Category Archives: Featured

LifeNews: Casey Mattox, an attorney with the pro-life legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, also noticed the empty benches and responded. “Like many, I’m both not surprised and disgusted by the fact that the bulk of the media continues to ignore the multiple murder trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist accused of killing a Nepalese immigrant and at least seven infants, born alive and grotesquely murdered with scissors,” he said. “Gosnell’s employees have testified that the babies screamed and flinched when Gosnell and his team snipped their spines to brutally and painfully end their minutes-old lives. Yet, the media deems this not newsworthy. While the first, and perhaps more likely rationale, is that this is exhibit 108 in the ongoing public trial of the media’s integrity on the abortion issue, perhaps there’s another answer. Dog bites man.”

Washington Post: The Republican National Committee passed resolutions Friday reaffirming its commitment to defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and calling on the Supreme Court to “uphold the sanctity of marriage” as it weighs rulings on two landmark cases involving gay marriage.

AP: The French Senate voted Friday to legalize same-sex marriage in France, putting a landmark bill on track to become law by summer.

Peter J. Reilly at Forbes: The church was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom. Erik Stanley of ADF had commented earlier in the litigation: “Tax exemptions for churches are vitally important because it doesn’t make sense to penalize organizations that help serve the community and don’t exist for profit–and that’s certainly true with this church,” Stanley explained. “The taxing authorities in this case determined that the facilities were not integral to a religious purpose of the church, but the government is ill-equipped to determine what is and what isn’t a legitimate religious use. That’s why it shouldn’t be delving into church affairs. Doing so violates the constitutionally protected rights of the church.”

KOLOTV.com: SJR13 was approved Thursday on a 3-2 party line vote by the Senate Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections. It now goes to the Senate floor.

Wall Street Journal: Uruguayan lawmakers voted to legalize gay marriage, making the South American country the third in the Americas to do so after Canada and Argentina.

Delaware Online: Democratic lawmakers will introduce legislation today to legalize same-sex marriage in Delaware, a measure proponents have aggressively sought in recent months and are determined to make law before the close of this year’s General Assembly session.

Bradley Abramson at Townhall: In the American Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers proclaimed that we are endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, we have long forgotten what our Founders meant by that now iconic phrase—“the pursuit of happiness”—and, as a consequence, we are now in jeopardy of losing the very liberty our Founders purchased for us at the risk of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Daniel Kuebler at Public Discourse: There are two problems with this type of reasoning. First, it’s questionable whether sexual orientation is biologically determined. Second, even if genetic and developmental factors cause one to have same-sex attractions, it does not follow that one’s biology should determine one’s behavior, much less dictate one’s morality.

Tufts Daily: Tufts Democrats and Tufts Republicans last Thursday joined the leaders of 49 other collegiate Democrat and Republican organizations in a statement supporting marriage equality for LGBTQ couples.

Alliance Defending Freedom made public its latest report to Congress Wednesday identifying waste, abuse, and potential fraud by Planned Parenthood, state family planning programs, and other organizations.

Washington AG: Attorney General Bob Ferguson today announced his office has filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts in Richland, Wash. On March 1, 2013, Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers, refused to provide wedding flowers to long-time customer, Robert Ingersoll, based on her opposition to same-sex marriage.

Newson6.com: The House approved the resolution Monday on an 84-0 vote. House Democratic Leader Scott Inman and openly gay Rep. Kay Floyd of Oklahoma City were among more than half of the chamber’s 29 Democrats who walked out of the chamber instead of voting.

Washington Times: “As of Aug. 1, 2013, every employee who doesn’t work directly for a church or a diocese will be included in the benefit package,” Mrs. Sebelius said at a forum moderated by Reuters that was held at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Washington Blade (“the newspaper of record for the LGBT community.”): USAID will work with the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency, the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute, the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law and Olivia Companies on the LGBT Global Development Partnership that will contribute $11 million over the next four years to advocacy groups in Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala and other developing countries

Religion Clause Blog: In Taylor v. Roswell Independent School District, (10th Cir., April 8, 2013), the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected 1st and 14th Amendment challenges by student members of a religious group, Relentless, to decisions by Roswell, New Mexico school officials that prevented them from distributing 2500 rubber fetus dolls to other high school students. The schools took the action after disruptions, described by the court . . .

Robert Knight at Townhall: A courageous German Christian couple refused to hand over their children to the government schools and fled to America three years ago. Now, the Obama Administration is trying to send them back. A likely outcome would be the state seizing the children and imprisoning the parents.

George F. Will at Washington Post: Hopkins’s institutional intolerance would be boring were it simply redundant evidence of academia’s commitment to diversity in everything but thought. It is, however, indicative of the increasingly extreme ambitions and tactics of those operating under the anodyne rubric of “choice.” . . . Planned Parenthood, which receives more than $500 million in government subsidies, is branching out, expanding its mission beyond the provision of abortions to the defense of consumers’ rights: If you pay for an abortion, you are owed a dead baby.

lliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to members of the California Legislature Friday to explain the significant legal and policy problems of a proposed bill designed to punish non-profit youth organizations like the Boy Scouts of America

NECN: New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez is drawing criticism from a liberal advocacy group for vetoing legislation that would have required the state to expedite the occupational and professional licenses of domestic partners of gay military members.

Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court Monday in support of an Oklahoma law that requires doctors prescribing the abortion drug RU-486 to use only the FDA required protocol for the drug. T

MSNBC: Ella explains who a person can and can’t marry and how in New York a person can marry anyone they love. “Girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys in New York and a girl can marry a boy in New York too,” Ella told Krystal.

“Parents and trained physicians are the ones responsible for the care of underage patients. The court’s decision wrongly allows pharmacies to distribute a life-ending drug over the counter to young girls without their parents’ or doctor’s knowledge or consent.

CNSNews: In a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration, a federal judge ruled Friday that age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill are “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable” and must end within 30 days.

SC Times: The Catholic deacon who owns American Manufacturing Company in St. Joseph has received a preliminary injunction protecting him from provisions in the Affordable Care Act. The injunction was issued Tuesday in the 8th Circuit of the federal district courts by U.S. District Court Judge John R. Tunheim. | Hall v. Sebelius, Preliminary Injunction

Indian Congressman Marlin Stutzman has issued this press release that includes this: “Regardless of any ruling, referendum, or law, marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” said Stutzman. “Washington cannot redefine marriage any more than it can govern gravity. As the cornerstone of society throughout history, marriage is a unique institution and the safest environment for raising children. My commitment to marriage is matched by my abiding commitment to the civil rights of all individuals—every American must be treated with dignity and respect. However, marriage is neither a civil right nor a political platform . . . ”

Washington Times: The Federal Communications Commission is mulling a change to a policy that, in effect, would open the doors to more obscenity on television and radio.

Ross Douthat at NY Times: The notion that nobody would have entertained what Drum later calls the “esoteric” idea that marriage has an essential link to the way that human beings procreate if desperate social conservatives hadn’t grasped at it is apparently quite a popular view, judging by the fact that other writers raised it on Twitter over the weekend, and its popularity testifies to the way that the gay marriage debate has encouraged a strange historical amnesia about the origins of marriage law.

ChrisAdamo.com: So perhaps the Supreme Court in its arrogance believes it can forcibly impose a redefinition of marriage on America. Let it next endeavor to strike down the law of gravity as “unconstitutional” on the basis that it clearly affects citizens in a decidedly disproportionate manner and thus is a primary source of “inequality” among the people. Then every concurring jurist, bureaucrat, and countercultural activist who regards the court’s decision as credible will be free to find a high precipice from which to test its merits. We will then see benefit that can actually be reaped from blind faith in liberal arrogance.

BuzzFeed: Although most people think sodomy laws have been unconstitutional since the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli would like to explain why — in his view — that’s not so.

Susan L. Brown at LA Times: The Beatles sang ‘Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?’ When it comes to marriage, many baby boomers are saying ‘no.’ . . . Until recently, it would have been fair to say that older people simply did not get divorced. Fewer than 10% of those who got divorced in 1990 were ages 50 or older. Today, 1 in 4 people getting divorced is in this age group.

Findlaw: The appellate court, however, agreed with the First and Tenth Circuits that downloading images and videos containing child pornography from a peer-to-peer computer network and storing them in a shared folder accessible to other users on the network amounts to distribution under federal law. | U.S. v. Richardson IV

Jill Staneck at Life News: This baby was still connected to his or her mother by the umbilical cord to the placenta. The baby had not drawn a breath.

Washington Post: The effort reflects a new White House effort to tilt in its favor the conservative-dominated U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is one notch below the Supreme Court and considers many challenges to executive actions.

U.S. v. Benoit, No. 12-5013 (10th Cir. April 2, 2013)

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court last week on behalf of Americans for Tax Reform and the Susan B. Anthony List in defense of Indiana’s freedom to exclude abortionists from state funding through its Medicaid plan.

Albert Mohler at LifeSiteNews: The Court’s oral arguments on the DOMA case made the risks of moral argument clear. Justice Elena Kagan, pressing Attorney Paul Clement, the lawyer defending DOMA, asked him if Congress had made a moral judgment in adopting the Defense of Marriage Act. She then read from a House of Representatives report, issued in advance of the vote on DOMA, in which a clear moral argument was made. That report included these sentences: “Civil laws that permit only heterosexual marriage reflect and honor a collective moral judgment about human sexuality. This judgment entails both moral disapproval of homosexuality, [and] moral conviction that heterosexuality better comports with traditional (especially Judeo-Christian) morality.”

LifeNews: A Washington Republican state lawmaker is standing tall and single-handedly thwarting a bill in the state legislature that would force insurance companies to pay for abortions.

Kansas City Star: A bill defining human life as beginning at fertilization and outlawing any direct or indirect state support for abortions cruised to Senate approval Monday.

Patrick J. Buchanan at Human Events: A common faith and moral code once held this country together. But if we no longer stand on the same moral ground, after we have made a conscious decision to become the most racially, ethnically, culturally diverse people on earth, what in the world holds us together?

Dallas Morning News (ruling is embedded): For six years the city of Dallas and two ministries have been locked in a legal battle over their right to feed the homeless and hungry wherever and whenever they find them. But at long last, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis ended that tussle today — for now, at least — by siding with Rip Parker Memorial Homeless Ministry and Big Heart Ministries.

Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter Thursday to the Virginia Board of Health urging it to formally adopt proposed abortion facility regulations that will protect the health and safety of women in Virginia.

Weekly Standard (includes video): Florida legislators considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion were shocked during a committee hearing this week when a Planned Parenthood official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion.

Columbian.com: Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing, but Washington’s hospitals are becoming places of conflict between religion and government over health care services.

Christian News: The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals announced on Friday that Hobby Lobby’s appeal will go before the entire court as per the company’s request. Cases are customarily held before a panel of three judges, except in what are called en banc hearings.

The Hill (includes video): Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) said Sunday it was “inevitable” a GOP presidential candidate will one day support same-sex marriage, and that he would have no problem backing that candidate.

Matthew J. Franck at NRO: Of course, there are no good arguments for striking down section 3 of DOMA, either on equality or federalism grounds, and any ruling against it will produce needless mischief that the Act is designed, quite constitutionally, to prevent. But the Obama administration appears to want a particular kind of mischief, and so prefers the equality argument. Unlike Ms. Windsor’s counsel, it has no client in the case. It has only an ideological project of foisting same-sex marriage on the whole country, by hook or by crook.

Ed Whelan at NRO: So at least one of the six signatories to the amicus brief arguing that DOMA violates principles of federalism believes that if DOMA is invalidated on federalism grounds, the federal government (absent additional legislation) wouldn’t be deferring to the definition of marriage of the state in which a couple resides. Rather, under Somin’s view, if a same-sex couple lawfully marries in one state (whether or not it’s their state of residence) and lives or moves to a state that doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, the federal government would provide federal marriage benefits to the same-sex couple in that state.

Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to an Alabama school district Wednesday after it banned the word “Easter” at one of its elementary schools in the “interests of religious diversity.”

Mary K. Reinhart at AZ Republic: The Center for Arizona Policy is using an opinion from the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal-defense organization, to argue that the draft Medicaid legislation should be amended to disqualify the non-profit women’s health provider Planned Parenthood from receiving public money. (excerpt also posted on CNN and Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report)

Business Week: Haslam, 55, a Republican, told lawmakers yesterday that Obama’s health-care overhaul might force hospitals to close as they lose money now channeled to caring for the poor.

John Eastman at Christian Post: The arguments reflect a serious misunderstanding of federalism, as a simple analogy will demonstrate. Property law, too, is a core function of state governments. But every year, millions of Americans deduct from their income taxes mortgage interest paid on their primary residence. Suppose Massachusetts were to redefine “residence” to include “automobile.” Under the faux federalism argument being urged to the Court, any Massachusetts citizen would thereby be able to deduct from their federal income taxes the interest on their automobile loan, and the federal government would have no power to define “residence” for federal purposes as it had always been understood, lest it intrude on that core state power. Such a conclusion is absurd.
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-faux-federalism-argument-against-doma-92852/#1mgMGp1X6VD7LyKp.99

Noah Feldman at Bloomberg: To understand the mess that would result if the court struck down DOMA without finding a general right to same-sex marriage, consider what would happen if the federal government recognized marriages performed in states that allow gay couples to marry while continuing to deny marital status to couples in other states.

Gerard Bradley at SCOTUS Blog: The Justices should be wary of the “science” route. Consider just the leading decisions mentioned during the arguments as instructive parallels to the instant cases. Consider, for example, Plessy v. Ferguson. Justice Sotomayor said that the Court let segregation “perk” for fifty years, until the Justices finally pulled the plug in 1954. But the Plessy Court did not wait upon social scientific evidence of the negative effects of segregation, as Sotomayor implied that it did. That Court was instead party to – at best – a sordid compromise with entrenched racist elements in American society.

Advocates of same-sex marriages can’t back up claims about positive long-term effects.

Anthony Esolen at Public Discourse: Lust perverts language itself, calling sex “safe” or “protected,” and cohabitation “honest,” and relationships “mutual,” which are nothing but forays into a jungle, where the strongest and most cunning survive.

Business Insider: The legislation protects “sincerely held religious beliefs” from infringement unless there is “a compelling governmental interest.” The courts will still consider and rule on each matter.

On the eve of a historic debate in the U.S. Supreme Court over gay marriage, three couples in Utah filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to declare unconstitutional any law in the predominately Mormon state barring same-sex marriage. The complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court for Utah . . .

Available here.

Ed Whelan at NRO: Justice Kennedy’s questions and comments are not encouraging, as they reflect a fundamental confusion that DOMA involves the exercise of an authority to regulate marriage. See, e.g., p. 76: “The question is whether or not the Federal government, under our federalism scheme, has the authority to regulate marriage.” 2. Some excellent questioning by the Chief Justice ought to dispel Kennedy’s confusion. . . .

Ed Whelan at NRO offers this description of today’s arguments and what to watch for.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS Blog: If the Supreme Court can find its way through a dense procedural thicket, and confront the constitutionality of the federal law that defined marriage as limited to a man and a woman, that law may be gone, after a seventeen-year existence. That was the overriding impression after just under two hours of argument Wednesday on the fate of the Defense of Marriage Act.

The How Appealing Blog links to numerous reports on today’s arguments in Windsor v. United States.

Steven Smith at Public Discourse: Debates about marriage will only be cluttered up, and decisions confounded, if the issue is framed in the question-begging terms of “marriage equality.”

Sacramento Bee: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled on Tuesday that the Lancaster City Council’s invocation policy is constitutional because it allows for the opening prayer to be said by any faith or religion. | Rubin v. City of Lancaster

AP: The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the law creating the nation’s broadest school voucher program, clearing the way for a possible expansion.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a federal lawsuit late last week against the Montana Office of Public Instruction and Columbus Public Schools on behalf of a hearing-impaired preschooler. State and school district officials denied the young girl disability benefits for tuition payments because her parents enrolled her in a Columbus faith-based preschool.

LifeNews: North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed three pro-life bills this morning, including one that would ban most abortions in the state. Dalrymple acknowledged a court battle is expected and asked state legislators to set aside funds to pay for the expenses.
The governor’s office released the following statement on the bills he signed . . .

Audio here. Transcript here.

Austin R. Nimocks at Wall Street Journal (via Google): The Supreme Court is not the place to settle the country’s public-policy disputes. The court is not equipped to distill all of the competing concerns and interests over marriage into a comprehensive, nationwide policy.

SCOTUS Blog: Below are answers to questions about how the cases will unfold over the next three months . . . As with health care last year, the ruling almost certainly will come at the end of the court’s term. The last week of June looks to be historic one way or another.

Politico: Republican fundraisers say the changing views of gay marriage in their party could unlock big money from GOP donors in places like New York, California and Florida — where some Republicans have kept their checkbooks closed over what they saw as misplaced priorities, at best, or intolerance, at worst, at the highest ranks of the party.

Matthew J. Frank at NRO: So the official position of the United States, in the Supreme Court anyway–notwithstanding the blandishments of the president of the United States–is that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right in those states that have civil unions, but that it is an “open question” whether this is so anywhere else. It might or might not be a constitutional right in, say, Mississippi, but it certainly is one in California!

CNSNews: “Well, you’ve said — you’ve said in the cases decided by this court that the polygamy issue, multiple marriages raises questions about exploitation, abuse, patriarchy, issues with respect to taxes, inheritance, child custody, it is an entirely different thing,” Olson said. “And if you — if a state prohibits polygamy, it’s prohibiting conduct.

Ed Whelan at NRO: Some noteworthy question/comments by Justice Kennedy in the oral argument today: