Religion & Law

Town of Richmond to pay St. Benedict Center in discrimination case

Posted on June 28, 2010
The Keene Sentinel: "It?s being hailed as one of the largest settlements of its kind ? Richmond town officials have agreed to pay $1.15 million to end a religious discrimination case. ... The settlement was announced Friday afternoon by the Alliance Defense Fund ...

Sweden: State ?child-napping? escalates to international court

Posted on June 28, 2010
WorldNetDaily: "The state-sponsored 'child-napping' of a Swedish boy because his parents were homeschooling him is being escalated to the European Court of Human Rights, which is being asked to hear the case of Dominic Johansson. The application has been filed by the Alliance Defense Fund and the Home School Legal Defense Association...

Judge says evangelist can preach at ?gay-pride festival?

Posted on June 28, 2010
Wall Street Journal: "A Wisconsin evangelist will be able to distribute Bibles and discuss sin this weekend at a Minneapolis gay-pride festival, the result of a federal court ruling Friday that could spark a First Amendment battle in the Midwest. ... Mr...

David French: Sometimes, the good guys (or gals) win

Posted on June 28, 2010
ADF Attorney David French writing at Speak Up Movement / University: "Congratulations to former ADF Clients (and current treasured friends) Ruth Malhotra and Orit Sklar for a glowing profile in today?s Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ... 'Decisive victory' is an understatement...

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InternetSafety.com says new .xxx domain will create twice the porn

Posted on June 28, 2010
PR Newswire: "Under the ICANN guidelines, sites with adult content are not required to purchase a domain ending in .xxx or to abandon their existing .com addresses. Therefore, existing adult sites will be able to purchase .xxx versions of their domains and simply use the new address to point traffic to their existing ...

Afghan Christians detained as politician calls for converts? execution

Posted on June 28, 2010
Catholic Culture: "Afghan authorities have detained over 20 of the nation?s Christians after Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a deputy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan?s National Assembly, called for the execution of converts to Christianity. Khawasi?s comments followed the broadcast of adult baptisms on Afghan television...

CLS v Martinez: The Alliance Defense Fund responds

Posted on June 28, 2010
T. Dalrymple writing at Cross and Culture: "In my earlier post I framed the issues behind CLS v. Martinez and noted the first-blush response of David French, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which argued the case alongside the Christian Legal Society...

CWA objects to pornography industry getting .xxx domain

Posted on June 28, 2010
Christian NewsWire: "CWA objects to ICANN giving so-called 'adult entertainment' respectability in the Internet world. ... Penny Young Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America (CWA) said, 'Since the new .xxx domain is voluntary, it will not isolate all pornography in one area, but it will cause parents and others to think that the Internet is safe for children...

Graham Signals willingness to support Kagan

Posted on June 28, 2010
The Blog of LegalTimes: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was the only Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to support the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor a year ago. Today, he continued to drop hints that he might be willing to vote for Elena Kagan, too...

Reason, will, appetite, and the end of education: Considering the role of evolutionary theory in modern teaching methods

Posted on June 28, 2010
Andrew Kern writing at The Circe Institute: "My conviction is this: when you apply naturalistic evolutionary teaching to education, you undercut education itself. ... When Darwin was believed to have demonstrated that humanity descended through an evolutionary process so that God was no longer a necessary concept and the soul was 'a needless hypothesis,' any Christian classical conception of reason and will were dismissed...

Day 1 of Senate hearings offers tale of 2 Kagans

Posted on June 28, 2010
Breitbart: "To those hearty souls who tuned in to C-SPAN on Monday it must have sounded like a tale of two Kagans. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the panel, previewed the GOP lines of attack?reaching all the way back to her college thesis on socialism, which he said 'seems to bemoan socialism's demise...

Archdiocese of Mexico City: Legalizing ?gay adoption? doesn?t make it moral

Posted on June 28, 2010
Catholic News Agency: "The spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City, Father Hugo Valdemar, said last week that if the country?s Supreme Court upholds the legalization of adoption by homosexual couples, the Church would continue to condemn the act as immoral...

Christian leader arrested for praying outside abortion clinic to plead ?not guilty?

Posted on June 28, 2010
ChristianNewsWire: "Rev. Mahoney is being charged with 'unlawful entry' . . . 'As I plead not guilty to these outrageous and baseless charges, I am affirming the power of the First Amendment and free speech and joining a long proud tradition of Americans who refused to keep silent and go silently into the night and surrender their God given rights and liberties...

Why does Washington Post need a reporter to cover conservatives?

Posted on June 28, 2010
Byron York writing in The Washington Examiner: In the past several years, newspapers have assigned reporters to specifically cover conservatives, but they haven't done the same thing for liberals. It started in January 2004, when the New York times chose David Kirkpatrick to cover the conservative movement...

?Porn?s new domain is good news?

Posted on June 28, 2010
Lance Ulanoff writing at PCMag.com: "Some conservative leaders have been quoted arguing that a porn-only domain would only serve to validate the porn industry. In other words, this multi-billion dollar business with thousands of employees, print services, video production operations and its own trade show is not already 'validated as an actual business'...

Chinese psychiatric hospitals used to incarcerate political opponents

Posted on June 28, 2010
BioEdge: "Chinese petitioners, troublemakers and corruption whistleblowers are being locked up in psychiatric institutions, according to the BMJ. Liu Feiyue, founder of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, says that he has documented more than 500 cases...

India may legalize commercial surrogacy

Posted on June 28, 2010
"India has become a world centre for surrogate motherhood. Now the government proposes to legalise commercial surrogacy. The Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) [Regulation] Bill 2010 will allow unmarried women to act as surrogates for both couples and singles, including homosexuals...

British researchers may have found way to communicate with people in ?vegetative state?

Posted on June 28, 2010
BioEdge: "British researchers believe that they have found a way to communicate with people who appear to be in a vegetative state. Recent studies have shown that responses from some of these people can be detected with an fMRI scanner."

CT: Fertility center fined for giving patient wrong embryos

Posted on June 28, 2010
"That patient who received the embryos was informed of the error within an hour and decided to take the 'morning after' pill to prevent the pregnancy, according to state records."

BeautifulPeople.com launches virtual sperm bank

Posted on June 28, 2010
PR Newswire: "www.BeautifulPeople.com, the dating site with a strict ban on ugly people, has launched a virtual sperm and egg bank for people who want to have beautiful babies. ... The Beautiful Baby service - which is also available to non-members - was created for people who want to maximize their chances of having good looking children...

US bishops clarify abortion ?for? mother?s health

Posted on June 28, 2010
Zenit: "Direct abortion is never morally permissible, but there are some medical procedures that are legitimate to protect the life of a pregnant mother, even if they might result in the death of her child. ... The committee added that a contrasting case arises in some situations where it might be permissible to perform a 'medical procedure on a pregnant woman that directly treats a serious health problem but that also has a secondary effect that leads to the death of the developing child...

What to do about pornography

Posted on June 28, 2010
Zenit: "Peter Kleponis, a Catholic psychotherapist who specializes in marriage and family therapy, . . . spoke with ZENIT about his extensive work with pornography users and their families, the success stories and how virtue plays a role in recovery...

Kagan hearings witness list released

Posted on June 28, 2010
Washington Post | 44: "The Senate Judiciary Committee has announced the witness list for Elena Kagan's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which are scheduled to begin Monday at 12:30 p.m."

?How Hollywood activists seized control of the fight for gay marriage?

Posted on June 28, 2010
Chuleenan Svetvilas writing in California Lawyer: "As Chad Griffin tells it, the idea for filing a federal challenge to Prop. 8 took shape ten days after it passed with 52 percent of the vote. Griffin and Kristina Schake, his business partner in the Los Angeles communications firm Griffin/Schake, had joined director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, for lunch at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel...

Children win as Louisiana enacts special needs scholarship program

Posted on June 28, 2010
American Federation for Children: "Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal this week signed into law the nation's 20th private school choice program, which will allow children with special needs to use state-funded scholarships to attend the private schools of their parents' choice...

A media welfare state?

Posted on June 28, 2010
Adam D. Thierer writing in The City Journal: "Imagine a world of 'post-corporate' newsrooms, where the state serves as the primary benefactor of the Fourth Estate. Billions flow from bureaucracies to media entities and individual journalists in the name of sustaining a 'free press...

Study: Competitive effects of means-tested school vouchers

Posted on June 28, 2010
Competitive Effects of Means-Tested School Vouchers | Google Viewer Author: David Figlio & Cassandra M. D. Hart "We study the effects of private school competition on public school students? test scores in the wake of Florida?s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program, now known as the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which offered scholarships to eligible low-income students to attend private schools...

Wall Street Journal: The Keynesian dead end

Posted on June 28, 2010
Wall Street Journal Editorial: "What the world has now reached instead is a Keynesian dead end. We are told to let Congress continue to spend and borrow until the precise moment when Mr. Summers and Mark Zandi and the other architects of our current policy say it is time to raise taxes to reduce the huge deficits and debt that their spending has produced...

Kagan vows to be unbiased, deferential to Congress

Posted on June 28, 2010
Associated Press: "Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan pledged Monday to be properly deferential to Congress if confirmed as a justice, while striving 'to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle and in accordance with law...

Reformed churches agree to unite in vote at Calvin College

Posted on June 28, 2010
The Grand Rapids Press: "The world's largest association of Reformed churches can now break bread together as one ecclesiastical body. An estimated 400 delegates approved Friday at Calvin College a constitution that merges the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council into the World Communion of Reformed Churches...

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