anti-religion’ moniker . . . ”

“‘It’s on the special session calendar, we are in special session, we have cleared the roadblocks away,’ Paterson said. That means a vote could come as early as Tuesday night, although the outcome remains uncertain.”

Ernest Wiatrek writes at ReporterNews: “During a recent local forum, the ACLU’s Texas Executive Director, Terri Burke, made another attempt to convince mainstream America of the ACLU’s ‘friendship’ with religion. What a smoke screen, come on!”

News8.net: “Loudoun County (web | news) ‘s Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to allow religious holiday displays outside the Leesburg Courthouse, reversing a ban imposed by a citizens committee.”

YouTube video. More reports here.

Breitbart carries video excerpts from Howard Dean speeches given earlier in the year.

LifeSiteNews: “‘The government shouldn’t harass and threaten citizens for simply wanting to exercise their First Amendment rights in public,’ said ADF Senior Counsel Joseph Infranco. ‘The court did the right thing in preventing this law from being enforced against the free speech activities of these men. We hope that this lawsuit will result in a new state statute that affirms the First Amendment rights of all New Hampshire citizens.’”

Townhall (Baptist Press): “The District of Columbia Council voted 11-2 to legalize ‘same-sex marriage’ Dec. 1, putting the capital in position to become the sixth U.S. jurisdiction to approve such unions . . . The Alliance Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit on behalf of eight D.C. citizens calling for approval of an effort to place the initiative on the ballot.”

3 News: “A gay rights group is challenging the New Zealand Blood Service’s ban on sexually-active homosexual men giving blood.”

“Religious institutions should not be taxed differently than other charitable organizations that serve the public.”

“The measure exempts all religious entities from having to perform or facilitate a gay marriage ceremony. But it does not allow those institutions to deny a gay married couple adoption services, for example, or health benefits for a gay employee.”

Southwest Times Record: “In a unanimous vote Monday, the LeFlore County commissioners put a hold on placing a private group’s planned Ten Commandments monument on the courthouse lawn, pending conferring with the county’s attorneys . . . in October the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit alliance of Christian attorneys based in Arizona, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the appeals court ruling.”

The Church Report: “Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney David Kennedy filed a motion with the Ohio Supreme Court Monday asking it to reconsider its narrow 4-3 ruling against a church being taxed on a type of property for which some other charitable organizations are not taxed.”

Harvard Crimson: “The latest round of financial readjustments hit Harvard Law School yesterday when Law School Dean Martha Minow announced a mix of cuts and expansions to programs that assist students interested in pursuing public interest careers.”

At the Culture of Life Foundation, William E. May reviews Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen.

CCFON: “The Family and Parenting Institute says grandparents, aunts and uncles are helping out more in childcare responsibilities in a form of ‘communal parenting’ as parents struggle to cope with marital breakdown and work. One in four children is now brought up in a one-parent household, the vast majority of which are led by mothers.”

EuroNews: “Serbia launched the legal challenge in the Hague and wants the body to put a stop to the number of countries recognising Kososvo and force Pristina back into talks with Belgrade.”

Press Association: “Plans for an ‘unprecedented’ 5,000-place Muslim girls’ boarding school will be scrutinised closely by the Government, junior minister Diana Johnson has said.”

The Age: “Mr Abbott, a conservative Catholic, has said on the record he believes abortion is a stain on Australia’s national character and should be reduced. Right to Life Australia president Veronica Andrews said she hoped Mr Abbott would use his position to speak out against abortion and voluntary euthanasia in parliament.”

Miami Herald: “Adult stem cells might help repair hearts damaged by heart attack — in part by becoming heart cells themselves. That was the finding of a new study, released Monday, that points to a promising new treatment for heart-attack patients that could reduce mortality and lessen the need for heart transplants. Adult stem cells also could help heal livers, kidneys, pancreases and other organs.”

Sex Education: What Kind? Who Pays? What’s the Result?
Capitol Research Center, Kate Knable, 12.2009

“The Bush administration promoted federally-funded abstinence education as an alternative to so-called ‘comprehensive sex education,’ the norm in public schools for nearly 50 years. But the abstinence policy is under relentless attack by progressive sex education advocacy groups. The Obama administration now proposes to de-fund abstinence education and divert the funding to ‘fact-based’ sex ed.”

WSJ, Digits: “The Ministry of Public Security recently launched a crackdown on mobile porn, targeting sites that use wireless application protocol, or WAP — a method of producing Web sites for mobile handsets.”

White House: “Today [11/24], President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order creating a new Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. He also announced today he has appointed Amy Gutmann to serve as Chair and James W. Wagner to serve as Vice Chair of the Commission.”

The Spectator: “Given the association of so many of its founding fathers with the dismal pseudo- science of eugenics, perhaps we should not be surprised that our welfare system has ended up preferring safety nets to trampolines, or that it prefers simply to warehouse the poor rather than give people who have fallen on hard times a chance to take responsibility for their own lives. Eugenics infected its adherents with a deeply pessimistic view of the poor, branding them as irredeemably genetically second-rate, and this view has cast a long shadow over social policy assumptions.”

WXII: “Forsyth County has filed a response to a ruling earlier this month by federal Magistrate Trevor Sharp that recommended that the use of prayer to open Board of Commissioners meetings in Forsyth County violates the First Amendment . . . Joyner and Blackmon are supported by the American Civil Liberties Union while the Alliance Defense fund is supporting the county.”

OneNewsNow: “‘A federal court in the matter issued a preliminary injunction, meaning that the law can no longer be applied to people in its current and very vague form,’ [Joe Infranco] explains. ‘The vague form is that it restricts whatever a police officer might consider “unreasonable” or “loud” noise — and there’s no standard to that at all. So that’s simply an invitation for an officer to use his or her discretion and to censor a message that they don’t like.’”

San Francisco Chronicle: “The Justice Department ‘should continue to defend (the law) the way that it used to,’ under the Bush administration, said attorney Jim Campbell of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian organization that represents sponsors of California’s ban on same-sex marriage in a separate case. Campbell cited the department’s 2004 filing in the Orange County case, which said the Defense of Marriage Act served the government’s ‘plainly legitimate interests in encouraging the optimal social arrangements for procreation and child-rearing.’”

Merced Sun Star: “‘It’s ridiculous that the people of Merced have to think twice about whether it’s OK to have a “Christmas” parade. An overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas and are opposed to any kind of censorship of Christmas,’ said ADF Senior Counsel Nate Kellum. ‘City officials shouldn’t self-censor the perfectly constitutional name of their town’s Christmas parade because of unfounded beliefs spread by groups hostile to our nation’s traditions.’”

California Catholic Daily: “‘It’s ridiculous that the people of Merced have to think twice about whether it’s okay to have a ‘Christmas’ parade,’ said ADF Senior Counsel Nate Kellum.”

Winston-Salem Journal: “Forsyth County is defending its public prayer policy in a new court filing after a magistrate judge’s recommendation last month that suggested the county’s policy is unconstitutional . . . Neither Parker nor Michael Johnson, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund representing the county, was willing to predict when Beaty might make a ruling.”

WCAX (AP): “The street preachers were supported in the lawsuit by the Alliance Defense Fund – a national Christian organization.”

Sea Coast Online: “Now backed by the Alliance Defense Fund — a national Christian organization supporting legal cases that ‘protect religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and marriage and the family’ — the street preachers have filed a U.S. District Court lawsuit against the Town of Hampton and members of its police department. Simultaneously, they’re challenging New Hampshire’s disorderly conduct statute as it pertains to unreasonable noise.” Also published in Boston Herald.

OneNewsNow: “‘This library had a practice and a policy of allowing various community groups to use its room, but when our client made application, he was denied because he planned on holding a religious event,’ Oster explains. ‘And according to the library’s policy, they would not allow the room to be used for religious purposes.’”

Religion Clause Blog: “In the case, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected constitutional claims brought by a Colorado high school co-valedictorian who was forced to apologize after she delivered remarks at a high school’s graduation ceremony encouraging students to accept Jesus Christ.”

Corder v. Lewis Palmer School Dist., No. 09-257 (Nov. 30, 2009)

Religion Clause Blog: “The groups include the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the National Council of Jewish Women, the American Jewish Congress and the Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs.”

Google News (AFP): “The EU’s first president Herman Van Rompuy and new foreign affairs supremo Catherine Ashton took office Tuesday as the Lisbon Treaty came into force, hoping to assuage concerns at the low-profile pairing.”

East Brooks Books, Inc. v. Shelby County, TN, No. 08-5958 (6th Cir. Nov. 25, 2009)

See the Community Defense Counsel abstract here.

AP: “But last month, several rabbis and other elders did something astounding for them: They took a public stand on a political issue, declaring their opposition to same-sex marriage in the state.”

BBC: “The number of new cases of HIV in Northern Ireland rose by more than 50% in 2008, compared to the previous year.”

AP: “An electronic bingo casino is planning to reopen and a new one is getting ready for its first customers as attorneys wage a legal battle over the popular machines.”

“The United Nations called Switzerland’s ban on new minarets ‘clearly discriminatory’ and deeply divisive . . . ”