Religion & Law

President?s ?evolution? on marriage wasn?t intelligently designed

Posted on October 28, 2010
FRC Action: "[W]hen the President sat in the White House yesterday with liberal bloggers, he seemed perfectly comfortable ceding more ground on marriage. To soothe some hurt feelings that he hasn't done enough for homosexuals, the President tried to please his base...

Canada: Test-tube parenthood on trial

Posted on October 28, 2010
"Canadians have been forced to consider, and reconsider, the ethics and the cultural attitudes at the heart of this eugenics contract: a contract undertaken between a woman, an anonymous donor and a doctor agreeing to create a human being who was not party to the contract and did not give assent to it...

Pope says bishops must educate faithful to vote against abortion

Posted on October 28, 2010
Catholic News Service: "Bishops must guide their faithful to use their vote to oppose efforts to legalize abortion and euthanasia, Pope Benedict XVI told bishops from Brazil."

Servicemembers United video: ?The path forward on DADT during lame duck?

Posted on October 28, 2010
Servicemembers United on YouTube: "Servicemembers United's Executive Director, Alex Nicholson, explains how to get DADT repeal done during the lame duck session of Congress in November and December of 2010."

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Tenn. students keep up prayer at school despite ban

Posted on October 28, 2010
Christian Post: "Tennessee athletes, students and community members have been rallying together in prayer despite the efforts of Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Hamilton County superintendent to shut down prayer before football games and during graduation ...

The poor?s good marriages

Posted on October 28, 2010
David Lapp writing at First Things / On the Square: "Should the decline of marriage among the less-educated concern us? . . . While economic explanations abound, less appreciated is how now-demolished traditional norms helped to maintain marriage as a broadly democratic institution...

Laurence Tribe?s letter to Obama: Sotomayor ?not nearly as smart as she thinks she is?

Posted on October 28, 2010
Ed Whelan writes at National Review Online / Bench Memos: "I?ve obtained a copy of an interesting letter that Harvard law professor Larry Tribe wrote to his protégé, President Barack Obama, in the immediate aftermath of Justice Souter?s announcement of his decision to retire from the Court...

David Hacker: U.S. Department of Education sends conflicting messages about speech

Posted on October 28, 2010
ADF Attorney David Hacker writing at Speak Up Movement / University: "The U.S. Department of Education issued a 'Dear Colleague' letter Tuesday which reportedly reinforces the Department?s commitment to curb bullying through federal harassment laws. However, the letter confuses earlier Department policy, provides harassment examples that run into protected speech, and fails to adequately remind administrators of their First Amendment obligations...

Only a tiny percentage of eggs or embryos in IVF process will become babies

Posted on October 28, 2010
American Society for Reproductive Medicine: "Researchers from Shady Grove Fertility Center in Maryland set out to quantify the fate of the eggs retrieved in the IVF process . . . only 7.5% of all the fertilized eggs will go on to become live-born children...

Utah: Cedar City holds off on approving sexual orientation discrimination ordinances

Posted on October 28, 2010
Salt Lake Tribune: "The City Council here failed to pass a pair of ordinances that would have made it illegal to discriminate in housing and employment based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Instead, the council wants to return to the issues and possibly pass the intent of the ordinances but in the form of resolutions, possibly as early as next week...

Cuba set to open new seminary; first religious building built in half a century

Posted on October 28, 2010
Catholic.net (zenit.org): "The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will send a delegation of its Church of Latin America Subcommittee to Cuba in recognition of the new seminary to be opened in early November."

Daniel Henninger: The rage against Citizens United

Posted on October 28, 2010
Daniel Henninger writing at The Wall Street Journal: "Presidencies and parties decline for lots of reasons, but looking back, one of the pivotal events in writing the history of the first Obama term is likely to be the tongue-lashing he gave several Supreme Court justices seated before him at his 2010 State of the Union message ...

WI: Kleefisch apologizes for same-sex ?marriage? comment

Posted on October 28, 2010
Associated Press: "The Republican candidate for Wisconsin lieutenant governor is apologizing for suggesting that extending domestic partner benefits to gay state employees could lead to approving marriage to dogs or furniture."

NC State Bar panel backs anti-bias language

Posted on October 28, 2010
The Sun News (AP): "The ethics committee of the North Carolina State Bar voted Thursday in favor of changing . . . their rules of professional conduct to add language stating lawyers shouldn't discriminate while working. The provision contains a list of characteristics that shouldn't lead to bias...

Yale Dean Gentry to students: ?consensual sex can be glorious?

Posted on October 28, 2010
Yale Herald: "In an email to the entire Yale student body, Dean of Student Marichal Gentry reminded students that 'consensual sex can be glorious'."

Teacher?s union, other groups urge Prop. 8 overturn, ignoring members? views

Posted on October 28, 2010
Pacific Justice Institute: "Teachers, African-Americans and others who voted for Prop. 8 might be surprised to learn that groups claiming to represent them filed legal briefs this week urging that Prop. 8 be struck down. Amicus or friend-of-the-court briefs were filed over the last two days by a number of groups supporting court-mandated gay marriage...

AZ: Are mega-churches and retreats abusing the system in Yavapai County?

Posted on October 28, 2010
Verde Independent: "Where should county officials draw the zoning line for tax-exempt religious retreats and mega-churches? Members of the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors and the Planning and Zoning Commission tried to confront that thorny issue without infringing on First Amendment rights at their joint study session Wednesday...

Washington Blade: ?Gay candidates poised for victory in D.C. council, MD races?

Posted on October 28, 2010
Washington Blade: "D.C.'s two gay Council members ? David Catania (I-At-Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) ? are considered strong favorites to win re-election, and the number of out gay or lesbian members of the Maryland Legislature is expected to increase from four to seven in Tuesday?s election...

Stanford University opens new stem cell building, bucking federal restrictions

Posted on October 28, 2010
Contra Costa Times: "Across the nation, embryonic stem cells live in legal limbo, their fate uncertain with a lawsuit challenging public funding for research. But they are cherished celebrities at Stanford University's School of Medicine, which on Wednesday inaugurated a new home for them at the Lorry I...

Gender-neutral housing continues to spread

Posted on October 28, 2010
Student Free Press Association: "'[Gender-neutral housing] is just part of the next logical step in a university project that is designed to cause students to rethink essentially everything they knew about sex and gender,' said [David French], the director of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian organization ...

Illinois soldiers wait for ballots; prisoners get hand delivery

Posted on October 28, 2010
Big Government: "Over 35 counties in Illinois missed the deadline to mail military ballots to our soldiers defending America. But in Chicago, county election officials have taken special steps to ensure that no inmates at the Cook County Jail are unable to cast a ballot...

Boehner: GOP ?won?t compromise? on pro-abortion health care

Posted on October 28, 2010
LifeNews: "House Republican leader John Boehner, the pro-lifer who could replace pro-abortion Speaker Nancy Pelosi if Tuesday?s elections produce the landslide most predict, says Republicans won?t compromise. When it comes to the abortion-funding health care 'reform' measure Pelosi passed and President Barack Obama signed, Boehner said yesterday that the GOP won?t back down on doing everything possible to combat it...

Islamists accuse Egypt?s Christians of behaving like . . . Islamists?

Posted on October 28, 2010
Middle East Forum: "The persecution of Egypt's Coptic minority is taking an ironic, and dangerous, turn: Islamist leaders are now projecting the worst traits of radical Islam onto Egypt's Christians . . . Needless to say, such charges are preposterous: in a nation and society where Islam is supreme; where sharia ...

Even top schools struggle under federal testing standards

Posted on October 28, 2010
Chicago Tribune: "More than half of Illinois public schools ? including, for the first time, many of the state's academic powerhouses ? failed to meet test targets this year, raising questions not only about the schools, but also the standard by which they are judged...

UK: Pupils from elite schools secure one in ten Oxford places

Posted on October 28, 2010
Telegraph: "A group of 11 independent schools, which charge parents up to £29,000 a year, accounted for 278 of the 3,034 undergraduate places at Oxford last year, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."

Justice O?Connor, Nevadans for Qualified Judges spar over robocalls

Posted on October 28, 2010
Politico: "O'Connor did not indicate what she did to authorize the group to do with her recording. The group did not identify who gave it permission to use O'Connor's voice or what convinced them that it was OK to do so in automated phone calls. The group, which is backing a ballot measure to do away with judicial elections in Arizona, has blamed a programming glitch for the late-night calls and said no more robocalls are planned ...

Faith without reason: Review of ?The Closing of the Muslim Mind?

Posted on October 28, 2010
At The American Spectator, Matthew Kenefick reviews The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis by Robert R. Reilly: "Reilly argues that 'the denigration of reason and the primacy of force that developed within Islamic thinking after the suppression of the Mu'tazilites are what have produced the dismissal of dialogue...

Culture matters more than politics

Posted on October 28, 2010
R.R. Reno writing at First Things / On The Square: "Today as we shift toward a seemingly ever-increasing interest in the machinery of partisan politics, we?re becoming Marxists by default. Marx held that economic realities are fundamental, and questions of culture are epiphenomenal ...

Persecution in Burma caught on camera

Posted on October 28, 2010
OneNewsNow: "In an effort to raise awareness about the 24/7 operation to seek out, tend to, and spotlight Christians who are being intimidated, raped, killed and driven from their homes, CFI recently sponsored a trip for members of a popular Irish Christian band called Bluetree...

UK: Catholic diocese makes war on Catholic school and parents for keeping the faith?

Posted on October 27, 2010
This is London: "Applications for its prized places, the Vaughan decided to demand proof of levels of Catholic adherence beyond the diocese's standard requirement that children be baptised Catholics whose parents regularly attend mass . . . This was regarded as uncontroversial by the parent body but caught the attention of officials at the Westminster diocese...

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