Tag Archives: State: Delaware

USA Today (includes video): Cabell wears men’s clothing, has a man’s haircut and grew a goatee. Like other transgender Delawareans, he’s afraid of what consequences he might face if his employer found out he wasn’t always identified as a man.

Delaware Online: Legislation to add transgender Delawareans to the list of groups protected under the state’s anti-discrimination law passed the Senate on Thursday with a slim majority and now heads to the House.

LifeNews: A filthy Planned Parenthood abortion clinic that botched five abortions this year alone and wasclosed by state officials is reopening in Wilmington, Delaware.

HRC Blog: In the last week Equality Delaware has announced two major endorsements in the effort to include gender identity into Delaware’s nondiscrimination and hate crimes laws.

Delmarva Now: The Delaware Attorney General’s Office filed a complaint Thursday against former Planned Parenthood abortion doctor Timothy F. Liveright, citing him for unprofessional, incompetent and negligent conduct during his practice at the Wilmington clinic and calling him a “clear and immediate danger to the public.”

LifeNews: Two former Planned Parenthood nurses are set to testify before the Delaware state legislature tomorrow about the “ridiculously” unsafe and filthy conditions they saw while working for the nation’s number one abortion business.

Josh Israel at Think Progress: The Losing Arguments Of Anti-LGBT ‘Alliance Defending Freedom’

ADF testimony in Minnesota, Colorado, and Washington all failed to sway legislators. Asked whether ADF believes its tact has been effective or swayed any lawmakers’ votes, legal counsel Jim Campbell told ThinkProgress: “First Amendment-protected freedoms are vital to the continued flourishing of our constitutional republic. They should not be ignored by state legislators who vote to redefine marriage. The failure to respect freedoms long-enshrined in our Constitution will lead to needless litigation. Sadly, even when those rights are eventually vindicated in court, the legal process will take a significant toll on innocent citizens who are simply trying to live in accordance with their conscience. Alliance Defending Freedom will be at the forefront of defending those Americans.”

Sussex Countian: “Marriage equality passes Delaware Senate; Gov. immediately signs into law”
Jordan Lorence, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom had concerns about the potential legal ramifications of the bill. “This state bans marital status discrimination. By passing this bill you will be changing the definition of marital status. People who don’t support this bill will be branded as bigots. If this is meant as a culture changing bill, those who believe in traditional marriage, defined as only one man and one woman, can only express that opinion with in four walls and not affect anybody else. If it goes anywhere else there are public accommodations laws already set that would come against them.”

One News Now: Nicole Theis, president of Delaware Family Policy Council, says there is no protection in the bill for people of faith . . . And we’ll be there with our partners at the Alliance Defending Freedom ready to defend the religious liberties of the good people of Delaware who find themselves in situations where their rights are being violated,” states the DFPC leader.

ThinkProgress: Unsurprisingly, one witness cited the debunked Regnerus study, while an Alliance Defending Freedom attorney claimed that the Ocean Grove pavilion in New Jersey was an example of “religious freedom” being violated, even though it wasn’t. A motion by opponents to table the bill failed 9-12.

On Top Magazine: Jordan Lorence, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a leading group representing clients who claim equal marriage laws violate their Christian beliefs, argued that allowing same-sex couples to marry would lead to discrimination against Christians. He warned that the bill’s true objective was to foster “a cultural change” and shun opponents as “bigots.”

Religion Clause: The new law protects clergy who object to performing same-sex marriages. It provides: nothing in this section shall be construed to require any person (including any clergyperson or minister of any religion) authorized to solemnize a marriage to solemnize any marriage, and no such authorized person who fails or refuses for any reason to solemnize a marriage shall be subject to any fine or other penalty for such failure or refusal. Notwithstanding the preceding sentence, a clerk of the peace who issues a marriage license, or a deputy thereof, shall be required to perform a solemnization of such marriage if requested by the applicants for such license.

USA Today: The Senate’s 12-9 vote sends the bill to Democratic Gov. Jack Markell, who supports the measure and planned to sign it later in the day. It would go into effect July 1.

Kellie Fiedorek at Townhall: Yes, anyone is capable of loving a child, and many heroic single parents admirably love and care for their children; however, few people advocate to incentivize permanently excluding moms or dads from a child’s life.

Engage Family Minute provides a quick summary.

Delaware Online: Legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Delaware cleared a Senate Committee today, paving the way for a final legislative vote on the measure Tuesday.

Cape Gazette: Alliance Defending Freedom Attorney Jordan Lorence, who testified before the House, said HB 75 does not protect Delaware citizens’ First Amendment rights. “The protections in this bill are not adequate,” he said. “You’re going to have some real victims, I think, if you pass this bill,” he said.

Delaware Online: A Glasgow church faced what it described as a “disturbance” after a sign out front implying religion trumps gay marriage caused a stir on social media.

PolicyMic: Opponents to Delaware’s bill cite concerns over religious liberties — worried that business owners who refuse marriage-related services for gay and lesbian couples could be hit with discrimination charges. “If there’s an exemption for right of conscience,” said Jordan Lorence, attorney of the conservative religious liberties group Alliance Defending Freedom, “I don’t see it.”

Water Mark Online: “If there’s an exemption for right of conscience, I don’t see it,” said Jordan Lorence an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious liberties group.

WGMD 92.7: Testimony went on for just under 2 hours in the state House from witnesses on both sides of the marriage equality issue. There was testimony from Jordan Lawrence, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom and Mark Pupura, of Equality Delaware and Nicole Theis of the Delaware Family Policy Council.

Delaware Online: The minority’s featured witness was Jordan Lorence, an attorney with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund. Language in the bill to protect churches and clergy from being compelled to solemnify marriages they oppose is not adequate, he said. “It’s the business owners that deal with weddings. It’s licensed professionals having their licenses threatened because they believe the wrong things about marriage,” Lorence said, citing discrimination cases in other states where businesses have been sued for denying services to same-sex couples. “Those are the places where we are having religious liberty conflicts around the country,” he added.

Beaumont Enterprise (AP): “If there’s an exemption for right of conscience, I don’t see it,” said Jordan Lorence an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious liberties group.

NBC News: “If there’s an exemption for right of conscience, I don’t see it,” said Jordan Lorence an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious liberties group.

Nicole Theis of DE Family Policy Council at Delaware Online: Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage rejects these truths. This is the position many of us hold, including the Delaware Family Policy Council. But this week, an advocate for same-sex marriage accused us of being a “hate” group and called for an investigation simply for believing in the definition of marriage that predates government and is true across cultures, faiths and time.

Delaware Online: Abortion protesters who picketed the Wilmington facility said last month they assisted a patient there after a botched abortion that forced her to seek emergency hospital treatment. That patient has retained Colorado-based attorney Michael Norton, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which promotes religious liberty and First Amendment protections.“We try to make sure abortion providers are held to the same standard as regular medical practices are,” Norton said.

BeforeItsNews.com: According to an updated Alliance Defending Freedom report, Planned Parenthood facilities across the country are accused of abuse and rampant fraud . . .

ABC: In Delaware, abortion clinics are not subject to routine inspections. The state only steps in when they have a patient complaint. Planned Parenthood is essentially in charge of inspecting itself.

Delaware Online: “If you promise to do your part and to assure that the marriage equality bill reaches my desk this year, I make a promise to you. I will sign it.”

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.

LifeNews: As LifeNews has reported, the Delaware Planned Parenthood clinic has experienced five botched abortion emergencies in less than five weeks. Since then, one abortionist and two employees have left Planned Parenthood in Wilmington, Delaware, as a result of the scandal.

LifeNews: A 63-year old Catholic grandmother of 12 was violently attacked yesterday outside the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Wilmington, Delaware, as she filmed the fourth abortion injury there in less than five weeks.

LifeSiteNews: The pro-life group Operation Rescue has today published newly obtained 911 recordings of two medical emergencies at Planned Parenthood in Wilmington, Delaware, which took place on February 8, and 16, 2013.

Huffington Post: New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley plan to file a friend-of-the-court brief on Friday, their offices said. Officials in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia, will join the amicus brief.

WDEL.com: The Delaware State AFL-CIO, the Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council and the Delaware Public Employees Council 81-AFSCME. are appealing to lawmakers to support a marriage equality bill this session.

Star Tribune: Freedom to Marry plans to spend cash in Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island as well as Minnesota.

Delaware Online: Norman Spector and George Everett, who live just south of Smyrna, said they wouldn’t have missed a Wednesday night gathering that kicked off a campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Delaware.

SB Sun: Coming off successful measures legalizing gay marriage in Maine, Maryland and Washington, gay rights activists are targeting:

— Oregon and Hawaii in the West;
— Minnesota and Illinois in the Midwest;
— New Jersey, Delaware and Rhode Island in the Northeast.
All of those states except Minnesota already allow civil unions. All are near other U.S. states which now allow gay marriage.

Politico: Advocates have identified Oregon, Rhode Island, Delaware, Minnesota, Colorado, Hawaii and New Jersey as states where they believe that as early as 2014 they’ll see gay marriage legalized through ballot measures, court decisions or state legislative action.

NY Times: They are also preparing for what they hope will be another milestone: the electoral reversal of a constitutional amendment defining marriage . . . campaigners see the potential for legislative gains in Delaware; Hawaii; Illinois; Rhode Island; Minnesota, where they beat back a restrictive amendment last Tuesday; and New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in February . . .

How Appealing links to a report and the opinion.

HSLDA: By defining “physical injury” to include the infliction of pain on a child, spanking has become a crime in Delaware punishable by imprisonment. Under the new law, a parent causing “physical injury” (e.g., pain) to a child under age 18 would be guilty of a class A misdemeanor and subject to one year in prison.

USA Today: Troop 70, nicknamed the “Peacemakers,” is still meeting at Silverside Church while it seeks another organization to host it. Leaders at the nondenominational church, which touts its inclusiveness on its website, say the troop should have no trouble.

Examiner.com: David Pierce, who has been a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives since 2006, was victorious in his Democratic primary for state senate on Sept. 11th and became the first openly gay candidate to be elected to the state senate as a freshman . . . The Victory Fund also celebrated the victory of out gay Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, who sealed the nomination for another term for reelection to Congress and two LGBT candidates in Delaware. Andrew Staton and Marie Mayor both took steps in becoming Deleware’s first out LGBT legislators . . .

Cape Gazette: Council approved an agreement with litigants that will allow an invocation before each council meeting. Council has recited The Lord’s Prayer for decades, but it became the subject of a lawsuit, Mullin v. Sussex County, filed in June 2011 in U.S. District Court by Americans United for Separation of Church and State on behalf of four Sussex residents.

The New American: Attorney Brett Harvey of the conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom applauded the ruling, noting that “since this nation’s founding, public meetings have been opened with prayer. There is no legal reason why Hamilton County’s citizens should be denied this freedom under the county’s policy.” Harvey emphasized that prayer “has always been lawful in America, and the district court rightly declined to stop the county from including prayer at its meetings. Secularist groups might not be happy with this, but an invocation offered according to the dictates of the giver’s conscience as part of a policy like Hamilton County’s is not an establishment of religion.”

AP: A Delaware law allowing Court of Chancery judges to preside over secret arbitration in business disputes is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Cape Gazette: Councilman Vance Phillips, R-Laurel, who has been among the staunchest supporters of opening meetings with The Lord’s Prayer, told Betts council members have been placed in a precarious position. He said if council fails to abide by the court injunction and recites The Lord’s Prayer anyway, council members could be arrested or the county could be fined. “People tell me we should be willing to go to jail for this,” he said. “But what if the fine is $10,000 a day? What would you have us do?” he asked. He didn’t get an answer. The county’s lead attorney, Everett Moore, cut in before Betts could respond, reminding Phillips that the issue was not an agenda item and could not be discussed.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy reports on the policy in question and links to some FIRE materials in connection with the matter.

Huffington Post: But in an interview at The Huffington Post’s offices on Monday, Markell said he expected the legislature to work on it as soon as the next session. “I think it probably will,” he said.

WBOC: The judge gave the parties time to settle the lawsuit, and said he’d order the county to change unless they settled the case.

USA Today: Delaware became the first state to enter the realm of legal online casino gambling Thursday with the governor’s approval of legislation that allows for full-service betting websites offering slots play and games like roulette, poker and blackjack.

DelMarvaNow: Some audience members said they came to the meeting specifically to say the prayer in protest of the judge’s ruling. At Tuesday’s meeting, county attorney Everett Moore asked that the audience not to do that again. “Mere silence on the part of the council during The Lord’s Prayer being recited by others may cause individual members and the council as a whole to be held in contempt,” he said.

The Republic: The Sussex County Council has voted to have a rotation of prayers read at its meetings after a federal judge ruled that reciting only the Lord’s Prayer in the government meetings violates the First Amendment.

DelMarVaNow: A U.S. magistrate judge ordered the Sussex County Council and a group of residents suing the county, claiming council’s ritual recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of its meetings is a constitutionally banned establishment of religion, to send representitives to mediation conferences.

Delaware Online: A federal court has ruled Sussex County Council must stop reciting The Lord’s Prayer as each council meeting begins, a longstanding practice, because doing so bucks the Constitution’s rule against government establishment of religion. | Mullin v. Sussex County

Washington Blade: A gay former judge running for the office of Delaware Insurance Commissioner and a gay Realtor running for the State Senate in a district that includes the popular gay resort town of Rehoboth Beach . . .

UPI: Officials in a Delaware school district said a girl who was suspended last week for dyeing her hair pink is being allowed to return to class.

Newark Post Online: The president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, Helen Foss, submitted a letter this week to Education Secretary Dr. Lillian Lowery asking that the Newark Charter School not be permitted to expand on the grounds of under representing minorities and low-income students due to its policy of not providing free and/or reduced price lunches to its students.

Windy City Media Group: On Friday, a Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington issued a stipulated order that respects the private communications of a Delaware same-sex couple married in California prior to the effective date of Delaware’s civil union law . . . The case is Theil v. Dentsply Intern’l, Inc. and Dentsply LLC . . .

Chicago Tribune: Gay marriage in Delaware is inevitable, the state’s Governor Jack Markell said on Friday,a day after neighboring Maryland became the eighth U.S. state to legalize marriage for same-sex couples.

The Daily Times: A week after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Indian River School District’s appeal of a ban on prayer at school board meetings, a small group of Sussex County residents continued delivering Christian prayers on behalf of the district.

Religion Clause: Yesterday’s Wilmington (DE) News Journal reports on an interesting line of questioning raised by a Delaware federal district judge in oral arguments in Mullin v. Sussex County, Delaware.

USATODAY.com: A hearing Wednesday in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the Sussex County Council from reciting the Lord’s Prayer before each meeting delved into the theological meaning and history of the prayer’s title and whether it is explicitly a Christian prayer.

DelMarVa Now: A federal judge will hear oral arguments tomorrow in a lawsuit challenging the Sussex County Council’s recitation of a Protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer at the commencement of its meetings

The News Journal | delawareonline.com: Public school districts throughout Delaware can allow students up to two minutes for a moment of silence at the start of the school day — provided they have a policy in place that allows it.

Dover Post: The Capital School District Board of Education will table its proposed social media policy for students tonight in light of the ACLU’s concern that the policy would violate the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause.

OneNewsNow.com: Brett Harvey of the Alliance Defense Fund says the court decided that the Indian River School Board was not the type of legislative body that was covered by a Supreme Court precedent.
“They decided to look at the school board because it was involved within the public school system; they ignored the way the board operated and analyzed it as if this was any sort of other typical school prayer case,” says Harvey. [more . . . ]

The News Journal: For years, the Sussex County Council has opened each of its meetings with the recitation of the Protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer. Despite requests to stop this practice, the council continued. Now, Sussex County and the council are facing a lawsuit filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based religious liberty watchdog group.

The News Journal: The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware has sharpened its teeth.

The News Journal | delawareonline.com: Sussex County has been sued by four county residents who want an end to its practice of starting council meetings with the Lord’s Prayer.

LifeNews.com: Pro-life advocates in Delaware are urging voters in the state to contact their state legislators and oppose a 25 percent increase in state taxpayer funding for the nation’s biggest abortion business.

The Washington Post: Former U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell says the Federal Election Commission has dismissed a complaint filed against her during last year’s campaign by the Delaware Republican Party.

AP: Gov. Jack Markell has signed legislation making Delaware the 16th state to allow the use of medical marijuana.

NBCPhiladelphia.com: Mark my words, there will be litigation over this,” said Douglas Napier, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative religious rights organization.