Daily Archives: July 13, 2011

The Washington Post: Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) is weighing whether to sponsor a same-sex marriage bill during next year’s legislation session and is likely to make a decision soon, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Baptist Press – : This gender nonsense serves as a strong reminder that the cultural war over same-sex “marriage” is not really about pension benefits and hospital visits for long-time same-sex couples. At heart, it’s a culture war over whether human beings get to redefine the contours of normal sexuality, overriding natural anatomy and reproductive purposes. In short, ignoring God’s design for human beings.

The Christian Institute: Humanist and homosexual groups have reacted strongly against the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s move to defend religious liberty of Christians.

Christian Concern: The UK’s equality watchdog said judges had interpreted the law “too narrowly” in cases where Christians claimed religious discrimination.

CSMonitor.com: Travel companies, airlines, and other parts of corporate America are starting to provide training programs to help employees recognize human trafficking. Will heightened awareness help detect more trafficking cases?

LifeNews.com: A LifeNews.com article describes pro-abortion organizations objecting to the “race-based” content of the billboards. But Hoye responds that since 1973 more than 15 million abortions of preborn black children “have crippled the black community.”

Yesterday the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated its decision upholding Minnesota’s ban on corporate independent expenditures and contributions to candidates and ordered a new hearing to determine the constitutionality of the laws.

Michigan Messenger: The church filed suit against the groups and its members under the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or the FACE Act. Mt. Hope was represented by the conservative legal group the Alliance Defense Fund.

Charisma: Churches should not be singled out for discrimination by a city’s zoning restrictions,” says Byron Babione, who argued before the 9th Circuit in April of last year. “Government officials cannot use broad commercial reasons to favor non-religious businesses or membership organizations over religious ones. The city’s actions left this small congregation with a mortgage to pay on a building it couldn’t use for two years while it had to pay for another meeting place at the same time.”

AP: Pawlenty said Wednesday he agrees with the principles behind the Family Leader’s Marriage Vow. But he says he prefers “to choose my own words, especially seeking to show compassion to those who are in broken families through no fault of their own.”

The New Democrat Party’s unanimously-passed resolution to call on the government to revoke the charitable status of “ex-gay” groups is a “potential attack” on all Christian charitable groups, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada warned Tuesday.

LifeNews.com: More members of Congress are pressing for an investigation of the Planned Parenthood abortion business following a new comprehensive report issued by Americans United for Life detailing extensive abuses.

LifeSiteNews.com: The lower house of Italy’s parliament has voted to prohibit the starvation and dehydration of patients in a move that is seen as a response to the killing of Eluana Englaro in 2009.

LifeSiteNews.com (see video): State Senator Jim Alesi told a crowd gathered to celebrate the passage of same-sex “marriage” in New York that his priest embraced him and gave him Holy Communion when he attended Mass after voting to pass the legislation.

LifeSiteNews.com: Chris Slattery of Expectant Mother Care/EMC FrontLine Pregnancy Centers called today’s ruling “a complete vindication of our arguments made against this law” since it was first announced in October. Slattery thanked ACLJ and ADF lawyers for their “outstanding legal defense work for the New York City life centers, that will positively affect the entire country.”

LifeSiteNews.com: Reacting to the news that the first New York State town clerk has resigned rather than sign her name on a same-sex “marriage” license, Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted Tuesday that “the law is the law.”

ADF secures court order that halts NYC ordinance requiring pregnancy care centers to post patient-deterring signs or face stiff penalties

An Illinois judge has blocked the state’s attempt to end its contracts with Catholic Charities after they refused an order to participate in same-sex adoptions and foster care placements. The move would have affected nearly 2,000 foster children.

The Volokh Conspiracy: The case is Tatro v. University of Minnesota, decided today by the Minnesota Court of Appeals. I can understand how the decision would be appealing on its facts, but the logic of the case strikes me as quite dangerous.

LifeNews.com carries a chart detailing the number of children killed by Planned Parenthood abortions year by year.

LifeNews.com: A new poll shows pro-abortion President Barack Obama has lost about one-third of the support he had from Hispanics in the 2008 presidential election, and one pro-life Hispanic leader says abortion is the reason why.

Plaintiffs Shelley Rubin and Maureen I. Feller had specifically challenged the prayer that opened an April 2010 council meeting in which reference was made to Jesus Christ. But U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer sided with the city.

Gay ‘Marriage’ and Fidelity, Christian News: There’s nothing “unclear” about this at all. The evidence Oppenheimer cites and Savage’s own counsel make it very clear that marriage is unlikely to change the habits of gay men. But, as Oppenheimer notes: Savage believes that heterosexual couples will learn from gay couples’ example. So “gay marriage” will inevitably undermine all marriages. That is very bad news for our culture.

LifeNews.com: A Catholic bishop in Ohio says his “misgivings” about the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation over its ties to the Planned Parenthood abortion business make it so he is suggesting that Catholics not support the organization

Christian Post: Adoption lawyers and agencies in New York are convinced that the state’s new gay marriage law will lead to a spike in same-sex adoptions, to the consternation of some faith-based groups.

Lee Romney at the LaTimes.com: The report, released Tuesday, showed a 13% increase over 2009 in violent crimes committed against people because of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity or status as HIV positive, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Last year’s homicide count reached 27 . . .

Science Daily: Writing in the online journal PLoS ONE, Dr Andrea Burri and Dr Qazi Rahman from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences report that a shared set of genes and shared set of random environmental factors is partially responsible both for gender nonconformity and female sexual orientation.

ABC News (includes video): Starting July 16, McDain’s, a Pittsburgh-area restaurant, will ban children under the age of 6 from its dining area. Restaurant owner Mike Vuick said the policy came in response to complaints he’d received from older customers about kids causing a ruckus.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: In a letter to the IRS, Americans United asserts that Tom Brown Ministries appears to have run afoul of federal tax law, which prohibits houses of worship, ministries and other 501(c)(3) non-profit groups from endorsing or opposing candidates.

Michelle Boorstein at The Washington Post: A conflict that roiled Washington’s social service world last year is detonating in Illinois, with the state reportedly severing major ties with Catholic Charities over the issue of same-sex marriage.

Religion Clause: On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a number of amendments to the 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill. The Daily Caller reports on one amendment, which passed 236-84, introduced by Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, that bars same-sex marriages being performed on military bases

Garnett, Richard W., The Political (and Other) Safeguards of Religious Freedom (July 6, 2011). Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 32, p. 1815, 2011 ; Notre Dame Legal Studies Paper No. 11-23. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1880084

Religion Clause: he New York Times reports that a state trial court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by a former fire fighter who is attempting to prevent the construction of an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan near “Ground Zero”.

Religion Clause: The Information Office of China’s State Council yesterday published a White Paper titled: Sixty Years Since the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet.

Religion Clause: In a White House blog posting yesterday, Joshua Dubois, Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, discusses the Interagency Working Group on Religion and Global Affairs that was launched, co-chaired by the White House Faith-Based Office and the White House National Security staff.

Religion Clause Blog: Alliance Defense Fund issued a press release announcing the orders.

The Republic: A group of death row inmates in Kentucky have sued the state prison system, claiming that pastors have been illegally and arbitrarily restricted from visiting them.

Adam J. White at The Weekly Standard: Samuel Alito’s understanding of community and tradition distinguishes him from his Supreme Court colleagues

AP: resident Barack Obama collected $86 million combined for his re-election campaign and the Democratic party during the past three months, giving him a large fundraising advantage over the Republican field seeking to challenge him in 2012.

AP: Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney, told The Associated Press in a written statement Tuesday that Romney “strongly supports traditional marriage,” but that the oath “contained references and provisions that were undignified and inappropriate for a presidential campaign.”

LifeNews.com: The Food and Drug Administration has quietly released a new report about the deaths of and injuries to women from the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug and the Obama administration has done nothing to make the information available to women.

Lambda Legal: Yesterday, Lambda Legal filed an amicus brief in a case involving Cristina Ojeda and Monica Alcota, a married binational lesbian couple from Queens, New York. The friend-of-the-court brief argues that immigration officials are incorrectly relying on an inapplicable case for authority to continue deportation proceedings while the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is being challenged. | Brief

“A gay rights organization is seeking Supreme Court review of the case of a gay couple who wanted both their names to appear on the birth certificate of the Louisiana child they adopted in New York.”

AP: The 2012-2015 blueprint is the second of its kind and has the “aim of expanding democracy, enhancing the rule of law, improving the people’s livelihood and safeguarding human rights,” said Wang Chen, director of the State Council Information Office. His comments in a speech Tuesday appeared in Wednesday’s edition of China Daily.

AP: U.S. Rep. Ron Paul said Tuesday he will concentrate on running for president and will not seek re-election to Congress, ending a 24-year career as one of the more colorful members of the House of Representatives.

AnnArbor.com: Ward, who sued EMU in 2009, lost in the lower courts, but Ward and her attorneys, the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal organization that works to uphold the rights of religious college students and faculty, appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District.

OneNewsNow.com (7/13): John Banzhaf argues that single-sex dorms violate the District of Columbia’s Human Rights Act. But Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) Senior Counsel Gregory Baylor says that is “ridiculous.” “Even the District of Columbia itself has separate restrooms for women and for men,” he points out. “If you take his theory seriously, which I don’t think you can, that sort of segregation of bathrooms would violate the D.C. Human Rights Act.”

WILX.com (7/12): Dale Schowengerdt with the Alliance Defense Fund, who represented Mount Hope Church in this case, told WILX the church was pleased with the ruling and expected it would deter similar protests in the future.

Cronkite News (7/12): The ruling by the three-judge panel of the court in San Francisco was hailed by Byron J. Babione, the attorney for the church. “We’re happy with the outcome,” Babione said. “Arizona has always had a good commitment to equality, the treatment of property owners and to the free exercise of religion.” [more]

WorldNetDaily: The court order – and another one citing ” Bash Back!” and “Bash Back! Lansing,” which failed to respond to court orders requiring contact information – came in a lawsuit brought by the Alliance Defense Fund against the radicals over an attack on Mount Hope Church in Michigan’s Delta Township in 2009.

Liberty Counsel: Today the Supreme Court of Ohio upheld lower court rulings that a biological mother, Kelly Mullen, who had allowed her same-sex partner, Michele Hobbs, to “coparent” Mullen’s daughter while the two women were in a relationship, did not permanently give up her right to exclusive custody of the child. The court ruled that it was a revocable relationship and did not create a permanent shared custody agreement with the partner.

Sonoran Alliance: Attorneys for Center for Arizona Policy and the Alliance Defense Fund worked together to defend the church’s rights in court. “Churches should not be treated unfavorably just because they are religious, and that is what the city of Yuma had done here,” said CAP Legal Counsel Deborah Sheasby. (linked at Tucson Citizen)

Jill Stanek at LifeSiteNews.com (7/11): The LDHH complaints against Causeway Medical Clinic, Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge, and Gentilly Medical Clinic for Women (now shut down) were revealed in court documents filed June 15 by LDHH, the Louisiana Attorney General, the Louisiana Department of Justice, and Alliance Defense Fund to dismiss a 3rd* lawsuit waged by 5 Louisiana abortion mills challenging Act 490, a law passed in June 2010 to enhance abortion clinic health and safety regulations with a “zero tolerance policy” for certain infractions.

New American: “It’s ridiculous to stop citizens from displaying a cross on their own property,” said ADF attorney Jonathan Scruggs, who is representing Racaniello. “The Constitution guarantees the right of Americans to express their religious beliefs in this fashion, and no local ordinance can trump that.” Scruggs noted that in the present case, “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.”

The Barna Group: The nationwide study shows that three-quarters of U.S. adults believe the presence of a church is “very” (53%) or “somewhat” positive (25%) for their community. In contrast, only one out of every 20 Americans believes that the influence of a church is negative—either very (2%) or somewhat so (3%). That leaves about one out of six adults (17%) who are indifferent toward the role of churches.

Tucson Citizen from USA Today: The National Organization for Marriage — now revving up a campaign to drive New York Republicans who voted for gay marriage out of office — and the Alliance Defense Fund say religious protections in marriage-legalization bills are inadequate to protect individuals and damaging to religious institutions, particularly faith-based non-profit organizations. Alliance attorney Austin Nimocks cites an example: The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston ceased offering adoption services because it would not allow gays to adopt children.

Houston Chronicle: A federal appeals court has issued an order asking the U.S. government to state whether it will defend the constitutionality of the military’s 17-year ban on openly gay troops

NPR (includes audio): The latest episode in Sister Wives is playing out in the courtroom, not on cable. On Wednesday, the Brown family — the husband, four wives, and 16 children who star in the reality TV show — plans to file a lawsuit in federal court in Utah. The family members say the state’s anti-bigamy law is unconstitutional and that Supreme Court precedent backs them up.

OneNewsNow.com (7/9): Daniel Blomberg is the litigation staff counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund. “…This decision…effectively stops the law from being in effect nationwide, worldwide,” says Blomberg. “So during a time of international conflict, our military is being forced by the judicial system — and unfortunately by the Obama administration’s Justice Department — to implement a change rapidly [that] they’re not prepared to implement. It’s a very disturbing development for our military.” [more]

OneNewsNow.com: “It’s ridiculous to stop citizens from displaying a cross on their own property,” says ADF attorney 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.”

Let The People Vote: Governor Cuomo and the New York Legislature imposed same-sex marriage on New York with no vote of the people. Voters in 31 other states have been able to decide the definition of marriage for their states, but New Yorkers have been denied that right! Stand up to protest the redefinition of marriage and demand your right to vote! If New York is going to change the definition of marriage, it should be the People and not the politicians who make the decision! Let the People Vote! Join us on July 24 in NYC, Albany, Rochester and Buffalo to let your voice be heard! Additional details coming soon…

Pew Poll: How Should SCOTUS Interpret the U.S. Constitution? – Court News – U.S. Supreme Court: Should the United States Supreme Court apply the Constitution in light of current-day trends and events, or should it apply the document based entirely on the way it was originally written? Americans are divided on these questions.

Richard Stith at University Faculty for Life Blog Archive : Arguing that female suicide rates are a good demographic-level proxy for women’s mental heath, Klick shows that there is a “statistically and practically significant drop in the suicide rate when states adopt waiting periods,” and so concludes that “waiting periods do improve mental health among females.”

Richard Fehring at University Faculty for Life Blog: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports comprehensive preclinical education about family planning that includes contraception and abortion for medical students. Furthermore, the Association of Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics (APGO) have set standards for medical students on the topics of contraception and abortion. The rationale is that many women in the United States seek these reproductive services and medical students should be knowledgeable about them.

Gothamist: Local atheists say they’re considering suing the city over a new street sign in Red Hook that honors firefighters who died on 9/11.

NCRegister.com (7/8): The pressure has been “intense and sustained,” said Piero Tozzi, global senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a U.S.-based group that monitors religious liberty . . . Tozzi also noted UNFPA’s bankrolling of a controversial “Adolescent Reproductive Health Program” that was halted in court last year after parental-rights activists brought a court action to halt the sex-ed program that they said encouraged promiscuity and violated parental rights.

Daily Kos: Midday open thread (7/8): Anti-choicers in Wisconsin want to make sure no one can get a legal medical procedure: On behalf of Pro-Life Wisconsin, the Alliance Defense Fund filed a formal request on Tuesday, July 5, with the Wisconsin Attorney General’s office to confirm the illegality of and enforce the law against the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (UWHC) Authority’s payment of physician-residents for abortion training at Planned Parenthood in Madison.

AWR Hawkins at Townhall (7/12): So the overarching problem with Davis’ argument is that while he correctly understands that our Founders did not want an “established religion,” he unjustifiably equates that with a pursuit of secularism. And as history shows, such secularism frequently results in the use of the “separation” metaphor as a call to action against the National Motto, the National Day of Prayer, and even the posting of the 10 Commandments or the Pledge of Allegiance: all of which actions would have amazed the Founders, many of whom we can judge even now by what they did as much as by what they wrote.

Bellinghamherald.com: The state of Illinois has declined to renew its foster care and adoption contracts with Catholic Charities across Illinois, possibly ending a historic public and private partnership initiated by the Roman Catholic Church a half-century ago and potentially severing the relationship between 2,500 foster children and their caseworkers.

TheHill.com: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday laid out a plan to avoid a national default and put responsibility for increasing the debt limit squarely on President Obama.

CNET News: Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months, CNET has learned.

Reuters: A town clerk in western New York has resigned to avoid being forced to sign marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples, citing religious objections to same-sex marriage.

An anarchist group and its members may no longer invade churches anywhere in the country unless they want to be held in contempt of court and fined $10,000, according to orders issued by a federal judge Monday.

9th Circuit says city of Yuma violated federal law against treating churches
unequally in zoning matters

ADF letter sparks City of Akron to allow Christian man, his family to share faith on public sidewalks during fireworks display at public park