Daily Archives: December 30, 2010

Daily Star: “Labor Minister Butros Harb has authored a draft law that would prevent Christians and Muslims from selling property to each other for a period of 15 years, in order to ‘safeguard national coexistence.’”

Kansas City Star: “IHOP, the California-based restaurant chain, recently filed notice that it voluntarily had dropped the suit it filed last fall against the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer over its use of the IHOP acronym.”

Union of Catholic Asian News: “The Hong Kong government has proposed increasing the number of voters in religious sub-sectors on the Election Committee that will select the territory’s Chief Executive in 2012 . . . According to the proposed arrangement, representation from each of the six designated bodies in the religious subsector will increase to 10 seats.”

Calgary Herald: “Nearly a month after a former education minister launched a petition to eliminate Alberta’s separate school system, 646 people have signed on to his call for a referendum into government-funded Catholic schools.”

Breitbart.tv

Scotsman: “Desperate efforts are under way to prevent the Church of Scotland splitting over the issue of gay ministers. New official figures suggest a clear majority of Kirk representatives in Edinburgh would back a more liberal attitude. A special commission is due to report to the General Assembly in May on whether practising gays and lesbians should be accepted into the ministry.”

W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, writing in the New York Times: “But a growing body of social scientific evidence strongly suggests that cohabitation and children don’t mix, even though more than 40 percent of American children will spend some time in a cohabiting household.”

The Globe and Mail: “New research out of the University of Laval and CIRPÉE asks the question: Can women have it all? Or is the disproportionate representation of men in high-power jobs explained by women choosing to invest earlier in the marriage market rather than risk not being successful in that market later in life?”

Wall Street Journal: “Facing budget gaps and an aversion to new debt and taxes, states and local governments are slapping residents with an array of new fees—and some are applying them to nonprofits. That marks a sharp departure from long-standing tax exemptions mandated by state law or adopted on the theory that churches, schools and charitable organizations work alongside governments to provide services to the community.”

National Review Online editorial: “As we have noted before, liberalism has found the perfect division of labor: Elected officials can pretend to oppose same-sex marriage, secure in the knowledge that courts will pretend to interpret the law. Same-sex marriage is the ‘civil-rights movement’ that can’t survive speaking the truth.”

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life, writing at The Washington Post / On Faith: “It is certainly no secret to us, to the Church, or to those who work in the pro-life movement that these decisions are not easy. It is also no secret that women do not get abortions because of freedom of choice. As this program illustrated, they get abortions because they feel they have no freedom and no choice. They do not celebrate abortion as an advance of freedom.”

Orlando Sentinel: “Atheists of Florida wrote a letter to Judd asking him to donate basketball equipment from county jails to other county organizations instead of the handful of churches currently designated to receive the materials.”

New York Times: “It was only after many of these social innovations had been put into place that the great majority of American households were able to achieve the three hallmarks of a secure middle class life: (1) the ability to earn a living through stable, steady and productive work; (2) the ability to form stable marriages as the basis of child-rearing and family life; and (3) the ability to save and to build assets for future goals and for giving to others. Today, far fewer American households are able to achieve even one, much less all three, of these hallmarks.”

Boston.com (AP): “Militants attacked at least three Christian homes Thursday night with a combination of grenades and bombs, killing two people and sending fear into the already terrified tiny Christian community.”

Winnipeg Free Press: “Macedonia’s religious leaders are urging the government to prevent same-sex weddings by changing the constitutional definition of marriage.”

“Legislation to end or curb same-sex marriage and abortion is beginning to take shape as the Iowa General Assembly prepares for a busy 2011 session.”

CNSNews: “In polling done Dec. 14-16, 2001 (the first Gallup survey on the question after the 9/11 attacks), 71 percent of Americans said they thought religion was increasing its influence on American life, and 24 percent said they thought religion was losing its influence on American life. (Two percent said they thought the influence of religion was staying the ‘same’ and 3 percent said they had no opinion.)”

CNSNews: “Specifically, Planned Parenthood’s Web site announced the group is preparing to launch a nationwide ‘social change initiative’ to end the ‘stigma and shame about sex’ in American culture.”

Erin McPike writing at RealClearPolitics: “Of the eight Republican senators who voted for repeal, five are among the youngest in the upper chamber – and they’re not all moderates . . . LaSalvia said that younger generations of Republicans are becoming increasingly familiar with issues affecting homosexual Americans. Older generations, he noted, generally don’t have the same experience of having as many contemporaries who are openly gay.”

The ADF Alliance Alert will not be published on Friday, December 31, 2010. Happy New Year!

KOCO: “The mother, Susan Grady, is a member of The Church of the First Born, a religious group that often practiced faith-based healing methods rather than relying on medicine . . . Officers said they are now trying to find Susan Grady’s whereabouts to serve her arrest warrant. Reports said she has already left Broken Arrow.”

The New York Observer: “The New York chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans just sent out a missive saying that they are preparing a major effort next year, beginning on the first day of 2011.”

CMDR Scott Whitfield, USN (ret.) writing at Catholic Phoenix: “More pragmatically and rather problematically, the repeal concerns the role of military chaplains. What is to become of Catholic chaplains, who minister to servicemen and -women everyday, as well as preach each Sunday on the evils of immoral behavior, including the intrinsic evil that is homosexual behavior? Military chaplains have been imbedded with US forces since the American Revolution. Task forces of Navy ships have chaplains embarked. Each of the service academies have several chaplains assigned to them. Every military facility of appropriate size has a base or post chapel. With the repeal of DADT, will the government now assert control of the content of homilies and sermons to prevent references to homosexuality?”

Reuters: “China shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year, netting almost 5,000 suspects in the process, a government spokesman said on Thursday, vowing no let-up in its campaign against material deemed obscene.”

Boston.com (AP): “Police have detained 10 people suspected of links to the al-Qaida terror network and accused of preparing to stage an attack before New Year’s Eve, the state-run Anatolia news agency said Thursday.”

Associated Press: “The rate of teen births in the U.S. is at its lowest level in almost 70 years. Yet, the sobering context is that the teen pregnancy rate is far lower in many other countries. The most convincing explanation is that contraceptive use is much higher among teens in most Western European countries.”

Sam Stein writing at The Huffington Post: “Whereas conventional wisdom holds that legislative victories beget future ones, there was no clear sense that the president’s signing of DADT’s repeal would have such a domino effect.”

Victoria Advocate: “If Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, and Rep. Rep. Geanie Morrison, R-Victoria, have their way in 2011, Texas will require healthcare facilities to provide no-cost sonograms for pregnant women before an abortion procedure.”

The Jewish Week: “Almost two years into the administration of President Barack Obama the faith based initiatives created by his predecessor are mostly still in place, and groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State are howling mad. But the reaction from Jewish groups has been muted, which leads to an intriguing question: is the decades-old church-state focus of Jewish “defense” organizations getting blurrier?”

ABC Local: “The Cook County Forest Preserve is being sued by a Muslim family who claims religious discrimination because they were denied admission to a swimming facility.”

My San Antonio: “The Bulverde City Council passed a resolution Dec. 14 that allows the offering of prayer before the meetings convenes, but not everyone is happy with the outcome.”

LifeNews: “Although the advanced directives apparently can’t be used for facilitate an assisted suicide, there is concern physicians will pressure or persuade patients to make decisions that would ration care or withdraw lifesaving medical treatment.”

However, despite the insistence by the educated elite that the traditional definition is bigoted and unreasonable, it is clear today more than ever that it is rationally superior to the modern conception.

Elizabeth Marquardt writing at The Huffington Post: “Young people from divorced families felt just as spiritual as those from intact families, but their spiritual journeys were more often characterized by loss and suffering. For children, there is a kind of elemental wholeness in being with both of your parents, an experience that evokes the place where God is present. That experience becomes foreign for children of divorce.”

AFP: “Pakistan has no intention of amending its controversial blasphemy law, a government minister said Thursday, despite a global outcry over a Christian mother sentenced to death.”

The Jakarta Globe: “If one trend that emerged in the past year was considered more disturbing than others, it would be the apparent increase in fundamentalism and religious intolerance in a country that prides itself on being a bastion of pluralism.”

Lebanon Daily News: “The Commonwealth Court has refused the city of Pittsburgh’s request to overturn a county judge’s approval of a strip club in the city’s West End neighborhood.”

WORLD: “You’ve written that radical Islam is the problem and that “modern Islam” is the solution. What is modern Islam? Modern Islam is an anti-Islamist Islam. I’m told that modern Islam is like the unicorn, much discussed but never seen—but its supporters do exist. You see Muslims all over arguing against Islamism, but they’re not a movement and they’re not coherent or organized with a follower and money. It needs deep thinkers—interpreters of the Quran and other sacred scriptures—along with activists and politicians.”

“President Obama announced today his intent to recess appoint six nominees to fill key administration posts that have been left vacant for an extended period of time.”

Los Angeles Times: “Faced with the self-assigned task of writing the California Supreme Court’s first ruling on gay marriage, Chief Justice Ronald M. George drafted an opinion in early 2008 with two different endings. One gave same-sex couples the right to marry. The other didn’t. Then he asked the six associate justices for reaction. George soon learned that his colleagues were split 3 to 3. His vote would decide the most burning civil rights question of the day.”

GoLocalProv: “In some ways Gordon Fox is the anti-Speaker. Charming, smart and experienced melded with a lower-middle-class background, biracial and openly gay. If America is the world’s melting pot, then Fox is America’s poster child.”

William Kristol writing in The Weekly Standard: “As Fiano writes, it’s a ‘massive insult to our military’ to assume that soldiers can’t handle the challenge of integrating openly gay troops. True, this is a burden they might have been spared while fighting two wars. But they’ll deal with it.”

The Bilerico Project (“daily experiments in LGBTQ”): “The underwritten story of the DADT repeal is how significant a role the Log Cabin Republicans played in lobbying GOP members of Congress. The question is now – will LGBT Democratic progressives seek common ground with their partisan counterparts to move the equality agenda forward in 2011?”

Minivan News: “The offer was criticised as a Christmas celebration by religious groups like the Adhaalath Party and the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives (IFM), which have both praised local police for yesterday stopping the promotion at the café.” Via Religion Clause.

Religion Clause: “The Association of American Law Schools Section on Law and Religion has issued its December 2010 Newsletter which includes a 23-page bibliography of the year’s books, articles and blogs on law and religion.”

The Boston Globe: “Senator Scott Brown’s decision to buck his party leadership in recent days on the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ military policy and on a nuclear arms treaty has set off a new wave of anger among some of the activists who helped elect him — and renewed talk among conservatives that he might face a primary challenge.”

Michael Barone writing at Townhall: “The fact is that there is an ongoing truce on the social issues, because for most Americans they have been overshadowed by concerns raised by the weak economy and the Barack Obama Democrats’ vast increase in the size and scope of government.”

Larry Elder writing at Townhall: “Where are the calls to sic Obama’s Justice Department on Big Oil to hold the oil companies accountable for ‘market manipulation’? Why aren’t we hunting down the amoral ‘oil speculators’ responsible for repealing the law of supply-and-demand in order to line their pockets?”

Associated Press: “Nearly two months after the election, Sen. Lisa Murkowski is about to be certified the winner of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.”

LifeNews: “December 30th Update: The organization’s web site is back up and Day tells LifeNews.com: ‘Nothing has changed with regard to the status of DFLA or my involvement.’ She did not say why the web site was down or why her Facebook status indicated she ‘worked’ for DFLA, in the past tense.”

Associated Press: “Now, as eurozone nations are asked to help bail out others overwhelmed by debt and the risk of contagion spreads beyond Ireland and Greece, adopting the common currency is no longer a top priority for former communist countries still outside the zone. And in newcomer countries, like Slovakia, some now see the euro as a burden, not a blessing.”

Associated Press: “China’s number of Internet users – already the world’s largest – rose to 450 million this year, more than a third of the country’s population, a senior official said Thursday.”

The Hill / Ballot Box: “Only 12 House Democrats out of the 40 who represent districts won by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008 survived the November election.”

The Hill: “President Obama used a recess appointment Wednesday to name James Cole as deputy attorney general. Cole’s nomination to the second-ranking post at the Department of Justice had been held up over objections from Republicans, who raised concerns over his tenure as an independent monitor of insurance giant AIG between 2005 and 2009. The federal government bailed out the company in 2008.”

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence appeared on WKBB with Don Taylor. | MP3 audio 33:33 mins

Wall Street Journal: “The FCC’s brazen power grab is already producing a welcome backlash on Capitol Hill. GOP Representative Marsha Blackburn says she’ll introduce legislation to prohibit the FCC from enforcing net neutrality rules. And Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison plans to introduce a ‘resolution of disapproval’ under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn regulatory agency orders with a simple majority in the House and Senate.”

Wall Street Journal: “For some, the Vatican’s efforts on behalf of Christian minorities in Islamic countries or among China’s population of 1.3 billion is regarded as worthy and admirable, but only a footnote against the grand sweep of current geopolitical concerns. Iran’s bomb, China’s economic importance and all that. This is a mistake. In these times, the pope’s agenda is the civilized world’s agenda. The pope’s agenda is individual freedom.”

Washington Examiner: “Nobody questions a president’s right or need to take take away from the White House, but an investigation by Hawaii Reporter has turned up some eye-opening information about the costs and other aspects of the Obama get-away.”

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “President Obama used a recess appointment to name an ambassador to Syria. Robert Ford will become the first United States ambassador to Syria since 2005.”

LifeNews: “The city council is considering a measure that would place stringent limits on the advertising pregnancy centers use and require them to post signs designed to dissuade women from seeking their abortion alternatives services . . . But Christopher Slattery of Expectant Mother Care-EMC FrontLine Pregnancy Centers is hoping the efforts his group of pregnancy centers are launching will help stop the bill in its tracks.”

Freedom From Religion Foundation: “On behalf of its currently active and former members in the Army, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) called today on the Secretary of the Army to halt its invasive and unconstitutional ‘spiritual fitness’ survey and rehabilitation program.”

The Humanist: “The far-right lawyer group, the Alliance Defense Fund, has been the driving force behind these pastor protests. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, the alliance is anti-abortion and opposed to same-sex marriage and boasts of having ‘more than thirty-five full-time Christian attorneys.’ The organization did not respond to a request for comment, but has made no secret of the fact that it’s itching for a court fight—all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.”

Associated Press: “China is going after Internet phone services such as Skype in a move to protect the country’s state-owned telephone companies, causing alarm among consumers who rely on cheap Internet calls.”

YouTube Video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOiZaFMgio

See also: http://lookingforamerica.us/

“The real question is whether human mating, precisely in virtue of the unity it effectuates, is capable of having moral significance of a certain sort.”