Religion & Law

Fighting for the First Amendment in NY

Posted on March 30, 2009
OneNewsNow: "Alliance Defense Fund is considering a federal lawsuit against Oyster Bay, New York, for violating a citizen's free-speech rights."

Putting the World Back Together? Recovering Faithful Citizenship in a Postmodern Age

Posted on March 30, 2009
George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper: "Render Unto Caesar provides evidence that America's identity and future are endangered by trends reifying radical human autonomy and choice. New threats surface in the form of legislation and judicial interpretations permitting choices that were once considered criminal to be accepted...

Church Schisms, Church Property, and Civil Authority

Posted on March 30, 2009
SSRN: "When the Supreme Court decided Jones v. Wolf it required courts to use secular criteria to decide church property disputes, yet there remains considerable uncertainty about the permissible latitude of those secular principles."

?Gay Marriage Would Not be Sufficient to Protect the Custodial Rights of Homosexual Parents?

Posted on March 30, 2009
Cynthia Ann Helzner: "However, judging by some courts' willingness to deny even biological homosexual parents' rights, same-sex marriage would not be sufficient to guarantee equal treatment under the law for gay and lesbian parents."

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Unofficial Family Law

Posted on March 30, 2009
Iowa Law Review:

The Psychological-Parent and De Facto-Parent Doctrines: How Should the Uniform Parentage Act Define ?Parent??

Posted on March 30, 2009
Iowa Law Review: "This Note advocates for the rejection of the doctrines and suggests that the Uniform Parentage Act define ?parent? to mean biological and adoptive parent, thus giving fit biological and adoptive parents the right to make decisions regarding third-party visitation...

Federal judge blocks charges in Pa. ?sexting? case

Posted on March 30, 2009
AP: "A federal judge has blocked a prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three northeastern Pennsylvania teenagers over racy cell phone pictures."

Two Utahns indicted on sex trafficking charge involving minors

Posted on March 30, 2009
Salt Lake Tribune: "Two South Salt Lake residents have been accused of recruiting underage girls to give erotic massages that end in sex acts. In a federal indictment that was unsealed late last week, DeWayne Eugene Hopkins, 27, and Julia Young, 19, were charged with one count each of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of children...

Thousands in Spain demand end to abortion

Posted on March 30, 2009
Martin Barillas reports at Spero News: "Hundreds of thousands of protesters, including families with children, filled the streets and plazas of cities throughout Spain on March 29 denouncing legislation proposed by the Socialists that would reform abortion law so as to allow minors to abort their pregnancies without parental consent at the age of 16...

Muslim island must give up polygamy as price of being part of France

Posted on March 30, 2009
SMH.com.au: "The mostly Muslim Indian Ocean island of Mayotte has overwhelmingly voted to integrate fully with France, a move that will bring financial benefits to residents but also outlaw practices such as polygamy and early marriages."

Alan E. Sears: Conscientious Objections

Posted on March 30, 2009
"The team now pulling the strings at the Department of Health and Human Services has decided that preserving religious liberty ? much less life in the womb ? is a luxury the nation can?t afford."

DNC Chair backs marriage redefinition in Vermont

Posted on March 30, 2009
Baptist Press: "Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean Saturday publicly backed a Vermont bill that would legalize 'gay marriage' and urged fellow Democrats in the state to support it."

?Christian Fundamentalist Group Preaches Patriarchy and Women?s Fertility as Weapons for Spiritual Warfare?

Posted on March 30, 2009
Mark Karlin has this post at AlterNet (a left wing website) interviewing Kathryn Joyce and discussing her new book that apparently tries to link the so-called "Quiverfull" movement with patriachialism, Sarah Palin, racism, Islam etc. . . The interview paints with a very broad brush and seem to be more of an attack on pro-lifers, social conservatives and those who oppose abortion ...

1st Circuit: Employer discrimination against women with children may violate Title VII

Posted on March 30, 2009
"Chadwick claims she was passed over for a promotion in favor of a less-qualified colleague without children."

David French: Americans United Misunderstands Free Association on Campus

Posted on March 27, 2009
AU would like for student fees to be an instrument of government control over expressive organizations . . .

Australia says Web blacklist combats child porn

Posted on March 27, 2009
AP: "Australia's communications minister has defended a proposed Internet blacklist as necessary to combat child pornography but admitted that at least one site had been wrongly blocked during trials . . . The blacklist, maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, is provided to creators of Internet filtering software that people can opt to install on their computers ...

Vietnamese Catholics lose appeal in land confiscation dispute

Posted on March 27, 2009
AP: "Hanoi court rejected the appeals Friday of eight Roman Catholics convicted last year of disturbing public order and damaging property during a series of demonstrations to demand the return of former church land . . . The communist government confiscated the plot several years after taking power from the French in 1954...

NJ girl, 14, arrested after posting nude pics

Posted on March 27, 2009
AP: "A 14-year-old New Jersey girl has been accused of child pornography after posting nearly 30 explicit nude pictures of herself on MySpace.com - charges that could force her to register as a sex offender if convicted . . . "

Judge Sees ?Serious? Issues in Cellphone Photos Case

Posted on March 27, 2009
NY Times: "A federal judge said at a hearing on Thursday that 'serious constitutional issues' were raised in a lawsuit filed by three teenage girls and their mothers against a county district attorney who threatened to arrest the students on pornography charges after seminude photographs of them appeared on other students? cellphones...

Texas Board Largely Supports Teaching Of Evolution Without Adding Alternatives

Posted on March 27, 2009
Religion Clause Blog: "The final set of hearings on these standards began Wednesay. (AP). Yesterday, according to the New York Times, the the Board by a vote of 7-7 refused to adopt a proposal to go back to the old 'strengths and weaknesses' language...

Sarah Palin, Catholics, Evangelicals, and Protestants on ?Shotgun Marriages?

Posted on March 27, 2009
The Washington Post carries this report by Anthony Stevens-Arroyo: "When Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, was introduced as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate of 2008, there was an announcement that her unwed but pregnant teenage daughter, Bristol, would marry the biological father ...

Headed toward extinction? World depopulation

Posted on March 27, 2009
USA Today: "World population will hit 7 billion by 2012, according to a recent United Nations report. Given that we just hit the 6 billion mark in October 1999, it is easy to conclude that there are just too many people in the world . . . Yes, human population is still growing in some places dramatically so...

The Political Obligations of Catholics: A Conversation with Denver?s Archbishop

Posted on March 27, 2009
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life carries this transcript of an interview with Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver. It begins: Catholic civic engagement plays a central role in American politics, and the question of how Catholic convictions translate to the public square is a matter of frequent discussion...

Hillary Clinton to receive Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood

Posted on March 27, 2009
Family Research Council: "Tomorrow in Houston, Texas, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to receive Planned Parenthood's highest honor--the 2009 Margaret Sanger Award."

California: The Folly of Stem Cell Subsidies

Posted on March 27, 2009
Kmele Foster writing at AFF Doublething Online: "So what has CIRM actually accomplished since Prop 71?s passage? Not much. In a September 2008 report for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Sigrid Fry-Revere and Molly Elgin find that only 15% of the money CIRM has distributed has been devoted to actual research...

The Relationship Between Economic Freedom And Political Freedom

Posted on March 27, 2009
Dave Prychitko writing at The Austrian Economists: "Considering both economic theory and the historical record, it is reasonable to believe that if a society tries to abolish the market economy it will find that it abolishes the wealth-generation and long-run growth that only a market system can provide, and, on top of that, it will become more undesirably statist and lead to severe reductions in human freedom...

?Mental bailout? costly for needy children

Posted on March 27, 2009
Jim Waters writing at the Bluegrass Institute: "It?s no surprise that powerful teacher unions succeeded in using the $410 billion federal spending bill to kill a voucher program that allows 1,700 students from low-income homes in Washington, D.C., to attend private schools through the D...

ADF: Hawaii ?civil unions? bill was bad attempt to undermine marriage

Posted on March 27, 2009
The proposed ?civil unions? bill, which failed to pass a Hawaii Senate committee Thursday, was a failed attempt to skirt the state?s constitutional amendment protecting marriage, according to attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund.

Effort to redefine marriage shifts back to New England

Posted on March 27, 2009
Findlaw (AP): "The effort for legal recognition of same-sex relationships has made a full circle back to northern New England. Hundreds of Vermonters rallied Friday at the Statehouse to protest the governor's plans to veto a bill that would allow gay marriage ...

One in Six Females Projected to Become a Teen Mother: Estimates as High as 1 in 4 in Nine States

Posted on March 27, 2009
National Council on Family Relations: An estimated 18% of females nationwide will become teen mothers, according to a new Child Trends research brief. The brief, Estimated Percentage of Females Who Will Become Teen Mothers: Differences Across States (pdf), also finds that states vary widely in the estimated percentage of females who will have a baby before the age of 20, ranging from 8% in New Hampshire to 30% in Mississippi ...

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