Daily Archives: October 10, 2011

The ADF Alliance Alert is on a reduced publication schedule today and the Alert will not be published tomorrow. Normal publication will resume Wednesday.

Stanford School of Medicine: U.S. policy prohibiting federally funded agencies abroad from providing abortions has had an unintended effect: It actually contributed to a substantial increase in the number of abortions among women in sub-Saharan Africa. . . . The study (.pdf) was published online in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

KansasCity.com: The document filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Kansas makes a one-sentence addition to their complaint stating ACLU’s members include women who will seek to buy insurance policies on state-level exchanges established under the federal health care overhaul.

Catholic Culture: Religious fundamentalists raised a Hindu flag over the site where a ruined Catholic church is being rebuilt in the troubled Kandhamal district of India’s eastern Orissa state.

LifeSiteNews.com: A pro-life monument to honor victims of abortion erected on private property in southern Ontario has been targeted by township officials who say it violates zoning and signage regulations. The group behind the pro-life initiative has until October 10th to remove the monument or face legal action.

LifeSiteNews.com: The Reform CCHD Now Coalition released a report Monday outlining allegations that 54 groups that were funded in 2010-2011 by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) were involved in work contrary to Catholic moral teaching, up from 51 in 2009-2010.

LifeSiteNews.com: There is no such thing as a “right” to abortion, Lord Nicholas Windsor has said in this weekend’s Daily Telegraph. Lord Windsor, the youngest son of the Duke of Kent and the first cousin once removed to Queen Elizabeth II, is becoming noted not only as among the rare members of Britain’s Royal Family to convert to Catholicism, but more recently for his outspoken opposition to legalized abortion, which he compares with eugenics.

Telegraph Blogs: The UN plumps for the rights of women over the rights of the unborn.

Anglican Mainstream: Tax breaks for marriage are backed overwhelmingly by the British public, according to a new opinion poll commissioned by an influential independent think-tank.

The Irish Times: The Government has rejected recommendations from six European countries that it should legislate for abortion, but pledged to act on a wide range of suggestions from UN states to improve human rights in other areas.

The Volokh Conspiracy : UCLA Law School’s Sanela Daniela Jenkins Human Rights Project has a special joint online forum with the International Criminal Court office of the prosecutor, which is currently running commentary on the question of prevention, and how the ICC can maximize its crime prevention impact.

The Christian Institute: Every Roman Catholic in Scotland has been urged by the Church to resist the controversial proposals to redefine marriage. Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti, has written to every RC parish in the country saying the Scottish Government does not have a mandate to “reconstruct society on ideological grounds”.

Today you have judges who are dictatorial and arrogant, who pretend that they are the dominant branch and who issue orders that clearly are against the Constitution,” he told CBS’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday.

LifeNews.com: California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill in the Golden State that prohibits minor from using tanning beds — in a state that has rejected three times efforts to allow parents to be notified when a minor girl is considering an abortion.

Reuters: Police in Tunis used teargas on Sunday to disperse hundreds of Islamists attacking them with stones, knives and batons, the biggest clashes over religion in the Tunisian capital for several years.

OneNewsNow.com: The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the San Leandro-based International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and stepped aside to allow the church to sue the city for preventing it from moving to a larger building that was purchased when the congregation outgrew its previous location in 2006.

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E Sears at Townhall: That citizen must know where his country has been in order to understand where it is, and likewise must understand where it is in order to ascertain where it’s going. Thus, history is a crucial component to understanding. So crucial, in fact, that those who write and teach history should be considered navigators, for they show us the way by showing us where we’ve been.
Our problem is that we are surrounded by faulty navigators: by historians whose writings are warped by a sexual or political agenda, or by a bald unfamiliarity with the very topic on which they write.

Oregon Faith Report: Georgene Rice interviews Nate Kellum with the Alliance Defense Fund to discuss a Federal lawsuit they have filed regarding a free speech zone in Issaquah, Washington. A city ordinance, if left to stand, could have implications on the free exercise of religion in that community and other places as well.

Oregon Faith Report: Georgene Rice interviews Nate Kellum with the Alliance Defense Fund to discuss a Federal lawsuit they have filed regarding a free speech zone in Issaquah, Washington. A city ordinance, if left to stand, could have implications on the free exercise of religion in that community and other places as well.

Ypsilanti Courier – Heritage Newspapers: Jeremy Tedesco represents Ward on behalf of the Alliance Defense Fund, a national legal organization founded to “defend our First Liberty — religious freedom.” . . . They argue that in denying Ward the ability to refer a client, she was being singled out and that in subsequent interactions with the school Ward’s religious views were “attacked and denigrated.” “(Ward) didn’t ask for anything that anyone else hadn’t asked for,” Tedesco said

The Hill: But conservatives have a different concern – that Cain’s plan to install a 9 percent national sales tax, paired with income and corporate taxes at that same rate, would give Democrats a brand new tax stream to try to squeeze out more revenue.

Beliefnet News: The town council has voted to consult with the Alliance Defense Fund about their legal options, “This is their cause in life – to ride up and down the highway and find small towns that maybe have a religious symbol somewhere on public property,” he said.

Jerry Newcombe at Crosswalk: A tape of his sermon was sent to the police, who then listened to it and determined that he had indeed committed a hate crime for saying homosexual conduct is sin. He was actually sentenced to jail, but spared from prison only when attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund, an American religious liberties legal group, went over to Sweden and successfully defended his case.

WorldNetDaily: That word has come from officials with the Home School Legal Defense Association, which along with the Alliance Defense Fund already has elevated the dispute involving Christer and Annie Johannson and their son, Domenic, of Sweden to the Europe Court of Human rights.

NCRegister.com: But Alliance Defense Fund senior counsel Piero Tozzi, who is also a senior fellow with the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), cautions that international human-rights decisions have been cited as precedents by U.S. courts. A notable example was the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling striking down Texas’s anti-sodomy law. Noted Tozzi, “What happens abroad impacts the U.S.”

Fox News NY: “Religious groups and their worship services should not be discriminated against simply because they’re religious,” said Jordan L[a]rence, an attorney for Alliance Defense Fund. “They should be allowed to meet under the terms and conditions as everybody else.”

The Daily Times | delmarvanow.com: The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group of Christian attorneys, filed a certiorari petition with the U.S. Supreme Court in May on behalf of Rock for Life-UMBC, asking the court to determine whether the students had legal standing to challenge “speech codes” governing their behavior. “We were hoping that the Supreme Court would intervene and uphold the First Amendment freedoms and allow the students to challenge the speech codes,” said Travis Barham, Alliance Defense Fund litigation counsel.

News from The Associated Press: Authorities in Brazil say nearly 700,000 people have celebrated in a gay pride parade at Copacabana beach

News from The Associated Press: Online calls by activists to visit a blind lawyer being held under house arrest in China have drawn unusually large support, with some traipsing to his village and being detained, questioned and even beaten.

News from The Associated Press: Islamic authorities will provide counseling to a dozen Malaysian Muslims to “restore their belief and faith” after they attended a community dinner at a church hall . . .

Nancy Valko at Mercatornet.com: Linking the “right to die” with organ donation has opened a terrible Pandora’s Box.

News from The Associated Press: Britain says it is considering criminalizing the act of forcing someone into a marriage under moves to tighten immigration policy.

Catholic Culture: In argument before the Supreme Court on an anti-discrimination case, the solicitor general—representing the Obama administration—said that the government would uphold the right of the Catholic Church to preserve an all-male priesthood, but only “because the balance of relative public and private interests is different in each case.”

Justin Deyer at Public Discourse: An upcoming Supreme Court decision might give government, rather than religious organizations, the final say on who counts as a religious minister.

News from The Associated Press: Egypt’s Coptic church blasted authorities Monday for allowing repeated attacks on Christians with impunity as the death toll from a night of rioting rose to 26, most of them Christians who were trying to stage a peaceful protest in Cairo over an attack on a church.

Liberty Counsel: It is almost certain that the High Court will accept one or more cases involving ObamaCare. It is likely the Court will accept the Florida case that has 26 states, because there the individual mandate was struck down. It is also likely the Court will accept the Liberty University case, because the issue of the AIA must be decided before the Court reaches the merits and it has the only challenge to the employer mandate. Either way, a ruling is expected before the end of June 2012.

The current SCOTUSblog list is here. It includes two key Establishment cases: Davenport v. American Atheists and Utah Highway patrol Association v. American Atheists

Fox News: GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has won the 2011 Values Voter Summit Presidential Straw Poll. The Texas congressman and straw poll darling pulled in 37 percent of the vote.

LaTimes.com: Republican presidential contender Herman Cain amplified his criticism Sunday of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, calling the protesters “jealous’ Americans who “play the victim card” and want to “take somebody else’s” Cadillac.

WSJ: GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney sidestepped a brewing controversy over his Mormon faith on Saturday by ignoring the remarks of a pastor who a day earlier called his religion “a cult.”

Fox News (includes video): Someone’s race is not a factor in his ability to serve in the military because it’s a passive trait, but homosexuality requires active behavior and that makes it a potential barrier to unit cohesion in the military, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said Sunday, distinguishing between an earlier argument against integration in the Armed Forces.

Breitbart: Actress Marzieh Vafamehr has been sentenced to a year in jail and 90 lashes for her role in a film about the limits imposed on artists in the Islamic republic, an Iranian opposition website reported Sunday.

Reuters: Egyptian Christians turned their fury against the army on Monday after at least 25 people were killed when troops crushed a protest using tactics that deepened public doubts about the military’s ability to steer Egypt peacefully toward democracy.