Daily Archives: June 11, 2010

ADF Attorney Daniel Blomberg and Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance, debate the effect of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal on religious liberty in the military on Interfaith Voices Radio. | MP3 38:49

BioNews: “Political consensus in Denmark has resulted in an amendment to legislation governing IVF (in vitro fertilisation) funding. According to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), free public health services will no longer extend towards assisted reproduction treatments (ART).”

WHDH: “The new plate, which costs an extra $40 above the normal registration fee features a mother cradling a child and reads ‘Choose Life’ on the bottom. The group behind the plates, Choose Life Incorporated, said a portion of the money will go towards pregnancy crisis centers in Massachusetts . . . Pro-Choice groups in Massachusetts worry what type of adoption centers would receive the money generated by the new plates.”

Southern.com: “The atheist challenging a $20,000 grant for Bald Knob Cross from the state to a fundraising group says he’s moving forward with plans to bring the battle to the courtroom.”

Irish Times: “The French interior minister has suggested amending the law to enable the state to strip polygamists of their French citizenship. Brice Hortefeux was speaking after a judge filed preliminary charges of fraud against an Algerian-born man whom the authorities suspect of polygamy.”

Janesville Gazette: “Although the CRES Academy has removed all materials suggesting it requires its students to complete a faith-based recovery program, the Freedom From Religion Foundation claims the school continues to violate the separation of church and state.”

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: “A Minnesota man has been barred from an annual bike tour in North Dakota after objecting to a prayer said during the event. Morgan Christian, 54, of St. Paul, rode the 500-mile CANDISC tour three consecutive years. He objected last summer to a prayer said before a meal at a public high school gym in Turtle Lake, one of several host communities along the route . . . he has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom from Religion Foundation about the issue.”

Business Week: “Late Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a bill authorizing a voter referendum on whether to convert the state’s two licensed slot parlors, Twin River in Lincoln and Newport Grand in Newport, into full-fledged casinos. Hours later, the Senate passed the measure.”

Medical News Today: “On Tuesday, abortion-rights opponents visited Montana polling places in an attempt to gather enough signatures to qualify a ‘personhood’ ballot measure for the November election, the Great Falls Tribune reports.”

Heritage Foundation’s Insider Online carries this report on the NEA.

Rob Schwarzwalder writing at the FRC blog: “In an op-ed in today’s Washington Post (‘Restoring Leadership and Integrity to the Office of Legal Counsel‘), President Obama’s former nominee to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel Dawn Johnsen writes that ‘There is no simple answer to why my nomination failed’ . . . Ms. Johnsen is a pro-abortion zealot, and a sufficient number of pro-life Senators found her views outside the mainstream that she finally gave up her more than 14 month effort to achieve Senate confirmation.”

The Post-Standard: “A federal judge today approved a lawyers’ agreement allowing a Schenectady school student to continue wearing a rosary outside his clothing pending a court hearing in September . . . Dague today said Albany-based U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn agreed to postpone a hearing in the case from Friday until Sept. 8 in order to give the two sides time to try and resolve the dispute over the summer.” | Related: NY judge allows student to return to school, wear Rosary

Fox News (NYPost): “Brenda Hamilton, who is an understudy in the Broadway show ‘Wicked,’ said she had been taking Yasmin for a little more than two years when she suffered the terrifying stroke in May 2007. She has since recovered, but says in a civil suit filed in The Bronx that Bayer knew Yasmin posed a greater risk than did other birth-control pills for blood clots and strokes, but withheld that information from patients and doctors.” | Via Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, who posts relevant anecdotal evidence.

ADF Attorney Joel Oster writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: “This past week, ADF confronted the tangible results of the myth of an impenetrable wall of separation between church and state. We sent out 151 letters to various governmental entities asking them to stop the discrimination against religious people . . . The most troubling aspect of this is the law in this area is crystal clear, and has been for some time. In 1993, the Supreme Court ruled in Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384, that a public school cannot prohibit a group from accessing its facilities to talk about Christian views on the family when the school opens its facilities to others to talk about the family from secular perspectives. Your Christian world view does not disqualify you from being a full citizen in America. Legally speaking, the matter was settled. The Supreme Court spoke, and there was no wall!” | ADF News Release

The Journal Gazette: The Allen County commissioners today agreed to hire the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund to defend against a lawsuit seeking to overturn the county’s new patient safety ordinance. The commissioners unanimously approved a resolution that appoints the attorney [Steven Aden] and the Defense Fund as the county’s primary legal counsel.”

Education Week: “The U.S. Department of Justice has sided with the American Civil Liberties Union in its challenge of single-gender classes at a Louisiana middle school.”

“Family Research Council praised today’s decision by the federal Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability to reject any change in current blood donation rules . . . ”

Erick Erickson writes at Red State Blog: “I have had great hopes for the Governor of Indiana running for President. Signs are starting to point to a run and in the process Daniels is signaling he is not so much a leader as a technocratic wonk and not so much driven by fiscal conservative principles as by bureaucratically generated data. A leader would not pick an unnecessary fight with social conservatives before even starting a run for office unless he wanted to start out by marginalizing social conservatives . . . ”

Christian Post: “Two women pastors were arrested and sent to jail on false charges by a Hindu Nationalist Movement in Karnataka, India, according to a Christian advocacy group.”

KGUN: “The ACLU is requesting records on the new laws that pertain to the Ethnic Studies program in Public Schools . . . ‘The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a records request seeking to prompt the Arizona Department of Education to release documents related to the implementation of a new law banning ethnic studies programs that goes into effect December 31.’”

BBC: “Police in Sri Lanka say they have started a campaign to remove what they describe as indecent advertising on film billboards and posters in Colombo . . . The sources said it was hoped that the internet would be more tightly controlled, too, after the recent banning of pornographic sites on mobile phones.”

ADF submits supplementary letter brief in Mt. Soledad case on behalf of American Legion Dept. of Calif.

NPR (includes audio): “But a fight is already shaping up over whether ulipristal — which will be marketed in the U.S. under the brand name ‘Ella’ — should be approved. Abortion opponents say it not only prevents ovulation, but can also destroy a fertilized egg, which they say is equivalent to abortion. ‘It prevents the fertilized egg, the embryo, from implanting in the uterus. And if the embryo has already implanted, it will destroy the embryo,’ says Donna Harrison, President of theAmerican Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.”

GOP Leader Blog: “House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), in a meeting with President Obama and Congressional leaders at the White House today, asked President Obama to provide the American people with a progress report on the implementation of his Executive Order which purports to ban taxpayer-funding of abortions. Leader Boehner noted that in her recent ‘progress report’ to Congress on the implementation of ObamaCare, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius did not make any mention of efforts by the administration to implement the president’s Executive Order (EO).” | Via The Corner.

AP: “Bill Clinton’s presidential library is keeping secret memos and notes Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan wrote in connection with the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit . . . ”

“Gov. Charlie Crist has vetoed a bill that would have required women seeking an abortion during the first trimester to undergo an ultrasound exam and pay for it.”

Las Vegas Review-Journal: “A national leader of the Personhood-USA movement said Thursday the group won’t be able to collect the required number of signatures by Tuesday’s deadline. The proposed constitutional amendment would halt abortions in Nevada.” | Ballotpedia: Nevada Personhood Amendment (2012)

ABC: “The new guidelines mean people who receive a tattoo, piercing or acupuncture can now donate blood after six months, down from the previous waiting period of 12 months. But the guidelines have remained the same for sexually active gay men – with a 12 month ban after engaging in homosexual intercourse.”

Washington Times: “A federal panel on blood safety will make a recommendation Friday about whether the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should change its blood donation policy for gay men.”

Associated Press: “The director of Poland’s National Museum says it is opening an exhibition on gay and lesbian love designed to provoke discussion on the place of homosexuals in this conservative and overwhelmingly Catholic country.”

LifeSiteNews: “The National Association of Evangelicals appears to be shifting away from its neutral stance on contraception in favor of a qualified endorsement of the practice. A new survey released by the NAE claiming to represent 45,000 evangelical churches reveals that Evangelical pastors overwhelmingly believe in artificial contraception.”

C-Fam on LifeSiteNews: “Deep divisions with top United Nations (UN) officials and abortion activists on one side and maternal health researchers on the other became public this week during the Women Deliver 2 conference in Washington, DC. The dispute threatens to derail hopes of raising $30B for family planning at international development conferences in the coming months.”

AolNews.: “Chinese authorities have brought a charge of ‘group licentiousness’ against a 17-year-old girl accused of participating in sex parties with multiple male students, according to a report in the English-language China Daily . . . Sexuality experts say the dusted-off offense is a leap backward for China’s modernization drive, reflecting Beijing’s effort to maintain social order amid the dizzying social changes brought by a sexual revolution and the Internet explosion in China.”

KDKA (AP): “Residents of a small eastern Pennsylvania town say they’re worried that a so-called ‘swingers club’ is coming to their community.”

The Korea Times: “At the Constitutional Court Thursday, tensions were high as the Ministry of National Defense and a local military court walked a tight rope on whether Article 92 of the Military Law subjecting those practicing homosexual intercourse to a year in prison violated the basic human right to seek happiness and live with equality.”

BBC: “Visitors to porn sites are at serious risk of being exploited by cyber criminals, a study has suggested. It found that many sites harboured malware or used “shady” practices to squeeze money out of their visitors.”

The Portugal News: “A lesbian couple who have become Portugal’s first same-sex couple to wed in an official ceremony, since the passing of the law allowing gay marriage last month, have now vowed that the next step in their fight for equality will be to tackle parenting rights, including the issue of adoption by same-sex couples.” | Related: “Portugal lesbian couple in nation’s first gay marriage” | President of Portugal Signs Law to Redefine Marriage | Portugal’s Constitutional Court OKs same-sex “marriage”

LifeNews: “The Beacon Women’s Center, placed on temporary probation in 2007 after health problems state inspectors encountered, will close down permanently next week.”

Florida Baptist Witness: “Dozens of Florida women held a news conference in Tallahassee today to urge Gov. Charlie Crist to sign HB 1143, a health care bill with pro-life provisions awaiting the governor’s action, according to a news release from the group.”

LifeNews: “Today, Huckabee released a statement to Politico saying he took exception to the ‘truce’ comment. He said pro-life issues ‘are not bargaining chips nor or they political issues. They are moral issues.’”

AFP: “Couples of different European nationalities will be able to choose which divorce laws will apply under a new deal struck between 14 countries on Friday . . . ”

Washington Blade: “‘The prospect of having an unprecedented number of openly LGBT folks in the legislature demonstrates just how far we have come,’ said Morgan Meneses-Sheets, executive director of Equality Maryland . . . ”

GayPolitics.com: “Openly LGBT candidates won political races literally from coast to coast last night, with key wins in California, Montana and Maine. 17 of the Victory Fund’s 21 endorsed candidates on the ballot yesterday either won their races outright or advanced to general elections . . . ”

New York Times: “As a young White House lawyer, Elena Kagan wrote that it was ‘quite outrageous’ for the government to force a landlord to rent an apartment to an unwed couple if doing so violated the landlord’s religious beliefs against cohabitation outside the bonds of marriage.”

Amnesty International: “Amnesty International has expressed great disappointment at the Nicaragua government’s decision to reject the recommendations made by 12 States urging a change to the country’s law imposing a total ban on abortion . . . Currently only four countries in the world have a complete ban on abortion: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and Malta.” | More from the European Life Network’s Pat Buckley and SPUC director John Smeaton.

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on the Janet Mefferd Show to discuss the case of a NASA specialist demoted for his Intelligent Design views. | MP3 17:37 mins | ADF Media information

ADF attorney Joel Oster appeared on Talk from the Heart with Rich Buhler to discuss equal access in public libraries. | MP3 8:43 mins | ADF Media: ADF seeks to end religious discrimination policies at more than 750 government-run facilities

Wall Street Journal: “The Census reported Thursday that nonwhite minorities accounted for 48.6% of the children born in the U.S. between July 2008 and July 2009, gaining ground from 46.8% two years earlier. The trajectory suggests that minority births will soon eclipse births of whites of European ancestry.”

Reuters: “The Althingi parliament voted 49 to zero to change the wording of marriage legislation to include matrimony between “man and man, woman and woman,” in addition to unions between men and women.”

New York Times: “The Justice Department has decided that federal prosecutors should enforce criminal provisions in the Violence Against Women Act in cases involving gay and lesbian relationships, a newly disclosed memorandum shows. In a seven-page legal analysis, David J. Barron, the acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that federal prosecutors may use the law in cases of interstate stalking and domestic violence regardless of whether the victim or the defendant is a man or a woman.”

WorldNetDaily: “An internationally known human rights lawyer [Rudy Harrold-Claesson, the president of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights] who had agreed to work on the case of a Swedish family whose son was taken into custody by agents of the government social services program for being homeschooled says she has been banished from the case . . . the court apparently removed Harrold-Claesson because the lawyer made an attempt to see the child in the school setting where social services agents have put him . . . ‘What you have here is a socialist country trying to create a cookie cutter kid,’ said [Roger Kiska], an Alliance Defense Fund attorney based in Europe. ‘This kind of thing happens too often where social workers take a child and then just keep him.’” | ADF News Release of December 22, 2009

Diana West writes at Townhall: “These ladies and gents of the Fourth Estate didn’t just want to ignore the Klein-Elliott book about Barack Obama’s radical ties, they wanted to denigrate it, and some quite angrily, which is an out-of-sync reaction to a book that last week debuted on the New York Times bestseller list at No. 10. Somehow, the book was personally or even existentially offensive to these MSMers’ most cherished convictions. Whether such convictions balance on a halo affixed to Barack Obama (threatened by the book’s revelations), or rest on their own sorry credentials as news professionals (ditto), or something else, I don’t know. But this rejectionist reflex, which characterized the abysmal 2008 Obama campaign coverage, is why we now have a president who poses a danger to the future of the republic. Unfortunately, conservative media, too, are relatively AWOL on this book . . . ”

WhiteHouse.gov: “James E. Graves, Jr. is a distinguished and experienced Mississippi jurist, who was an attorney in private practice and public service before taking the bench. The only African-American currently serving on the Mississippi Supreme Court, Justice Graves takes a keen interest in the administration of his state’s court system, and has been active in national, state and local bar associations. ”

San Francisco Chronicle: “The only members of the public who will get to watch next week’s closing arguments in the trial over same-sex marriage in California will be the ones who make it to the courthouse.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Rentz v. Werner, (WA App., June 7, 2010), a Washington state appellate court held that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine precludes the court from adjudicating a dispute between former members of the Aquarian Foundation, a spiritualist church headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and the church’s current minister . . . ”

Idaho Press-Tribune: “The Idaho Public Charter School Commission will conduct a hearing in Boise today to discuss revoking Nampa Classical Academy’s charter. A hearing officer will . . . present his findings on a possible charter revocation to Charter Commission board members at their June 24 regular meeting . . . The commission told school leaders they could not use the Bible and other religious texts to teach history and literature. The school then used the resources of the Alliance Defense Fund, a national conservative advocacy group, to sue the commission and the state for the right to use religious texts. That lawsuit is still in progress.” | ADFmedia.org Nampa Classical Academy v. Goesling resource page

LifeNews: “Allen County commissioners this week will consider whether to allow the Alliance Defense Fund, a pro-life legal group, to defend the county in a lawsuit challenging a local ordinance.”

Religion Clause Blog: “The court held that while a landowner who intends to rent his property to a Christian church has standing to bring a ‘substantial burden’ claim under RLUIPA, the exclusion of churches from one area does not place a substantial burden on free exercise when other ares in the Town are available for churches.”

Dixon v. Town of Coats, No. 5:08-CV-489-BR  (ED NC, June 9, 2010)

Religion Clause Blog: “In Saieg v. Haddad, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56331 (ED MI, June 7, 2010), a Michigan federal district court upheld as a valid ‘time, place and manner regulation’ a requirement that any literature distribution at the annual Dearborn, Michigan Arab International Festival must take place from a booth in the vendor area.”

NCPA Policy Digest: “Organized Christian health-sharing arrangements, which first cropped up in the early 1980s, have become an alternative to traditional health insurance for an estimated 100,000 Americans. The groups range from small, community-based collectives to large, multistate organizations like Samaritan Ministries International and Medi-Share, which each month direct the flow of millions of dollars from individuals to fellow members with eligible health care expenses, says Time Magazine . . . ”

Mediaite.com (includes video): [Rep. Mike Pence]“Remarkably, yesterday the president said it was time for Israel to sharply limit its effective blockade in Gaza saying ‘the situation in Gaza is unsustainable.’ The truth, Mr. President, your policy in Israel is unsustainable. The American people are on the side of Israel and Israel’s right to defend herself. Mr. President, whose side are you on?”

“. . . a contraceptive culture and a chaste culture are mutually exclusive . . . any potential benefits from greater contraceptive use are dwarfed by the benefits that would accrue from a more chaste culture . . . ”