Daily Archives: June 22, 2010

CNN: “Voters in Utah can now go online and sign a petition to qualify candidates for public office, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday.”

“President Barack Obama is promising gay rights activists he’ll keep pushing for action on their priorities including benefits for same-sex partners and repealing the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on gays in the military.”

NewsBusters: “On Tuesday’s Newsroom, CNN’s Brooke Baldwin brought on another teenaged homosexual activist for a sympathetic interview to help promote their upcoming one-sided documentary, ‘Gary and Tony Have a Baby.’ Baldwin prompted Constance McMillen to give advice to ‘other teens who are suffering in silence.’ The anchor also didn’t press McMillen on how she might have inconvenienced her classmates.”

Associated Press: “Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the White House intends to immediately appeal a federal judge’s ruling against a moratorium on new deepwater drilling.” | Related: Judge block Gulf offshore drilling moratorium

Miami Herald: “Somerset Academy has given the city a Friday deadline to issue a certificate of use for a proposed 675-student charter school at University Baptist Church or ‘Somerset will pursue all available remedies,’ the school’s attorney wrote in a letter last week to City Attorney Elizabeth Hernandez. … Hernandez says . . . the site is zoned for a religious institution and allows a school only as a secondary use. But representatives for the school say land use and zoning changes are not needed because a state law allows churches to house charter schools regardless of zoning.”

Science Blog: “The study, published in the journal, Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, examined the influence of gender, sexual orientation and whether we’re right-or-left-handed on our ability to recognize faces. It found that when memorizing and discriminating between faces, homosexual men show patterns of bilaterality — the usage of both sides of the brain — similar to heterosexual women. Heterosexual men tend to favour the right hemisphere for such tasks.”

CBN: “Planned Parenthood is being pressured to answer questions about how much taxpayer funding it receives and and how that money is spent.”

On Top Mag (“gay advocacy website”): “Legislation introduced by openly gay New York Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell would allow married gay and lesbian couples to file joint state tax returns. While lawmakers rejected a bill that would have legalized gay marriage in the nation’s third most populous state last year, New York is moving ahead in recognizing legal gay marriages performed outside its borders. Neighboring Connecticut, Vermont and Canada offer the institution.”

Buenos Aires Herald: “The Upper House began a new phase in its debate on the same-sex marriage, this time with psychologists and psychiatrists being the ones exposing their viewpoints. The General Legislation Committee is officially discussing the draft which aims at amending the Civil Code to allow gay couples to get married. The first shift of debate has concluded.”

The Morning Journal (AP): “An Ohio panel has approved a new rule allowing nonunion state employees to take bereavement or sick time for issues related to a live-in partner.”

“[T]he purpose of this occasion is to recognize with gratitude the contributions made by LGBT members of the State Department family every single day. We celebrate the progress that is being made here in our own country toward advancing the rights of LGBT Americans, and we recognize that there is still a lot of work to be done but that we are moving together in the right direction. And we reaffirm our commitment to protect and advance the rights of all human beings, as Cheryl just said, of members of the LGBT community around the world.”

The Greenville News: “Two Greenville street preachers who have sued the city saying their civil rights to free speech were violated when police arrested and accused them of harassing passersby downtown are scheduled to have their case heard Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Bryan Harwell will conduct the hearing for an injunction in federal court in Greenville, according to court records.” | Related: [9.28.2009] Street preacher says Greenville stifled free speech

KWTX: “McLennan County Commissioners voted Tuesday to begin their meetings by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and agreed to explore options for prayers at meetings. … Last week, County Attorney Mike Dixon warned that prayer at meetings could spark a lawsuit.”

The Daily Breeze: “Years after one of the South Bay’s largest churches roiled its neighbors in a failed attempt to grow even bigger, Rolling Hills Covenant Church is putting forward a new expansion plan. … After years of repeated late-night meetings, and amid passionate outcry from neighbors and threats of litigation from the church, the plan was scaled back. It failed to gain City Council approval, nonetheless. Now the church is hoping simply to get the go-ahead for more Sunday-school classrooms and executive offices, among other improvements. The expansion is a modest 16,000-square-foot addition to the nearly 64,000-square-foot existing campus.”

Freedom from Religion Foundation: “The Madison, Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation on June 21 urged the Otsego County Board of Commissioners (Gaylord, Mich.) to end its practice of sectarian prayers to Jesus at official meetings.”

Christian Post (Compass Direct): “In a hearing in its lawsuit against a local government, a representative for a church that Bekasi, West Java officials summarily closed earlier this year told an administrative court that the action was unconstitutional. The Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP) Filadelfia church had filed a lawsuit on March 30 against the local government for its Jan. 12 sealing of the building under construction. Regent H. Sa’adudin on April 12 issued a decree to cease worship and other activities.”

Wall Street Journal: “A growing number of companies are offering the services of chaplains in the workplace. Managers say many employees who wouldn’t think of calling a therapist or an employee-assistance program will willingly turn to a chaplain. Executives at Tyson Foods Inc., which employs 120 chaplains serving a work force of 117,000, say they believe the service reduces turnover. Other companies contract with chaplain-placement services to handle workplace disruptions that managers can’t.”

ADF Attorney Erik Stanley writing at Speak Up Movement / University: “You can read Mr. Johnson’s actual letter to James Madison online here. I have a couple of thoughts in response to this. First, I find it interesting to note that it was pastors who provided the impetus, at least in part, for the First Amendment, and specifically the protection of religious freedom. Pastors have always been at the forefront of the great social and moral issues facing America and this is just one more example. Second, as [former Judge Mike McConnell] notes, it was only after pastors pressured Madison that he switched his position to support a provision that would later become the First Amendment. This little vignette from American history demonstrates just how much of an impact pastors can have on American life. And this is just one story in a mountain of historical evidence of the positive impact pastors have had on American history.”

Christian Post: “An 11-year-old Christian boy here is growing weak and ill from malnutrition from working in slave-like conditions for a Muslim landowner who kidnapped him and is forcing him to work off his family’s debts, his mother told Compass . . . ”

Politico: “Gay groups are lashing out at former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee for saying in a recent interview that he doesn’t support gay marriage, in part, because of the ‘ick factor.’”

CBS: “A West Texas jury has convicted a member of a polygamist group of sexual assault of a child, a charge stemming from his alleged marriage to an underage girl.”

The Mercury: “Cabinet is understood to have signed off yesterday on legislation introducing a Charter of Rights to the Tasmanian Parliament, after three years of procrastination and delays. The Charter of Rights is designed to better protect the civil and political rights of Tasmanians, enshrining major issues such as the right to vote, free speech and religious freedom in state law.”

TV by the Numbers: “Building upon the success of Black in America and Latino in America, CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien will cover another underreported story, one of two gay men who want nothing more than what they each had growing up – a traditional family – and a child of their own. O’Brien reports a revealing one-hour CNN documentary that follows Gary Spino and Tony Brown on their struggle to have a baby that has a biological and legal connection to both of them via an egg donor and a surrogate.”

Financial Times: “Over the last few years, India has emerged as a big hub for infertile Western couples seeking young women willing to serve as surrogate mothers for their babies. … Yet the largely unregulated business has generated many concerns, including worries about practices that could risk the surrogate mothers’ health. Indian is now planning a draft law to clean up an industry which has been limited only by the ethics of local doctors – many willing to go to great lengths and push the young surrogates hard – to satisfy their affluent customers’ demands.”

ABC: “Tasmania’s Deputy Premier has announced she will help Greens leader Nick McKim reintroduce a bill to legalise voluntary euthanasia.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “As if there aren’t already enough reasons why public funds should never support religious education – here are just a few more. Reason No. 793: NBC’s Today Show recently interviewed a Florida teacher who said she was fired by a Christian school after school officials learned she became pregnant before her marriage . . . ”

Legal Blog Watch: “All the former U.S. solicitors general since 1985 today joined in endorsing current SG Elena Kagan in advance of her Senate confirmation hearing, set to begin June 28. ‘Elena Kagan would bring to the Supreme Court a breadth of experience and a history of great accomplishment in the law,’ the group said in a joint letter released by the White House this morning . . . ”

NY Daily News: “In addition, the platform says that homosexuality ‘tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit and leads to the spread of dangerous communicable diseases.’”

NY Times: “In the public’s imagination, the classic hate crime is an assault born of animus against a particular ethnicity or sexual orientation, like the case of the Long Island man convicted in April of killing an Ecuadorean immigrant after hunting for Hispanics to beat up. But in Queens since 2005, at least five people have been convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, committing a very different kind of hate crime — singling out elderly victims for nonviolent crimes like mortgage fraud . . . ”

ACLU: “For many immigrants in this country, the chance to take the oath of allegiance to the United States and become sworn in as a U.S. citizen is a moment they dream about and work years to achieve. But for Tarek Hamdi and many other Muslim immigrants around the country, the dream is tarnished by racial and religious discrimination in the naturalization process . . . ”

Legal Blog Watch: “The New York Times reports that next month, every student at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles will ‘awake to a higher grade point average,’ but not because of anything the students did. Rather, the school has simply decided that by retroactively inflating its grades by 0.333 for every grade recorded in the last few years, it can make its ‘make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.’”

LifeSiteNews: “Ahern, a sponsor of the bill who continues to profess to be a Catholic, said, ‘I do leave my religion behind me and I genuinely mean that. While we all have our beliefs and our own religions, I don’t think it should cloud our judgment.’”

LifeSiteNews: “The American Life League joined the U.K.’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) on Monday calling for a ban on all in vitro fertilization (IVF) practices. IVF routinely involves the massive loss of human life as ‘excess’ embryonic children are discarded, frozen indefinitely, or fall victim to ‘selective termination’ following implantation.”

Boston Globe: “Mexico on Tuesday asked a federal court in Arizona to declare the state’s new immigration law unconstitutional, arguing that the country’s own interests and its citizens’ rights are at stake.”

LifeSiteNews: “Andrea Bocelli wants to make it clear that he is not merely “anti-abortion” but genuinely pro-life, in the fullest sense. In an interview this weekend with the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, the world-renowned singer said his position is founded on his deeply held Catholic faith . . . ”

Thomas More Law center has posted two videos and additional information here.

Thomas More Law Center: “These Christian missionaries were exercising their Constitutional rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion, but apparently the Constitution carries little weight in Dearborn, where the Muslim population seems to dominate the political apparatus. It’s apparent that these arrests were a retaliatory action over the embarrassing video of the strong arm tactics used last year by Festival Security Guards.  This time, the first thing police officers did before making the arrests was to confiscate the video cameras in order to prevent a recording of what was actually happening.”

The Volokh Conspiracy: “For more than 30 years, gay-rights organizers have annually paid for a permit to hold a gay-pride festival in a small park near downtown Minneapolis. … This year, an anti-gay activist and preacher named Brian Johnson and his family have insisted that they be given access to the permit grounds during the hours of the festival in order to display signs, distribute literature, and peronally counsel attendees with an opposing message: that homosexuality is sinful and must be condemned rather than accepted. … Facing potential litigation, the MPRB agreed to the demands of Johnson’s lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund, one of the most active litigation outfits opposing gay equality around the country. In response, TCP is threatening its own lawsuit against the MPRB.”

ADF Attorney Joe Martins writing at Speak Up Movement / University: “Today, Peter Schmidt has an excellent article at the Chronicle of Higher Education on the efforts of various professors to shore up academic freedom at their respective universities. This effort is entirely understandable, but I fear will ultimately prove ineffective. … Given the practical shortcomings of institutional protections, it appears this matter needs to be settled by the Supreme Court. For almost half a century before Garcetti, the Court recognized the ‘transcendent value’ of academic freedom and the special place it holds in the First Amendment. The Court needs to clarify that Garcetti did not change this precedent and that the viewpoint of professors’ scholarship and teaching is still protected by the Constitution. The ADF Center for Academic Freedom is currently appealing this precise issue to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for Dr. Adams because the district court wrongly used Garcetti to quash his First Amendment rights. For the sake of academic freedom, let’s hope the Fourth Circuit—and ultimately the Supreme Court—get it right.”

LifeNews: “Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are considering boycotting the hearings planned next week for pro-abortion nominee Elena Kagan because they still have not received the documents they requested from her tenure as Solicitor General for pro-abortion President Barack Obama.”

“A crowd of gay and lesbian Justice Department employees and their supporters enthusiastically cheered Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday as he vowed to strictly enforce a new federal law designed to protect them.”

Washington Post: “The Southern Baptist Convention is battling the expected repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” on a number of fronts: Its agencies are contacting members of Congress and the Pentagon; retired chaplains are sending letters to President Obama; and a resolution adopted at the denomination’s annual meeting in Orlando this week condemns allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.”

Washington Post: “With a federal court considering a challenge to California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ban on same-sex marriage, The Post asked state residents, pollsters and others what it would mean for the cause of gay marriage if the law is overturned. Below, responses from Scott Keeter, Joe Mathews, Morgan Meneses-Sheets, Ayelet Waldman, Dianne Feinstein and Jarrett T. Barrios . . . ”

The Republic (AP): “The Alliance Defense Fund will represent Liberty Baptist Tabernacle of Rapid City and its pastor, the Rev. H. Wayne Williams. … ADF lawyer [Erik Stanley] says free-speech rights take precedence over tax rules.” | ADF News Release

Christian Web News: “‘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,’ [David Cortman] states.”

FRC: “The Obama Administration continues to defy federal law and exceed the limits of its constitutional authority by extending benefits to homosexual couples that have not been authorized by law . . . ”

Slave Master: How Pornography Drugs & Changes Your Brain
Donald L. Hilton, Jr., Salvo Magazine, Salvo 13 (Summer 2010)

“This article will seek to answer two questions: (1) Biologically, is the brain affected by pornography and other sexual addictions? (2) If so, and if such addictions are widespread, can they have a societal effect as well?”

Dallas Morning News: “DART board members appear likely today to change the wording of the agency’s proposed nondiscrimination policy to explicitly prohibit employment decisions based on gender identity. It takes two votes to change a board policy, and last week members voted 11-2 to adopt protections for transgender employees – but only after a last-minute wording change created a loophole that some say is large enough to gut the new protections altogether.”

Breitbart (AP): “Feldman says in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the moratorium. He says it seems to assume that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.”

Findlaw (AP): “Last week, however, the New York Senate passed a divorce reform bill, by a vote of 32-27, which would dramatically reform the law. Senate Bill 3890 would allow divorce based on the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, regardless of whether either party had committed a particular kind of marital fault . . . In this column, I’ll explain what changes the bill would bring about, what problems it will hopefully remedy, and whether there are likely to be any adverse consequences of the new law.”

Findlaw (AP): “Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s arguments as solicitor general in several cases on government secrecy were at odds with a promise of transparency made by her boss and top client, President Barack Obama. In four of five cases she dealt with involving the Freedom of Information Act, Kagan argued in favor of secrecy, Justice Department documents show.”

Life News: “A new study coming from researchers in Sri Lanka finds women who had abortions more than triple their breast cancer risk compared with wome who carry their pregnancy to term. The study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology and found a 3.42 odds ratio against women having abortions compared with those who kept their baby.”

De Silva M, Senarath U, Gunatilake M, Lokuhetty D. Prolonged breastfeeding reduces risk of breast cancer in Sri Lankan women: a case-control study. Cancer Epidemiol 2010;34(3):267-73. Abstract available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20338838

National Law Journal: “The U.S. Senate this morning broke deadlocks on more than 60 presidential nominees, including those for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the D.C. Superior Court.”

Action3News: “The law attempts to ban undocumented immigrants from renting or being employed in the Nebraska town.”

PFOX: “There is, however, another possibility. Could it be that Kagan is ex-gay? That would explain the White House insistence on Kagan’s heterosexuality and Kagan’s silence about her past sexual preference.”

Wall Street Journal: “Last month, the Republican-controlled legislature passed one of the nation’s toughest state laws aimed at strip clubs and other adult-entertainment venues. It would ban nude dancing and the serving of alcohol in adult cabarets, force strip clubs to close at midnight and forbid seminude dancers to touch patrons. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat who counts job creation among his top priorities, must decide whether to sign or veto the bill. … Club owners and dancers say that the venues rarely attract crime, and that the new rules would be so strict that hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in state revenue could be lost at a time when Missouri’s economy is struggling to recover from the recession.” | SB 586 |Related: Missouri General Assembly passes strip club regulation bill | For data regarding the negative “secondary effects,” including crime, caused by sexually oriented businesses, see the Studies: Sexually Oriented Businesses category at the Community Defense Counsel website.

“The claim that the gender of parents doesn’t matter is a crucial argument for same sex marriage advocates . . . ”

Christopher O. Tollefsen writing at Public Discourse: “While there is a clear danger that pro-lifers will not have available to them health-care plans that cover all their most important needs (an injustice to pro-lifers), there should be no danger that pro-lifers will be forced to pay into the abortion pool, or forced to allow their dollars to be used for abortions. Pro-life citizens will continue to work for rectification of PPACA (for example, by supporting HR 5111, which attempts to correct many of the current legislation’s inadequacies), but they must not, pending such rectification, adopt any plan with PPACA’s segregated funding for abortion, lest they truly adopt a double standard regarding the unborn.”

The Columbian: “Citizen and politician passions were first stirred several months ago, when city staff presented a new comprehensive special-events ordinance that would cover policy and procedure for all city events, including parades, block parties and other large gatherings. The ordinance included a clause regarding ‘expressive activities’ — generally defined as those involving political, religious or other right-to-assemble issues. Based on language used in other Washington cities, Vancouver was going to require that for events with more than 100 people, organizers would have to get a permit at least seven days in advance, along with insurance. Exceptions would be granted for short notice or an inability to pay for insurance.”

BBC: “Israel’s supreme court has overturned jail terms given to a group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish mothers for disobeying a court order on school integration. They had refused to let their daughters attend school with girls from a different Jewish background.” | Related: Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews in jail after demo | The Jewish Religious Conflict Tearing at Israel

Grand Haven Tribune: “Two church crosses are being taken down this week in Spring Lake — but it is not a sign that the village is any less religious or spiritual. … Officials with C3 Exchange, formerly Christ Community Church, announced last month they would be taking down the cross on the bell tower as the group will undergo a series of changes.”

Farmers Weekly Interactive: “All poultry meat may eventually carry a label displaying the method of slaughter as well as the country of origin after draft legislation was passed in the EU parliament. … In some religious practices such as Jewish (Shechita) and Muslim (Halal) slaughter, animals must be killed without stunning.”

ADF Attorney Austin R. Nimocks appeared on Live from Criswell with guest host Penna Dexter to discuss the Proposition 8 trial. | MP3 12:35 | ADFmedia.org Perry v. Schwarzenegger resource page

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence writing at TownHall: “The trial over the California constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman already took place where it should have—among the voters of California during the fall of 2008 when they debated its merits and decided to approve it. The U.S. Constitution permits the people or their elected representatives to decide public policy issues and to reaffirm the definition of marriage that existed even before the state and nation did. There is nothing bigoted or unconstitutional about doing so.”

Evangelical Examiner: “Alliance Defense Fund attorneys have sent Kingsborough Community College (KCC) officials a letter Monday calling upon them to end an unconstitutional policy that allows a faculty adviser to cancel a student organization’s event and silence its message by simply not showing up for the event. … ‘The whims of government officials should not be allowed to trump the constitutionally protected rights of students whose views those officials don’t favor,’ said ADF Litigation Counsel Travis Barham.”

OneNewsNow: “The recent mass deportation of Christians from Morocco is getting the attention of lawmakers in Washington, DC. … Roger Kiska with the Alliance Defense Fund attended the hearing and points out that many people are now watching the situation. ‘There are a lot of governments involved: the Dutch government, the U.K., the European Union, the American government is involved,’ he lists. ‘TIME magazine, Christianity Today, the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] — you name the international media outlet or the election government and they are watching this carefully, because this sets a dangerous precedent.’”

CitizenLink: “The Louisiana Legislature has passed in its final hours of session the ‘Preservation of Religious Freedom Act’ [which] declares that the ‘free exercise of religion is a fundamental right of the highest order in this state’ and that states and local governments must not burden an individual’s exercise of religion. … ‘We feel strongly that Christians are not second-class citizens,’ said [Joel Oster], senior litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). ‘They should not be denied access to a public meeting room because of their religious views.’”

CitizenLink: “‘Nurturing families come in many forms,’ Obama said, ‘and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a stepfather, a grandfather, or caring guardian.’ … ‘No matter how much they may love a child, two fathers do not create a mother,’ [Austin R. Nimocks] explained ‘And, the same can be said when there are two moms. No matter how good of a parent they are or how much they may love the child, they do not create a dad, and children need both a mother and a father. That is what marriage laws are all about.’”

NCPA: “A taxpayer-funded state pension system encourages career teachers and administrators to retire in their 50s, tap the fund and return to work, says the Columbus Dispatch. If the educators don’t retire at that relatively young age after 30 years of service, they are likely to receive far less income in both their working careers and retirement. And much is at stake — for both educators and taxpayers . . . ”

The fifteen page report is accessible here.

MSNBC: “Most cases never reach the Supreme Court, so appeals judges are crucial.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Institute for Creation Research Graduate School v. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, (WD TX, June 18, 2010), a Texas federal district court upheld the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s refusal to grant the Institute of Creation Research Graduate School a certificate of authority to offer a Master of Science degree with a major in Science Education . . . ”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Shepherd Montessori Center Milan v. Ann Arbor Charter Township, (MI Sup. Ct., June 18, 2010), the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a Catholic school’s claim that the denial of its zoning variance request amounted to an infringement of its equal protection rights.”

ABC: “People who buy their own health insurance have been hit lately with premium hikes that far exceed increases in premiums for employer-sponsored coverage, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.”

Thomas Sowell writes at Investors.com: “The president’s poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.”