Tag Archives: Country: Germany

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The AP reports on a US Apeals Court decision to leave a family of homeschoolers at the mercy of the German Government, even though the Court found that the US Constitution forbids the state from prohibiting homeschooling. The family faces impossible fines and loss of custody of their children if they are returned to Germany. They should have just pretended to be gay.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: Jonathan posted earlier today about Romeike v. Holder (6th Cir. May 14, 2013), which reject German homeschoolers’ asylum claim. The opinion is quite readable and persuasive, and I recommend it to those interested in the subject. But here’s my general thinking (reprised from 2010 post on the original immigration judge decision in the case), and stressing that I’m not an expert on asylum law:

Jonathan Adler reports on the ruling at the Volokh Conspiracy: The relevant legislation applies only to those who have a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). There is a difference between the persecution of a discrete group and the prosecution of those who violate a generally applicable law.

Filistrucchi, Lapo and Prufer, Jens, Nonprofits are Not Alike: The Role of Catholic and Protestant Affiliation (April 26, 2013). TILEC Discussion Paper No. 2013-013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2259051 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2259051

Norbert Blum at WorldCrunch: In a society designed around individual liberty, has marriage become little more than a temporary link-up of working people choosing to spend some free time together? And the kids?

DW.de: A major study of attitudes towards religion says Germans approve of openness towards other religions. But many are still suspicious of Islam. Former German President Christian Wulff earned much praise but also much criticism when said in a speech during his tenure, “Islam is also a part of Germany.”

AP: Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has fired his justice minister, who made comments alleging Germans may be experimenting on Polish embryos from in vitro fertilization procedures

Reuters: The 60-year-old teacher, challenging his 2011 dismissal, had claimed his constitutional right to freedom of opinion trumped the Church’s right to employ only Catholics who agreed with the religious mission of their jobs.

Baptist Press: A German family should be granted asylum in the U.S. because their s native government is denying a fundamental human right by preventing them from homeschooling their children, attorney Michael Farris told a three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday (April 23) in Cincinnati.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: French parents who wish to pass on certain values to their children will clash in the coming months over the Republic’s education system, which the current Government wishes to reform, particularly in relation to the complementary …

Wendy McElroy at Future Freedom Foundation: Many would disagree with Bonhoeffer’s simple and uncompromising Christianity but even those with no religious belief can find a rolemodel in his behavior. He and his family definitely disprove the theory of a German character flaw. They should make us pause before blaming a nationality or a race for the triumph of totalitarianism and make us consider, instead, the dynamics of how that tyranny came to be. As long as we blame only the character of individuals or defined groups, we will learn little about the more general institutional character of totalitarianism itself.

AP: A German pastor due to stand trial for allegedly inciting violence at an anti-Nazi demonstration says authorities risk deterring people from standing up to right-wing extremists if he is convicted.

Spiegel Online: Germany is home to some 4 million Muslims. With the long Easter weekend around the corner, a leading member of the country’s Muslim community has called for legal recognition of two Muslim holidays, drawing criticism from among Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling conservatives.

Digital Journal: Police in Germany have foiled an assassination plot by Islamic extremists to kill Markus Beisicht, leader of the far-right Pro NRW party.

AP: German authorities banned three ultraconservative Islamic groups Wednesday, including one whose Internet propaganda videos helped inspire the extremist who killed two American airmen at Frankfurt airport in 2011, the country’s domestic intelligence chief said.

AP: The German government wants to allow women to use false names when giving birth in hospitals while still ensuring that children born this way can learn the mother’s name after turning 16.

Spiegel.de: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s quiet attempts to end debate within her party on same-sex marriage are falling short, as a number of her allies in parliament consider joining an opposition-led petition to the government in favor of gay rights.

AP: Germany’s foreign minister says Berlin will fight a European Union proposal to introduce mandatory quotas for the number of women on the boards of private companies.

DW.de: Senior members of Merkel’s conservative party want to open up on issues related to equal rights for homosexuals. They are looking into taxing same-sex partnerships like married couples. But the party’s base is divided.

NY Times: Gay rights have quickly emerged in Germany as a campaign issue in this parliamentary election year, with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats struggling to catch up to changing attitudes among voters on issues like gay marriage and adoption.

LifeSiteNews: The same month that Germany’s bishops have backed the use of the morning-after pill for rape victims, one of the world’s leading authorities on the drug has said doctors have a duty to inform women that it could prevent a newly-conceived embryo from implanting in the womb, causing an abortion.

Religion Clause Blog: Applying Germany’s new law enacted in December to confirm the legality of religious circumcisions performed with parental consent by specially trained members of the religious community, a court in the German city of Hof has dismissed charges that had been filed last year against a rabbi.

Baptist Press: A family homeschooling safely in rural Tennessee may be forced to return to their native Germany, where the parents likely face huge fines and criminal penalties, and could lose custody of their five school-age children. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are looking to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to give them permanent refugee status. But Attorney General Eric Holder is disputing their case, arguing Germany’s ban on homeschooling fails to violate the family’s fundamental rights.

Michael Farris at HSLDA: But, let’s assess the position of the United States government on the face of its argument: a nation violates no one’s rights if it bans homeschooling entirely.

LifeSiteNews: A drama has been unfolding in Germany over the last month that has seen the leading conservative prelate in the country, Cologne’s Cardinal Joachim Meisner, seem to suggest that it is permissible in Catholic hospitals to administer the morning-after pill (MAP) to rape victims. The Bishops of Germany will be discussing the matter further at their next plenary meeting later this month.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: On wednesday, 30 January, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg held a hearing in a case concerning the right of churches to choose employees based on religious affiliation.

De Spiegel: Moscow is currently seeking to make “homosexual propaganda” a prosecutable offense. But in Germany, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has warned Russia’s ambassador that the new legislation could aggravate European-Russian relations.

DW.de: Bremen is the third German state to recognize Islamic organizations as official religious bodies. Holidays, funerals and pastoral care will be regulated by state contracts. Other states will likely follow suit.

AP: Like a handful of other countries, including Germany and Denmark, Iceland has official rules about what a baby can be named.

The Gatestone Institute: Opinion polls consistently show that growing numbers of ordinary German citizens are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies, as well the emergence of a parallel legal system based on Islamic Sharia law.

Eugene Kontorovich at the Volokh Conspiracy: The Bestiality Brief “The man-bites-dog story of Germany legalizing then banning bestiality raises the question of the constitutionality of such laws in the U.S. Most states criminalize zoophilia, and in many places the bans …

AP: The interior ministers of Germany’s 16 states unanimously recommended Wednesday pursuing a new ban of the National Democratic Party on allegations it promotes a racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic agenda in violation of the country’s constitution.

AP: Maria Menendez, a 25-year-old caught in Spain’s job-destroying economic crisis, would love to work in Germany as a veterinarian. Germany, facing an acute shortage of skilled workers, would love to have her. A perfect match, it seems, but something’s holding her back: She doesn’t speak German.

AP: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been re-elected as her party’s leader with a landslide majority of 98 percent of the vote.

AP: Germany says it won’t back a Palestinian drive for statehood in a U.N. vote this week – putting it at odds with France and other European countries.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The case had acquired worldwide notoriety when the Court of Justice of the European Union, answering a prejudicial question that had been submitted to it by the BGH, found that the existence of a human embryo begins at the moment of conception, and that therefore inventions that involved the use of embryonic stem cells were therefore excluded from patent protection under the EU Biopatent Directive.

Intolerance Against Christians: November 2012: A gothic chapel, a protected heritage monument which had just been renovated, was vandalised by graffiti in Haßfurt.

WorldNetDaily: German politicians from Angela Merkel’s governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister Christian Social Union (CSU) told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that they are willing to accept Christian Syrians fleeing the violence in their country, in comments due to be published on Sunday.

Reuters: Germany’s Angela Merkel on Wednesday warned Britain not to turn its back on Europe ahead of talks in London with Prime Minister David Cameron aimed at overcoming divisions that threaten to block a European Union budget deal later this month.

Ed News: Countless tears were shed at the first Global Home Education Conference here as homeschooling parents told horror stories of having to flee vicious persecution in their home countries – mostly Sweden and Germany, but other places as well.

AP: Opposition lawmakers and human rights groups are criticizing German Chancellor Angela Merkel for claiming that Christianity is “the most persecuted religion worldwide.”

C-FAM: A mood of hostility in Germany toward Christianity comes across in the numerous instances of vandalism, destruction of property, and defamatory displays listed in the report.

World Net Daily: Norbert Blum, a prominent member of Angela Merkel’s German CDU party who served as Helmut Kohl’s minister of labor for 16 years, has said Germany’s modern education system is “usurping” children and ignoring the important role parents must play in education.

Spiegel.de: The Chinese are seen as victors in the global financial crisis, and as both a hope and a threat to German industry. Beijing wants to be more than the world’s factory. But the country’s economic engine is showing signs of stalling and it is uncertain what direction it will take in the future . . . China is on a global buying spree, and it sees the current economic crisis in Europe and the United States as an historic opportunity to energetically press ahead with its offensive. The financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that China’s so-called red capitalists spent $23.9 billion on shares in foreign companies in the first half of 2012, or three times as much as in the same period last year.

Gatestone Institute: In Islamist radical convicted of stabbing two German police officers during a protest against “offensive” cartoons has been sentenced to six years in prison. Murat K, a 26-year-old German-born Salafist of Turkish heritage from the western state of Hessen, openly admitted that he had attacked and wounded the two police officers with a kitchen knife during the cartoon riots in May. He showed no remorse, however, during his trial at the district court in the city of Bonn; he said he had been morally obligated to follow Islamic Sharia law.

Religion Clause Blog: Gatestone Institute reports on a Sept. 28 decision by the Hessian Administrative Court in Germany refusing to excuse a 12-year old Muslim girl from co-ed swimming lessons in her school.

Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe: The German law requires pharmacists to provide prescribed medications within due time (§ 31 Abs. 1 Satz 1 and § 17 Abs. 4 SGB V). There is no exception for ethically ambiguous drugs, such as the early abortifacient morning-after-pill. If a pharmacy fails to deliver, its concession may be withdrawn (§§ 1 Abs. 2, 2 and 4 ApoG).

HSLDA: Arguing that homeschooling damages children and is an abuse of parental authority, a German district court in Darmstadt transferred the custody rights of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich’s four children to the Jugendamt, Germany’s child protective agency.

ABC: Chancellor Angela Merkel says Islam has become a part of Germany and she is urging her fellow citizens to show tolerance for Muslims.

AP: A woman killed her five infants shortly after giving birth in secret at home and in the woods because each time she got pregnant she worried her husband would leave . . .

AP: Germany’s Justice Ministry has proposed new rules for religious circumcision of infant boys . . .

AP: Germany’s top administrative court has ruled that Catholics who opt out of paying religious taxes must automatically leave the church as well.

Religion Clause Blog: Germany’s Conference of Catholic Bishops on Thursday issued a Decree and Pastoral letter providing that those who opt out of Germany’s church tax will be ineligible to participate in a wide variety of Church sacraments and activities

Oliver Marc Hartwich at Business Spectator: So what was the role of the Constitutional Court, then? Simply to make sure that any euro crisis decisions taken are compatible with the constitution in general and with its democratic principles in particular. First and foremost among these democratic principles are parliament’s budget rights. No democracy can work if parliamentarians had no control over taxes and expenditures, and thus the Bundestag could not divest itself of this core right of fiscal autonomy, the court stated. Along with this, the judges demanded clarifications in the course of ratifying the European treaties.

NY Times: But now, some Jewish leaders say, the circumcision debate has exposed how ignorant many Germans are about Jewish beliefs. “This discussion has shown that we are foreigners in our own country, doing something that Germans are not supposed to do,” said Stephan J. Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. “We are accused of torturing our own children.”

The Church Report: Pastor Terry Jones, who received global attention in 2010 when he threatened to burn a copy of the Koran, has been barred from entering Germany.

BBC: Protesters in Khartoum entered the US compound, while the German and UK embassies were also attacked. The US compound in Tunis was also breached by protesters, who started a fire in the car park as police fired shots. There were further clashes in Yemen and Egypt. One person in Lebanon has died.

Reuters: The euro rose to a four-month high against the dollar on Wednesday after Germany’s Constitutional Court gave its approval to the euro zone’s new rescue fund and budget pact, allowing its ratification under certain conditions.

Guardian: Decision is likely to give financial rescue fund the go-ahead against a background of German disillusion with single currency

Religion Clause Blog: In Bundesrepublik Deutschland v Y and Z, (EU Ct. Justice, Sept. 5, 2012), the Court of Justice of the European Union interpreted the EU’s directive on the status of refugees in the case of two Pakistani members of the Ahmadiyya community who are seeking asylum in Germany.  As summarized by the Court’s press release . . .

Times of Israel: State does not authorize mohels, requires that parents be informed of the procedure’s medical risks before consenting

Reuters: A poster campaign by Germany’s Interior Ministry to advertise a hotline for those worried that a friend or family member may be turning to radical Islam has incensed some Muslims who say it stigmatizes them.

AP: A top state official says infant male circumcision for religious reasons is legal in Berlin . . .

Volokh Conspiracy: At the risk of provoking the ire of anti-circumcision zealots (you know who are), I thought I’d mention that the American Academy of Pediatrics, reversing a previous neutral stance, is now endorsing male circumcision based on a review of recent scientific evidence.

Commentary Magazine: As the Times of Israel reports, criminal charges have been filed against a rabbi in Northern Bavaria for performing circumcisions. According to the Juedische Allgemeine, a Jewish weekly, the state prosecutor of Hof confirmed that charges had been filed against Rabbi David Goldberg, who serves the community of Upper Franconia for “harming” infants by performing the rite of brit milah, the covenantal ritual at the heart of Judaism.

NY Daily News: A new prenatal test hit the market in Germany and several other European countries Monday, the manufacturer said, amid a controversy over whether it could lead to more abortions.

Christian Science Monitor: Germany’s conservative coalition is pushing to pay moms who stay home to care for children ages 1 to 3. Opposition parties are outraged, calling the plan an antiquated take on family politics.

AP: Berlin court has rejected an emergency appeal by three mosques to prohibit a far-right group from displaying caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad at a demonstration this weekend.

AP: The deputy leader of Germany’s far-right National Democratic Party has been convicted of defamation over a 2010 speech in which he criticized a Holocaust memorial event.

AP: Authorities in Hamburg have become the first in Germany to officially recognize Islamic holidays so Muslim employees and students can celebrate them at home.

Religion Clause Blog: In In re the Constitutional Complaints of Mr. P, (Fed. Const. Ct. Germany, July 21, 2012), Germany’s Constitutional Court held that . . .

AP: A group of lawmakers from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party called Tuesday for same-sex couples in civil partnerships to be given the same tax breaks as heterosexual married couples . . .

GateStone Institute: The German state of Lower Saxony has published a practical guide to extremist Islam to help citizens identify tell-tale signs of Muslims who are becoming radicalized. Security officials say the objective of the document is to mitigate the threat of home-grown terrorist attacks by educating Germans about radical Islam and encouraging them to refer suspected Islamic extremists to the authorities.

AFP on Yahoo: Switzerland has given the green light for a new prenatal test for Down’s syndrome amid controversy over whether this will lead to more abortions, a Swiss newspaper reported Sunday.

The court found procedural ‘penumbras’ emanating from non-existent rights in Article 8 of the Convention, and that opens the door to confusion and abuse.