Daily Archives: August 1, 2011

LifeSiteNews.com: An opinion poll conducted by the Een Vandaag Institution of 800 general medical practitioners shows that there is a broad acceptance of the practice of euthanasia and a general willingness among Dutch doctors to offer euthanasia to people in their care.

LifeSiteNews.com: Amnesty International is demanding the “right” to kill unborn children conceived by rape in Nicaragua, according to international media sources.

CNS: “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments and violate federal law,” Aden said in a July 27 statement. “The law is clear, and we intend to review all of our options for appeal of this decision. “In these tough economic times, it makes no sense for the federal government to use taxpayer money for this illegal and unethical purpose,” he added.

ADF attorney Brian Raum at Townhall: Recently, PR Newswire ran the latest Harris Interactive poll under the headline, “Over Half of all Americans Favor National Recognition for Same-Sex Marriages.” And like so much of the homosexual agenda, both the headline and the story beneath it demonstrated the Left’s not-so-subtle habit of using verbiage to say one thing but communicate another.

The Local: A number of Sweden’s faith communities that refuse to accept homosexuals as members continue to receive state support despite requirements that they uphold the country’s “social values”.

Christian Concern: Colin Atkinson, the Wakefield and District Housing (WDH) employee who was in the news recently for fighting for the right to keep displaying a palm cross in his van, has been suspended from work following continued harassment.

The Christian Institute: Sharia law has become a shadow legal system within Australia, endorsing polygamous and underage marriages, according to new research.

MiamiHerald.com: Perhaps with the exception of the debate over the nation’s health-care system, Black said he’s never seen a more difficult time on Capitol Hill.

LifeNews.com: As LifeNews.com reported, the Health and Human Services Department ruled that insurance companies are required to include birth control and drugs that can cause abortions in their coverage by virtue of defining them as preventative care.

Christian Newswire: Violence against women is now a common byproduct of the consumption of pornography, a topic that will be addressed during the final week of Morality in Media’s “Be Aware: PORN HARMS” National Awareness Campaign.

The Washington Post: ow, in a reversal, some conservative Christian women are tentatively claiming the feminist label for themselves. In the reframing, feminism has nothing to do with a woman’s right to choose an abortion or with government programs for the poor.

BostonHerald.com: Massachusetts Citizens for Life, an anti-abortion organization, intends to initiate a ballot petition that would repeal the requirement that all Massachusetts residents obtain health insurance, a core provision of the state’s landmark 2006 health care law.

LifeNews.com: The Maryland Health Department is issuing new regulations that will result in better monitoring of abortion centers in the state to ensure they are following health and safety laws.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott Holds Pro-Life Bill Signing Ceremony | LifeNews.com: A changing of the guard in the governor’s mansion in Florida made it so pro-life advocates could enjoy a bill signing ceremony with Governor Rick Scott — whereas pro-abortion Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed pro-life bills.

LifeNews.com: The Germantown Reproductive Health Services abortion business that employs late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart, will close this week as hundreds of pro-life advocates from across the country participate in a week-long pro-life protest.

WSFA 12 News Montgomery, AL :
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley appointed Charles R. “Chuck” Malone, his current Chief of Staff, to be the next Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

The Moral Liberal: In a decision setting back student free speech rights, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued its opinion in the case of Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools earlier this week.

A law professor attempts to use a homosexual rights ruling to defend a polygamous family in Utah.

Religion Clause: The United Nations Human Rights Committee is the body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This week, after two years of debate and consultation, the Committee finalized General Comment No. 34, an authoritative interpretation of the freedoms of opinion and expression guaranteed by Article 19 of the Covenant. (Press release.)

Religion Clause: Compass Direct News reports that Chinese authorities this week sentenced Shi Enhao, deputy leader of the Chinese House Church Alliance, to two years of “re-education through labor” on charges of organizing and holding illegal religious meetings.

Religion Clause: Controversial reporter Jason Leopold in a posting Wednesday on Truthout says that U.S. Air Force training for missile officers includes a mandatory session led by chaplains discussing St. Augustine’s Just War Theory . . .

Religion Clause: The Wall Street Journal over the week end reported on Friday’s rally in Cairo, Egypt by tens of thousands seeking the establishment of Islamic law in the country.

A federal judge has blocked a new law the Kansas state legislature approved that revokes taxpayer funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business. U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten issued his ruling today in a lawsuit Planned Parenthood filed.

SCOTUSblog: The first significant challenge in the Court to the new health care law raises two constitutional challenges, but they are not pressed with equal vigor.

LifeSiteNews.com: The Coptic Orthodox Churches in Toronto are threatening to withdraw 4,000 families from the Toronto Catholic District School Board if it does not amend its controversial equity policy to protect Catholic teaching in the schools.

Margaret Somerville at Mercatornet: Same-sex marriage creates a clash between upholding the human rights of children with respect to their coming-into being and the family structure in which they will be reared, and the claims of homosexual adults who wish to marry a same-sex partner. It forces us, as a society, to choose whether to give priority to children’s rights or to homosexual adults’ claims. This problem does not arise with opposite-sex marriage, because children’s rights and adults claims with respect to marriage are consistent with each other.

Persecution News: An exchange of harsh words on July 25 between Ruth, a Christian woman, and Gassem Fouad, a Muslim man who had parked his tricycle in front of her home, escalated into assault by the man on Ruth and other Christian villagers, and the arrest of one Copt.

ChurchLeaders.com: Among them are politics (38 percent), homosexuality (23 percent), abortion (18 percent), same-sex marriage (17 percent), war (17 percent), women’s role in church and home (13 percent), the doctrine of election (13 percent), hell (7 percent) and money (3 percent).

OneNewsNow.com: “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law,” he contends. “The district court’s injunction simply enforced that law, which makes sure Americans don’t pay any more precious taxpayer dollars for needless research made irrelevant by adult stem-cell and other research.”

PRNewswire-USNewswire/ –: Catholic Charities policy of providing state-funded adoption and foster care services in a fashion that excludes same sex couples does significant harm to children in the custody of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and discriminates against same-sex couples who desire to act as foster or adoptive parents. These arguments are the focal point of a filing by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which moved late Friday (July 29, 2011) to intervene in a case brought by four Catholic Charities agencies (from Joliet, Springfield, Peoria and Belleville. | ACLU Filings

NJ.com: “There’s no question that this was provoked by a complaint by an irate neighbor,” said Joseph Infranco, one of a coalition of Christian lawyers with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing Racaniello. “I’m fairly certain that if he had posted a lost dog sign, that the neighbor would have done nothing. There’s evidence indicating that it may well have been about the content,” Infranco said.

ADF files suit against USPS on behalf of man arrested by police because some may object to Christian literature

ADF letter advises district that ACLU’s demands would result in students having access to sexually explicit content

California Catholic Daily – No need to heed: “The Freedom From Religion Foundation has no valid legal argument to demand that prayers be censored or eliminated; they simply don’t like prayers being uttered at public meetings, and so they are on a seek-and-destroy mission to rid cities and counties of such prayers through coordinated attacks like this one,” said Harvey. America’s founders opened public meetings with prayer,” said ADF Senior Counsel Brett Harvey. “Public officials today should be able to do the same. In fact, a recent federal court ruling in California says they can.”

Mercatornet: Seriously. This is their legal complaint. Just like the American Center for Law and Justice, the Alliance Defense Fund is getting used to this.

Chemical & Engineering News: The litigation, however, is likely to continue. The plaintiffs plan to review all options for an appeal, according to their attorney, Steven H. Aden of the Alliance Defense Fund. “In these tough economic times, it makes no sense for the federal government to use taxpayer money for this illegal and unethical purpose,” Aden says.

Christian Post: Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) also insist that the cross’s placement in the museum is legally sound, and claim that the American Atheists’ lawsuit “is completely out of step with the Constitution.” “One atheist group’s agenda shouldn’t diminish the sacrifice made by the heroes of 9/11,” said ADF Senior Counsel Byron Babione in a statement on the group’s website. “A cross like this one simply does not amount to a government establishment of religion under either the U.S. Constitution or the New York Constitution.” Babione added, “Nothing in the Constitution authorizes atheists to scour the landscape on a mission to seek and destroy memorial crosses.”

The New American: James Sherley, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, who uses adult stem cells in his research, was set to file an appeal of the verdict, with the aid of the Alliance Defense Fund, which represented him and Theresa Deisher in the lawsuit. “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law,” ADF senior counsel Steven Aden said after the verdict. “The law is clear, and we intend to review all of our options for appeal of this decision.”

JournalNow.com: Johnson said Friday’s opinion conflicts with decisions by other appeals courts in similar cases, apparently creating a dispute only the nation’s highest court can decide. Johnson is an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian organization active in church-state issues. The fund is paying the county’s costs to litigate the case. “The idea that a legislative body would have to censor the speakers who come in on a rotational basis to offer an invocation is unprecedented,” Johnson said.

Daily Kos: Sherley and Deisher can appeal the ruling. The Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative organization that assisted with the lawsuit, said in a statement that its attorneys and other lawyers involved in the case were “weighing all of their options for appeal.”

WXII12.com, The Triad (includes video): The Alliance Defense Fund represented Forsyth County in the case and disagreed with the 2-1 ruling, arguing that the decision is in “conflict with other federal court decisions and out of step with the history of invocations in America.” “America’s founders opened public meetings with prayer. There’s no reason that today’s public officials should be forced to censor the prayers of those invited to offer them simply because secularist groups don’t like people praying according to their own conscience,” said ADF attorney Mike Johnson. “The legal team will confer with the county about the process of appealing today’s decision.”

Mary Frances Boyle Heritage Foundation Foundry Blog: Earlier this year a federal judge found part of a similar law in Montgomery County, Maryland, unconstitutional. The law required pregnancy centers to post a sign in the waiting room notifying women that there is no medical professional on staff and encouraging them to see a licensed health care provider. With the help of organizations like the Alliance Defense Fund and American Center for Law and Justice, Slattery’s group fought the bill alongside other nonprofits like Boro Pregnancy Counseling Center and AAA Pregnancy Problems Center.

LifeNews.com: att Bowman, a pro-life attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, commented on the billboard controversy and said the whole incident outlines the grief fathers bear in the abortion process. “Regardless of the prudential character of this particular billboard, it does highlight a deep and festering wound in our society: the harm that abortion causes to the fathers of aborted children,” he said. “Most attention on post-abortion psychological harm is focused on the mothers, but men similarly have intense grief due to abortions of their children, both when they participate and when the abortion is done against their wishes.”

LifeNews.com: Recently, Hon. Richard D. Bennett of the federal district court for the District of Maryland issued a 49-page opinion in a civil rights action filed by attorneys with the American Catholic Lawyers Association in 2009. The decision, following extensive motions for summary judgment by both plaintiffs and defendants, holds that the First and Fourth Amendment rights of the seven pro-life advocates who are the plaintiffs (as well as two pro-life advocates represented by the Alliance Defense Fund) were violated when the state troopers arrested and jailed them.

Lexington Herald-Leader: For this Madison County city with a legacy of diversity, the debate on whether to extend discrimination protections to gays and lesbians has been vigorous and arduous.

Yahoo! News: China said on Monday that Islamic militants had mounted an attack that left 11 people dead in the restive western region of Xinjiang, which announced a crackdown on “illegal” religious activities at the start of the Muslim fasting month.

NCPA Policy Digest: When viewed in terms of additional total energy output by source, measured in the common unit of million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE), we see that energy from nonhydro renewable sources (mainly wind and solar) grew by only 11.4 MTOE from 2000 to 2010, while new energy supply from coal grew 976.4 MTOE.
That’s 85 times as much new energy that came from coal than from nonhydro renewables.

Health insurance plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women, with no copays, the Obama administration said Monday in a decision with far-reaching implications for health care as well as social mores.