Daily Archives: October 6, 2010

Chicago Tribune: “An Indiana first-grader and his mother are accusing his school district of violating the Constitution by teaching the Bible in a classroom during school hours.” Complaint in D.G. v. Fairfield Community Schools, No. 3:10-cv-00415-JD (N.D. Ind.)

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “In a friend-of-the-court brief filed today, Americans United told a federal appeals court that an Idaho inmate was unfairly treated by a local judge and an Idaho homeless shelter that tried to force her to convert to Christianity and participate in Pentecostal worship.”

Associated Press: “A South Carolina jail was sued Wednesday over its policy barring inmates from having any reading material other than the Bible.”

NorthJersey.com: “The Millburn Free Public Library trustees have changed the facility’s meeting room rental policy. The discussion about the policy stems from a letter from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a group formed to legally defend religious freedom and fundamental rights.”

Christian Web News: “On Thursday, a consultation paper was sent by the Alliance Defense Fund along with several other Christian groups to a United Nations human rights body, asking it not to reinterpret language in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in a way that could make Christian speech into ‘hate speech.’”

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a notice of appeal Tuesday in the ongoing battle for a public school student who was prohibited from reading and discussing the Bible during recess. ADF is appealing a jury verdict against the student and a court order that denied his request for a new trial.

CNN Belief Blog: “‘All the recent attention to bullying helped us realize that we need to equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace while treating their neighbors as they’d like to be treated, whether they agree with them or not,’ said Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, the group that sponsored the event this year . . . Chambers said he contacted Alliance Defense Fund last week about his decision and that it’s unclear whether that group will continue to sponsor the Day of Truth. The Alliance Defense Fund did not immediately provide a comment.”

Associated Press: “Political strategists think the tears and reflection might be an opportunity to advance gay rights.”

Freedom From Religion Foundation: “The Freedom From Religion Foundation fired off a letter to the Redlands [Calif.] Unified School District over a serious violation of the separation of church and state occurring at Redlands High School football practices and games. A complainant informed FFRF, which has over 15,500 members nationwide and 2,450 members in California, that the team and coach regularly recite the Lord’s Prayer and traditionally open the first practice of the season with a ‘blessing of the helmets.’”

ChipleyPaper.com: “The teams gathered at midfield Saturday at Memorial Field in Bonifay at a weekly game of the Holmes County Peewee Association. Both teams joined in prayer before the game except for two lone figures on the Vernon sideline — Vernon Assistant Coach Louis Fromm and his son, a player on the Vernon team.”

Yahoo (Reuters): “Private employers unexpectedly cut 39,000 jobs in September after an upwardly revised gain of 10,000 in August, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday.”

AnnArbor.com: “The American Family Association of Michigan has accused Saline school board members of pressuring administrators to ‘punish a teacher’ for speaking out against proposed changes in the district’s non-discrimination policy and threatened the district with a lawsuit if such pressure does not stop.”

ANSA: “A court in Florence is reported to have petitioned Italy’s supreme Constitutional Court to rule on Italy’s 2003 law on assisted fertility, one of the most restrictive in Europe.”

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: “About 25 college students and community members at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., were denied communion by Twin Cities Roman Catholic Archbishop John C. Nienstedt because they were displaying rainbow buttons and sashes in protest of the church’s stand on gay relationships.”  Catholic Culture reports: “Immediately after the gay activists’ confrontation with the archbishop, a priest serving on the St. John’s faculty celebrated Mass for the protestors and gave them Communion.”

“[The president has left] the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unprotected in the hands of activist judges. When a federal district court ruled in July that DOMA was unconstitutional, it fell to Obama’s Justice Department to fight for the law . . . As of this week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) hadn’t lifted a finger to appeal the ruling . . . Together with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the GOP’s ranking member [Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas)] on the House Judiciary committee is petitioning the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts to intervene.”

The Salt Lake Tribune: “On Tuesday, the school board weighed an amendment that would add sexual orientation to the list of characteristics, such as race and religion, that would be illegal to use to target someone for harassment. The board will consider the issue again Nov. 2.”

KCPQ-TV: “A survey is causing havoc at a local junior high school. Students at Edgemont Junior High in Edgewood will be taking part in an event called ‘Challenge Day’ on Tuesday, but parents are challenging the Puyallup School District over a controversial survey . . . The survey asks students their grade, race and gender. Then, whether they identify as heterosexual, lesbian, gay or bi-sexual, or whether they’re unsure or prefer not to say.”

EU Observer: “The Belgian EU presidency is keeping alive hopes that disabled, gay and old people will in the coming years have equal access to services in the Union’s single market.”

EU Observer: “The EU’s ambassador to Serbia, French diplomat Vincent Degert, has said he is willing to put his neck on the line in support of what he calls EU values by personally attending the Belgrade Pride event in the Serb capital on Sunday (10 October).”

Catholic Herald: “Catholic Care, which serves the dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough and Hallam, wants to continue its policy of assessing only married heterosexuals and single people as potential adopters and foster parents. The Charity Commission has twice rejected its applications to change its statutes to allow this on the grounds that such a policy was unjustly discriminatory towards homosexual couples and in breach of both European and British equality and human rights laws.”

Bobby Eberle writing at GOPUSA: [T]he people of King, North Carolina felt the sting of government when their City Council under pressure from the ACLU voted to remove a Christian flag from a veterans memorial. But that was not the end of the story . . . it was only the beginning.”

Family Security Matters: “On May 9th, the Mojave Memorial Cross was stolen from the United States World War I memorial in the Mojave Desert, which is a federal crime under the Veterans Memorial Preservation and Recognition Act of 2003. More than four months have passed and your administration has still refused to take action to replace the Mojave Memorial Cross.”

Jeanne Monahan writing at FRCBlog: “As an update to my blog last week, it appears that Planned Parenthood is receiving much more government funding to teach your children about sex than initially obvious from the HHS award announcement.”

LifeNews: “Planned Parenthood claims its new telemed abortion process it is using in Iowa has resulted in no complications for women using the dangerous abortion drug. But, one pro-life organization says figures from the CDC and the Australian government make that claim appear impossible.”

ADF Attorney David French writing at Phi Beta Cons: “Featuring an absolute avalanche of politically correct nonsense, the video shows what is allegedly a freshman orientation program at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. I’d be tempted to fully describe the video, which — among other things — has actors portraying gay, lesbian, bicurious, bisexual, transgendered, transexual, and pansexual students and then features a student discussing how he became an atheist at a Christian college, but then you might not actually watch.”

National Post: “On Wednesday the Supreme Court of British Columbia agreed to consider whether Ms. Pratten’s legal battle against the province’s Attorney-General and College of Physicians and Surgeons that seeks to make the identities of anonymous sperm, egg or embryo donors available should proceed to trial.”

“When a B.C. couple discovered that the fetus their surrogate mother was carrying was likely to be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. The surrogate, however, was determined to take the pregnancy to term, sparking a disagreement that has raised thorny questions about the increasingly common arrangements.”

Politico: “[Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper] and other anti-abortion Democrats are at risk of becoming an endangered species in the House. She and others eventually signed on to the health reform law, endorsing an executive order that barred federal funding of abortions. But SBA List and other anti-abortion groups opposed the executive order, contending it was too weak.”

Fox 11: “A billboard dealing with the controversial topic of abortion is getting some attention. The billboard is in Marinette, near the high school. It’s been up for about a week and a half. So far, there have been a variety of interpretations, and responses to it.” (photo of billboard at the link)

Yahoo (Reuters): “Women who undergo an abortion during the second trimester may often prefer a surgical procedure to the ‘abortion pill,’ a small UK study suggests.”

Reuters: “A Florida lawyer at the forefront of legal challenges against foreclosure practices by mortgage lenders says the U.S. housing morass will drag on due to difficulty in determining who owns home loans.”

CBS: “At a Texas fundraiser on Tuesday, Sarah Palin urged audience members to vote in the midterm elections for candidates who would focus on overturning health care reform, citing the importance of choosing a “culture of life” over ‘a culture of death,’ according to CNN.”

Newsweek: “As cohabiting has come more common across the country . . . the once strong link between ‘living in sin’ and divorce has weakened over time. While some religious groups, such as socially conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews, still frown upon living together before marriage, two thirds of marriages in the U.S. now start as cohabitations. ‘Something that used to be stigmatized is now becoming the common experience,’ Smock says . . . Many of the cohabitations that started for economic reasons during the Great Recession are ‘fragile’ and probably won’t result in marriage, says Wendy Manning, associate director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University.”

Bruce Hausknecht writing at CitizenLink:  ”That’s why it is interesting to see a Prop 8 friend-of-the-court brief filed in the 9th Circuit appeal of Walker’s Prop 8 decision by several civil rights organizations, specifically on the topic of Loving v. Virginia. Their main point? That Loving was about eugenics and racism, and Virginia’s antimiscegenation laws only used marriage as a tool . . . ”

Los Angeles Times: “Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer, usual defenders of the First Amendment, said they thought people could be sued for outrageous personal attacks . . . Though the case is about funeral protests, Breyer said the court’s ruling will have an impact on the Internet, since it tests whether personal attacks can lead to lawsuits.”

Michael C. Dorf writing at FindLaw: “[A]s I shall explain in the balance of this column, the Leahy bill carries with it some potential risks–the most serious of these concerning the judicial politics that could frustrate its effectiveness and exacerbate divisions on the Court . . . On most issues, Justice O’Connor is more conservative than either Justice Stevens or Justice Souter. Would the Court fight a preliminary battle over which retired Justice to appoint in any ideologically-divisive case?”

Merced County Political Buzz Examiner: “The California Southern Baptist Convention is offering help to local churches wanting to change their by-laws to reflect possible changes in the legal definition of marriage. Baptist officials on Wednesday made available ‘sample bylaws to defend biblical marriage.’”

The Jakarta Post: “The Indonesian Ulema Council has proposed a ‘comprehensive’ look at the relationships between Muslims and other religious communities, to counter the escalation in inter-faith conflicts.”

Dennis Prager writing at Townhall: “The very reason America has been so prosperous and so free — the very reasons you or your ancestors, like almost every other American’s ancestors, came here — is that America has had more limited government and therefore more liberty than any other country in the world. The Republican Party represents all that you or your parents came to America for — and why you left Mexico and other countries: individual opportunity and individual responsibility. It is also the party that represents your social values.”

LifeSiteNews: “The Archdiocese of Guadalajara has said that the government of Mexico City is behaving like a ‘dictatorship’ by filing a complaint with the nation’s Secretariat of Governance in response to the archbishop’s opposition to the city’s abortionist and homosexualist policies.”

LifeSiteNews: “Speaking out against in vitro fertilization, and other forms of artificial procreation, Cardinal Antonelli said, ‘Today, many people – not just couples but also singles and homosexuals – claim the right to have a child through artificial insemination and do not hesitate to resort to shameful forms of commerce. But there is no right to a child, because a person cannot be produced, acquired and owned as an object for one’s self gratification.’”

OneNewsNow: “In noting the areas of the U.S. where most military recruits come from, the Secretary of Defense may have unknowingly argued in favor of retaining ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ . . . Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.) says that small demographic is very conservative.”

LifeSiteNews: “In hosting a talk this month by a leading U.S. homosexual activist, King’s University-College, a Catholic institution affiliated with the University of Western, is ‘caving into a false compassion which neuters the healthy teachings of the Church,’ says David MacDonald, a Canadian Christian musician and speaker who left the homosexual lifestyle.”

Baptist Press: “Scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Boston, Mass., published studies showing they had reprogrammed adult skin cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells without the hazards previously associated with the technique. Unlike previous conversions of adult cells into stem cells virtually identical to those in embryos, these iPS cells did not require the use of viruses to insert genes into cells — a technique which increases the risk of cancer in the recipient of the cells.”

LifeSiteNews: “The Vanier Institute of the Family has released ‘Families Count: Profiling Canada’s Families IV,’ the fourth in a series of publications since 1994 that draw on the most recent data to provide a new picture of Canadian families and the challenges they face. For pro-family advocates, the report paints a worrying picture of increased cohabitation and divorce, later marriages, and fewer children.”

AFP: “An Australian woman has conceived quintuplets without using fertility treatment — something believed to occur only once in every 60 million pregnancies, a report said. Melissa Keevers, 27, was inseminated with the sperm of a donor from the United States to conceive the babies, which doctors say have strong heartbeats and are above average size for multiple births.”

Politico: “In a new twist in the fight over Arizona’s immigration law, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday asked a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit to overturn the law.”

OneNewsNow: “A recent poll shows that several judges who voted for homosexual ‘marriage’ in Iowa may be on the search for new jobs by the time the retention election comes to pass.”

Catholic News Agency: “Archbishop Hector Aguer of La Plata, Argentina criticized a proposal by the country’s Chief Justice Carmen Argibay to remove crucifixes from the courtroom, saying such a move would leave the country empty of transcendent values and at the mercy of agnosticism and relativism.”

Associated Press: “The American Civil Liberties Union claims in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that a North Carolina school violated the constitutional rights of a 14-year-old student by suspending her for wearing a nose piercing.”

EU Observer: “Police in rural southern Bulgaria have raided the houses of what they suspect to be a branch of an outlawed Islamist group, provoking a peaceful protest in a Muslim village, the interior ministry and media reported.”

Law.com: “President Barack Obama’s recent nomination of Jimmie Reyna for one of three vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit covers all open slots and adds a candidate with deep international trade expertise. But court watchers expect that at least two of the confirmations to the 12-judge court, including Reyna’s, will stretch into next year.”

After receiving a letter from the Alliance Defense Fund, Lakeshore Technical College has agreed to stop showing faculty and students a film that insisted that the Bible condones homosexual conduct. The film promoted denominations that accept homosexual behavior and denigrated Scripturally accurate teachings opposing such behavior as relying on an ignorant misuse and misinterpretation of the Bible.

The How Appealing roundup is here.

The Hill: “The decision by Democratic leaders to skip a vote on extending the Bush tax cuts has led to intense campaign attacks on vulnerable House and Senate Democrats.”

Religion Clause: “In Payne v. Salazar, (DC Cir., Sept. 7, 2010), . . . Department of Interior employee Cassandra Payne won her religious discrimination clam at the administrative level. An EEOC administrative judge found that the Interior Department had violated Title VII by refusing Payne’s requests for weekends off so she could attend church and Bible study . . .”

PBS: “For the first time on television, God in America, a presentation of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, will explore the historical role of religion in the public life of the United States. The six-hour series, which interweaves documentary footage, historical dramatization and interviews with religious historians, will air over three consecutive nights on PBS beginning Oct. 11, 2010.” Via Religion Clause.

National Review Online: “Our actual point was and is that same-sex marriage is a contradiction in terms that undermines the logic of the institution. There is a governmental interest in ensuring that as many children as possible are raised in a home by biological parents who are committed to each other and to them for the long term . . . The disarray of the modern family, to our mind, argues for strengthening those links [between marriage and procreation] in both the law and the culture.”

James Taranto writing in the Wall Street Journal: “There’s a new kind of supremacist on the scene: green supremacists. They haven’t blown up any children–not in real life. But they’ve been thinking about it.”

Religion Clause: “Now in ACLU of Minnesota v. Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104961 (D MN, Oct. 1, 2010), the district court has upheld a federal magistrate’s grant of a protective order to prevent enforcement by TiZA of non-disclosure / confidentiality provisions in its employee handbook against current and former employees in connection with disclosures the employees may make to the ACLU.”

Koenraad Elst writing in The Brussels Journal: “[T]he mere fact that the Rama Janmabhumi (Rama’s birthplace) site in Ayodhya is well-established as a sacred site for Hindu pilgrimage, is reason enough to protect its functioning as a Hindu sacred site, complete with proper Hindu temple architecture. Ayodhya doesn’t have this status in any other religion . . . So, the sensible and secular thing to do, even for those sceptical of every religious belief involved, is to leave the site to the Hindus . . . a group of ‘eminent historians’ started raising the stakes and turning this local communal deal into a clash of civilizations . . . In Western academe, dozens chose to toe this party-line of disregarding the evidence and denying the obvious, viz. that the Babri Masjid (along with the Kaaba in Mecca, the Mezquita in Cordoba, the Ummayad mosque in Damascus, the Aya Sophia in Istambul, the Quwwatu’l-Islam in Delhi, etc.) was one of the numerous ancient mosques built on, or with materials from, purposely desecrated or demolished non-Muslim places of worship.”

CNN: Indian court splits holy site in three

“Muslims in the Netherlands say that remarks by politician Geert Wilders have poisoned attitudes toward them, making them feel unwelcome and at risk, according to complaints disclosed at his hate speech trial Wednesday.”

ADF attorney Joe Infranco appeared on “Grassroots America, We the People” with George Stephenson to discuss Pulpit Freedom Sunday. | MP3 audio 18:31 mins

ADF attorney Matt Bowman appeared on AFA Focal Point with Bryan Fischer to discuss the issue. | MP3 audio 10:07 mins | Related LifeSiteNews: FBI, Obama Admin Join Pro-Abort Groups to Host Training Seminar against Pro-Life Activity

Associated Press: “Members of a fundamentalist church are circling the Supreme Court in protest, brandishing an assortment of the kinds of mocking placards they’ve been carrying to military funerals”

Associated Press: “Authorities say two Romanian men have been arrested for allegedly taking pornographic photos of children and putting them online.”

Associated Press: “Supreme Court justices on Wednesday pondered the vexing question of whether the father of a dead Marine should win his lawsuit against a fundamentalist church group that picketed his son’s funeral . . . Justice Stephen Breyer said the Internet aspect of the case troubled him because the church was saying something ‘very obnoxious’ about private individuals.”

Associated Press: “More churches and religious groups are conducting background checks and taking other steps to protect children against mistreatment in the wake of the sex abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church for years.”

Richmond Parade: “In light of the outpouring of support for retaining ‘Christmas’ in the name, our board has voted to change the name to the ‘Dominion Christmas Parade.’ Dominion has been informed of this decision.”

Associated Press: “A new poll shows Republican Christine O’Donnell badly trailing Democrat Chris Coons in a Delaware Senate race that Republicans were heavily favored to win until the tea party-backed O’Donnell pulled off an upset in the GOP primary last month.”

CatholicCulture.org has the text of remarks given by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput to the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars on Sunday, Sept. 26: “The inquisitors of today’s developed societies are secular, not religious. The real enemies of human freedom, greatness, imagination, art, hope, culture and conscience are those who attack religious belief, not believers . . . The central problem in constructing a Christian culture is our lack of faith and the cowardice it produces. We need to admit this. And then we need to submit ourselves to a path of repentance and change, and unselfish witness to others . . . The role of Catholics in America is exactly the opposite of what we’ve been doing for half a century or more – compromising too cheaply, assimilating, fitting in, fleeing from who we really are as believers; and in the process, being bleached out and digested by the culture we were sent to make holy.”

Conn Carroll writing at The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “The injustice done to Abner Schoenwetter illustrates a very real problem that is currently undermining the civil liberties of all Americans. Between 2000 and 2007, Congress created 452 entirely new crimes, a rate of over one new crime every week. By the end of 2007, the U.S. Code included more than 4,450 federal crimes, with an estimated tens of thousands more located in the federal regulatory code. Civil liberties attorney Harvey Silvergate estimates that the average working American unknowingly commits Three Felonies a Day.”

My Way News: “An Associated Press-GfK poll shows whites without four-year college degrees preferring GOP candidates by twice the margin of the last two elections, when Democrats made significant gains in the House and Senate. The poll, conducted last month, found this group favoring GOP hopefuls 58 percent to 36 percent – a whopping 22 percentage-point gap.”

“This Thursday the Council of Europe, a transnational body created in 1949 to promote democracy and human rights, will vote on a resolution and series of recommendations on conscience protection.”

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence writing at The Christian Post / Advancing Religious Liberty: “The . . . sobering but unsurprising video that purports to be of freshman orientation at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota . . . is also available on Youtube. (Warning: The video is full of pro-homosexual verbiage, but no graphic yuckiness. It also has a student foolishly explaining how he abandoned his Lutheran faith for atheism thanks to his time at Gustavus. It also has a weird sequence where students utter offensive racial ephithets. The video is painful and difficult to listen to. If you don’t want to watch it, the summary you have just read gives you a sufficient summary of its tragic ‘high points’) . . . if this video is indeed from freshman orientation at Gustavus Adolphus College, then it shows that Gustavus Adolphus College allows students to contradict the teachings of Christ.”