Daily Archives: June 21, 2010

“The Labor Department intends to issue regulations this week ordering businesses to give gay employees equal treatment under a law permitting workers unpaid time off to care for newborns or loved ones.”

John Rossomando writing at Inside Catholic: “Following Queen Elizabeth I’s reestablishment of the Anglican Church in 1560, Parliament and the queen were made the ultimate source of religious dogma in England. Where the Roman Catholic clergy and bishops had previously decided matters of religion, secular leaders of the House of Commons and House of Lords mandated by law which articles of faith were to be believed by the queen’s subjects and which were to be considered illegal. As a result, Catholics and non-conforming Protestants suffered tremendous persecutions in England because of their refusal to submit to the Anglican church. This state of affairs continued throughout the colonial period and into the Americas, where each colony — except Pennsylvania and New York — had its own state church. This was a problem the Founding Fathers knew they had to change, and so they made it impossible for the new government to decide matters of religious dogma by prohibiting the creation of a state religion.”

‘Perhaps God, who knows whether or not Biden’s brain was permanently damaged by his brain surgery, will not judge him too harshly, but the Church, which does not have that kind of knowledge should certainly speak out and reprimand him.’

USA Today: “The world has changed so drastically that experts say today’s young adults have a lot to ponder, much more than decades ago. More education has meant delayed financial independence, which is a major reason young adults say they aren’t making their relationships official. Other reasons: Sex before marriage is widespread; two-thirds live together before saying “I do.” And there’s a whole world of other potential partners yet to meet . . . ”

“Virtually all Americans have the common sense to recognize that children need both a mother and a father. Rudimentary biology tells us it’s impossible for a child to have two fathers. But here we have the leader of our nation and the Democrat Party celebrating sexual behavior which is contrary to nature and pushing a household structure that we know is harmful to children.”

NY Times: “For years, lawmakers in New York have been trying to pass legislation that would protect existing abortion rights by codifying the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which guarantees rights broader than the laws still on New York’s books. The legislation, never a winner when Republicans controlled the State Senate, has been the top priority of abortion rights groups since Democrats took control of the chamber last year. But as Albany’s legislative session draws to a close, a split is emerging . . . ”

Mercury News: “A Muslim advocacy group representative accused the FBI on Monday of wrongly questioning five Muslim men in the Los Angeles area about praying in a shopping center parking lot in southern Nevada six months ago.”

ADF Attorney Joe Martins writing at Speak Up Movement / University: “The Health & Human Services Committee recently recommended that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) maintain its lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men (MSM). I blogged a few weeks ago about how San Jose State University (SJSU) prohibited campus blood drives in response to the FDA’s policy. … In light of SJSU’s extreme expansion of nondiscrimination policies, many of you may be thinking that I am crying wolf or that I’m an alarmist. Perhaps SJSU is just an extreme outlier. Certainly other universities are not also charging down this path? If these are your thoughts, then unfortunately, you are wrong. Universities are gladly taking up the banner raised by SJSU in a variety of settings.”

ADF Attorney David J. Hacker appeared on Northwest Nights with Frank Shiers to discuss Idaho’s censorship of the Great Books in charter schools. | MP3 12:11 mins. | ADFmedia.org Nampa Classical Academy v. Goesling resource page

ynetnews.com: “Ultra-Orthodox councilmen stormed out of a Tel Aviv city council meeting Monday in response to a suggestion to begin teaching classes against homophobia in the city’s schools. … Hoshen, an organization that teaches kids about the dangers of homophobia, has so far given lessons only in Tel Aviv schools willing to accept its message. Many schools were unreceptive, however, prompting Councilman Yaniv Weizman, the mayor’s adviser on gay affairs, to make the suggestion.”

Asbury Park Press: “Barely any of Lakewood’s public school students will see a voucher; and still, ‘This piece of legislation will help us more than any other town,’ according to Republican state Sen. Robert Singer, who is also a Lakewood committeeman. … In Lakewood, private school students outnumber their public school counterparts four to one — a unique situation enhanced by the fact that they also comprise up to 20 percent of all low-income private school students in the state, far more than any other municipality, according to the latest U.S. Census data. Match that population with an inconspicuous addendum to the bill that reserves 25 percent of the $360 million in school vouchers for low-income students already in private schools, and Lakewood actually stands to win big.”

Business Mirror: “Concerned parents on Monday went to court to stop the Department of Education from implementing its decision to integrate its reproductive health syllabus into that of both public and private elementary and high schools. They filed the petition in the Regional Trial Court in Quezon City after they found the modules for the program includes introducing ‘non-invasive sexual activities.’”

Times of India: “The Nepal government Monday banned a school textbook after growing outcry by Muslims over an ‘objectionable’ illustration depicting Prophet Mohammed as a woman-like figure and containing ‘erroneous interpretations’ of Islam.”

BBC: “A BNP activist who delivered leaflets which blamed Muslims for the heroin trade has been cleared of intending to incite religious hatred. Anthony Bamber, 54, of Preston, printed and distributed the documents claiming Muslims were responsible for importing the drug from Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Montreal Gazette: “The government is preparing to appeal a court judgment ordering an exemption for a private Catholic school to teach an ethics course.”

JTA: “Police officers in the Netherlands may go undercover as religious Jews to identify violent anti-Semites.”

Boston Globe: “British prosecutors said Monday that a man convicted of murdering a toddler in 1993, when he himself was just 10 years old, has been charged with child pornography offenses.”

Reuters: “Living happily ever after needn’t only be for fairy tales. Australian researchers have identified what it takes to keep a couple together, and it’s a lot more than just being in love. A couple’s age, previous relationships and even whether they smoke or not are factors that influence whether their marriage is going to last, according to a study by researchers from the Australian National University.” | Full text: What’s love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability

Telegraph: “It shows that 1,023 Eurocrats pocket bigger salaries than David Cameron’s annual income of £142,500. … Among the 995 European civil servants, who are on the AD14 to AD16 grades earning £146,267 to £179,703, are at least 90 unelected British EU officials earning more than the Prime Minister. The Commission has admitted that the true numbers cannot be calculated and could be at least twice as high. After tax relief and generous perks are taken into account it is likely that over 2,000 officials are earning more than Mr Cameron.”

The Christian Institute: “A London council is set to stop beginning its meetings with Christian prayers, and replace them with poetry readings. … Many councils choose to start their meetings with Christian prayers, but Jayne Buckland, the Mayor of Enfield, has chosen to replace them in a bid to ‘support and encourage the arts’.”

ABC: “Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott have been put to the test by Australia’s Christian leaders in what could be the final week of Parliament before the next election. Mr Rudd and Mr Abbott spoke to churchgoers at a major gathering organised by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) in Canberra.”

PR Newswire: “American Civil Liberties Union client Constance McMillen will go to the White House on Tuesday to join President Obama at a ceremony recognizing the contributions of LGBT Americans. She will also serve as a Grand Marshal in the New York City Pride parade on June 27.”

Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65K5Y720100621?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true: “Plans for mosques in New York’s Brooklyn and Staten Island boroughs also are hitting opposition, with neighbors worried about potential extremism. ‘In the beginning, it will be peaceful, but we just don’t know what they will be taught there and that bothers us,’ said Alex Davidson, 62, a repair man who lives near the proposed Brooklyn mosque. He said: “If you look at the statistics, most terrorists are Muslim.’”

Carl Olson write at Ignatius Insight: “Singer and Co. seek to find meaning, or say there is meaning to be found, while implicitly adhering to a materialism that has no meaning aside from what man subjectively stables onto it. Most people, I’m convinced, can’t and won’t live with such an approach to reality and truth. Most people want to really live and love. Which is why we must be able to give an account for the hope we have been given (1 Pet. 3:15). ”

ADF attorney Roger Kiska appeared on Chris Fabry Live to discuss the Congressional hearings on the expulsion of Christian missionaries from Morroco. | MP3 7:07 mins | ADF Media: U.S. House holds hearing Thursday on Morocco’s deportation of Christians

WCAX: “The Vermont Supreme Court weighs in later this week in the long running custody dispute between former lesbian partners.”

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss the Proposition 8 trial. | MP3 8:22 mins

The Hill: “Gay rights activists see a chance to get the gay marriage issue back into the midterm campaign conversation thanks to an upcoming court ruling in California. … Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, said his organization fully intends to make it a campaign issue this year, and said he is confident it will work, at least in California’s statewide races. The group is fully engaged in both the race for governor and attorney general. ‘I think the issue of marriage equality is clearly going to drive turnout here in California,’ Kors said.”

Click Liverpool: “A primary school has censored a section of a C4 sex education DVD after one furious parent branded it ‘cartoon porn’. The video – intended for children aged over seven – shows a naked cartoon couple, having a pillow-fight and chasing each other before having sex in different positions.”

ADF attorney Jim Campbell appeared on a couple of programs last week to discuss the marriage battle. | The Roland Lettner Show : MP3 24 mins | AFR Focal Point with Bryan Fischer : MP3 11 mins

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys sent Kingsborough Community College officials a letter Monday calling upon them to end an unconstitutional policy that allows a faculty advisor to cancel a student organization’s event and silence its message by simply not showing up for the event.

RTE News: “The Government has dropped its challenge to a High Court declaration that Irish law on transgender rights is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Government must now introduce legislation recognising the new gender of transgender persons and allowing them to obtain new birth certificates or it will face condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights.”

CNSNews: “’Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a stepfather, a grandfather, or caring guardian,’ the proclamation reads.”

Minnesota Independent: “Same-sex marriage advocates think 2010 is their best chance yet to realize equality for gay and lesbian people. But a key factor will be who ends up occupying the governor’s mansion after Tim Pawlenty moves out — and whether he or she supports Minnesota joining the five other states and Washington, DC., that allow same-sex couples to wed. With the exception of Republican candidate Tom Emmer, all major candidates for governor are strongly in favor of same-sex marriage.”

First Amendment Center (AP): “A New Hampshire sex offender on probation is asking the state’s highest court to allow him to go to church with a chaperone. The case of Jonathan Perfetto marks the first time the New Hampshire Supreme Court has been asked to rule whether a probation condition that effectively bars church attendance violates constitutional rights to religious freedom.”

Kenneth Minogue writes at the New Criterion: “The fate of the Romans under Tiberius, who followed Augustus, was alarming beyond anything even imaginable in our time, but we should not forget the broader lesson: that over long stretches of time, the moral changes that take place only become evident in the light of some unexpected crisis. It is a lesson that ought to make us wary of our easy-going and liberated ways. Our world is infinitely benign, and we are in no immediate danger of falling into the distractions and treacheries that afflicted the early days of Rome under the Principate. But we should never forget that moral change never ceases, and it takes place below, and often deeply below, the surface of a culture.”

Hat tip: Todd Zywiki at the Volokh Conspiracy

‘As Muslims, we’re not interested in an education that is simply about getting a job. We’re not on Earth for this reason. We live on this Earth merely with a view to the next life.’

SCOTUSblog analyzes the Supreme Court’s ruling in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, No. 08–1498 (U.S. June 21, 2010): “For the first time in nearly nine years of what the government has called a ‘war on terrorism,’ the Supreme Court on Monday ruled decisively in the government’s favor — but still stopped short of providing an unqualified victory. The Court ruled, by a 6-3 vote, that it does not violate the Constitution for the government to block speech and other forms of advocacy supporting a foreign organization that has been officially labeled as terrorist, even if the aim is to support such a group’s peaceful or humanitarian actions.’” | See full post for more information.

Demographic Winter didn’t happen in a vacuum. Bad ideas and misguided policies have led to rapidly declining birthrates worldwide.

WHO: Don Feder
World Congress of Families

WHEN: Thursday, June 24, 2010 11:00 a.m. (EST)

WHERE: Family Research Council
Media Center
801 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

LEARN MORE:

http://www.frc.org/eventregistration/webcast–the-roots-of-demographic-winter-and-the-global-economic-crisis#

Tom Fiebiger, member of the legislative Interim Human Services Committee, writing in the Grand Forks Herald: “When the data about teenagers and abortion in North Dakota was released last week during testimony as part of this study, one thing was clear: We have to do more to reduce the rate of unintended pregnancy in the state of North Dakota. … This is a complex problem that requires comprehensive solutions, including support for parents as the primary sexuality educator of their children, medically accurate sex education and access to reproductive health care services.”

Graphic Ghana: “The Minority Leader in Parliament, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has called for the criminalisation of abortion and urged the Attorney General and Minister of Justice to initiate measures in pursuit of that.”

“U.S. Vice President Joe Biden travelled to Kenya to personally urge the country to pass a new constitution that would legalize abortion – and to assure Kenyans that such a change would ‘allow money to flow’ from foreign aid treasuries.”

Mercury News: Robert Norse’s Nazi salute lasted fewer than five seconds before he was removed from the Santa Cruz City Council meeting in handcuffs. But the Santa Claus-bearded gadfly’s free speech lawsuit against the city has lasted more than six years and may be destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the 9th U.S. circuit Court of Appeals will convene a rare 11-judge panel to consider how thick-skinned and tolerant public officials need to be before they can silence and evict dissenters from meetings.

9th Circuit panel ruling: Norse v. City of Santa Cruz, 586 F. 3d 697 (2009)

White House: “Today, President Obama spoke in Washington, D.C. to discuss the importance of responsible fatherhood and mentoring to build healthy families and communities. At the event, the President announced the next steps in his longstanding agenda on fatherhood and personal responsibility: The President’s Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative. The Initiative will continue the President’s effort to impact father absence in America through partnerships with fatherhood and family-serving groups and role models around the country.”

President Obama: “Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian.”

ADF Attorney David French writing at Phi Beta Cons: “NYU is sending students to a country that not only bans homosexual sodomy, it vigorously enforces that ban and reportedly subjects imprisoned men to involuntary hormone treatments. … Why would NYU tout a new school in a place that is officially racist and reportedly engages in mandatory and bizarre forms of medical ‘treatment’ for homosexual prisoners? It couldn’t possibly be that our university culture is addicted to Arab money, could it? It can’t be that the university world has different levels of tolerance for Christians and Muslims, right? I mean, they certainly can’t tolerate pervasive anti-Semitism, can they?”

Jeff Milyo has this post at the Volokh Conspiracy discussing legislative and administrative efforts to bully the Catholic Church in Connecticut.

Tom McClusky writes at Life News: “The best response I have seen to the ridiculousness of a ‘truce’ was written by prominent conservative activist (and FRC Action board member) Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values . . . Unless he knows something we don’t, using the word “truce” when family values are under increasing attack can only mean surrender. ”

LifeNews: “Missouri could become the fifth state to opt out of at least some of the abortion funding under the health care bill President Barack Obama signed if Governor Jay Nixon signs a bill the state legislature approved. Four states — including Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana have passed similar bills . . . ”

Christopher Guzman writes at Human Events: “Americans United for Life (AUL) is devoted to exactly what the name implies: safeguarding the lives that the pro-life movement so valiantly seeks to keep sacred. AUL began its work in 1971, playing some role in every pro-life case before the Supreme Court since Roe v. Wade.”

Thomas Fleming writing at Chronicles: “Most modern schools of philosophy base morality on the principles of reason, and the principal accounts of moral development emphasize growth in moral reasoning rather than moral behavior.To be a human person in this sense would mean that an individual is conscious of his own existence and capable of making rational decisions, including the decision to remain alive. On this reasoning Michael Tooley concludes that infants, born and unborn, are not persons and do not possess a right to life; mature higher mammals, on the other hand, may well be persons. Some animal rights advocates have reached the same conclusions: It is wrong to kill elephants and primates but not human babies.”

Professor Vardit Ravitsky writing at BioNews: “With no central registry and no federal or state regulation requiring long-term record keeping, information about donors is kept by individual sperm banks and fertility clinics according to various standards and for different lengths of time. The outcome of the current situation is that many US donor offspring will never have potential access to information about their donors (either non-identifying or identifying information subject to donor’s consent to disclosure).”

“[Activists] routinely invoke specters from America’s past such as white supremacism and state-sponsored racism, and argue that supporting marriage as the union of husband and wife is somehow similar. … Defending marriage is not similar to defending racism. Loving didn’t fundamentally redefine the natural understanding of marriage. Rather, the 1967 decision rescued marriage from an extreme ideology that sought to hijack marriage for purposes unrelated to marriage itself. Today, the courts faced with Perry and similar litigation should do the same.”

Heritage Foundation The Foundry: “National standards would also further remove parents from their children’s education. Instead of being able to petition their local school boards or state leaders for changes in academic content, parents would have to lobby bureaucrats in Washington, DC, if they wish to see changes in what their child is learning. This is perhaps the most worrisome part of the shift toward national standards. If imposed, parents and taxpayers will no longer be able to retain one of their most significant tools for education reform: the power to shape their schools’ academic content, standards, and testing.”

Detroit Free Press: “Four Christian missionaries trying to convert Muslims were arrested and jailed Friday for disorderly conduct at the Arab festival in Dearborn, police said. ‘We did make four arrests for disorderly conduct,’ Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad said Saturday. ‘They did cause a stir.’”

ADF attorney Austin R. Nimocks appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the Proposition 8 trial.  | MP3 14:43 mins

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence writing at Speak Up Movement / University: “With all of the caveats that Supreme Court Bingo is not an absolutely 100% accurate prediction tool, I am going out on a limb here to predict that Chief Justice John Roberts is writing the decision in the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez decision. That would be good news for the supporters of First Amendment freedoms. . . . I was fortunate enough to attend the oral arguments in both of those cases (CLS and Doe #1). I was able to watch the interpersonal dynamics among the justices on these cases. John Roberts gave a strong, emotional defense of CLS’s legal positions in this case. If the Chief is in the majority, he can assign the writing of the opinion to himself. I can clearly see him doing so because of his strong support for CLS’s legal arguments. If the Chief Justice is writing the CLS decision, I expect it to be strong and favorable to First Amendment rights.”

KSLA: SR 145 states that ‘citizens are urged to pray for a solution to this crisis, each according to his or her own faith, to pray for God’s continued guidance and protection and to join in the observance of a day of prayer, seeking God’s blessings upon both our state and nation.’  Click here to review the complete text of Senate Resolution 145.”

ACLU: A copy of the report is available online at: www.aclu.org/organization-news-and-highlights/report-american-civil-liberties-union-nomination-elena-kagan.

Parish the Thought: “Over the past two weeks I’ve had the honor of offering Mass for the Catholic participants in the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, which is a ministry of the Alliance Defense Fund. The Blackstone fellowship is an intensive nine week program for law students to equip them for facing the moral and ethical challenges in today’s legal system. You can go to their site for a better explanation. The students told me of the incredible speakers and programs offered during this two week session in Phoenix. In fact, I was kind of jealous not to be able to attend the sessions myself.”

Religion Clause Blog: “A lawsuit has been filed against the village of South Blooming Grove, New York by a Satmar Hasidic group that wants to restore an old club house at a former resort on Lake Anne. Today’s Hudson Valley Times Herald-Record reports that the lawsuit, originally filed in state court but transferred to federal court on the judge’s order, claims that the village’s refusal to consider Sheri Torah’s application violates RLUIPA.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Last week, Leonard Leo, recently re-elected chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, wrote President Obama urging him to publicly raise religious freedom and other human rights issues with the Russian leader. (Full text of letter.) . . . ”

Terry Paulson writes at Townhall: “Hayek’s book remains a wakeup call to apathetic citizens who take for granted that the improvements achieved through democracy, individual freedom and capitalism have been ‘acquired once and for all.’ Hayek knew what history confirms; freedom must be earned and reearned in every generation . . . ”

“Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s (PPFA) audits show the organization spent just $657.1 million between 2002 and 2008 from federal government grants and programs, but the abortion behemoth’s own annual reports show that it took in $2.3 billion . . . ”

AP: “A meeting between the Vatican’s foreign minister and President Raul Castro sparked hopes Sunday that more of the island’s political prisoners may be released or transferred to jails closer to home.”

AP: “Bork plans to detail his criticisms of Kagan during a Wednesday news conference organized by Americans United for Life.”

Christian Newswire: Judge Bork to Weigh in on Kagan Nomination in Exclusive RSVP-Only News Event

AP: “Several oil service companies are asking a federal judge to block the Interior Department from enforcing a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Vikram David Amar writes at Findlaw: “My first observation is that as significant as Judge Walker’s ruling will be, in many ways it will serve primarily as a placeholder . . . the way that Judge Walker has framed, and will in his opinion frame, the issues; the findings of fact he makes; and his important decision to hold a trial (with witnesses and cross-examination) in this case in the first place, rather than resolve the dispute on papers alone, will all affect the Ninth Circuit’s (and potentially the Supreme Court’s) review of the case.”

LifeNews:  ”The leading Republican in the Senate left the door open for a potential filibuster of pro-abortion Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. In a weekend interview with ‘Fox News Sunday’ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the initial information on Kagan has been ‘quite troubling.’”

OneNewsNow: “A Montana college is being supported by the Christian community regarding the constitutionality of the school’s graduation prayer tradition. . . . Travis Barham with Alliance Defense Fund is hopeful the letter will encourage the university to hold fast. ‘These prayers have been part of our nation’s traditions for centuries, and two federal courts have already upheld these kinds of prayers,’ the attorney points out.”

OneNewsNow: “ADF senior legal counsel [David Cortman] says he is stunned by the censorship. ‘We are talking about every school in the entire state of Idaho from kindergarten up through post-secondary school — we’re talking about colleges and universities — where every single book that can be deemed to be a religious document or text has been banned from study, whether it’s for objective study for art or history or literature or music,’ Cortman states.”

“While I thank God for the patriot pastors like those who have signed our Pastors’ Declaration of Godly Citizenship and those like Wayne Williams, pastor of Liberty Baptist Tabernacle in Rapid City, S.D. (“Pastor tests IRS by endorsing candidate”), and hundreds of others joining Alliance Defense Fund’s Free The Church project – they are still a minority. . . . The bottom line is that the pulpits of this nation had better get back to the business of preaching the undiluted, uncompromised word of God as applied to all vital current issues and then demand that Christians vote those principles.” (Dave Welch writing at World Net Daily)

AP: “A nationwide Associated Press analysis found that the 20 states with civil commitment laws will spend nearly $500 million this year alone to lock up and treat 5,200 offenders. The annual costs per offender topped out at $175,000 in New York and $173,000 in California, and averaged $96,000 a year, about double what it would cost to send them to an Ivy League university . . . ”

“The Louisiana legislature has passed and sent to Gov. Bobby Jindal for his signature SB 606, the Preservation of Religious Freedom Act.”

CNSNews: “Middle-class households that earned between $34,300 and $141,900 paid 50.5 percent of all federal tax revenues in 2007 (the most recent year analyzed), according to the CBO study released Thursday, and households that earned between $34,300 and $352,900 paid 66.7 percent of all federal taxes.”