Daily Archives: July 6, 2011

Christian Concern: A new IVF ‘lottery’, set to be launched this month, will allow members of the public to ‘win’ a baby after purchasing a £20 ticket online.

GOP victim of pro-homosexual ‘spin’?: The president of the Family Research Council and FRC Action says the claim by Log Cabin Republicans — a pro-homosexual group — that its executive director has been appointed to the Finance Committee of the Republican National Committee (RNC) is “completely false.”

The Asheville Citizen-Times: He expects the measure, which can’t be vetoed by the governor, to pass the House with the minimum 72 votes and go to voters in 2012.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the United States cannot force partners in its international fight against AIDS to denounce prostitution as a condition for receiving funding.

“The official legislative record makes plain that DOMA Section 3 was motivated in large part by animus toward gay and lesbian individuals and their intimate relationships, and Congress identified no other interest that is materially advanced by Section 3,” the brief read

AP: President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he’s decided to reverse a long-standing policy of not sending condolence letters to the families of service members who commit suicide while in a combat zone.

The New American: As reported by CNN, Emanuel “showed his support for the recently passed New York same-sex marriage law, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer … he would support similar legislation in Illinois.” Obama’s friend and political ally told Blitzer that he thought same-sex marriage is a “significant issue,” and he hoped Illinois would move in the same direction as the Empire State.

BBC News: China has blocked internet references to retired leader Jiang Zemin after rumours circulated that he had died.

God Discussion: Also appearing at the Familiokratos Coalition Conference was Roger Kiska, legal counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group that says there is no constitutional separation of church and state, as well as a number of speakers from the European Parliament and international “pro-family” activists.

VirtueOnline – News – Viewpoints : The most flagrant non-churchgoers used to abide a church’s tax exemption because of the service they rightly believed the church offered the community. The church is now seen as devoid of metaphysical value, and therefore, the only benefit it can give is through taxes on the dollars donated to it and the property it owns. –– Alan Sears, president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund (www.telladf.org).

LifeSiteNews.com: The billboard company hosting a series of pro-life ads addressing the Bay Area black community have refused to bend to demands that led to the removal of similar ads elsewhere in America.

federal judge has blocked a state law meant to prevent the spread of child pornography, saying it violates the First Amendment and is too broad in its scope.

Matthew J. Frank at National Review Online: The conflict is that direct. Either the great religions of the world–all of them–have historically taught the truth about marriage as a union of a man and a woman, a truth that has up until the last few years been reflected in the laws of every nation . . . Or they have taught a falsehood, and their stubborn adherents must be broken to a new “truth” lately discovered . . .

Catholic Culture: William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal has joined the list of columnists intrigued by Maria Hvistendahl’s new book Unnatural Selection, which decries the widespread practice of sex-selection abortion.

The Washington Post: The president of the U.N. Security Council says he expects a ministerial meeting on July 13 to recommend that South Sudan be admitted as the 193rd member of the United Nations.

LifeNews.com: A new study conducted in the United Kingdom finds women who have abortions are 34 percent more likely to deliver a baby prematurely when they become pregnant the next time and to suffer from other pregnancy complications. Sohinee Bhattacharya, who led the research at the University of Aberdeen . . .

Christian Newswire: The Christian Medical Association (CMA, www.cmawashington.org) today sent to President Obama a letter on behalf of 61,154 individuals who signed a petition urging the President to uphold and enforce conscience rights in health care.

Elizabeth MarquardtNational Review Online: So it is right for parents and educators to be open with children about their origins and to grapple with questions such as how to draw their family tree. But it is also worthwhile to ask why we would deliberately conceive children to struggle with these questions in the first place, especially when a host of children, already born, await loving, open, adoptive homes of their own.

Breitbart’s Big Government: New questions have arisen regarding those 14 Wisconsin Democratic state senators who fled to Illinois for three weeks this February in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to stop the Badger State’s new public employee labor law.

Her appointment to the West Point board, announced Tuesday, does not require Senate confirmation.

LifeSiteNews.com: California law currently permits children age 12 and older to consent for themselves to diagnosis and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. The proposed law, AB 499, would extend that right to include preventative care, such as immunizations.

Houston Chronicle: A federal judge will hear arguments Wednesday on whether to stop Texas from enforcing a new law requiring doctors to conduct a sonogram before performing an abortion.

LifeSiteNews.com: Right to Life New Zealand (RTLNZ) revealed that they have joined their name to the complaint in a press release Tuesday. The complaint is being lodged at the International Criminal Court in The Hague by a group of thirty-seven parents or siblings who have a family member with Down syndrome.

LifeSiteNews.com: Obama’s Department of Justice (DoJ) filed papers last Friday in a lawsuit filed by Karen Golinski, an attorney with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, whose partner was denied benefits based on DOMA. The DoJ argues in their brief that the Defense of Marriage Act violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection.

LifeNews.com: ublic funding of human cloning became legal on in Minnesota on July 1 without reauthorization of the state’s current ban on such funding. Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life helped to pass the ban on taxpayer funding of human cloning during the 2009 legislative session.

LifeNews.com: A new campaign is placing emphasis on lobbying the Chinese embassy in Washington on behalf of Chen Guangcheng, a blind attorney who was jailed for years for his part in exposing a brutal campaign of forced abortions.

LifeNews.com: The de-funding of the Planned Parenthood abortion business in Nashville, Tennessee became official on Friday as the state shifted the funds to the city’s health department.

LifeNews.com: A young teenage girl who was recently found after spending more than a year as a sex trafficking victim is an example of the kind of concerns pro-life advocates presented earlier this year about Planned Parenthood.

Erwin Cherminsky at the LaTimes.com: Has the Supreme Court lost faith in the American court system? That is a strange question to ask about the justices who sit at the top of the country’s judicial hierarchy. But in case after case in the just-completed term, the court, usually in 5-4 decisions with the conservatives in the majority, denied access to the courts.

Religion Clause: In the Australian state of New South Wales, the cabinet of Premier Barry O’Farrell has approved for introduction into Parliament later this year a law that will allow police to require motorists or others to remove face coverings, such as a burqa or niqab, if police have reasonable ground to believe that a violation of law or breach of security may have occurred.

Religion Clause: Utah prosecutors have dropped, at least temporarily, two charges of desecration of a human body that had been brought against a Santeria clergyman (santero).

Boulder Daily Camera: The National Association of Human Rights Workers is considering whether to discontinue the ecumenical prayer services during its national conference in Colorado this summer after members of the Boulder Human Relations Commission expressed concerns about the religious content.

The Globe and Mail: The Toronto District School Board says it is meeting its obligation to accommodate students’ religious beliefs by allowing an imam to lead students in prayer on school property.

Cal Thomas at the MiamiHerald.com: Intellectually, I understand the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision that the First Amendment protects the most violent of video games. Experientially, I don’t. It’s fine for the majority to say parents have ultimate control over what their children see, but how many members of the Supreme Court have experienced “real” life? . . Justices live in an unreal world. They have little experience with cyberspace and violent video games . . .

SCOTUSblog features the petitions for certiorari in Utah Highway Patrol Association v. American Atheists and Davenport v. American Atheists, Inc..

Guardian: UN Women’s 2011 report focuses on women’s access to justice in every country around the world. See how countries compare.

California lawmakers on Tuesday sent the governor a bill that would make the state the first requiring public schools to include the contributions of gays and lesbians in social studies curriculum.

Centre Daily: The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania announced that a vote by the State College Area School Board to extend health insurance benefits to same-sex partners of its employees will partially settle a discrimination lawsuit brought against the school district by the ACLU . . . ACLU officials said the district also will add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to anti-discrimination policies for staff and students under the settlement agreement.

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears at Townhall: President Calvin Coolidge saw this clearly. And during a speech in Philadelphia on the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration, he said, “In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document.” In other words, every claim, every declaration, and every example of proper governance and natural rights contained in the Declaration are ultimately rooted in the existence and person of God.

The New American: Following the threats from the two liberal groups, Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a pro-family legal advocacy organization, wrote a letter to Carlson encouraging him and district officials to stand firm in the policy. “School districts should not be bullied into taking the side of homosexual activists,” wrote Tedesco. “Parents rightly believe that public schools are a place for education, not sexual indoctrination. The Anoka-Hennepin School District’s policy is entirely appropriate and legally sound.” Tedesco noted that SPLC/NCLR letter “plainly misinterprets the District’s Policy, is inaccurate as to the law, and is heavy on hyperbole,” adding that the two homosexual legal groups seemed “more concerned with pushing their agenda than with offering real solutions to the problems of bullying….”
[more]

Terence P. Jeffrey at Townhall: “The practice and beliefs of the founding generation establish that ‘the freedom of speech,’ as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors’ parents or guardians,” wrote Thomas. But Thomas was a dissenter. Justice Antonin Scalia — a conservative — wrote the majority opinion in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.

Charisma: “It’s ridiculous to stop citizens from displaying a cross on their own property,” says ADF Litigation Staff Counsel Jonathan Scruggs. “The Constitution guarantees the right of Americans to express their religious beliefs in this fashion, and no local ordinance can trump that. In this case, however, the ordinance itself doesn’t actually even prohibit these crosses. The law is being used in a vague fashion to stop him from doing what he wishes on his own private property.”

Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service via National Catholic Reporter: David Cortman, senior counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, which argued for both the National Day of Prayer and for the Arizona tuition credit program, is not surprised about strategies to move to the state courts. “If they can’t challenge them in federal courts, they’ll certainly challenge them in states,” he said, “but we’ll also be there to defend those programs.”

Raymond Ibrahim at the Middle East Forum: One may argue that rape is a phenomenon that affects every society, yet the fact that most women raped in Pakistan come from the mere 2% Christian minority speaks for itself.

A recent Supreme Court case reveals a division amongst conservatives over the moral foundations of the law.

NYTimes.com: Mr. Perry’s public statements exposed a long-simmering rivalry that had been little known outside the political fraternity here but underscores the rightward drift of the Republican Party since Mr. Bush was president. More acutely, Mr. Perry’s criticism holds potential peril and benefit for him should he decide to mount a presidential campaign, allowing him to establish an identity distinct from Mr. Bush but risking a guerrilla campaign against him by the former president’s inner circle.

TheDaily.com: The Mile High City is getting higher all the time. There are now more medical marijuana dispensaries in Denver than there are Starbucks. Glossy guidebooks list nearly 300 locations where Colorado’s 125,000 residents who have been prescribed medical marijuana can get their “medicine.”

. . . The insistence on ignoring vice is the hallmark of a debased culture, but the insistence that a lie be publicly affirmed as true is the hallmark of ideological totalitarianism.

Liu Junning at WSJ.com: China has indeed made great strides since 1978′s “Reform and Opening” in alleviating poverty, opening up to the world, and making slow steps down the road of legal reform. Yet on closer inspection, the most significant transformations from the perspective of boosting prosperity have involved loosening of control over the people, not some alchemy of power and Marxism.