Daily Archives: February 24, 2010

Hurriyet Daily News: “The Council of Europe has amended an article of its declaration on children’s rights after Turkey objected to a specific article alluding to gay marriage . . . The council considered Turkey’s objection and amended the relevant article. Originally, the article stated, ‘Currently, the family [is a concept] composed of different lifestyles and children in Europe grow up in family forms that can change during the life of children.’”

InterFax: “The Russian Justice Ministry has rejected an application to register Marriage Equality, a nonprofit organization set up to provide legal assistance and information services to sexual minorities.”

Washington Post: “When it was announced that retailer Walmart would buy streaming movie startup Vudu a couple days ago, a number of sites wondered what it would mean for Vudu’s adult content. Here’s what it means: bye bye.”

Gizmodo: “According to the developer, Apple said that, while they are thinking about it, ‘it’s not going to happen anytime soon.’”

“This legislation would more than open the Armed Forces to homosexuals; it would lead to a zero-tolerance policy toward anyone who disapproves of homosexuality . . .”

Christian Post: ‘We drew a circle around a 30 minute travel distance from our central meeting place, and asked what would happen if we drew another 30 minute distance around the outside of that,’ ND Strupler, coach for ICF Team and
Start-Up’s, says in the report. ‘Zurich is the biggest city in Switzerland, with not even 400,000 people, but if we plant seven campuses each 30 minutes travel distance from the centre we could reach a population of around 1.5 million people.’”

WBAY: “The Healthy Youth Act is designed to ensure the most current sex education standards are taught in Wisconsin public schools.”

James Srodes writes at the American Spectator: “The truth is our wizards dare not admit that the levers they pull are not really connected to the true crisis that confronts America or its place in the global market. Despite the self-congratulatory assurances from the White House, Congress, and part of Wall Street that we have been saved from a slide into a 1930s depression, our most serious trials still lie ahead of us.”

CBS: “Spain on Wednesday approved a sweeping new law that eases restrictions on abortion, declaring the practice a woman’s right and doing away with the threat of imprisonment, in part of a drive toward liberal policies that has angered conservatives and the Catholic Church.”

Russell D. Moore write at the Christian Post: “I received an email from a man who was upset about a couple in his extended family who are pursuing a so-called ‘snowflake adoption,’ the adoption of a ‘frozen embryo’ (to use, for clarity’s purpose only, the satanically clinical lingo of the current era). This couple had been led to do this after reading Adopted for Life, so he wanted to correspond.”

San Francisco Chronicle: “The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday voted to reject a number of applications from charter school operators, choosing instead to hand control of nearly 30 schools to nonprofit educational groups formed by teachers and administrators already employed by the district.”

Yahoo News (AFP): “A judge on Tuesday authorized two men to marry in Buenos Aires in what would be the country’s second same-sex marriage.”

Breitbart (AFP): “Russia’s biathlon relay team revealed the secret weapon behind Tuesday’s gold medal success at the Winter Olympics and recommended their rivals do the same: have babies.”

Fox News 8 Video (mp4) runs approximately 2 minutes.

The state’s top court ruled on its own pay raises Tuesday morning, insisting the governor and Legislature violated the constitution by linking judicial salary hikes to other non-related issues.”

CBS: “The Drudge Report and other conservative sites are highlighting a newly-unveiled logo for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Missile Defense Agency and complaining that the new logo (pictured at left) is reminiscent of both the Obama campaign logo and an Islamic flag.”

CNA: “A proposed Missouri ‘mega-sales tax’ would affect private school tuition and would unfairly burden parents who send their children to Catholic schools, the Missouri Catholic Conference has warned.”

Fairbanks News Miner: “The Anchorage Superior Court is hearing a challenge to a ballot initiative to require a parent to be notified if a girl under 18 seeks an abortion.”

LA Times: “Nearly half of the Arizona Legislature wants to force President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate to state officials if he runs for re-election.”

The Virginia Court Court of Appeals has issued this ruling in Miller v. Jenkins, No. 0705-09-4. (Va. Ct. App. Feb. 23, 2010). For more background on the case, click the case name tag below.

StarNewsOnline: “Sue strongly defends his commission’s invocation practice. ‘When I can’t end a prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, I’ll quit praying. And I won’t quit praying,’ he said. ‘This country was founded on religious freedom, and that’s the reason the settlers came to this country. I don’t think one judge can make a ruling that can change the opinions of millions of Christians across this land.’”

NY Times: “Until a few weeks ago, the Rev. Gail Sowell was pastor at two Lutheran churches in the small Wisconsin town of Edgar. That was before members of both congregations jumped headfirst into the simmering debate over gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. ‘It was pretty gruesome,’ Sowell said, recalling shouting matches inside the sanctuary; the mass resignation of one church’s council, save one member; even whispers around town that she was a lesbian. ‘For the record, I’m not,’ she said.”

Christian Newswire: “‘It was a bloody day yesterday in Mosul,’ an Iraqi worker of Open Doors reported today. ‘In one house all the family members were killed — five people. First the attackers drove by and shot from their car. Then they forced themselves into the house and gunned down the entire family. They even threw two bodies outside the house as a cruel warning for others.’”

OneNewsNow: “Missouri lawmakers are proceeding with a constitutional religious liberty amendment . . . ‘We’ve had success with this constitutional amendment in the Missouri House the last two sessions,’ [Joe Ortwerth, executive director of the Missouri Family Policy Council] explains. ‘ . . . Our challenge has been in the Missouri Senate where the issue has faced a filibuster from allies of the ACLU’ . . . The issue has been moved to the Senate floor, where Ortwerth is hopeful there will be enough votes to get Senate Joint Resolution 31 on the ballot this fall.”

Boston Globe (AP): “A 31-year-old Mars Hill woman is facing up to 30 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to a charge of production of pornography.”

“In a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, a Bay Area woman has won the right to parental status and visits with the daughter of her former lesbian partner, who moved out when the girl was 3 months old.”

Charleston Gazette: “Democrats in the House of Delegates on Tuesday swiftly shot down Republican attempts to advance a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.”

The Unofficial Apple Weblog: “After all of the kerfuffle earlier this week about Apple shutting down racy apps in the App Store, it appears that the company might be creating a special place for all of that suggestive and sexy content.”

LifeSiteNews: “Britain’s Labour government clarified this week that an amendment to the Children, Schools and Families bill, that says faith schools may teach the mandatory Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE) program ‘in a way that reflects the school’s religious character,’ does not, in fact, give the schools freedom to oppose abortion, contraception and homosexual activity on moral grounds.”

The American Spectator: “In a society already ideologically polarized, many believers go to church in hopes of a respite from conflict. But recent surveys show similar political disparities straining the Christian community. There are huge gaps in political affiliation between clergy and laity, especially in the oldline Protestant denominations. The divide between oldline and evangelical Protestant leaders remains exceedingly wide. The much publicized evangelical left, purporting to bridge that divide with a fusion of evangelical theology and liberal politics, remains statistically insignificant.”

Eugene Volokh writes at the Volokh Conspiracy: . . . Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) reports that, “According to the Oregonian, yesterday by a vote of 21–9 Oregon’s state Senate approved House Bill 3686 repealing an 87-year old ban on teachers wearing religious dress in the classroom…. The state House of Representatives has already passed the bill, but it now goes back to the House because of two changes in wording made by the Senate.” . . .

Dale Carpenter reports at the Volokh Conspiracy: “That’s the title of a symposium to be held this Friday at the University of San Francisco School of Law.”

Not Dead Yet: “Yesterday, in spite of short notice and a long delay in the start of the hearing, disability advocates testified in opposition to a bill that would legalize assisted suicide in Massachusetts.” [post includes video]

UK Parliament: “The Commons passed the report stage and third reading of the Children, Schools and Families Bill, which now moves into the Lords. The Bill aims to provide guarantees for parents and pupils, setting out what they are entitled to expect from the schools system. It will also reform the curriculum and introduce a new licensing scheme for teachers.”

Religion Clause Blog: “The new top staff person is Jackie Wolcott, ambassador to the United Nations Security Council in the George W. Bush administration . . . ”

Religion Clause Blog: “The European Court of Human Rights yesterday held that Turkey violated Art. 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion) of the European Convention on Human Rights when it convicted members of a religious group known as Aczimendi tarikatÿ for the clothing they wore.”

Religion Clause Blog: “The Chicago Council on Global Affairs yesterday released a task force report titled Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy . . . The report includes a dissent and response among task force members on whether the Establishment Clause imposes restrictions on the way the U.S. pursues engagement with religious communities abroad.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Atlantic Beach, South Carolina police ticketed the CME Mission Church for broadcasting its religious services into the surrounding neighborhood by means of a loud speaker system, after complaints by surrounding businesses and residents.”

CNN: “A man authorities want to question in the slaying of a 7-year-old girl, whose body was dumped in a landfill, appeared in a Florida court Wednesday on child pornography charges after being extradited from Mississippi.”

HSLDA: “In what is becoming an increasingly tragic situation, Christer and Annie Johansson are still separated from their 7-year-old son, Dominic, who remains in the custody of Swedish social services, where he has been since June . . . HSLDA and the Alliance Defense Fund are jointly advising the family and exploring all available avenues to help reunite Dominic with his family.”

CNN Politics: “Support for allowing gays in the military is much higher among Democrats than Republicans, but the policy wins support from a majority of Republicans as well. More than eight in ten Democrats say that gays should be allowed to serve; 62 of Republicans and 63 percent of Independents agree with that view.”

David Prentice writes at LifeNews: “Last Friday the National Institutes of Health announced that they were proposing a ‘technical change’ in their Guidelines for destruction of human embryos, a.k.a. Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research.”

Melanie Phillips writing in the Spectator: “Indeed, the real significance of this appalling piece of legislation [the Children Schools and Families Bill] goes far beyond this particular row over this amendment, and far beyond the particular difficulties to be faced by faith schools and the ludicrous hoops through which they are now expected to jump. For it means that in all schools, parents will now find that their children are to be indoctrinated in a set of ‘non-judgmental ‘assumptions about sexual activity that many may find questionable or objectionable – but by law these assumptions may not deviate from the doctrines laid down by the Inquisitors at the Department for Children Schools and Families.”

LA Times: “UC Berkeley’s Goodwin Liu will be nominated to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, The Times has learned. Though he will face opposition from conservatives, he has admirers in that camp as well.”

Forum 18: “Three members of the unregistered Greater Grace Protestant Church have been given heavy fines in Samarkand in central Uzbekistan, Forum 18 News Service has learned.”

Fox News: “A bill in Congress that would prohibit discrimination in public schools based on sexual orientation or gender identity could stifle free speech and even lead to “homosexual indoctrination” in the nation’s classrooms, critics say.”

“A long-awaited opinion by Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D) out Wednesday morning concludes that the state’s highest court is likely to rule at some point that same-sex marriages performed in other states are valid in Maryland.”

Citizen Link: “A Colorado bill could give home school or private school families a tax credit the state would have spent on that child in a public school. The Colorado Legislature is considering the Quality Education and Budget Reduction Act, House Bill 1295 . . . ”

“The Pentagon said on Tuesday it is moving ahead with plans to end the U.S. military’s ban on allowing women to serve in submarines.”

The Guardian: “. . . faith schools can continue preaching that contraception, abortion and homosexuality are wrong or sinful, even though sex and relationships education (SRE) – which will be a compulsory part of the curriculum – is supposed to promote equality, diversity and tolerance.”

MailTribune: “Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon plans to offer medication-induced abortions at its clinics in Ashland and Eugene beginning sometime in March.”

Citizen Link: “Dr. James Dobson, founder and former chairman of Focus on the Family, is stepping down 33 years after he began the organization that has helped countless families.”

OneNewsNow: “Pro-Life Wisconsin and the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) obtained records concerning the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. Virginia Zignego, communications director for Pro-Life Wisconsin, explains what they discovered. ‘The UW Medical School has been taking students over to Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin to do two, four-week rotations there, and at this rotation, the students view and participate in abortions,’ she reports.”

National Law Journal: “Court unanimously rules that a corporation’s principal place of business is where the company’s executives work, not where the company’s products are sold.”

CNSNews: “Pennsylvania regulators say federal raids at a Philadelphia clinic where abortions are performed found ‘deplorable and unsanitary’ conditions, including blood on the floor and parts of aborted fetuses in jars.”

Winston-Salem Journal Editorial: “Commissioner Chairman Dave Plyler, the swing vote, approved the appeal after being pressured by a local group, the North Carolina Partnership for Religious Liberty [which] entered the fray because the Alliance Defense Fund [said it would] not pay the legal costs of the American Civil Liberties Union were the county to lose the case . . . The local partnership backing the appeal — the only thing standing between taxpayers and potentially high legal costs — has yet to provide detailed information about its members and donors.”

Alliance Defense Fund and Stand4MarriageDC attorneys appealed a court order Monday that denied their motion to keep a D.C. marriage redefinition law from going into effect on the projected date of March 3.

Separation of Church and State: Transfers of Government Land As Cures for Establishment Clause Violations
Paul Forster, 85 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 401 (2010)

“This article examines how courts should treat remedial sales in light of current case law. This note will argue that, given certain requirements, even the Supreme Court’s strictest Establishment Clause tests should permit defendant governments to sell land in order to cure Establishment Clause violations arising from permanent displays that include religious imagery. Section I of the note discusses the Supreme Court’s struggle to produce clear and consistent Establishment Clause standards and describes several tests that the courts use–or may in the future use–in Establishment Clause cases. Section II explains how these various tests apply to permanent physical displays on public property. Finally, Section III uses the Lemon-endorsement line of cases to illustrate issues likely to arise from a remedial sale of land. The section assumes an Establishment Clause violation caused by a permanent physical display on public land and analyzes how a defendant government might use a sale of land to remedy the violation.”