Tag Archives: Category: Religious Freedom

Jordan Lorence at the NYC info: Religious liberty will likely take a step forward May 22, when the New York City Council votes on a resolution asking the New York Legislature to overturn a state law that permits the New York City public school policy that bans private worship services in the vacant buildings when school is not in session. | originally posted at Speak Up Movement.

AL.com: A national observance of the National Day of Prayer will be streamed live Thursday from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. CST from the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Jon Scruggs at Speak Up Movement: In this respect, our proposed “worship paradigm” highlights the importance of the Bronx case and reveals conceptual flaws underlying the effort to exclude New York City churches from school buildings after hours. With the Bronx decision liable to come any day now, it will be interesting to see whether the Second Circuit continues to perpetuate the worship service/discussion distinction. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear (i.e. those who adopt our proposed worship paradigm), the continued perpetuation of this false distinction strikes right at the heart of our religious freedoms.

Doug Napier on Engaging the Issues with Jeremy Dys. | MP3 audio 14:51 mins

David Hacker at the Speak Up Movement Blog: We have a lot to be thankful for this year at Alliance Defending Freedom as our clients prevailed time and again in cases across the country. Here’s a recap of the top university victories in 2012 . . .

Jordan Lorence appeared on the World and Everything In It with Mary Reichard to discuss the Bronx Household of Faith case. | MP3 audio 5:43 mins

Reuters: They’re focusing on a type of worship that is Judeo-Christian, and that is the type of religion being excluded,” Jordan Lorence, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, the Christian nonprofit representing the Bronx church, told a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

One News Now: “Well, we are facing the reality that we are before … the same three judges who ruled against us 2-1 in June of 2011,” he tells OneNewsNow. “But we [now] have some different arguments and new evidence, and we are hopeful that they will take a fresh look at this and vote in favor of religious liberty.”

Jordan Lorence at Speak Up Movement Church Blog: The ongoing legal battle for equal access of churches to meet in New York City’s public schools returns to court Monday

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence will be available for media interviews following his oral argument Monday in favor of a ruling that would allow churches and other faith groups to continue meeting for worship services in New York City public school buildings on weekends.

Jordan Lorence appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss the the case and other issues. | MP3 audio 7:28 mins

Townhall: The Obama Department of Justice has shown surprising indifference to religious liberty by declining to follow the DOJ’s earlier repeated support for the right of religious groups to meet for worship services in New York City public schools during non-school hours.

Nathan Cherry at the Engage Family Blog: The silent battle taking place that you have probably not heard much about is in the area of zoning and equal access for public facilities. Churches are systematically being forced out of public spaces and told “no” by local zoning offices for permits to expand, or buy property . . . Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence has been working on the Bronx Household of Faith case in New York City for over 17 years. He spoke with FPCWV president Jeremy Dys in this issue of Engaging the Issues. Lorence explains that the fate of every church that meets in a public school hangs in the balance pending the outcome of this case. You can rest assured that if this case is not resolved in favor of the churches, and the school system is allowed to evict the churches, that and ripple will be felt from coast to coast as other school systems follow suit.

Andrew McCarthy at National Review: I’m a big fan of the 1 percent. No, not the dastardly 1 percent of Occupy Wall Street myth; I’m partial, instead, to the 1 percent of Congress that takes seriously the threat of Islamic-supremacist influence operations against our government.

Christian Newswire: Bill Keller, the world’s leading Internet Evangelist and the founder of LivePrayer.com, with over 2.4 million subscribers worldwide reading the Daily Devotional he has written every morning for 13 years on the issues of the day from a Biblcial worldview, is planning to file a $100 million defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling him and his ministry as a “hate group.”

Jordan Lorence at the NY Post: The New York City ban is emblematic of the much-too-widespread habit of public officials considering private religious expression to be dangerous and threatening, like asbestos that must be expunged from the ceiling tiles of the public square.
Simply put, the government does not treat churches “neutrally” when it treats them worse than everyone else.

Roanoke.com: Roanoke County officials were inundated with calls from the community urging them to continue opening meetings with an invocation — and late Tuesday evening, officials said they will likely keep prayer, but it will likely be nonsectarian.

LiveActionNews: Earlier this year, a new series of Planned Parenthood billboards which read, “birth control for your lifestyle” began popping up throughout the state of Delaware. It was around this same time that Delaware Right to Life was planning the release of a fresh billboard of their own in response to President Obama’s attack on individual and religious liberty through his HHS mandate. Thanks to Planned Parenthood, Delaware Right to Life didn’t have to look too far in order to obtain inspiration for the project.

Casey Mattox at The American Thinker: Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy recently incited the outrage of The Washington Post, actor Ed Helms, and at least five other celebrities by supporting marriage on the Ken Coleman radio program. In a discussion about ongoing attempts to redefine marriage in this country, Cathy said . . .

Salt Lake Tribune: A Wisconsin-based atheist and agnostic organization has jumped into the debate over a Christian concert planned for next week in Draper.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review: “I think it’s a fairly pervasive attitude in our culture that people with religious convictions should really get along with the program, whatever the program is — in this case, the HHS mandate,” Ryken observes. He worries that the principle that “even if you disagree with a point of view it’s very important to defend the right of someone else to have that point of view” is “not as widely valued as it needs to be for us to have a flourishing democracy” in the United States today.

Michael Heath at LifeSiteNews: Many leaders of the pro-family movement carefully avoid any discussion of the morality of homosexuality. Instead they prefer subtle sociological, psychological and legal arguments in support of traditional marriage. They do so not because these arguments are effective, but because they fear being called haters.

AP on Google News: Republican candidate for a Connecticut seat in the U.S. House of Representatives says he did not mean to disparage “peace-loving Muslims” by calling Islam a cult and questioning if it is a religion of peace.

American Prospect: In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, just outside Nashville, the Muslim community won a hard-fought victory Wednesday. After a two-year legal battle that inflamed anti-Islamic sentiment across the state, a federal judge ruled that a new Islamic community center could get the permits necessary to open. Elsewhere in the state, however, Muslim residents got a cold reminder this week of just how much prejudice exists around them.

Religion Clause Blog reports on the ruling in Fouche v. NJ Transit, (3d Cir., July 16, 2012).

Robert P. George at Public Discourse: In the name of “marriage equality” and “non-discrimination,” liberty–especially religious liberty and the liberty of conscience–and genuine equality are undermined.

Kyle Duncan of the Becket Fund at National Review: Today’s decision by a federal district court in Nebraska to dismiss one of the many pending lawsuits against the HHS abortion-drug, contraception and sterilization mandate is unfortunate (and in one respect, seriously mistaken). But the decision turns on technicalities and doesn’t decide the merits of the dispute.

Huffington Post: Wheaton College, a top evangelical school, is joining a raft of lawsuits challenging the Obama administration mandate that most employers offer health insurance that covers birth control.

Jordan Lorence appeared on Southern California Public Radio (89.3 KPCC) with Patt Morrison. | MP3 audio 15:16 mins

SCOTUS Blog spotlights the Free Exercise issues raised in the case of Leonard v. Leonard.

LifeNews: A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit filed by attorneys general of several states against the Obama HHS mandate that requires to religious employers to pay for or refer women for abortion-causing drugs and birth control in violation of their religious liberties | Nebraska v. HHS, Order