Daily Archives: September 2, 2010

LifeSiteNews: “The mentally and morally ‘unfit’ should be sterilized, Professor David Marsland, a sociologist and health expert, said this weekend. The professor made the remarks on the BBC radio program Iconoclasts, which advertises itself as the place to ‘think the unthinkable.’”

ChristianWebNews: “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is being urged by republican lawmakers to defends California’s gay marriage ban, Prop. 8. There were 37 members of the Assembly’s Republican caucus who wrote to him asking for an appeal on a federal ruling that struck down Prop 8. as unconstitutional.”

“A New York school district has voted to amend a discriminatory policy that led to the repeated suspension of a Christian student over his Rosary beads. The American Center for Law and Justice filed suit on behalf of Raymond Hosier in an effort to change the dress code at Oneida Middle School, which labeled rosary beads as a prohibited ‘gang-related’ item.” ACLJ Press Release

ABC: “Tasmania’s Lower House of Parliament has approved laws recognising same-sex marriages and civil unions registered in other states or countries . . . Attorney-General Lara Giddings says the changes will remove discrimination for same-sex couples in registered relationships.”

Telegraph: “Edmund Adamus, an adviser to the Archbishop of Westminster, said five decades of liberalising abortion and gay rights laws had made Britain more anti-Catholic than countries where Christians can be subjected to violent persecution.”

AFP: “Homosexuality remains a social taboo across the racial and religious spectrum in Malaysia, a conservative country which is also home to large ethnic Chinese and Indian communities . . . there is a growing sense of activism among the gay community which is beginning to mobilise to fight for its rights.”

Toronto Star: “Late-blooming lesbians have gained some mainstream visibility in recent years thanks to celebrities like Cynthia Nixon and Portia de Rossi . . . The subject is also starting to garner academic attention, with researchers trying to understand how women’s sexuality — and capacity for same-sex relationships — might be different than men’s . . . But ‘there are more shades of grey to women’s attraction,’ [Richard Lippa, professor of psychology at California State University] says. Women, he says, tend to have a preferred sex and less preferred sex. Women are much more likely than men to report some degree of same-sex attraction.”

PinkPaper.com: “Labour leadership hopeful David Miliband has said government MPs must be made to fear for their seats to stop them cutting services to LGBT people . . . The current forerunner in the race to lead the party was speaking to PinkPaper.com yesterday after making a stop at the gay LoProfile bar in London’s Soho on his campaign trail.”

Dakota Voice: “The third annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday is coming on September 26, 2010. This nationwide event, also known as the Pulpit Initiative, is sponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund to promote the religious freedom America’s pastors and churches enjoyed throughout our history until it was curtailed in 1954 . . . Below is a video I made of [Alan Sears] at the 2008 Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C. where he talks about the issue of religious freedom in the pulpits of South Dakota. Notice the crowd’s reaction when Sears said, if the IRS tries to stop churches from speaking out, ‘On behalf of the churches, the Alliance Defense fund will sue the IRS.’”

Howard W. French writing in The New York Times: “It has become a truism to observe that contemporary China is the scene of the most rapid, transformative change of any large country in the world today . . . As this society rapidly grows richer, its social fabric and mores have been changing in ways far more dramatic than even the physical landscape, and sexual choice and expression are arguably in the leading edge of this upheaval . . . Most interestingly for me, though, [a gender studies professor] mentioned the ‘sudden media exposure of lesbian and gay people’ in prime-time television in China.”

Rutherford Institute: “In a letter to Don Curtis, the principal of Wilson Middle School in Fishersville, Va., John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, warns the school administrator against creating a hostile workplace environment towards religion and discriminating against religious student groups such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA). Several members of the community asked the Institute to intervene after Curtis emailed teachers advising them that they could be subject to termination proceedings should they assist students in forming an FCA club at their school.”

CBS: “The [Democratic Governors Association] reportedly filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission accusing Fox of giving Ohio candidate John Kasich free political advertising. When Kasich appeared on Fox News earlier this month, the complaint reportedly lays out, he solicited donations on air while Fox added the graphics ‘John Kasich (R), KasichforOhio.com’ under Mr. Kasich’s image.”

The Garden City Telegram (AP): “Kansas moved ahead toward selecting a new state Supreme Court justice on Wednesday, while facing a federal lawsuit alleging that voters’ rights are being violated because lawyers unfairly dominate the process. Nine lower-court judges and four attorneys hoping to fill the high court vacancy met a noon deadline for submitting applications to the Supreme Court Nominating Commission.” | Dool v. Burke, No. 10-1286-MLB-KMH (D. Kan.) [complaint]

Scott Fayner writing at Technology Review: “By 2005, the BitTorrent technology gave way to something more manageable and user-friendly: streaming video . . . Suddenly, anybody who wanted to watch a clip could do so almost instantly. You clicked on a video and it played in the browser: no more waiting, no more downloading. This simple innovation has demolished the porn industry’s traditional way of doing business. Porn tube sites are now among the most visited websites in the world.”

ABC4.com: “The Utah Republican Party has chosen the head of the Utah Log Cabin Republicans to run in a state Senate race.”

San Francisco Chronicle: “A federal civil rights agency sued Abercrombie & Fitch on Wednesday on behalf of an 18-year-old woman who said she applied for her first job at the company’s store at the Great Mall in Milpitas and was turned down because she wore a Muslim headscarf.”

CitizenLink audio available here.

Hindustan Times: “Girls in Yunnan province are being given a booklet that teaches about chastity. The Yunnan provincial education department has asked all local high schools and universities to ‘teach girls how to
reject sexual requests until marriage’, the Global Times reported citing the Chuncheng Evening News . . . According to data collected from over 80,000 college students from across the country, 14 percent admitted to having sexual relations during their college days and about 70 percent held a tolerant attitude toward sex before marriage, the Nanjing Morning Post reported.”

Law.com: “A new legal effort to force California’s governor and attorney general to defend Proposition 8 in court may have some political potency, but is unlikely to win in court, legal observers say . . . There’s a high standard to win a writ of mandamus. And in this case, the Pacific Justice Institute, which filed the petition, is up against issues of executive branch discretion, the separation of powers doctrine and an ambiguous state statute regarding the attorney general’s obligation — or discretion — to defend the state in lawsuits, said UC Hastings College of the Law professor and appellate expert Rory Little.”

CNSNews: “Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said requests by Arizona law enforcement personnel and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) for 3,000 National Guard troops along the state’s border with Mexico have been answered so far with 1 percent of that number deployed there this week.”

Religion Clause: “According to a release yesterday by the Sikh Coalition, the U.S. Army, for the third time in less than a year, has agreed that a Sikh recruit may enlist and continue to wear his religiously-mandated turban along with unshorn hear and a beard.”

Yahoo: “In arguably the biggest political upset of the year, Joe Miller claimed the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate when incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski conceded Tuesday evening. Murkowski gave up after failing to gain much ground in an count of outstanding absentee ballots . . . Miller’s win was a major victory for the tea party movement and marked the first time it had defeated a sitting senator in a primary.”

Mercury News (AP): “A California court has refused to order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal a ruling that overturned the state’s gay marriage ban.”

Megan Mcardle writing at The Atlantic: “If we’re evolved to be polyamorous, why do we also seem to be evolved to be extraordinarily possessive? . . . Lifetime monogamy may not be the evolved human template. But I’m pretty sure that carefree polyamory isn’t either.”

WVRecord.com: “Elementary school playgrounds in Cabell County are losing their swing sets in part because of lawsuits over injuries. Cabell County school safety manager Tim Stewart said the removal process began two weeks ago at Meadows Elementary and may not be completed until Christmas break . . . Stewart said a lot of parents are accusing him of being un-American, but he says the cost of maintaining a safe surface is too expensive . . .”

LifeSiteNews: The head of the Italian Catholic bishops’ conference said this week that Italian society is being “seriously mutilated” by its negative growth birth rate. Angelo Bagnasco, cardinal archbishop of Genoa, said at a Mass in Liguria this weekend that Italy, and Italian democracy, is facing a “serious cultural catastrophe” from its low birth rate.

LifeSiteNews: “Catholics in New England are raising questions after it was announced that Caritas Christi, a network of Catholic hospitals, would allow a newly-acquired secular hospital in Rhode Island to ignore core Catholic medical practices. The move appears to contradict previous statements by Boston’s cardinal that Caritas Christi would remain Catholic despite being sold by the diocese.”

365Gay.com: “Obama appointed designer Michael Smith, who is gay, to the Committee for the Preservation of the White house in February.”

“The largest polygamous group in North America only wants to participate in the trial to determine whether Canada’s anti-polygamy law is constitutional if its members can provide testimony anonymously, under pseudonyms or behind a screen.”

Washington Post: “Teaching about polyamory but not about monogamy or abstinence? . . . Brooks notes that denizens of the sex industry have been involved in some of the events . . . ”

Mercator.net: “This widely-discussed book seems to be about the differences between red states and blue states, between socially conservative and socially liberal America. In fact, it is about the differences between college educated women and everyone else. You could say this book is the “soft power” version of class warfare. The rich are deliberately making war on the poor, not to expropriate their material resources, but to establish social hegemony. They want complete social approval and legal support for a lifestyle from which they benefit and which harms others . . . ”

Mirror of Justice: A commentary by Margaret Brooks in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education, “Sex Week” Should Arouse Caution Most of All, points out the most powerful cultural force promulgating the permissive sexual norms that concern Rob and Bob — the sex industry. And this force isn’t contained by controlling our kids’ access to cable and MTV. Here’s her description of what’s happening on our college campuses . . .

One News Now: An organization in Iowa is hard at work to get new faces on that state’s highest court. An effort is under way to seat some new justices on the Iowa State Supreme Court, some 18 months after the court ruled in favor of same-sex “marriage.” Bob Vander Plaats — who came up short in early June in his bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in The Hawkeye State — is one of the organizers of Iowa for Freedom.

Washington Post: “As depositors thronged branches of Afghanistan’s biggest bank, Mahmoud Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a major shareholder in beleaguered Kabul Bank called on Thursday for intervention by the United States to head off a financial meltdown.”

“Canada, which redefined marriage nationwide to include same-sex couples in 2005, against the backdrop of successful provincial lawsuits against the country’s marriage law, could be moving on to bigger things — literally. Specifically, polygamy and polyamory, as this case invokes the question of whether the government can continue to criminalize multiple-partner marriages . . .”

And prominently placed on virtually every page of the site is a quote credited to a man who facilitated a greater role for socialists and communists at the U.N., and the global “workers rights movement.”

AP: “Note to big companies hoping to tap into France’s lucrative but long-neglected Muslim consumer market: Pitfalls may await, and not only in the form of complaints from the far-right.”

Inside Higher Ed: A news release Monday from the Alliance Defense Fund, which backs the rights of religious students nationally and in this case, said that the court had found that the university “cannot deny funding to Catholic student group.” . . . The statement from the Alliance Defense Fund, which sued Madison, praised the appeals court’s ruling. “The constitutional rights of Christian student organizations should be recognized by university officials just as they recognize those rights for other student groups,” said Jordan Lorence, senior counsel. “The university funded the advocacy and expression of other student organizations but singled out Badger Catholic for exclusion based purely upon its viewpoint. The Seventh Circuit rightly regarded this as unconstitutional.”

AZ Republic: “Last week, an attorney for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said he wanted to cooperate with federal investigators, but would not automatically grant access to materials it considers beyond the scope of civil-rights laws . . . Arpaio believes the inquiry is focused on his immigration sweeps, patrols where deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases heavily Latino areas — to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders.”

Texas Lawyer (Law.com): “James ‘Jody’ Scheske, a partner in the Austin office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld who represents J.B., says he is disappointed with the decision and his client will likely appeal.”

Ginny LaRoe writes at the Recorder: “A new legal effort to force California’s governor and attorney general to defend Proposition 8 in court may have some political potency, but is unlikely to win in court, legal observers say.”

“Rasmussen, which discovered that 62 percent of the voters favor electing judges during a national telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters on Aug. 26 and 27, explained the finding by tying it to the fact that 53 percent believe judges have their own political agendas.”

Military.com: “In what was likely his last appearance in the Pentagon briefing room, soon-to-be retiring Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway once more waded into the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ waters with his straight-shooter candor by suggesting that ‘very religious’ Marines with ‘moral concerns’ about homosexuality might not be forced to live with their gay battle buddies.”

Rasmussen: “A majority of voters in Colorado believe most members of Congress neglect the views of their constituents, and even more voters are furious with the current policies of the federal government . . . . These findings are roughly in line with those found nationally . . . ”

John Fund writes at the Wall Street Journal: “In their only debate last week, Mr. Miller pounded home his view that Senator Murkowski had voted for bills that lacked any Constitutional justification. She lamely responded that it would be a far different country if she only voted for things explicitly authorized by the Constitution.”

The AP carries this report: Senate upset erases Alaska seniority.

The Ledger: “In the coming weeks, Lakeland city commissioners will vote on whether to accept money from outside groups to help pay for a lawsuit between the Atheists of Florida and the Commission. Conservative legal groups, including Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit litigation and policy organization affiliated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and The Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit law firm that focuses on religious liberty cases, have offered to help pay for the lawsuit.”

Thetowntalk.com: “LC officials announced Wednesday that the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law will locate in the 10-plus-story United Mercantile Building in downtown Shreveport, which was counted as a $3.1 million in-kind donation by LC officials. It is located at 509 Market St. The law school is projected to open in August 2012.” | Related article Shreveport Times

Texas Insider: “In recent months the American public has been made increasingly aware of a secretive foreign network of Islamic radicals that operates dozens of charter schools on U.S. soil. These schools are linked to an extreme Islamist, Fethullah Gülen, who was charged with trying to create an Islamic state when he tried to overthrow his own Turkish government and enforce Sharia Law. He came to the United States and lives in self-exile in rural Pennsylvania where he controls his transnational empire . . . Islamic extremists are using our First Amendment rights to their advantage to Islamize our nation and forcefully impose Shariah Law while Americans sit idly by and watch Rome burn.” (Hat tip: Education News)

EducationNews: “Alabama made national headlines this week when 25 more schools reported they will likely have to extend lines of credit to remain open, in addition to the five schools that borrowed from banks last year.”

AP: “Southern Sudan’s parliament may vote to secede from the Khartoum-based north if an independence reference scheduled for January is delayed, a former top Southern Sudan official said Thursday.”