Religion & Law

Male prostitution is Nevada?s newest legal profession

Posted on January 06, 2010
LA Times: "A county board's vote Tuesday affirming that Davis could offer 'shady men' to her clientele followed months of rancorous debate among the state's legal brothel community . . . "It seems the biggest hoopla is a great fear in some people's minds that some kind of homosexual activity might go on," she said...

MI: Gulfport Council halts permits for adult businesses

Posted on January 06, 2010
Sun Herald: "The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a six-month moratorium on permits for adult-oriented businesses and tattoo parlors. Councilman R. Lee Flowers said the moratorium was probably proposed because businessman Barry Artz applied for a permit to open an adult bookstore near a Gulfport School District building where General Equivalency Diploma examinations are held, meaning teenagers could be exposed to the business...

VA lawmaker seeks reversal of non-denominational prayer policy

Posted on January 06, 2010
The Gazette: "As state legislators prepare for the 2010 General Assembly, a local delegate has once again renewed his commitment to overturn an administrative order requiring Virginia State Police chaplains to deliver non-denominational prayers at official events...

How the British government funds radical Islam

Posted on January 06, 2010
David Pryce-Jones writing at his "David Calling" blog, National Review Online: "[I]n the past two years, according to the Sunday Telegraph, the Muslim Centre [of the East London Mosque] has received at least 60,000 pounds from a government initiative known as Preventing Violent Extremism...

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The battle over New York City?s worst teachers

Posted on January 06, 2010
New Yorker: "By now, most serious studies on education reform have concluded that the critical variable when it comes to kids succeeding in school isn?t money spent on buildings or books but, rather, the quality of their teachers. A study of the Los Angeles public schools published in 2006 by the Brookings Institution concluded that 'having a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row would be enough to close the black-white test score gap...

While Europe sneered

Posted on January 06, 2010
Bruce Bawer writing at City Journal: His thesis: Europe is chugging along just fine; Islam poses no real challenge to the continent?s freedom and prosperity; after all, the ?experts? say so. Never mind the draining of European welfare systems by Muslim families, the explosion in rapes and gay-bashings and Jew-baitings, the proliferation of honor killings and forced marriages and no-go zones; never mind the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh by fanatics who objected to those men?s positions on Islam; never mind the threats directed at critics of Islam, such as Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Robert Redeker, which have obliged them to live in hiding or with round-the-clock bodyguards.

NH lawmaker wants voters to decide same-sex ?marriage?

Posted on January 06, 2010
Concord Monitor: "New Hampshire's residents deserve the right to vote on same-sex marriage, state Rep. David Bates, a Windham Republican, said yesterday. Before about 75 people, many wearing stickers opposing same-sex marriage, Bates launched a campaign to urge state legislators to let the people vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman...

Same-sex ?marriage? foes slam plans to televise Prop 8 trial

Posted on January 06, 2010
Washington Times: "Attorneys for Proposition 8 backers said television coverage would expose their witnesses to further harassment and intimidation. Backers of Proposition 8 were targeted for harassment in the months after the initiative's passage in November 2008...

Canada: Kids will be exempt from airport scanners

Posted on January 06, 2010
The Star: "Travellers under 18 will be exempt from Canada's peek-a-boo body scanners amid international fears that the resulting images would amount to child pornography."

Hearing on Federal Prop. 8 challenge take place today

Posted on January 06, 2010
San Diego Gay and Lesbian News: "Attorneys for two couples who wish to be married but cannot because of Prop. 8 will argue today at a hearing in favor of allowing cameras in the courtroom during the federal trial on the unconstitutionality of the initiative...

Companies in Hot Seat as Courts Advance Climate-Change Claims

Posted on January 05, 2010
Law.com: "Three important court rulings have been handed down in recent weeks regarding claims for harm alleged to have resulted from "climate change" caused by private companies' carbon emissions. Two of those decisions, by federal courts of appeal, found that such actions may proceed, while the third, by a lower federal court, ordered such a lawsuit dismissed...

Slow Going in Senate for DOJ, Judicial Nominees

Posted on January 05, 2010
Law.com (The National Law Journal): "The U.S. Senate ended the year having confirmed three nominees to federal circuit courts, half as many as were confirmed during President George W. Bush's first year. Among nominees for district court judgeships, the difference is even more stark -- nine won confirmation during 2009 compared with 22 during 2001...

RI Gov. to lawmakers: leave my vetoes alone

Posted on January 05, 2010
"Rhode Island lawmakers will try to override the governor?s veto of legislation allowing same-sex couples to plan the funerals of their partners."

Pro-Lifers Group launches moving billboard campaign targeting ?Blue Dog? Democrats

Posted on January 05, 2010
Christian Newswire: "The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) will begin to operate graphic billboard trucks in the congressional districts of specially selected Members of the U.S. House of Representatives during the second week of January."

9th Circuit: AZ Charter Schools are not state actors

Posted on January 05, 2010
"Instead, the court concluded, the school is a private company . . . "

Evangelicals: Abortion, Moral Relativism Top Moral Issues List

Posted on January 05, 2010
Christian Post: "Abortion, moral relativism and mistreatment of others almost came in a three-way tie as the top concerns among America's evangelical leaders, according to the survey released Monday by the National Association of Evangelicals."

SC county GOP leaders vote to censure Sen. Graham

Posted on January 05, 2010
Boston Globe (AP): "Republican leaders in a South Carolina county known as a GOP stronghold have voted to censure U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham for working with Democrats on immigration and climate change."

Vermont custody disputes highlights legal consequences of same-sex unions

Posted on January 05, 2010
CNA: "In a case showing some ramifications of the legal recognition of same-sex unions, a Virginia woman has disobeyed a Vermont court order to turn over sole custody of her biological daughter to her former lesbian partner."

InternetSafety.com sponsors debate between porn actor and XXXChurch.com founder

Posted on January 05, 2010
PRNewswire: "[Ron] Jeremy will air his views on pornography and square off with anti-porn pastor and XXXchurch.com founder Craig Gross at the 2010 CES International conference in Las Vegas in an event called 'The Great Porn Debate' being sponsored by InternetSafety...

Atlanta strip club staffers to be sentenced after using roaches, rats and arson to fight rival

Posted on January 05, 2010
LA Times: "After the luxurious Club Onyx started taking business from other strip clubs, the operators of rival Platinum 21 dreamed up ways to shut it down."

Nova Scotia town delays vote on bylaw that ?gay community? says is discriminatory

Posted on January 05, 2010
570news: "Truro town councillors put off a vote Monday on whether to restrict access to a park entrance the mayor has labelled a gay pickup area as an advocacy group warned the town could develop a reputation for intolerance. The issue over the gate's placement sparked controversy last month when Mayor Bill Mills said it was being moved to reduce sexual activity by gay men...

Belarus: Two Catholic parish priests banned from religious activity

Posted on January 05, 2010
Forum 18: "Two Polish Catholic parish priests in Belarus are the latest foreign citizens to be denied permission to carry out religious activity, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Both Capuchin priest Fr Jan Bonkowski, who was parish priest of Mizhevitsi village for twenty years, and Jesuit priest Fr Edward Smaga had to halt all religious activity at the end of 2009...

UK: ?Body scanners may break child porn laws?

Posted on January 05, 2010
politics.co.uk: "The scanners create images which reveal the passenger's body under their clothes, potentially contravening laws which ban 'indecent' images of children. Terri Dowty, of Action for Rights of Children, told the Guardian the scanners could breach the Protection of Children Act 1978...

TIME: ?A Gay-Marriage Lawsuit Dares to Make Its Case?

Posted on January 05, 2010
TIME: "The trial begins Jan. 11 in a 17th-floor courtroom in downtown San Francisco, and is expected to last two to three weeks. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker convenes a hearing Wednesday over whether to take the rare step of allowing the trial to be broadcast, despite strong objections by defenders of Prop 8 ? the 2008 voter initiative that ended gay marriage in California...

?Openly gay man? in line for Rhode Island House Speaker position

Posted on January 05, 2010
". . . [Gordon] Fox?s legislative priority list aligns him with the party?s more liberal wing. An openly gay man, he is a staunch advocate, for example, of same-sex marriage."

PA: Proposals for sex ed are stuck in the ?80s

Posted on January 05, 2010
Op-Ed in The Patriot News: "The sex education programs mandated by the proposed legislation [HB 1162 & HB 1163] are simply the repackaged version of the failed 'safe sex' messages in that 1985 presentation. These programs and those who promote them are stuck in the 1980s...

Most Argentines reject same-sex ?marriage?

Posted on January 05, 2010
Angus Reid: "Many people in Argentina are against same-sex marriage, according to a poll by Poliarquía Consultores. 60 per cent of respondents disagree with allowing homosexual couples to get married."

NJ: Odds against same-sex ?marriage? grow with setback in Trenton

Posted on January 05, 2010
New York Times: "But advocates of the bill were rebuffed on Monday, when the Judiciary Committee in the General Assembly met and did not take up the proposal. That setback, which comes two weeks after the measure stalled in the State Senate, means that the legislation has now become bogged down in both chambers...

South Africa: ?Gay rights group angry at blood service rule on donors?

Posted on January 05, 2010
Weekend Post: "While the SA National Blood Service is pleading for residents to donate blood this holiday season, members of the gay community in Nelson Mandela Bay say they are battling to donate blood because of strict policies. Eastern Cape Gay and Lesbian Association president Christina Engela said the blood service was discriminating against gay men and trans-gender donors in Nelson Mandela Bay through the use of a 'six-month rule...

Judge Birch to retire from 11th Circuit in August

Posted on January 05, 2010
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Birch, put on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by President George H.W. Bush in June 1990, will join JAMS Inc. The firm was founded in 1979 and bills itself as the world's largest private alternative dispute resolution provider...

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