Daily Archives: September 27, 2011

LifeSiteNews.com: After a two and a half year battle, a Warsaw court this month found that Polish pro-life leader Joanna Najfeld was “not guilty” of defamation against the country’s most infamous abortion activist when Najfeld claimed the activist was on the “payroll” of the abortion and contraception industry.

LifeSiteNews.com: Teresa Kelly and colleagues at Newcastle University followed 122 women who had either a surgical abortion or used the mifepristone pill in the second trimester of pregnancy and published their findings in the obstetrics journal BJOG.

LifeSiteNews.com: “Family Planning Official dragged my wife into a dark room and beat her brutally. She gripped their legs and knelt down to beg, ‘I know I’m wrong. Please forgive me. Please forgive me…”

Christian Today: A day after a suicide bomb attack wounded 28 at a church in Indonesia, affiliated with Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback megachurch, explosives were found in front of another church in a different district Monday, exposing the magnitude of the threat to minority Christians.

ADF Allied Attorney Mike Johnson appeared on “Today’s Issues” with Tim Wildmon and Tony Perkins to discuss Joyner v. Forsythe County, North Carolina. | MP3 audio 18:45 mins

The Christian Institute: Primary schools in England are being penalised for resisting pressure to teach sex education to young children, a new report warns.

Telegraph: Germany and America were on a collision course on Tuesday night over the handling of Europe’s debt crisis after Berlin savaged plans to boost the EU rescue fund as a “stupid idea” and told the White House to sort out its own mess before giving gratuitous advice to others.

NYTimes.com: — Abu Elias sat beneath the towering stairs leading from the Convent of Our Lady of Saydnaya, a church high up in the mountains outside Damascus, where Christians have worshiped for 1,400 years. “We are all scared of what will come next,” he said turning to a man seated beside him, Robert, an Iraqi refugee who escaped the sectarian strife in his homeland.

Freedom From Religion Foundation: The Freedom from Religion Foundation, a national state/church watchdog, is sounding the alarm on unlawful, exploitative activities in public schools by The Gideons International. “It takes constant vigilance to keep the Gideons out of public schools,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

Houston Chronicle: The Ohio Senate has approved a bill that contains new requirements before a minor can be allowed to have an abortion without her parents agreeing to it.

KOAT Albuquerque: Bernalillo County commissioners will decide whether or not to ban public ceremonies that are held in places of worship at a meeting on Tuesday.

LifeNews.com: Two leading Democrats in Congress are objecting to an investigation a Republican committee chairman has started into the Planned Parenthood abortion business admit allegations concerning financial improprieties and criminal actions.

Telegraph: Australian women will be able to serve in any front line combat role within five years after a historic change in policy by the Government in Canberra on Tuesday.

Human Events: A new Zogby poll puts Herman Cain at the top of the Republican field, as the top choice of 28% of poll respondents. (IBOPE Zogby International says the polling sample consists of “all likely voters and of likely Republican primary voters.”)

Christian Newswire: Many professional voices proclaim that it is impossible to change homosexual orientation, and that the attempt to change is commonly and inherently harmful. Psychologists Stanton L. Jones (Wheaton College, IL) and Mark A. Yarhouse (Regent University) have just published in the respected, peer-reviewed Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy the final results of their longitudinal study of individuals seeking sexual orientation change through involvement in a variety of Christian ministries affiliated with Exodus International. The results show change to be possible for some, and the attempt not harmful on average.

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears at the TellADF Blog: It’s almost as if officials at the University of Montana think religious faith is toxic … a kind of spiritual or philosophical asbestos that pollutes whoever breathes the air around it.

Stephen Green at Telegraph: The advertising industry has got to realise that what is broadcast affects the cultural environment of us all. No man is an island and no-one knows the unintended consequences of a torrent of sexualised imagery and brutalised language.

Gary Fields and John R. Emshwiller at WSJ.com: This legal protection is now being eroded as the U.S. federal criminal code dramatically swells. In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them.

CNN.com: Today, it’s not unusual to meet a Christian who is single at 30 – or 40 or 50, for that matter. So what do you tell them? Keep waiting?

Baptist Press: Apple, Google and other Internet giants are participating in religious discrimination and restricting free speech, according to a new report by the National Religious Broadcasters.

BBC: She highlighted that 80 countries still criminalised gay relationships, including seven countries that apply the death penalty.

Fox Nation (includes video): For the only Detroit automaker that “didn’t take the money” of the federal auto bailouts, Ford Motor Co. keeps paying a price for its comparative success and self-reliant turnaround…

WNEM TV 5: According to the Saginaw News, township officials voted Monday night in favor of expanding the number of spots available for these types of commercial businesses.

Fox Nation: A father’s complaint that his daughter’s homework promotes the Muslim faith could lead to a lesson change in Cobb County.

AFP: A Pakistani school expelled a 13-year-old Christian girl for alleged blasphemy and her mother was transferred from her job as a nurse near the town where Osama bin Laden was killed, officials said Monday.

LifeNews.com: A Congressional committee has taken the first steps in investigating the Planned Parenthood abortion business over abuses ranging from financial disparities to its compliance with federal regulations on taxpayer funding to concerns that it is covering up cases of sex trafficking.

Robert Barnes at The Washington Post:
Gay rights groups “have gained more political ground in less time than just about any other interest group in American political history,” a document states.

The Washington Post: Just days after Iran released two Americans accused of spying, an Iranian court has upheld the apostasy conviction and execution sentence of Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani.

WorldNetDaily: The dispute over Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president erupted during the 2008 election campaign and featured among others a lawsuit filed on behalf of Ambassador Alan Keyes against California election officials who did not check whether Obama was eligibile. Now the 2012 campaign is charging ahead at full throttle, and the issue is still alive.

Washington Times: The head of the Family Research Council said Tuesday that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would struggle to win the support of values voters should he chose to run for president.

News from The Associated Press: The Census Bureau reports there are 131,729 same-sex couples in the U.S. who say they’re married – the first-ever government count of this kind.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday on behalf of Bronx Household of Faith in an equal access lawsuit against the New York City Department of Education.

Metro Weekly: Gautam Raghavan, currently the deputy White House liaison at the Department of Defense, will be taking over as the full-time LGBT liaison in the White House Office of Public Engagement (OPE) . . .

HIVPlusMag.com: A new bill was introduced to Congress Thursday that would end extensive punishment for people who transmit HIV to others. Rep. Barbara Lee’s Repeal HIV Discrimination Act . . .

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys announced that they are ready to defend, free of charge, students who are prevented or discouraged by public school officials from participating in Wednesday’s 2011 “See You at the Pole” event.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Lawyers for an elderly man who has been ordered to stand trial for raping his then-wife almost 50 years ago have argued in the High Court that he cannot be tried for something that was not illegal then.

A group of House Democrats behind an effort to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act on Monday took a swing at the lawyer hired to defend the act in court.

KMBC Kansas City: Conservative Republican legislators are critical of an audit of Kansas benefit programs looking for potential disincentives that might keep people from getting married.

Rebecca Burgoyne at California Family Council: Parents currently have final authority to determine which vaccines their child receives, but it is getting more difficult. California law

WSJ Law Blog: “Our educational establishment these days, while so tolerant of and even insistent upon diversity in all other aspects of life seems bent on eliminating diversity of moral judgment — particularly moral judgment based on religious views,” he said, citing the suit against Catholic’s same-sex dorm policy.

NYTimes.com: The cost of health insurance for many Americans this year climbed more sharply than in previous years, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and adding more uncertainty about the pace of rising medical costs. A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation . . .

The Tennessean: While hundreds of students across Sumner County will gather at their school’s flagpole for prayer Wednesday morning for See You At The Pole Day, school officials have taken extra measures to ensure teachers, administrators and coaches do not publicly endorse religion.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: A clash is reigniting over a pair of measures regarding the state’s abortion clinics, with anti-abortion lawmakers pushing for stronger rules that opponents say will make the procedure less accessible.

National Organization for Marriage: The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) announced today that John Eastman, a distinguished Constitutional law scholar, is taking on the role of Chairman of the Board for NOM.

Catholic News Agency (CNA): Legalizing “gay marriage” is having major repercussions for religious freedom, according to observers of the latest developments.

WSBT-TV: This is the second time suits have been filed on behalf of same-sex couples. The first involves a Wanatah woman who died in the stage collapse.

The Christian Institute: Most people in Britain oppose same-sex marriage, a new Government report has revealed.

Liberty Counsel: Today Liberty Counsel filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Victory Through Jesus Ministry Foundation (“Victory”) in its lawsuit against Lee’s Summit School District. Victory offers Victory Soccer Camp (VSC), a Christian summer sports camp program, throughout the Midwest. The district refused to include the soccer camp’s flyers along with the other information given to students about secular community activities for youth.

LifeSiteNews.com: Babies born from in-vitro fertilization (IVF) are up to 10 times more likely to suffer from rare genetic disorders, according to a pro-IVF geneticist. In an address to the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society, University of Toronto geneticist Dr. Rosanna Weksberg called for more study of a link between fertility treatment and certain rare genetic disorders.

LifeSiteNews.com: The organization “Mississippians for Healthy Families” is simply a front organization for Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, who are attempting to prevent a pro-life amendment from being added to the state constitution, according to a state pro-life organization.

LifeNews.com: Indiana officials filed a legal brief on Monday with a federal appeals court asking that it reverse a judge’s decision this summer overturning its new comprehensive pro-life law that limits abortions and de-funds Planned Parenthood.

LifeNews.com: The story is about the rising number of what are euphemistically called “twin reductions”: Women who are carrying twins decide to kill one of their unborn children while allowing its sibling to live. This demonic procedure was the unintended but not unforeseeable consequence of reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization.

The Blog of Legal Times: Senate leaders have come to an agreement to consider 10 judicial nominees during the next several weeks, stepping up the rate that senators have been considering judges in recent months.

In this column, I argue that this litigation actually presents a relatively unimportant constitutional question. The real significance of the case lies, instead, in the realms of politics and policy.

Keith Cassidy at University Faculty for Life: Now two new cases, one from British Columbia and another from Quebec, are working their way through the court system and are expected to reach the Supreme Court next year. In each case a person with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has requested the right to an assisted death.

Religion Clause: The ACLU of Virginia announced yesterday that it had filed a federal court lawsuit against the Pittsylvania (VA) County Board of Supervisors over the opening of county board meetings with Christian prayer. (links to complaint and other docs)

The Australian (carrying a story from The Times) today reports that Britain is experiencing an unexpected rise in polygamy among young Muslims. Even though polygamy is illegal in Britain, it is permitted under Shariah law and accepted in many Muslim communities.

Report: Consumers spent less, earned less in 2010 – Yahoo! Finance:

ADF Attorney Matt Bowman appeared on the Mike Siegel Show to discuss this. | MP3 audio 38:03 mins

Christian Post: Seeking to give Americans a way of petitioning President Barack Obama on certain issues, the White House has launched the “We the People” website in an effort to facilitate such discourse. Among the many petitions on the week-old website are two seeking to have God “dropped” from the Pledge of Allegiance and from U.S. currency.

News: Special Interests Sue to Remove Arizona Children with Special Needs From Private Schools: The Arizona Education Association (AEA) and the Arizona School Boards Association (ASBA) today filed yet another lawsuit to remove children with special needs from the private schools of their parents’ choice.

Houston Chronicle: Kansas has asked a federal judge to reject a request to block enforcement of a new law restricting insurance coverage for abortions.

The Republic: Bay Minette has decided to delay a new program that is supposed to give first-time, nonviolent offenders the choice of jail time or going to church each week for a year.

KTBS Shreveport: County commissioners have enlisted the aid of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative group that gets involved in church-state issues.

God Discussion (includes ADF video): The Alliance Defense Fund is sponsoring its annual “See You at the Pole” September 28th. It is being touted as a student organized, student led event which entails meeting on public school grounds around the country and praying round the flag pole.

Bloomberg: The Obama administration set the stage for possible U.S. Supreme Court consideration of its landmark health-care law, saying it will forgo further review before a federal appeals court that declared part of the law invalid.

FT.com: Coca-Cola now sees the US becoming a less friendly business environment than China, its chief executive has revealed, citing political gridlock and an antiquated tax structure as reasons its home market has become less competitive.

BBC : A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a woman to 10 lashes for breaking the country’s ban on female drivers.

Police in Lancashire have told the owner of a Christian café to stop displaying Bible texts on a video screen, because it breaches public order laws.