Daily Archives: July 1, 2010

Baptist Press: “Supporters of traditional marriage gained a big legal win at the Wisconsin Supreme Court June 30, although both sides in the nationwide struggle over marriage’s definition now are watching Hawaii and California, two states where the next round of political and legal battles will take place. … In Hawaii, Republican Gov. Linda Lingle has until Tuesday, July 6, to make her decision on a bill that would legalize civil unions in the state. She could either sign, veto or let the bill become law without her signature.”

365Gay: “Dr. Maria New, of Mount Sanai School of Medicine and Florida International University, is one of the few female pediatric endocrinologists and an established member of the National Academy of the Sciences. New is currently working on an experimental hormone that is thought to prevent lesbianism and put a stop to females that have ‘abnormal’ masculine tendencies, such as disinterest in babies, childrearing, and girl’s toys, or ‘masculine’ career preferences.”

“The new guidance treats gender identity discrimination most often faced by transgender persons as gender discrimination under the Fair Housing Act, and instructs HUD staff to inform individuals filing complaints about state and local agencies that have LGBT-inclusive discrimination laws.”

UK Home Office: “The Forced Marriage Unit, run jointly by the Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office (new window), received more than 220 emails and calls to its helpline about forced marriages involving male victims in 2009 – up from 134 in 2008, an increase of 65 per cent.”

C-FAM: “Elections to fill openings for half of the 23 seats of the committee charged with monitoring compliance to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) were held at United Nations (UN) headquarters this week. … The CEDAW committee’s next session will take place in New York later this month and already the committee has sent written question on abortion to more than half of the countries scheduled to be reviewed.”

LifeNews: “They say they support choice, but the pro-abortion activists at NARAL want to leave women in unplanned pregnancy situations with one option: abortion. In a letter to its members today, NARAL president Nancy Keenan announced she is asking two Internet directories to remove pregnancy center listings.”

C-FAM: “The Group of Eight (G8) leading industrial countries held their annual forum here last week and, following the lead of the Canadian government, launched a new global initiative on maternal and child health. … While the host government was successful in keeping references to abortion out of the final document, the initiative calls for G8 countries to ‘commit to promote integration of HIV and sexual and reproductive health, rights and services within the broader context of strengthening health systems.’”

Buenos Aires Herald: “The majority of citizens in Nicaragua (81.6 percent), Brazil (72.7percent), Mexico (70.8 percent), and Chile (66.2 percent) are opposed to legalizing abortion in their countries, where it is prohibited in almost all its forms, according to a survey by Flacso.”

GPB News: “More than 350 bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year to restrict abortion. At least two dozen new laws have passed. In many states, the fierce debate over abortion now centers directly on the fetus. Eighteen states now have laws requiring either that doctors perform ultrasounds before an abortion, or that women be allowed to see one. Some states want to go even further — getting doctors to describe the fetus to the mother. But Gloria Nesmith of the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta says doing an ultrasound is already routine.”

ChristianNewsWire: “From Shanghai to Beijing, rights defense lawyers have witnessed the harassment of petitioners, Chinese citizens who bring community concerns of the people to their designated higher authorities in government. … In response, a group of Chinese human rights lawyers have joined together to form the Chinese Petitioners’ Rights Defense Association, a group of legal defenders who are committed to protecting the rights of petitioners, and promoting rule of law throughout China.”

Wall Street Journal / Washington Wire: “After the Supreme Court’s Monday decision extending gun rights nationwide, the Second Amendment front moved to the Senate, where the National Rifle Association and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence squared off over Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed retired Justice John Paul Stevens.”

WLTX: “Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham addressed rumors that he is a homosexual in an interview with the New York Times, telling the Times that ‘I ain’t gay.’”

The New American: “[Gregory S. Baylor] of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a legal organization that helped to defend the CLS before the Supreme Court, said that the latest ruling does not settle what he called the ‘core constitutional issue’ of whether non-discrimination policies can compel religious student groups to allow members with divergent beliefs to lead their groups. … ADF’s senior counsel [Jordan Lorence] predicted that there would be plenty more legal action over the issue. ‘It’s not over with and there’s a lot more litigation,’ he said. ‘This isn’t even a loss … in the sense that we’ve lost this issue. It’s that the Supreme Court has basically kicked it down the road for another day.’”

Mario Rizzo writing at the Christian Science Monitor / ThinkMarkets: “My friend economist Richard Ebeling has discovered two extremely important letters. (Click the link above.) In 1932 before John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory was written, these letters appeared in The Times of London regarding the appropriate economic policies for Britain to follow during the slump.” | Text of the letters via Google Viewer

The Catholic Weekly: “The Church has ‘grave reservations’ about allowing same-sex couples to adopt children with its opposition based on three considerations: to safeguard traditional marriage; to protect the wellbeing of children; and to ensure stability in society, says Bishop Julian Porteous, auxiliary Bishop of Sydney. ‘The current laws have shown that governments of all persuasions have acknowledged and supported the general proposition that a child’s best interest is served when that child is raised by a mother and a father,’ he said.”

Miami Herald: “Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who last December introduced the first immigration reform bill of the current congressional session, announced in May that he intends to add provisions that would include same-sex couples and their families. Gutierrez plans to incorporate into his bill language from the Uniting American Families Act, offered by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a longtime proponent of the measure.”

Human Rights Campaign Press Release: “Elena Kagan’s record indicates she may be more familiar with how laws and policies affect the LGBT community than any individual previously nominated to serve on the Supreme Court.”

Vatican Radio interviews Jeffrey Lena, the California-based attorney currently representing the Holy See in the Oregon case of Holy See vs John Doe: “What the Supreme Court did was decide that it wasn’t going to address a question which we had wished to bring before it. That was a question that on the substantive law I think we were right. The United States agreed with us, but the Supreme Court simply determined that at this time, it was not interested in hearing the case. The fact that it wasn’t interested in hearing the case, as I say, did not deny immunity and was no comment on the merits of our position.”

Associated Press: “A judge has agreed to hear a case challenging the U.S. government’s “don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy against openly gay soldiers. Lawyer Dan Woods says U.S. District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips in Riverside, Calif. agreed Monday to send the case to trial July 13.”

Providence Journal / Projo Politics Blog: “In addition to his closely-watched veto of this year’s casino bill, Governor Carcieri has also vetoed bills to shut off access to new home-care licenses, require the recording of criminals’ confessions and expand the state’s list of hate crimes … [which would have added] ‘bigotry and bias’ against people based on their ‘gender identity’ to the state’s official list of hate crimes, which, as he notes, already addresses actions ‘motivated by racial, religious, sexual orientation, gender or disability prejudice.’”

Rick Hess writing at Education Week: “I’ve just spent the better part of three weeks lending a hand to school reform efforts in the Republic of Georgia. … Saakashvili and his libertarian-leaning allies took school choice seriously when they waded into education policy. They weren’t kidding around, drafting a law guaranteed to bring smiles to my friends at the Cato Institute. The 2005 law on general education, as enacted by parliament, declared, ‘The state shall protect freedom of educational choice of a pupil and a parent…The state shall finance education of a pupil from the central budget by a voucher [and] every parent has a right to get a voucher for financing the education of a child who reaches school age.’”

Hernando Today: “If the chaplain is to have a link on the fire district’s website, it must have a disclaimer. That was the legal opinion of Assistant Attorney General Lagran Saunders in a letter to Andrew Salzman, the attorney who represents the Spring Hill Board of Fire Commissioners.”

“A federal judge has ruled that a Pennsylvania law banning blasphemy from the names of corporations is unconstitutional.”

Leonard Link: “The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday that the state’s anti-marriage constitutional amendment . . . does not violate the ‘single subject’ rule. Although this was a private voter lawsuit rather than an action instigated by LGBT public interest groups, the case attracted organization amicus briefs on both sides of the issue. ACLU and Lambda Legal and the League of Women Voters supported McConkey’s appeal, while the Wisconsin Family Council (represented by Alliance Defense Fund), and an organization calling itself ‘Community Leaders Dedicated to Children Raised by Married Mothers and Fathers,’ filed briefs defending the amendment.”

ADF Attorney Casey Mattox writing at The Christian Post / Advancing Religious Liberty: “The predictions of those, including Elena Kagan, who said banning partial-birth abortion would result in harm to women have not come true. Three years of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act has resulted in more than 7,000 partial birth abortions that have NOT been performed and zero proof that this has harmed women’s health. Kagan’s claim, in her revision of the position statement of a leading pro-abortion medical group, has been proven false.”

At First Things / First Thoughts, David Mills posts a report from Christopher Barnekov, director of Scandinavia House in Fort Wayne, Indiana: “Sweden’s Riksdag adopted a complex, 1500 page school law on June 22. Only vague outlines have appeared in the press, but the reports are alarming. The new law apparently makes home schooling almost impossible and removes religious motivations as an allowable basis for home schooling. Home schools were already severely limited in Sweden. … The new law also appears to restrict religious schools sharply and limit severely the extent to which they can incorporate faith in their curriculum.”

M. Casey Mattox and Matthew S. Bowman, Your Conscience, Your Right: A History of Efforts to Violate Pro-Life Medical Conscience, and the Laws That Stand in the Way, The Linacre Quarterly 77(2) (May 2010): 187–197.

Attacks on the conscience rights of health-care professionals are increasing. This stems from the seven stages of liberal legal activism which begins with the assertion that a specific (immoral) activity should not be illegal and ends with the condemnation as criminals of those who disagree with the immoral activity. The history of legal activism in the United States with regard to abortion is traced, including attempts to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions and sterilizations. These include challenges on the national and state levels with conscience-protection legislation enacted both in Congress and in state legislatures. However, these laws provide no
explicit means by which a medical professional or institution may seek redress for a violation of their conscience. This has led to recent failures of conscience protection, such as when Catholic Charities in New York was forced to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives and a Catholic nurse was forced to assist in a twentytwo-
week-old dismemberment abortion. The conscience protection regulations issued near the end of President Bush’s second term would be helpful in ensuring greater education about and adherence to the laws and respect for conscience rights, but the Obama Administration has proposed rescinding the Bush Administration
regulations. Catholic Medical Association members must stand and defend their conscience rights in this time or risk the loss of those rights in the near future. The Alliance Defense Fund and its allies are ready to assist medical students, professionals, and institutions who are willing to stand in this gap and refuse to sacrifice their
consciences to the anti-choice agenda being promoted by those who call themselves “pro-choice.”

____________

Adapted from a presentation delivered by M. Casey Mattox at the first annual symposium for Catholic health-care professionals, “Conscience and Ethical Dilemmas
in Catholic Healthcare,” hosted by the Archdiocese of Baltimore Respect Life Office and Baltimore Guild of the Catholic Medical Association, Baltimore, MD, May 9, 2009. This symposium predated the deliberations on health-care reform in Congress. As this article went to press Congress passed and President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. The impact of that bill on the longstanding conscience protections discussed here remains to be seen.

ADF attorney Jeff Ventrella to discuss the Blackstone Legal Fellowship. This was recorded last week.| MP3 5:27 mins

ADF attorney Greg Baylor appeared on several radio shows to discuss the ruling in CLS v. Martinez. | The Hugh Hewitt Show here: MP3 6:19 mins| The Janet Mefferd Show here: MP3 17:34 mins

Victoria Advocate: “A motion to add a provision that would ‘audit the Fed’ to the financial overhaul bill failed Thursday. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul sponsored the audit the Fed bill previously supported by 320 members of the House. But the audit add-on failed by a vote of 229-198.”

Eurasia Review: “Suspension of passports for monks in Burma has begun amid suggestions that the Burmese government is attempting to block the influential community from going abroad in the run-up to elections.”

Europe News: “Islamically-correct ‘Made in Italy’ products that can be exported to Muslim countries and follow Italian gastronomic excellence – including tortelloni and lasagne – but also the most advanced drugs and the best cosmetic specialist products. And in order to respect, also in Italy, the Koranic laws. This is the sense of the ‘halal’ brand, sponsored by the Italian Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Economic Development, Health and Agricultural Policy, which today at the Foreign Ministry in Rome, have signed an inter-ministerial agreement to support the Coreis initiative.”

ADF Attorney Kevin Theriot writing at Speak Up Movement / Church: “The federal court in Idaho recently rejected an attempt to restrict the religious freedom of the Boise Rescue Mission. … The federal court summarily ruled for the Rescue Mission in a well-reasoned opinion that does a great job of protecting religious freedom. The court determined that ‘prohibiting the Rescue Mission from engaging in the activities challenged by Plaintiffs would result in requiring a religious organization to remove religion from its religious programs, and prohibit a religious organization from choosing how to introduce its religious beliefs to people who voluntarily come to the organization.’”

UPI: “Italian authorities said they expect a ‘positive result’ in their appeal of a court ruling that banned the display of crucifixes in schools.”

The Daily News Journal: “The Tennessee Religious Freedom Protection Act recognizes rights beyond land uses for mosques, churches, temples and other places of worship, lawyers said. … The law’s land use rights mirror the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act passed by Congress in 2000. Given that, Fowler said no one should blame legislative sponsors who include state Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, for passing a law that makes it harder for local governments to regulate or reject religious institutions such as the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.” | Via KnoxNews.com / Humphrey on a Hill

Orlando Sentinel: “Maitland-based Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit Thursday to overturn a ban on Bible distribution on public school campuses in Collier County. According to the Liberty Counsel, the Collier County School Board allowed World Changers to distribute free Bibles to students during off-school hours on Religious Freedom Day, but now the school officials claim that Bibles do not provide any educational benefit to the students and the distribution should stop.” | Complaint in World Changers of Florida, Inc. v. District School Board of Collier County (M.D. Fla.) [Google Viewer] | Liberty Counsel

Hindustan Times: “Britain has delayed implementation of new European Union (EU) airport security rules for hand searches of passengers after concerns from the Sikh community that this could also mean searches of their religious headgear, officials on Thursday said.”

LifeNews: “The latest report on abortion issued today by the Minnesota Department of Health reveals the decrease is part of a three-year trend of fewer abortions statewide since the Positive Alternatives program has funded efforts to help pregnant women in need. The annual Abortion Report shows abortion businesses in the state reported a total of 12,388 abortions in 2009 compared with 12,948 the previous year.”

E. Christian Brugger, D.Phil., Senior Fellow in Ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation: “Some may believe that only extraordinary situations can constitute legitimate reasons for practicing NFP to defer pregnancy (e.g., severe illness of a spouse; extreme financial difficulties; mental breakdown, etc.). In my opinion, this extreme interpretation is incorrect and can result in avoidable harms. … A few concrete examples of ‘iustae causae’ for deferring pregnancy might include: 1) Physical or mental illness of one of the spouses; 2) Serious financial instability (e.g., during a period of unemployment); 3) Needs arising from caring for ‘high-needs’ children; 4) The instability of transitional periods such as spouses in graduate school; 5) Debilitating stress that can arise from having a large family in societies where large families are no longer valued.”

“Charles Grassley (R-IA) asked, ‘Do you believe that marriage is a question reserved for the states to decide?’ This question, Kagan pointed out, was the subject of a high-profile suit now in the courts, making comment improper. Then Grassley asked whether she considered a 1970 case on the issue, Baker v. Nelson ‘settled law.’”

Religion Clause: “In Erdman v. Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church, (WA Ct. App., June 29, 2010), a Washington state appellate court held that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine does not bar a church employee’s claim for negligent supervision and retention claims against a church based on alleged physical intimidation and verbal abuse by its pastor.” | Full text of opinion in Google Viewer

Adhi Parasakthi Charitable, Medical, Educational and Cultural Society of North America v. Township of West Pikeland, (ED PA, June 23, 2010) | Google Viewer

Religion Clause: “A Pennsylvania federal district court held that ‘in granting an overly broad amount of discretion to its Zoning Board in deciding whether to allow expressive religious use of land within the Township, Defendant has created a prior restraint on speech in violation of Plaintiff’s First Amendment rights.’ On plaintiff’s free exercise and RLUIPA claims, the court held that there are factual disputes which a jury must decide as to whether the Township’s zoning law was applied discriminatorily.”

ACLU / Blog of Rights: “A Catholic-owned hospital in Arizona recently made national headlines for demoting a nun for approving an abortion for a pregnant mother of four to save her life. While most of us would like to think this was an isolated incident, based on the Catholic Church’s response and other reports, it wasn’t and it won’t be. Today the ACLU asked the federal government to investigate and take action against these hospitals. Denying such care is not only unethical, it also violates federal law. Our government should ensure that emergency rooms that open their doors to the public provide all necessary emergency care, including abortion. No hospital, religiously affiliated or otherwise, has a right to impose its beliefs to deny anyone necessary emergency medical care.” Full text of the letter via Google Viewer.

National Right to Life News: “What we know for sure is, as NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson once put it, ‘The bottom line is that thousands of additional babies were mostly delivered alive and then stabbed through the back of the head, thanks to the deceptive but successful political strategy, to which Elena Kagan lent all of her considerable talents, that blocked the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act from becoming law during the Clinton Administration.’ In slip-sliding around her real role, Kagan is demonstrating the very qualities that make her critics nervous: a political adroitness at fudging her true role in providing political cover for pro-abortion Democrats.”

“Yesterday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 3-3 decision, held that a political advertisement run by successful Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Justice Michael Gableman did not violate the State’s rules of judicial ethics. The case, In re Gableman, involves a political advertisement Justice Gableman ran against his opponent in his 2008 campaign. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission alleged that his ad was false and misleading and warrants disciplinary action.”

“The Supreme Court’s ‘Subsidies’” editorial by the Wall Street Journal, full text via Google News: “The Court’s definition of ‘state subsidies,’ meanwhile, is especially pernicious. Government may ‘own’ the roads, but that doesn’t mean it can say citizens can only drive if their associations meet government approval. Just because private schools and churches receive the ‘subsidy’ of tax exemptions doesn’t mean the government can say they must accept all comers. … The issue isn’t whether the Christian legal students were intolerant, but whether society will tolerate the exercise of their own moral values without political harassment.”

Younis v. Pinnacle Airlines, Inc., No. 08-6112 (6th Cir. June 30, 2010) | Google Viewer | Excerpt:
“Younis, an Arab-American and Muslim, began working as a pilot for Pinnacle Airlines as a first officer in September 2002. He was promoted to captain in 2004. In September 2005, Pinnacle terminated him, citing poor performance.”

Maggie Gallagher writing at Townhall: “How can you spot a legal progressive? A legal progressive is someone who believes rights that are not stated in the Constitution, but inferred or extrapolated, should be given more weight than rights plainly enumerated.”

Nate Kellum appeared on the Janet Mefferd Show to discuss efforts to stop a Minnesota evangelist’s witness at a “Pride Festival.” | MP3 12:49 mins | ADF Media Information

“U.S. District Judge Judith Herrera, who is not related to the secretary of state, had ruled last August that the state’s threat to prosecute the Albuquerque groups for not registering as political committees under the state Campaign Reporting Act violated the constitutional rights of New Mexico Youth Organized and the SouthWest Organizing Project.”

Marci A. Hamilton writing at FindLaw: “As the Court rightly recognized, this was not a case about compelled speech or belief, but rather a case about a regulation of conduct that is reasonable, legitimate, and related to the goal of the all-comers policy. Justice John Paul Stevens put it nicely in his concurrence: ‘A free society must tolerate such groups [i.e., those that believe in discriminating against others]. It need not subsidize them, give them its official imprimatur, or grant them equal access to law school facilities.’”

“My question for Ms. Kagan is this: What’s your standard? By what standard is [DADT] ‘a moral injustice of the first order’ and abortion a moral right?”

George Neumayr writing at The American Spectator: “Don’t be surprised when the polished and polite Elena Kagan finds a constitutional right to gay marriage within the shadows and penumbras of Thurgood Marshall’s Constitution. As the dean of Harvard Law School, she made it clear that she thinks homosexuals have an inalienable right to change the ethos of the United States military. If that’s a right in her mind, then marriage, which is an even more basic claim than access to soldiering, has to be one too.”

ADF attorney David French appeared with Kelly Shackelford of the Liberty Institute on Point of View Radio to discuss the Julia Ward case. | MP3 8:27 mins

SCOTUSblog: “The Court was cautious in more than one case on Monday. As I explained here, in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the Court surprised many in holding that public universities can deny recognition and funding to student groups with exclusionary membership requirements. In a poll of SCOTUSblog readers, this case didn’t hold much interest, but I join Tom in believing that it’s actually really compelling and far-reaching. … As I noted when the case was argued, the issue was a tough call, presenting good arguments on both sides. It looks like the Court saw it the same way, deciding five to four in favor of the law school, but cautioning that university policies about recognizing student groups must be neutral and aimed at organizations in general, not targeted at any particular group or type of group.”

Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “Kagan has now testified that not only does she find the Founders’ concept of “unalienable Rights” irrelevant to Constitutional interpretation, but she also declined to say if the Constitution prevents Congress from telling Americans what to eat. Her evasive non-response to Coburn’s Commerce Clause inquiry shows that she would indeed be a rubber-stamp for almost any part of the Obama agenda that Congress enacts.”

John Culhane, Professor of Law, Widener University, writing at 365 Gay: “Imagine that you’re a member of a gay student group in college. You’ve just come out . . . and this is your one safe, comfortable space. One day, there are two new members in the group: Religious fundamentalists who have joined the group in a (doomed) effort to get the members to realize the error of their ways. Should the group be able to exclude them?”

National Center for Policy Analysis: “Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes; the average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio. … The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe (these comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor). … Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.”

ADF attorney Casey Mattox appeared on CBN News to discuss the CLS v. Martinez ruling. | MP4 1:44 mins

BusinessWeek: “Elena Kagan contrasted herself with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican appointees as she finished her Senate testimony, saying judges aren’t “robotic” umpires and must interpret the Constitution with an eye toward changing conditions. … ‘The Constitution does not change, but the court must apply it to changing conditions,’ said Kagan . . .”

“Hancock has been overshadowed by many other founders.”

Associated Press: “Massachusetts lawmakers enthralled with the lure of easy casino cash are having a tough time squaring the 24-hour world of smoke-filled, free-booze gambling haunts with the state’s Puritan roots and high-minded liberal reputation.”

Associated Press: “A Google search feature was blocked in China on Thursday, the company said as it awaited Beijing’s decision on whether to renew its operating license amid tensions over censorship. Mainland users were unable to use the search giant’s ‘suggest’ feature, which offers possible results as they start to type a query, the company said.”

Associated Press: “The news agency run by China’s ruling Communist Party launched a global English-language television channel Thursday as part of efforts to expand its influence abroad.”

Helena Independent Record (AP): “Montana State University’s lawyer says MSU-Northern officials don’t have to apologize for inviting a Christian pastor to give the invocation and benediction at the school’s graduation in May. The ACLU of Montana had filed a complaint and asked for an apology . . .”

Medical News Today: “In the ‘Fresh Air’ interview, Greenhouse discussed the emergence of ‘right to choose’ rhetoric and why medical and public health communities came to support legalization of abortion. ‘It’s natural to think of the cause of abortion reform as having been … part of the second-wave feminism of the 1960s,’ but in fact it was ‘originally an issue that was put forward by the public health community,’ she said. Greenhouse also discussed early influences on the antiabortion-rights movement, including J.C. Willke’s ‘Handbook on Abortion.’”

Associated Press: “A Swedish prosecutor has charged two men with arson for the attempted attack on the home of an artist whose cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad infuriated some Muslims.”

The Observatorium: “What’s the biggest bone of contention among progressive post-modernists? Bring together all their complaints and talking points and distill their essence. What you get is a hatred of non-permissive belief systems. What’s the biggest non-permissive belief system in the United States? Christianity. … [Greg Baylor], senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, tells us that, ‘The Hastings policy actually requires CLS to allow atheists to lead its Bible studies and the college Democrats to accept the election of Republican officers in order for the groups to be recognized on campus.’”

New York Times: “On Thursday, Google is going to begin covering a cost that gay and lesbian employees must pay when their partners receive domestic partner health benefits, largely to compensate them for an extra tax that heterosexual married couples do not pay. The increase will be retroactive to the beginning of the year.”

ChristianNewsWire: “The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will take up a series of items, among them proposed constitutional amendments to change the definition of marriage in the PCUSA Book of Order. The effect would be to allow churches to host and ministers to officiate at same-sex marriages. Other proposals would interpret the PCUSA constitution as allowing any state-recognized same-sex marriage to be celebrated as a Christian marriage.”

Christian Post: “The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a state constitutional amendment that affirms traditional marriage and bans same-sex civil unions. … [Jim Campbell], litigation counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief last year on behalf of the Wisconsin Family Council, maintained that voters adopted the amendment ‘for one clear and simple reason: to protect the institution of marriage.’” | ADF News Release

The Underground Site: “The Supreme Court issued a ruling recently that allows San Francisco’s Hastings College of Law to force student groups to permit membership even to those who disagree with the group’s vision and mission, the Alliance Defense Fund Media said.”

Evangelical Examiner: “‘Voters adopted the marriage amendment in Wisconsin for one clear and simple reason: to protect the institution of marriage,’ said ADF Litigation Counsel [Jim Campbell]. ‘We should be strengthening–not undermining–marriage, which is one man and one woman. Once again, activists tried to use the courts to force something on the people that they have repeatedly and overwhelmingly rejected.’” | ADF News Release

suit101.com: “Two organizations have come to the aid of the Johansson family representing them before the European Court of Human Rights. The Alliance Defense Fund and the Home School Legal Defense Association have begun to assist the Johanssons. The case has reached international levels because the Swedish courts refused to review a lower court’s decision that affirmed the abduction of Domenic.”

The Keene Sentinel: “On Friday, the $1.15 million settlement with the conservative Catholic St. Benedict Center was announced. The deal is one of the largest of its kind, according to the Alliance Defense Fund.” | ADF News Release