Daily Archives: December 8, 2010

“Various media outlets have reported the DADT repeal legislation will not be taken up until Senate Democrats garner two more votes to open debate on the topic.”

CNSNews: “China reportedly has launched a new crackdown on ‘house churches,’ Protestant congregations that do not belong to the country’s state-sanctioned, ‘patriotic’ church organization.”

Radio Netherlands Worldwide: “Everyone in the Netherlands is entitled to in vitro fertilisation. However, in practice, IVF legislation is complicated and discriminates against lesbian couples. The Dutch gay rights organisation COC and the Equal Treatment Commission want the law changed.”

Daily Mail: “The Christian owners of a seaside guesthouse are being sued in a landmark case – for refusing to allow a gay couple to share a double bed. Devout Peter and Hazelmary Bull refused to let civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy use a double room because it would be ‘an affront to their faith.’”

Christian Science Monitor: “Long seen as a fringe societal taboo far from the realm of African politics, homosexuality is emerging as a hot-button issue throughout much of the continent. Kenya, East Africa’s economic hub, joined the trend in late November when Prime Minister Raila Odinga told supporters in the Nairobi slum of Kibera that he would order police to arrest gays.”

Salt Lake Tribune: “In a landmark move, the Salt Lake City school board voted Tuesday to approve a policy providing protection from discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Mooresville Tribune: “The town board on Monday opted to support the planning board’s recommendation for a more restrictive proximity requirement, or ‘separation distance,’ despite suggestions from planning staff that the tougher restriction might open the town to a legal challenge.”

Christian Science Monitor: “China will award its answer to the Nobel Peace Prize a day before it is bestowed upon jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, giving the ‘Confucius Peace Prize’ to former Taiwan vice-president Lien Chan.”

All Headline News: “Dr. Shoshana Grossbard, economics professor at San Diego State University, said polygamy would place women under constant threat by the husband of taking another wife.”

MSNBC: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will ‘likely’ force a procedural vote late this afternoon to take up a bill that contains the repeal of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. But Democrats are unlikely to get the 60 votes they need to start debate on the Defense Authorization measure that addresses the 17-year old ban on gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.”

LifeNews: “State Representative David Sater, a Republican who owned a pharmacy in Barry County for 30 years says the measure he introduced would guarantee the rights of pharmacies to decline to sell drugs like the morning after pill and the Plan B or ella drug.”

The Sun News: “First Baptist Church of Dallas is making a list this Christmas, and lots of people will be checking it. The Rev. Robert Jeffress, the church’s pastor, announced Tuesday the launch of www.GrinchAlert.com. There people can post on a ‘naughty’ list names of businesses that aren’t acknowledging Christmas through store displays, advertising and greetings to customers.”

Cincinnati Enquirer: “Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Jody Luebbers ruled Tuesday that the doctor for Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio breached a legal duty by not having a meeting with the teen 24 hours in advance of the abortion to explain her options, something called an ‘informed consent’ meeting.” | LifeNews: Planned Parenthood Rushed Abortion on Sexually Abused Teen

Christian Science Monitor: “Years in the making, the so-called Pigford II settlement has stirred much debate about government responsibility to repay blacks for unfair US Department of Agriculture (USDA) loan policies and about whether such settlements amount to backdoor reparations for general historic discrimination.”

Sentinel and Enterprise: “The Governor’s Council on Wednesday approved the nomination of Roderick Ireland as the first black chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.”

Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe: “At the occasion of the OSCE/ODIHR Human Dimension Implementation Meeting on Freedom of Religion (Vienna, Dec 9 – 10), The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe releases a five-year report. For your convenience, please [find the embargoed report attached].”

“In 1995, legislators in the Illinois General Assembly passed the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act; but due to legal challenges by the ACLU and their allies, the law has been enjoined for 15 years . . . ”

The Vancouver Sun: “The Internet’s wild west era as a veritable free speech zone may be quickly coming to an end in Canada. The Supreme Court in Ottawa on Tuesday reserved decision on whether simply posting a hyperlink could be considered defamatory and actionable.” | For more information, see How Appealing.

Trend News Agency: “Azerbaijan plans to increase fines for violations of legislation on freedom of religion: for individuals – six times, for officials – up to 16 times, Ali Huseynov, the chairman of the parliamentary committee on legal policy and state-building, said at the meeting of the parliamentary committees on human rights and on legal policy and state-building on Wednesday.”

Indiana Law Review Election Law Symposium is here. Via Election Law Blog.

San Francisco Chronicle: “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed five attorneys to the Superior Court bench in Santa Clara County.”

Houston Chronicle [AP]: “Texas legislators will consider proposals to better define bullying in schools as students face being targeted on campus and online.”

Christian Post: “A ComRes poll of 1,000 adults for the think tank found that just under half (46 percent) agreed with the statement that the birth of Jesus is ‘irrelevant’ to their Christmas, compared with 51 percent who believe His birth is relevant.”

For more information on this cultural trend, see this ADF Alliance Alert compound tag: http://www.alliancealert.org/tag/country-united-kingdom+topic-christmas/

Walter E. Williams writing at Townhall: “Immorality in government lies at the heart of our nation’s problems. Deficits, debt and runaway government are merely symptoms. What’s moral and immoral conduct can be complicated, but needlessly so. I keep things simple and you tell me where I go wrong.”

The Missoulian: “With Republicans controlling both chambers in the 2011 Legislature, some GOP lawmakers are proposing a broad collection of bills to restrict or possibly ban legalized abortion in Montana.”

News Journal: “The University of Delaware would face a rigorous process to establish its credentials in the legal community . . . To receive full accreditation, a school must comply with a list of 56 standards, Askew said.”

LifeNews: “The Senate may vote as early today on the 2011 defense authorization bill that contains language turning military base hospitals into abortion facilities.”

Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan T. Anderson, What is Marriage? (December 8, 2010). Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 34.1 (Winter 2010): 245-287 . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1722155

“In the article, we argue that as a moral reality, marriage is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together, and renewed by acts that constitute the behavioral part of the process of reproduction. We further argue that there are decisive principled as well as prudential reasons for the state to enshrine this understanding of marriage in its positive law, and to resist the call to recognize as marriages the sexual unions of same-sex partners.

Besides making this positive argument for our position and raising several objections to the view that same-sex unions should be recognized, we address what we consider the strongest philosophical objections to our view of the nature of marriage, as well as more pragmatic concerns about the point or consequences of implementing it as a policy.”

Rasmussen Reports: “Very few Americans are offended when someone wishes them a ‘Merry Christmas,’ but most are more likely to say ‘Happy Holidays’ to someone else rather than risk offending them.”

Federalist Society: “Speakers: Jonathan Adler, Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University; Mark Strasser, Professor of Law, Capital University Law School; Edward Whelan, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center . . . Does the Fourteenth Amendment require states to recognize same-sex marriages? A recent California federal district court case said that it does. Now the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is taking up the question, and the U.S. Supreme Court might do so in the near future, too. Our panel of experts will consider what the Constitution requires with respect to this controversial issue.”

Above The Law: “Yesterday, University of Delaware President Patrick Harker announced that the university is thinking about founding a law school. It would be Delaware’s first public law school — Widener Law School is a private institution.”

Des Moines Register: “Key Iowa Republicans are drafting legislation mirroring a new, more restrictive Nebraska abortion law in an attempt to derail plans of a Nebraska doctor to open a Council Bluffs clinic where late-term abortions would be performed.”

Ken McIntyre writing at The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “In a pleasant surprise, a startling new report on the ‘disappearance of marriage’ is getting serious attention from liberal media outlets. It’s a good day for the American family when NPR, CNN and The New York Times all take note of a study warning that divorce, childbearing outside marriage and single parenthood have become the norm—imperiling not only the wellbeing of children but the American Dream itself.”

TIME / Healthland: “S. Alexandra Burt, a behavioral geneticist at Michigan State University, looked at 289 genetically identical male twins to ascertain what difference getting hitched made to these otherwise very similar men. ‘Our results indicate that the reduced rate of antisocial behavior in married men is more complicated than we previously thought,’ said Burt. ‘Marriage is generally good for men, at least in terms of reducing antisocial behavior, but the data also indicates that it’s not random who enters into the state of marriage.’” Abstract is here.

“Choose Life” license plates will soon hit the streets in New Jersey now that the state has agreed to authorize The Children First Foundation’s life-affirming specialty license plate, prompting the Alliance Defense Fund to voluntarily dismiss a lawsuit it filed in 2004 on behalf of the pro-adoption organization

Chicago Tribune Local: “Evanston officials could scale back the number of business or commercial districts in which they would require special-use permits for houses of worship.”

Great Lakes Advocate: “Ms Firth said in a statement the ethics course would operate parallel with special religious education, as an alternative, without taking away the importance of religious classes for other families.”

MacLeans: “An Ontario school board recently voted in favour of handing out Bibles to grade five students. The free Bibles, provided by The Gideons of Canada to the Waterloo Region District School Board, were only given out to those students whose parents had given their permission and, according to an article in the National Post, ‘a guarantee that the Bibles were not intended for in-school use.’”

Cleveland.com [RNS]: “A new educational program in the western German town of Osnabrueck is about a month into an experiment to help imams learn about European society so that they, in turn, can give better advice to their followers . . . Supporters of the German programs eventually want to go beyond filling knowledge gaps on Western society to providing university degrees for would-be imams or Islamic teachers in grade schools.”

Arutz Sheva: “Several weeks ago, Palestinian Authority police arrested 26-year-old Walid al-Husseini because of a series of anti-religious blog posts he had written. Now PA officials say Husseini is not in jail for his religious beliefs, but rather, for his own safety. If he is released, they say, he could be murdered.”

WREG [AP]: “In a letter to the 137 public school superintendents, the group reminded them that holiday celebrations focusing primarily on one religious holiday amount to a school’s unconstitutional endorsement of religion.” | ACLU Press Release

Jeff Jacoby writing in the Boston Globe: “America is many things, but ‘Islamophobic’ plainly isn’t one of them. As Time itself acknowledged: ‘Polls have shown that most Muslims feel safer and freer in the US than anywhere else in the Western world.’ That sentiment is powerfully buttressed by the FBI’s newly released statistics on hate crimes in the United States.”

Radio Netherlands Worldwide: “Malaysia’s law minister on Wednesday shot down calls to ban underage marriage, despite an uproar over the recent wedding of a 14-year-old Muslim school girl.”

Christian Today: “Organised by the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI), the consultation will bring together leaders cutting across religious lines to study the outcome of anti-conversion laws that have been implemented in at least six states.”

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “A Catholic civil rights organization is accusing Boca Raton, Fla., of discrimination for buying and displaying menorahs in public buildings without including a nativity scene.”

Delco Daily Times: “At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, [Cardinal Rigali] noted that changing demographics, declining enrollment and rising costs have contributed to the struggle of keeping Catholic education alive . . . ‘We’re going to map out a long-range plan to sustain the system we have,’ said Quindlen. ‘It doesn’t mean we’re going to sustain every school. It could mean consolidation, it could mean regionalization, it could mean closing some schools.’”

The Independent Press: “Zoning hearings on the Chai Center for Living Judaism’s application to build a house of worship at the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Old Short Hills Road in Short Hills will probably continue for at least another three to six months, according to Millburn’s Zoning Officer.”

Sydney Morning Herald: “An Islamist militant group, the Indian Mujahideen, has circulated an email claiming responsibility. It said the attack was to ‘avenge’ the 1992 destruction of the 16th-century Babri mosque by Hindu mobs in the Uttar Pradesh town of Ayodhya.”

Telegraph: “The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has criticised politically correct officials who remove carols and Nativity plays from Christmas celebrations.”

WECT: “The New Hanover County School Board voted Tuesday night to add Christmas and Good Friday to the official calendar for the 2011-2012 school year.”

Binghamton University Pipe Dream: “New York state will be implementing a change to the fire code at the end of December regarding open flames, which could conflict with some students’ religious practices.”

Bob Barr writing at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution / The Barr Code: “The ‘Establishment clause’ in the First Amendment to our Constitution is designed to prohibit state-mandated religion and to protect individuals from state interference in their exercise of religion if they so choose. Now, thanks to the misguided efforts of groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State, this important bulwark against government interference, is being reduced to the absurdity of empowering lawyers to stop high school graduations because someone might feel ‘uncomfortable’ just sitting in a church for an hour in order to witness a totally non-religious event.”

CTV: “Chief Justice Robert Bauman is hearing from experts, as well as video testimony from former residents of Bountiful, B.C., and other polygamous communities, as he considers Canada’s current ban on multiple marriages. While current residents of Bountiful say they live happy lives, some past residents are calling it a cult and allege that abuse was rampant.”

Interfax: “The organization is called the Russian Association of Islamic Accord (All-Russian Muslim Board). This organization will be the fourth centralized Muslim organizations, the three others being the Central Spiritual Muslim Board, the Council of Muftis of Russia, and the Coordination Center of the North Caucasus Muslims.”

KPTV: “The state labor commissioner and the state school superintendent have teamed up to create a model policy for religious clothing in Oregon schools.” | OR Dept. of Ed. Press Release and Model Policy

“If tens of thousands of troops now serving in the finest military force the world has ever known vote with their feet in the midst of a war, we’re all in deep trouble.”

“Bob Vander Plaats, who led the effort to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices in last month’s election because of a ruling that legalized gay marriage in Iowa, called Tuesday for the remaining four justices who took part in that unanimous decision to step down.”

Religion Clause: “Last week, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Freedom from Religion Foundation v. Obama, a case in which the district court held that the statute creating a National Day of Prayer violates the Establishment Clause. (See prior posting.) The recording of the full oral arguments in the Court of Appeals is now available from the court’s website.”

Adventist News Network: “Members of Peru’s congress voted last week to approve legislation guaranteeing the religious liberty of all citizens, a freedom already recognized by the South American country’s constitution.” | Via Religion Clause.

Daily Mail: “Britain has plummeted down worldwide education rankings in the last decade, according to definitive figures which shame Labour’s record on schools . . . The verdict is a damning indictment of Tony Blair’s mantra that his three top priorities in government were ‘education, education, education.’”

Associated Press: “The father-in-law of a young Afghan woman who said her nose and ears were sliced off to punish her for running away from her violent husband has been arrested, officials said Wednesday.”

Associated Press: “Democrat Mark Dayton started putting together a transition team right after election day. With Republican Tom Emmer ready to concede the governor’s race, he’ll finally get to use it.”

Associated Press: “The Republican challenger on Wednesday conceded to Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop in a congressional race in eastern Long Island, the nation’s only undecided House contest.”

“Senate Democrats are demanding a vote late Wednesday on a bill that would let gays serve openly in the military.”

Associated Press: “The Senate has voted unanimously to convict U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Porteous of Louisiana on the first of four impeachment charges, removing him from the federal bench.”

The News-Examiner: “The Freedom From Religion Foundation has asked Franklin County to remove the nativity scene from the courthouse lawn.”

Gregory J. Sullivan writing at Public Discourse: “Brennan’s interpretive approach was to consider the Constitution a ‘living’ document that should be construed with current, as opposed to original, meaning. When the Constitution lives, judicial discretion is maximized . . . Abortion is the classic example of this process.”

SCOTUSblog: “Jessica E. Slavin, an associate professor of legal writing at Marquette University Law School, previews the case for the American Bar Association’s PREVIEW of U.S. Supreme Court Cases; the ABA has generously agreed to share some of its previews – which are authored by practitioners and scholars in the field – with SCOTUSblog. You can read Professor Slavin’s preview here; PREVIEW’s website is here.”

Friends of Domenic Johansson: “To the best of our knowledge, Sweden continues to hold this father in jail. The original information we received said he’d have some sort of trial on December 10th. However, we are now learning that the trial can be held as late as December 14th or 15th and it seems this might be the case. Sweden will NOT take Christer to trial until they have a psychiatric finding assigned to him.”

National Journal: “In the global race for jobs and economic prosperity, the United States is No. 2. And it is likely to remain there for some time. That’s the glum conclusion of most Americans surveyed in the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll.”

Los Angeles Times: “The adult film performer who tested HIV-positive at a San Fernando Valley clinic this fall spoke out for the first time Tuesday, calling for mandatory condom use in porn productions, improved testing for sexually transmitted disease and follow-up care for fellow performers.”

The Sun News (AP): “The plan, which was designed with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian civil rights group, is aimed to appease both critics of the original display of a lone Christian flag, and those who protested the flag’s removal . . . ‘Groups like Americans United for Separation have an extreme agenda that is trying to eradicate any recognition of our religious heritage in the public square,’ Infranco said. ‘I’m really puzzled as to how they could turn a policy that honors veterans into a constitutional crisis.’”

The New American: “‘It was a very vigorous argument,’ [Jordan Lorence], senior counsel for the pro-family Alliance Defense Fund, said of the two-hour question and answer session between the judges and the attorneys for both sides of the issue . . . Nonetheless, added Lorence, the judges were ‘all over the place’ in their questioning of both sides in the debate, making it very difficult to predict how the court will ultimately rule on the appeal.”

The Catholic Review (CNS): “[Brian Raum], senior counsel for Alliance Defense Fund, a group supporting Proposition 8, said in a statement: ‘What’s at stake in this case is bigger than California and bigger than even marriage. Americans are concerned about how marriage, voter rights, religious liberty and other issues will be affected nationwide if this lawsuit is allowed to prevail.’”