Daily Archives: June 3, 2011

StamfordAdvocate: Attorneys for the Alliance Defense Fund filed the lawsuit on behalf of the group in federal court in April. The lawsuit alleged the high school denied the club the same benefits and access it provides to other groups.

Gothamist: The Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing Bronx Household of Faith, says it will appeal, “Religious groups, including churches, shouldn’t be discriminated against simply because they want to rent a public building just like other groups can. The idea that people of faith may be singled out for discrimination is flagrantly contrary to the U.S. Constitution. The 2nd Circuit greatly erred by not putting an end to the board’s continued defiance of the First Amendment.”

LifeNews.com: “Pro-life students should not be discriminated against for expressing their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “School officials did the right thing by finally granting the ALIV Club official status and no longer assuming the authority to trump the constitutionally protected rights of students. As the U.S. Supreme Court has noted, students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.”

OneNewsNow.com: Christian student groups in public schools shouldn’t be discriminated against,” states ADF senior legal counsel David Cortman. “District officials did the right thing by reinstating the Ichthus Club and adjusting their policies.”

CBN.com: Religious groups, including churches, shouldn’t be discriminated against simply because they want to rent a public building just like other groups can,” ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence said. “The idea that people of faith may be singled out for discrimination is flagrantly contrary to the U.S. Constitution,” he added. “The 2nd Circuit greatly erred by not putting an end to the board’s continued defiance of the First Amendment.”

A federal appeals court has lifted the order banning public prayer at a Texas high school graduation Saturday.

Christian Concern: I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology of hatred, of destruction, of conquest. It is my strong conviction that Islam is a threat to Western values, to freedom of speech, to the equality of men and women, of heterosexuals and homosexuals, of believers and unbelievers. All over the world we can see how freedom is fleeing from Islam. Day by day we see our freedoms dwindle . . .

Christian Post: Texas Governor Rick Perry on Friday criticized a federal judge’s decision to ban prayer from a high school graduation ceremony, calling the ruling “reprehensible.”

FoxNews.com: I’ve never seen such a restriction on speech issued by a court or the government,” Abbott told Fox News Radio. “It seems like a trampling of the First Amendment rather than protecting the First Amendment.”

The Washington Post: The Vatican’s handling of that meeting recalled its treatment of Geraldine Ferraro, a Catholic who was the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1984. She opposed abortion, but also opposed outlawing it. Her 1985 meeting with Pope John Paul II was never officially announced and no photo was released.

Seattlepi.com: The Public Employees Federation, CSEA, New York United Teachers and four other unions are joining with Empire State Pride Agenda Executive Director Ross Levi this afternoon at the Capitol to call on the Legislature to pass a same-sex marriage bill.

Lesbians | Prostitutes | Sex Workers: Because of greater plasticity of female sexuality, he says, “Some women who have had bad experiences with men might seek tenderness and love from women, even though their natural preference might be heterosexual.” . . . There is another complicating factor, experts here say: broken homes.

LifeNews.com: Florida Gov. Rick Scott has signed the first of several bills he is expected to sign that put new limits on abortion in place. The first bill he’s signed makes it so the state doesn’t have to pay for abortions under Obamacare.

This webpage is designed to keep you updated on the President and his Administration steps have taken, and continue to take to benefit the LGBT community.

Christian Post: The Bible is the latest target of Islamists in Pakistan, where Christian and other minorities routinely face blasphemy charges followed by “religious” lynching. An influential political party has asked the Islamic country’s apex court to ban the Christian holy book alleging it denigrates prophets.

The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room: Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. played up his record on abortion, taxes, and the size of government during a speech Friday before a conservative audience at the Faith and Freedom Conference.

Allan Carlson at Touchstone: Even Comstock’s political “descendants” in contemporary America, the socially conservative Religious Right, are largely oblivious of his legacy. My informal survey of a dozen contemporary American pro-family leaders found only one who had even heard of him; this despite the fact that Comstock succeeded in almost every aspect of his purity campaign: from crushing the pornography industry to suppressing abortion and contraception. Indeed, under any fair comparison, the current pro-family and pro-life movements have been failures.

FoxNews.com: he United States is providing hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid to countries that it borrows billions from, according to a report by Congress’s research arm.

San Antonio Express-News: s a federal appeals court weighs whether a judge was correct to keep public prayers out of the Medina Valley High School graduation ceremony, the furor over the issue is attracting more activists and political players who don’t like the decision.

Cardinal Newman Society Campus Notes: For the second time this year, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional director has ruled that a Catholic college lacks a substantial religious character. Today The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) announces its latest publication, “The NLRB’s Assault on Religious Liberty,” to explain the historical context and the gravity of this federal intrusion into Catholic education. The new paper, available online here, is published by the Center for the Advancement of Catholic Higher Education . . .

Washington Times: Crossing party lines to deliver a stunning rebuke to the commander in chief, the vast majority of the House voted Friday for resolutions telling President Obama he has broken the constitutional chain of authority by committing U.S. troops to the international military mission in Libya.

On Tuesday, a coalition of plaintiffs filed a motion asking a federal court to declare unconstitutional several state laws governing the ballot initiative process in the city of Chula Vista. First, they challenged the Natural Person Requirement, which requires that those who propose ballot initiatives must be “natural persons.”

ADF attorney Matt Sharp appeared on Connecting Faith (faithradionet.com)with Michelle Strombeck filling in for Neil Stavum to discuss Religious Freedom in the schools. | MP3 audio 46:19 mins

ADF attorney Austin R. Nimocks on the radio. | The Hugh Hewitt Show, MP3 audio 5:53 mins | The Janet Mefferd Show, MP3 audio 15:09 mins

NCRegister.com: Regarding the civil-union legislation currently making its way through the statehouse, he declared, “It is an unpopular and last-minute attempt at a compromise that satisfies no one and accomplishes little. The civil-unions legislation itself is objectionable since it serves as a gateway to same-sex ‘marriage,’ thus guaranteeing that this divisive debate will continue to grow in our state well into the future.”

Our Sunday Visitor: That leads to a subtle anti-clericalism, he said, because the children learn that priests cannot be counted on to hand on the faith. It shows in what he sees as a dearth of vocations from home-school families. “Why would you want to join the club if its members can’t be trusted to their jobs?” he said.

Spero News: They also maintain that the closure of the Centre for Islamic culture is linked to the Kremlin’s desire to bring the large Muslim community in the country under the control of a single organisation loyal to the state.

ENInews¦ Featured Articles: In the wake of the destruction and surrender of the Japanese empire in August 1945, a “spiritual vacuum” emerged that the country’s de-facto ruler, General Douglas MacArthur, sought to fill with religious and quasi-religious beliefs still new to Japan, from Christianity to Freemasonry. That is the focus of a recently published study of the Occupation years of 1945 to 1952 by Japanese investigative journalist Eiichiro Tokumoto. In “1945 Under the Shadow of the Occupation: The Ashlar and The Cross,”

Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, is asking the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank to remove the rainbow flag flying below the American flag outside of the building, calling its presence “a serious deficiency of judgment by your organization, one not limited to social issues.”

LifeSiteNews.com: A homosexual activist running for Trustee on the Vancouver School Board has drawn the attention of parents with children in British Columbia’s public school system for conducting “homophobia” presentations in their children’s classrooms, without parental notification.

LifeSiteNews.com: The cardinal called homosexual unions “unacceptable” and noted that “Saint Paul says that those who participate in sodomy will not see the kingdom of God. Nothing stronger than that can be said.”

LifeSiteNews.com: n abortion facility in Melbourne is calling on the government to crack down on filming by pro-life advocates outside their facilities as part of a campaign to silence the pro-lifers’ highly-effective vigils.

Persecution.org: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were conducting “an internal purge, reportedly killing many of their own men and accusing them of being traitors to the Communist cause,” said Voice Of the Martyrs Canada (VOMC), which investigates the persecution of Christians in several countries.

A man who had his sperm frozen in case he became infertile was astonished to learn that his ex-wife had tricked an IVF clinic into twice making her pregnant. He then had to pay £100,000 towards the upbringing of the son and daughter he had known nothing about.

John Smeaton, SPUC director: The aim of this engineering is not just permission for the unlimited practice of abortion, contraception and homosexuality*, but also the creation of an international legal framework in which even criticism of such practices will be prohibited.

Daily Mail: The number of women having abortions in their 40s has risen by almost a third in just a decade, official figures show.

Daily Mail: But as soon as the divorce process started, the children suffered a range of problems that persisted, a report in the American Sociological Review [June 11] said . . . ‘Children of divorce experience setbacks in maths test scores and show problems with interpersonal skills and internalising behaviour,’ lead researcher Hyun Sik Kim, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.

aca litigation blog: The regulated activity: Much ink has been spilled over whether Congress–using its commerce power alone, or its commerce power in conjunction with the Necessary and Proper Clause–has the authority to regulate “inactivity.” But there is a logically prior question–a question that is often quite tricky in enumerated powers cases–that must be resolved before reaching the inactivity issue. Namely, one has to define exactly what conduct Congress is regulating in the challenged provision. | Hat tip: How Appealing

The essential public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. To see the importance of this purpose, we must take the perspective of the child: What is owed to the child?

State officials in Indiana say they will defy the decision by the Obama administration asking it to not proceed with implementing a new pro-life state law that would revoke taxpayer funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

Religion Clause: A group of Baptist proselytizers have won the right to distribute pamphlets and speak with attendees on public streets around a Catholic Church where the Church annually holds a festival.

Religion Clause: One of the changes the bill makes is to eliminate the requriement that in order for religious bodies and religious schools to hire based on religious belief or activity, sex, sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity, marital status, parental status or gender identity, they must show that conforming with the doctrines of the religion is an inherent requirement of the job.

U.S. Dept. of State: As Secretary Clinton has said, “when China lives up to [its] obligations of respecting and protecting universal human rights, it will not only benefit more than one billion people, it will also benefit the long-term peace, stability, and prosperity of China.”

Religion Clause: As previously reported, earlier this week a Texas federal district court judge in Schultz v. Medina Valley Independent School District, (WD TX, June 1, 2011), issued a preliminary injunction barring the official listing of an invocation or benediction in the graduation program for Medina Valley (TX) High School, and ordering school officials to instruct students previously chosen to deliver the invocation and benediction to change their presentation to be a statement of their own belief as opposed to leading the audience in prayer. The students are not to end their presentations with “amen” or a statement that they are praying in Jesus’ name.

Religion Clause: In McCollum v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, (9th Cir., June 1, 2011), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims by a volunteer Wiccan chaplain in the California prison system that he should have been considered for one of the paid chaplaincy positions that now are given to Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Native American clergy.

Washington Examiner: President Obama’s solicitor general, defending the national health care law on Wednesday, told a federal appeals court that Americans who didn’t like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money.

AP: The argument has been particularly fierce around Medicare, the giant health insurance program for Americans 65 and older. Democrats are gaining politically from public opposition to a GOP proposal to send future beneficiaries shopping for health insurance in the private market.

AP: The Air Force has discharged an airman under the law banning gays from serving openly in the military, the first firing since President Barack Obama signed legislation aimed at ending the ban.

AP: The Legislature’s budget committee voted early Friday morning to require newly hired police and firefighters to pay more for their health insurance and pension benefits.

Linda Chavez at Townhall: For the first time in history, less than half of Americans now live in married-couple households. The new finding by the Census Bureau reflects the most profound change in the nature of American society ever to have occurred, yet practically no one talks about it.

In the wake of a federal lawsuit filed by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys on behalf of a student-led pro-life club, Independent School District #885 has granted the club official status at St. Michael-Albertville High School.

Washington Examiner: Documents made public yesterday by Judicial Watch describe extensive collusion by Federal Communications Commission officials with a left-wing advocacy group in a campaign to expand government regulation of the Internet.

Brad A. Greenberg: The Circumcision Wars – WSJ.com: But the practice has its critics. Judaism’s small but vocal anti-circumcision movement insists that pain and bodily modification aren’t necessary for forming a child’s covenant with God. Outside of Judaism, the anti-circumcision movement began as a loose union of “intactivists” in 1960s and ’70s San Francisco. It has since coalesced into groups like the National Organization for the Restoration of Men—and they are now looking for some legislative leverage.

HRC : “We are delighted to recognize Hands Across The Water for removing barriers to qualified LGBT adoptive parents and for placing a high value on our families. It is wonderful that LGBT individuals and couples in Michigan have a trusted resource to turn to when pursuing adoption,” added Ellen Kahn, HRC’s Family Project Director.

Chuck Norris and Stephen DeMaura: A Texas Roundhouse for the Trial Lawyers – WSJ.com: This week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a law that will help free Lone Star State businesses from the threat of frivolous lawsuits by enacting “loser-pays” tort reform.

Beaumont Enterprise: The Advocate reports David Dupuis, the school’s principal, told the board Thursday very few parents elected to place their students in the single-sex classes in some grade levels.

Charisma: “Religious groups, including churches, shouldn’t be discriminated against simply because they want to rent a public building just like other groups can,” says ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence, who argued before the 2nd Circuit in October 2009. “The idea that people of faith may be singled out for discrimination is flagrantly contrary to the U.S. Constitution. The 2nd Circuit greatly erred by not putting an end to the board’s continued defiance of the First Amendment. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court has already definitively ruled that the government must allow religious groups to have the same access that other groups have.”

Federal Court Rules New York City Can Ban Schools From Churches – FoxNews.com: Jordan Lorence, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, blasted the ruling and called it “very, very disappointing.” “If we do not get an emergency stay, the churches could be thrown out by the school district,” Lorence told Fox News Radio. “They might be meeting on the street.” Lorence said they hope the court will grant a longer stay so that churches can continue to rent public buildings. “The religious groups are not seeking special treatment, but equal treatment,” Lorence told Fox News Radio. “It would be a tragedy if these churches that serve the communities would be tossed out and be made homeless by this anti-religious policy.” But the court determined that allowing churches to use schools resulted in an “unintended bias in favor of Christian religions” – since most Christian churches worship on Sunday.

Maine Family Policy Council: Legislators in Augusta are not sure that Christians care. Maine Christians claim to support legislation that promotes Biblical values, but they are not walking the hallways of Augusta during these final days of the 125th session.

Christian Post: The Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Bronx church, plans to appeal. “Religious groups, including churches, shouldn’t be discriminated against simply because they want to rent a public building just like other groups can,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence. “The idea that people of faith may be singled out for discrimination is flagrantly contrary to the U.S. Constitution. The 2nd Circuit greatly erred by not putting an end to the board’s continued defiance of the First Amendment.” . . . “It’s very sad when government officials misinterpret the Constitution and attempt to kick such groups out,” said Lorence. “That is clearly not at all what the authors of the Constitution intended.”

OneNewsNow.com: This is a biological fact and not a state of mind,” notes Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney Austin R. Nimocks. “So the court was right to uphold marriage by not buying into the delusion that people can actually change their sex.”

National Law Journal: ordan W. Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., argued for the Bronx Household of Faith. Mr. Lorence said the Bronx Household case is far from over. “We are definitely going to appeal and the only question we have not decided is whether to go en banc to the Second Circuit or go directly for a certiorari petition at the Supreme Court. We’re going to do one or the other,” he said. “I would just say the decision is wrong on so many parts, it’s disappointing.”

Pacific Justice Institute: A Ventura County woman has filed suit against retail giant Macy’s, alleging that she was fired on account of her religious commitment to observing Sunday as the Sabbath, and refraining from work on that day.

AZ Republic: Jack Kevorkian, the retired pathologist who captured the world’s attention as he helped dozens of ailing people commit suicide, igniting intense debate and ending up in prison for murder, has died in a Detroit area hospital after a short illness.