Tag Archives: State: Maryland

Baltimore Sun: State health regulators have suspended the licenses of several abortion clinics owned by Associates in OB/GYN Care for the second time after an employee with no health care license or certification gave a patient a drug to induce an abortion at the Baltimore facility.

LifeNews: The Maryland Board of Physicians has permanently revoked the license of abortionist Nicola I. Riley in a scathing 24-page order issued May 6, 2013, that prohibits her from ever again applying for licensure or reinstatement of her license.

CBS Baltimore: Sex show controversy. A fight in court over a sex fetish festival that was set to come to Canton this weekend. Wednesday night, the community moved to block the adult entertainment.

Cecil Whig: “The Cecil Whig conducted an online poll, which was overwhelmingly for prayer,” Broomell said as she tried to garner support from her colleagues during Tuesday morning’s work session. The Whig’s poll was an unscientific poll, in which 192 people voted in favor of council prayer while 51 opposed the idea.

StarDem.com: The original resolution states that due to court rulings, prayers at such public meetings must “strive to be nondenominational.” A new addition to the resolution states that invocations should not “proselytize or advance any faith over another or disparage the faiths or non-religious views of others.”

The Hill: Neurosurgeon Ben Carson on Wednesday withdrew as commencement speaker at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine after students protested statements he made about same-sex marriage.

Baltimore Sun: The controversial anti-abortion group, Voice for Life, at the Johns Hopkins University won its battle to become a fully recognized club that will conduct “sidewalk counseling” sessions outside clinics and be eligible for funding, the university announced Wednesday.

ACLU MD: Enidris Siurano-Rodriguez, a 10th grader, is an honor roll student and talented violinist. Since she was in the seventh grade, she has chosen to sit quietly during the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, as a way of showing her disagreement with United States government policies towards Puerto Rico. She did so, without incident, until this year.

Fox News: Maryland lawmakers agreed this week to require public school teachers to pay union fees – a move that bolsters the state’s connection to organized labor as others move toward a right-to-work status.

a href=”http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MEDICAL_MARIJUANA_MARYLAND?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-04-09-06-10-43″>AP: The Maryland General Assembly on Monday approved a measure allowing medical marijuana programs at research centers that choose to participate.

Baltimore Sun: The ACLU of Maryland is calling for legislators to halt funding to religious and private schools, saying that taxpayer money should be put toward the state’s funding obligation to public schools. | ACLU press release

Todd Starnes at Townhall: The Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins University compared pro-life students to white supremacists and denied them official club status at the school.

LifeSiteNews: On March 12th, a pro-life group at Johns Hopkins University, Voice for Life (VFL), was denied the right to become an official student club by the Student Government Association (SGA) during a student Senate meeting, after having been recommended for approval by the SGA Appointments and Evaluations Committee.

Washington Blade: A Maryland state Senate committee on Thursday struck down a bill that would have banned anti-transgender discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation. The 6-5 vote in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee came slightly more than two weeks after it held a hearing on Senate Bill 44 . . .

The HIll: Investigators looking into the death of Jennifer Morbelli in Maryland from a legal abortion have discovered that another woman also died from a second-trimester abortion in the state, but it was never made public until now.

LifeSiteNews: Prompted by the death of a third trimester abortion patient of LeRoy Carhart’s on February 7, 2013, seventeen members of the Maryland House of Delegates have sent a formal letter to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) seeking clarification of the state’s new abortion clinic licensing regulations that went into effect last year.

LifeSiteNews: Now she has left all of that behind, including a very lucrative financial settlement stemming from the arrest. She has chosen a life that confounds the culture of death, which depends on the clamor and ceaseless distraction of the modern world to drown out the quiet voice of conscience.

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.

Americans United for Separaiton of Church and State: By reciting a Christian prayer to open its meetings, the Brentwood, Md., Town Council has aligned itself with a single religion in violation of the U.S. Constitution, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has told a federal court. In a lawsuit filed today on behalf of two residents of the community, Americans United said the council’s practice of beginning its sessions with the Lord’s Prayer transgresses the First Amendment.

LifeSiteNews: Fourteen abortion centers were cited as having infractions that violated inspections, yet due to the weakness of the current law, only one was fined by the state. Although many of the violations were recorded, much of the reports was blacked out. Below is a summary of the little that is actually legible . . .

LifeNews: Following a new probe started by local officials, the Maryland Attorney General has opened an investigation into the late-term abortion practitioner who killed a woman last week in a botched abortion.

Christian Newswire: Representatives of Priests for Life, Alliance Defending Freedom, 40 Days for Life, the Family Research Council, Students for Life, Operation Rescue, Rock for Life, the Christian Defense Coalition, the National Black Pro-Life Union, the Maryland Family Alliance, the Archdiocese of Washington DC, several local churches and pastors, and many others will join the Maryland Coalition for Life on Monday.

CBS: An ethics panel has criticized a Maryland lawmaker for using his official letterhead to urge Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to restrain a football player from publicly supporting same-sex marriage.

Business Journal: A Silver Spring megachurch that claims Montgomery County violated federal law by blocking its plan to relocate to a 119-acre plot in Germantown should get a chance to prove its case, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday, the Maryland Daily Record reported. | Bethel World Outreach v. Montgomery County Council, No. 11-2176 | Religion Clause post

Religion Clause Blog: The Washington Post reported yesterday on an interesting method of accommodating Muslim students’ religious needs at Prince Georges County, Maryland, Parkdale High School.

AP: The nation’s leading university for the deaf and hard of hearing has reinstated its chief diversity officer, who was suspended for three months after signing a petition circulated by opponents of gay marriage in Maryland.

Baltimore Sun: The owner of Discover Annapolis Tours said he decided to walk away from $50,000 in annual revenue instead of compromising his Christian convictions when same-sex marriages become legal in Maryland in less than a week. And he has urged prospective clients to lobby state lawmakers for a religious exemption for wedding vendors.

Washington Post: With Maryland’s same-sex marriage law set to take effect Jan. 1, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) on Thursday directed his Cabinet secretaries to “work expeditiously” to clear any bureaucratic hurdles that stand in the way of conferring new rights on gay couples.

Washington Times: Maryland Comptroller Peter V.R. Franchot said Wednesday that the state will allow same-sex couples to file joint state-level income tax returns for tax year 2013, one day after a spokeswoman told The Washington Times that current federal tax policy prohibits such a move.

WalshLaw: This morning’s lively en banc proceedings at the Fourth Circuit in abortion-counseling-related First Amendment challenges did not produce clear signs of a winner, but raised questions (at least in my mind) about what legal issues the court took the cases en banc to address. There was virtually no discussion of commercial speech doctrine, and no judge or set of judges developed a line of questioning that would seemingly lay the foundation to displace strict scrutiny as the appropriate standard of review. That said, oral argument reveals only so much. | Related ADF Media Information Page and Press Releases

LifeNews: “Pregnancy centers, which offer real help and hope to women, shouldn’t be punished by political allies of abortion sellers,” said Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman, co-counsel for the Centro Tepeyac Women’s Center. Bowman added: “Pro-life centers provide women with the emotional support and practical resources they need, giving them more choices. They should be free to share that message instead of being compelled to provide the government’s preferred message, which sends women elsewhere. The 4th Circuit panel was right to rule against Montgomery County’s law, and we trust the full court will agree.”

Annapolis.Patch.com: An Annapolis wedding vendor plans to ask Maryland’s General Assembly to give his company and others like him the right to refuse services to gay couples on religious grounds.

An Alliance Defending Freedom attorney will be available for media interviews following oral arguments by co-counsel Thursday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in a lawsuit involving a Montgomery County, Md. law that forces pro-life pregnancy counselors to advise women against using their services.

San Francisco Chronicle: Maryland’s attorney general says clerks of court can begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses before Jan. 1, when the law is scheduled to take effect, so long as the effective date of the license is for the first of the year.

One News Now: “No American should be forced to give up a constitutionally protected freedom, much less sacrifice their job in order to maintain that freedom,” Nimocks contends. “Religious freedom is important to every American, and that includes those who issue marriage licenses. It’s important that we as a society embrace the idea that they can do their job without having to violate their conscience.”

Salon: “No American should be forced to give up a constitutionally protected freedom, nor should any American be forced to give up his or her job to maintain that freedom,” said ADF Senior Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. “Religious freedom is paramount to every American, including those issuing marriage licenses. They can perform their job without violating their conscience.”

Charisma News: “No American should be forced to give up a constitutionally protected freedom, nor should any American be forced to give up his or her job to maintain that freedom,” said ADF Senior Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. “Religious freedom is paramount to every American, including those issuing marriage licenses. They can perform their job without violating their conscience.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is advising officials responsible for issuing marriage licenses in Maine, Maryland, and Washington that they do not have to violate their faith or conscience by personally issuing licenses to applicants who are of the same sex.

Baltimore Sun: Lori said he hopes the bishops can take better advantage of “the most persuasive argument of all” — the living example of “strong families with loving fathers, mothers and children” — and some of his colleagues suggested finding more positive terminology for their position, as they had in debates over abortion.

Ryan T. Anderson and Andrew Walker at the Heritage Foundation: But a little perspective on the setback is in order. The results were close, and marriage did better in these deep blue states than Mitt Romney did. Of the four states that had marriage questions on the ballot, traditional marriage outperformed the presidential candidate in each and every one:

FRC Action: But contrary to what the Left will say, the narrow margin for victory in these four states offers plenty of evidence that a solid majority of Americans still opposes same-sex “marriage.” Despite being outspent 8-to-1 in some of the most liberal states in the country, we witnessed record-setting petition efforts that crossed every racial, party, and socioeconomic divide. And while homosexuals may be celebrating an end to our movement’s perfect record, they still have a long way to go to match the 32 states where Americans voted overwhelmingly to protect the union of a man and woman. And that includes North Carolina, where President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex “marriage” likely cost him the state’s electoral votes.

Seattle Times: Altering the course of U.S social policy, Maine and Maryland became the first states to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote, while Washington state and Colorado set up a showdown with federal authorities by legalizing recreational use of marijuana.

Religion Clause Blog reports.

Wall Street Journal: Americans for the first time approved gay marriage at the ballot box on Tuesday, pointing to changing attitudes on the divisive issue.

Baltimore Sun: Marylanders made history Tuesday as they voted to make same-sex marriage legal — a question that had been defeated each of the 32 times it had been on the ballot in other states.

Geoffrey Fowler at the Wall Street Journal: Americans weighed in on gay marriage in four states Tuesday, in a test of whether attitudes have changed on the divisive issue. In Maine, Maryland and Washington state, voters decided whether to begin allowing same-sex unions. A vote to permit gay marriage would mark a first for a cause that previously has been rejected by voters in 32 states.

Religion Clause Blog: While the Presidential contest obviously looms largest at the polls tomorrow, those interested in church-state and religious liberty issues are watching a number of down-ballot issues and contests . . .

Austin Nimocks appeared on the Mike Essen Show. | MP3 audio 20:57 mins

Baptist Press: Gay marriage laws in Washington state and Maryland are in danger of being overturned by voters, according to new polls that were released after traditional groups went on the air with television ads warning of the consequences of marriage redefinition.

LA Times: The change appears to be partly driven by black pastors in Maryland urging their congregations to vote against the measure. During a sermon in October, pastor Harold L. Dugger of First Baptist Church in Prince George’s County, Md., asked his congregation to go to the polls to cast their votes against same-sex marriage.

The Church Report: Polling of Maryland voters a few weeks ago suggested black voters supported same-sex marriage but a poll conducted last week indicated the numbers tightened.

Catholic Culture: The mind boggles not only at the directness of this defiance but at the absurdity of its alleged theological justification. Anyone who understands the Catholic doctrine of marriage knows that no such “development” could possibly be authentic. Consider these fundamentals . . .

Baltimore Sun: Asked to support the ad’s claim, Frank Schubert, the consultant running the campaign against same-sex marriage in Maryland and other states, said “it necessarily follows” that schools would teach same-sex marriage if Question 6 is approved.

Balitmore Sun Editorial: Our view: Maryland’s marriage equality law protects religious institutions while affirming the principle that no one should face discrimination under the law

Baltimore Sun: A month ago, the same-sex marriage question was ahead by 10 percentage points — 49 percent to 39 percent — in an earlier Sun poll. The contest is now a dead heat in part because some African-Americans who supported the measure or were undecided are now saying no. The numbers have moved amid television and radio commercials from the Maryland Marriage Alliance, which opposes same-sex marriage, and stepped-up efforts by pastors preaching against Question 6.

Washington Post: Maryland activists working to overturn same-sex marriage have had to get used to one surprising absence from their religious coalition: Mormons.

Sharon A. Knotts at Baltimore Sun: He was highly upset by remarks made by a local Baptist preacher regarding a New Testament Bible verse, Romans 1:32, that states that homosexuality, along with other sins, “is worthy of death.” The short answer is, according to both Old and New Testaments, in scores of verses too numerous to cite here, all sin is worthy of death . . . While the writer referred to the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount and their unparalleled teachings of hope and love, neither of these speak directly to marriage. Why not cite the passages where Jesus did specifically address the subject of marriage?

AP: President Barack Obama on Thursday threw his support behind ballot measures in Maine, Maryland and Washington state that would legalize same-sex marriage.

Washington Post: President Obama is heard endorsing same-sex marriage in a new radio ad being aired by supporters of Question 6, the Maryland ballot measure that would legalize gay unions.

MinnPost: Minnesota is one of four states where voters next month will be asked to decide ballot questions related to same-sex marriage. This is the only state where voters will be asked to outlaw, not approve, gay marriage.

Wall Street Journal: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he’ll spend $500,000 of his personal fortune on gay marriage campaigns in Maine, Minnesota and Washington state to help them raise an equal amount.

Maryland – The pro-marriage campaign asks you to vote “AGAINST” Question 6.  Church resources are here: http://www.marylandmarriagealliance.org/church-resources/ Minnesota – The pro-marriage campaign asks you to vote “YES” for the marriage amendment.  Church resources are here: http://www.mnpastorsformarriage.com/ Maine – The pro-marriage campaign …

Baltimore Sun: Gallaudet University is asking the group opposing Maryland’s same-sex marriage law to take down a new commercialthat features a university staff member who was suspended for signing a referendum petition.

Advocate.com: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is launching a super PAC with plans to spend between $10 and $15 million this election cycle to advance issues including marriage equality and candidates who show a commitment to solving problems over partisanship.

Reuters: Maine will give the issue a second vote in three years, after rejecting same-sex marriage in a referendum in 2009 by 53 to 47 percent. In Washington and Maryland, where the state legislatures passed laws expanding marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples earlier this year, citizens will vote on whether to let the laws stand. Meanwhile, defenders of traditional marriage hope Minnesota will become the latest state to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman – effectively banning same-sex marriages.

Washington Post: The lead group seeking to uphold Maryland’s same-sex marriage law on Monday announced it had received a $250,000 contribution from Paul Singer, a prominent New York-based hedge fund manager — and a major donor to Republican candidates.

Baltimore Sun: Gov. Martin O’Malley and other supporters of the law to allow same-sex marriage in Maryland called Thursday for the reinstatement of a university administrator who was placed on leave for signing a petition aimed at overturning the measure. “Everyone has a right to their opinion, and everyone has a right to participate in the political process,” O’Malley said. The legislation, he said, “is about treating everyone fairly and equally under the law.”

NY Times: Expanding his support for same-sex marriage onto the national stage, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg donated $250,000 this month to support an effort in Maryland to do what no state has done so far: legalize same-sex marriage at the ballot box.

KSTP.com: Dating back to 1998, 32 states have held votes on same-sex marriage, and all 32 have opposed it. Maryland is one of four states with Nov. 6 referendums on the issue – and gay-marriage advocates believe there’s a strong chance the streak will be broken.

FRC: On Wednesday, October 10, Gallaudet University suspended a senior university official when it was learned that she had signed a ballot petition giving Maryland voters the right to vote on recently passed legislation that redefines marriage in the state. Dr. Angela McCaskill serves as the school’s chief diversity officer, and is according to the university’s web site the first deaf African American woman to earn a Ph.D. from Gallaudet. Apparently that is not diverse enough for the uniform viewpoint required by the school’s administration.

David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy: With that in mind, stories like this don’t help the cause: “The chief diversity officer at Gallaudet University has been placed on paid leave after she signed a petition to put a gay marriage referendum on the ballot in Maryland…. Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz says McCaskill “participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate” for someone in her position.”

NY Times: In the roiling state-by-state war over same-sex marriage, the campaign against marriage rights has been masterminded largely by one man. Frank Schubert, a former corporate public relations executive, ran the $40 million, come-from-behind push for Proposition 8 in California in 2008.

Washington Post: The ad features Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the national NAACP, who argues that voting for Question 6 is “the right thing to do.” “I know a little something about fighting for what’s right and just,” Bond says in the ad, which the NAACP said will air in both the Washington and Baltimore markets. “Maryland’s gay and lesbian families share the same values, and they should share in the right to marry.”

Baltimore Sun: Football and politics meet again: Former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue and his wife have said they will give $100,000 to Maryland’s same-sex marriage campaign.

LifeNews: A Florida-based abortion practitioner was caught, earlier this year, running an illegal late-term abortion business in Maryland. Now, state officials have shut it down.