Religion & Law

Is there a next generation of abortion providers?

Posted on June 16, 2009
Kate Harding writing at Salon: "[A]nother factor keeping young doctors away from providing abortions is lack of comprehensive family planning training in medical schools. Apart from that outrageous hour of 'abortion education,' says Carolyn, 'I got none in the subsequent two years of school-sanctioned rotations...

Focus on the Family?s new CEO shifts perspectives

Posted on June 16, 2009
Denver Post: The secret of Jim Daly's success, he says only half-jokingly, is "low expectations." Daly, president and chief executive of Focus on the Family, has achieved more by dint of low expectations than most heads of international multimedia giants...

Sotomayor the Realist?

Posted on June 16, 2009
Kevin Gutzman writing at Human Events: "Sotomayor is a devotee of Legal Realism. That early-twentieth-century school of judicial thought amounts to this: Judges bound by law? Get real! In a 1996 speech at Boston?s Suffolk University Law School, Sotomayor embraced the main tenets of Legal Realism: that law is perforce indeterminate, and that lawyers? role must be to shepherd the legal system to more and more progressive pastures...

Infanticide Case Mesmerizes France: Woman Confessed to Killing 3 Newborns; Husband Was Unaware of Pregnancies

Posted on June 16, 2009
Washington Post: "Véronique Courjault, by her own admission, smothered the two babies after giving birth to them secretly in Seoul, the first in 2002 and the second in 2003. She also has acknowledged killing a newborn and burning the body in her garden after a first secret pregnancy in 1999, before the couple left France...

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Evangelists suit leads Miami U to revise speech policy

Posted on June 16, 2009
Aaron J. Leichman reports in the Christian Post: "Nearly a year after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit sided with a Christian man who was prohibited from sharing a Christian message on campus because he didn?t have a permit, Miami University revised their policies to affirm the First Amendment rights of campus visitors, reported Alliance Defense Fund attorneys...

?In DC, LGBT activists won by playing the long game?

Posted on June 16, 2009
Adam Serwer reports at The American Prospect's Tapped blog: "As I reported last week, pending the results of a court battle (Greg Scott of the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Jackson camp, confirmed to me this morning that they plan to appeal the board's ruling) the fight over marriage equality in DC may be over...

?Christian conservatives fight expansion of hate-crimes law?

Posted on June 16, 2009
Tiffany Stanley reports at USA Today (RNS): "There is no evidence that a lack of prosecutions is occurring," said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel of Alliance Defense Fund. "There is a well-documented pattern that these crimes are being punished under current criminal law without adding any kind of hate crimes provisions...

Judge orders end to muzzling of St. Louis Christians

Posted on June 16, 2009
CitizenLink: "Christian groups shouldn't be prohibited from expressing their beliefs at public locations," ADF-allied attorney Rick Nelson of the American Liberties Institute said. "We are pleased with the court's decision to lift an unconstitutional ban on expression in these areas throughout the city, allowing members of Apple of His Eye to peacefully exercise their First Amendment right to free speech...

Ohio university agrees to settle suit over ?free speech? rights

Posted on June 16, 2009
Jake Jones writes at the Evangelical Examiner: "Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund announced a settlement in Gilles v. Hodge case, bringing to end a five-year legal battle over Miami (Ohio) University?s speech policy that prohibited a Christian man from exercising his First Amendment rights on campus because he didn?t have a permit...

On the demise of fatherhood

Posted on June 16, 2009
Andrew Peach writing in a First Things web exclusive: "I would like to propose that the demise of fatherhood is largely the result of a relatively recent and thoroughly unjustifiable faith in rational self-determination. Indeed, nearly all of the culprits that cultural observers have previously identified?contraceptives, abortion, women?s liberation, increased secularity, the usurpation of the functions of the father by the state?can probably best be understood as instances of this more general tendency...

Maine marriage petition drive off to fast start

Posted on June 16, 2009
Everyday Christian: Emrich, a pastor, is the founder of The Jeremiah Project, a conservative non-profit. To date, he said between 10,000 and 12,000 signatures have been collected since late May. The goal, he said, is to get about 80,000 signatures before the petitions are handed in to account for potential duplications and errors...

David French: Every School is a Party School

Posted on June 16, 2009
ADF attorney David French, Direct of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom, writes at the National Review Phi Beta Cons Blog: "The real culprit, of course, is culture. Colleges have developed a culture of nearly unrestrained hedonism. Binge drinking isn't an accident, it's the entire point of the Thursday (or is it now Wednesday?) to Sunday party circuit ...

Family Advocates Baffled as NASA Celebrates Homosexual ?Pride? Month

Posted on June 16, 2009
LifeSiteNews: "NASA headquarters issued a press release Monday declaring that the space-faring organization would participate in, and encourage celebration of, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month declared by President Obama." NASA information page

U.S. Conference of Mayors Resolution advocates marriage redefinition

Posted on June 16, 2009
"BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that The U.S. Conference of Mayors supports marriage equality for same-sex couples, and the recognition and extension of full equal rights to such unions . . . "

Federal judge in Prop 8 challenge has mixed LGBT record

Posted on June 16, 2009
Roger Brigham reports in EDGE: "The Alliance Defense Fund, which is seeking to argue in support of Prop 8 in federal court next month, has a well-known and predictable track record against LGBT rights. That of the judge who will hear initial arguments, however, is something of a mixed bag...

U.S. Births Hint at Bias for Boys in Some Asian Families

Posted on June 16, 2009
". . . the statistical deviation . . . is significant, and . . . it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion...

Student Debt, Fool?s Gold?

Posted on June 16, 2009
NY Times: "In our discussion about the rising burden of student loans, we received numerous comments from readers who took on a lot of debt to pay for their education. Some found they simply couldn?t afford to repay the loans with the jobs they found after college...

Alan Sears: Proclamation Supporting Homosexual Agenda Reveals Our Nation at a Turning Point

Posted on June 16, 2009
ADF President and General Counsel Alan Sears writes at the ADF website: "Last week, the White House issued a proclamation (if you haven?t, you MUST read it!) that could mark a significant turning point in the history of our country if the Body of Christ fails to respond...

Americans United for Life Senior Counsel Clarke Forsythe Publishes Landmark Pro-Life Book

Posted on June 16, 2009
Are we pursuing good goals? Are we using wise judgment about what is possible in the circumstances? Are we effectively connecting means and ends? Are we preserving the possibility of future progress when the ideal cannot be immediately achieved?"

Divided we stand: imagining a devolution of political power

Posted on June 16, 2009
Paul Starobin writing in the Wall Street Journal: "Remember that classic Beatles riff of the 1960s: 'You say you want a revolution?' Imagine this instead: a devolution. Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society...

Thurgood Marshall Also Called Prejudiced, Leahy Says

Posted on June 16, 2009
Blog of the Legal Times: When the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Thurgood Marshall's nomination to the Supreme Court, the man who later became the first black justice faced questions along the lines of, "Are you prejudiced against the white people of the South?" Sen...

Brave New World ? Woman Aborts IVF Baby after ?Wrong? Embryo Implanted

Posted on June 16, 2009
'They've killed our baby.'

NOW Calls on Obama to Withdraw DOMA Brief and Renounce Discriminatory Law

Posted on June 16, 2009
NOW: "The National Organization for Women calls on President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to withdraw the U.S. Department of Justice brief filed in support of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and to publicly renounce this discriminatory law...

CNN: ?Born in male body, Jenny knew early that she was a girl?

Posted on June 16, 2009
CNN: "While still relatively rare -- one advocate estimates that 0.25 to 0.5 percent of the American population is transgendered -- the idea of changing gender identity has become more widespread in recent years . . . Many people who have transitioned, including Madden, say they knew they had been born into the wrong gender from childhood...

Washington Homosexual Advocates Planning to ?Out? Signers of Referendum Petition

Posted on June 16, 2009
Volokh Conspiracy: "The Spokane Spokesman reports: 'Petitions were being printed Tuesday for Referendum 71, which asks Washington voters to overturn a new law granting same-sex domestic partners many of the rights of spouses. But those who sign the petitions may be in for a surprise...

Canadian HRCs have an ?appetite for censorship?

Posted on June 16, 2009
Ezra Levant writing in the National Post: "Pesky civil rights -- like the right to speak the truth -- are a big reason why police don't have a 100% hate speech conviction rate like the CHRC does. So in its new report, the CHRC suggests that the defence of truth be removed from the Criminal Code...

Obama aide: ?Hate crimes to pass this week.? + Update: Vote scheduled

Posted on June 15, 2009
Daily Kos: "Kerry Elevald is reporting that John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, speaking at Washington D.C.?s Capital Pride Festival Sunday, told attendees that the Obama administration hopes to 'secure secure passage of Hate Crimes this coming week...

LA Times: ?A court battle California doesn?t need?

Posted on June 15, 2009
Los Angeles Times editorial: "By California's rules, [Chief Justice] George faces a retention election in 2010, and some predict that he could face challenges from either side -- or even both -- in this polarizing debate."

2nd Circuit: Non-custodial parent lacks authority to ?control? child?s education

Posted on June 15, 2009
In Fuentes v. Bd. of Educ., No. 06-4715 (2nd Cir. June 15, 2009), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the dismissal by a district court of Jesus Fuentes? challenge to the ?adequacy of special education services in his son?s public school ...

Albany judge orders warring Senate parties back to table; Democrats say they want to make deal

Posted on June 15, 2009
NY Daily News: "Judge gave warring lawmakers another day to hash out an agreement over control of the state Senate on Monday as Democrats said they want to work out a power-sharing deal with Republicans."

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