Religion & Law

D.C. Council Wants Vouchers

Posted on July 13, 2009
Wall Street Journal: "The life and death saga of the D.C. voucher program for low-income families continues. A majority of the members of the D.C. Council recently sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan expressing solid support for continuing the program...

Peter Heck vs. Annie Laurie Gaylor: What does the Establishment Clause prohibit?

Posted on July 13, 2009
AFA has published a portion of a discussion between talk show host Peter Heck and Annie Lauri Gaylor, who is the President of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. You can hear the audio here.

The Sotomayor Confirmation Hearings: Will Sotomayor Be a Justice Unleashed?

Posted on July 13, 2009
National Law Journal: "One of the recurring themes from Republican senators thus far this morning is that no matter how moderate or even-handed her record as a district and appeals judge has been, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will likely turn out to be an unabashed liberal once she joins the high court and is untethered by the precedents she must follow as an appeals court judge...

Marriage Remains Key Predictor of Party Identification

Posted on July 13, 2009
Gallup: "Gallup analysis of more than 29,000 interviews conducted in June highlights a continuing and significant marriage gap in party identification."

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Sri Lanka for tough measures against child pornography

Posted on July 13, 2009
Hindu News reports: "Sri Lankan government has ordered tough measures to curb child pornography after it noticed that many websites containing obscene material are easily accessible in the country."

?Allies? stance cited in US gays-in-military debate?

Posted on July 13, 2009
Associated Press: "With such polarized views as a backdrop, Associated Press reporters took an in-depth look at how the militaries of Israel, Britain and Australia have managed with serve-openly policies, and interviewed partisans on both sides of the debate in the United States about the relevance of those experiences...

FDA approves Teva?s single dose emergency contraceptive

Posted on July 13, 2009
John George reports in the Philadelphia Business Journal: "The Food and Drug Administration approved Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc.?s new drug application Monday for Plan B One-Step, an emergency contraception tablet."

Surfing for porn shouldn?t be a public library service

Posted on July 13, 2009
Elizabeth Hovde reports at OregonLive.com: "Concern for librarians and children led the federal government to tie some federal dollars for library Internet access to a requirement that libraries have the ability to block minors from pornography and other potentially harmful sites...

OK: ACLU investigates Sally Kern?s morality proclamation

Posted on July 13, 2009
News9.com reports: "State Representative Sally Kern's proclamation for morality is creating new controversy . . . Now, the American Civil Liberties Union has launched its own investigation into whether or not Kern improperly used state tax dollars to fund her endeavor...

Graham to Sotomayor: You?re in, barring a ?meltdown?

Posted on July 13, 2009
The Hill: "During his opening statement in Monday?s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) told nominee Sonia Sotomayor that she is virtually assured of Senate approval. 'Unless you have a complete meltdown, you?re going to be confirmed,' said Graham, capturing the sentiment of many Republicans at the outset of Sotomayor?s hearing...

Texas: ACLU, Americans United target council prayers

Posted on July 13, 2009
OneNewsNow: "The complaint comes from two groups -- the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State -- which, in a letter to the council, noted that videos of meetings over a nine-month period indicated that every prayer except one began or ended with an invocation of the name of Jesus Christ...

Choose based on merit, not identity or ideology

Posted on July 13, 2009
John Steward writing in the Des Moines Register: "In reality, alternating 'boy, girl' may work on the playground, but when it comes to judicial appointments (or elected offices, or editorial page editors) we need the best and brightest. Unfortunately, identity politics, where one vigorously supports a person based on ethnicity or gender, has clouded our collective thinking...

Appeals court upholds MA law establishing protest-free zone around abortion clinics

Posted on July 13, 2009
Medical News Today: "Tim Chandler, legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which helped represent the plaintiffs, said abortion-rights opponents "shouldn't be penalized for expressing their beliefs." He added that the fund and its supporters were evaluating the 'next legal step' (Finucane, Boston Globe, 7/10)...

Who is President Obama?s science czar?

Posted on July 13, 2009
M.Z. Hemingway writing at Get Religion: "His name is John Holdren. He is President Obama?s science czar ? director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, assistant to the president for Science and Technology, and co-chair of the President?s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology...

?The embryo troubles of Obama?s top doctor?

Posted on July 13, 2009
Justin D. Barnard writes at Public Discourse: "A cloned human embryo, no less than a human embryo produced by the union of gametes, is an embryonic human. That is a matter of biological fact that Collins conveniently shuffles off stage. The moral implications are clear, and clearly contradict Collins? conclusion: the embryo produced by cloning enjoys the same moral status, whatever one judges that to be, as the embryo produced the old-fashioned way...

Wesley J. Smith: Animal-rights extremism in the Obama entourage is no joke

Posted on July 13, 2009
Wesley J. Smith writing in The Weekly Standard: "Animal standing has friends in some surprisingly high places--including potentially at the highest levels of the Obama administration. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, ranking Republican member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, recently announced he was holding up the confirmation of law professor Cass Sunstein--a close friend of the president rumored to be on the fast track for the Supreme Court--as the White House's 'regulations czar...

ADF attorney to testify before Mass. Legislature on ?hate crimes? bill for the sexually confused

Posted on July 13, 2009
Alliance Defense Fund Legal Counsel Tim Tracey will be available for media interviews Tuesday following his testimony before the Massachusetts Legislature at a public hearing on H.B. 1728, titled ?An Act Relative to Gender Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes...

China Blames Violence in Its Muslim Western Region on Outsiders

Posted on July 13, 2009
CNSNews: "Amid reported quiet in its far-west Xinjiang region, Chinese state media on Monday charged that pro-Uighur protests at Chinese diplomatic missions in the West indicated that outsiders had planned the recent violence in the Muslim-majority area...

Utah: ?Helpless, as ex rips boy away?

Posted on July 13, 2009
Rosemary Winters reports in the Salt Lake City Tribune: "Mylar, a former Utah attorney general candidate, belongs to a conservative alliance of "Christian attorneys," the Alliance Defense Fund, and regularly fights against the extension of rights for gay and lesbian couples...

?British House of Lords Keeps Free Speech Defense To Inciting Hatred Against Gays?

Posted on July 13, 2009
Religion Clause Blog: "In Britain last Thursday, the House of Lords, by a vote of 186-133, deleted from the proposed Coroners and Justice Bill section 61 which would have done away with a statutory free speech defense to the crime of inciting homophobic hatred...

Importance of Europe?s ?Roe v. Wade? case grows exponentially with elevation in status

Posted on July 13, 2009
"ADF attorneys defending legal protections for pre-born children in Ireland at the European Court of Human Rights say the importance of the case has grown exponentially . . . "

Contract or not, lesbian partner can?t be ?mommy?

Posted on July 13, 2009
Drew Zahn reports at WorldNetDaily: "Frank D. Mylar, an attorney teamed with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal alliance defending religious liberty, sanctity of life, marriage and the family, represented Dickson and her 2-year-old boy."

Same-Sex Marriage Bill Clears Calif. Assembly Panel

Posted on July 13, 2009
"A bill that would recognize what may be thousands of same-sex marriages performed outside of California sailed through a policy committee Thursday . . . "

Abortion protester whisked out of Sotomayor hearing

Posted on July 13, 2009
AP: "An anti-abortion protester briefly disrupted the opening of Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination hearing.

Federalist Society online debate: The Sotomayor nomination

Posted on July 13, 2009
Federalist Society: "In this installment of Originally Speaking, Thomas C. Goldstein, Wendy Long, Louis Michael Seidman, David Stras, and M. Edward Whelan III discuss how to approach Sotomayor's nomination: what standard Senators should use to support or oppose the nomination, what deference should be given to the President, what weight should be given to the nominee's views on issues, what questions the Committee should ask and which ones the nominee should answer...

?Brief guide to gay marriage laws across ?conservative? EU?

Posted on July 13, 2009
Séverine Lenglet reports at Cafe Babel: "The ILGA [International Lesbian and Gay Association], whose mandate is to defend lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans- and intersex rights, will publish a report on the rights of homosexuals in Europe this month. Its conclusions are damning...

UK: David Cameron ?sacrificed Catholic adoption for gay vote?

Posted on July 13, 2009
The Christian Institute: "Newspaper columnist Gerald Warner says the Conservative leader had 'calculated that it was worthwhile insulting Catholics (8 per cent of the electorate) to please homosexuals (0.8 per cent) because he believed (correctly) that the former do not constitute a bloc vote and imagined (incorrectly) that the latter do...

ADF attorney to testify before WV Legislature on need for marriage amendment

Posted on July 13, 2009
Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence will be available for media interviews Tuesday following his testimony before the West Virginia Legislature on the need for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Allowing for Cultural Discussion of Queerness and Pansexuality: Sex/Gender/Sexual Belief Systems, the Religion Clauses, and the Ideal of Pluralism

Posted on July 13, 2009
Stetson Law Review: "The concepts of queerness and pansexuality could radically alter human interactions and the order of society by: destabilizing the categories of sex, gender, and sexuality; revealing that the binary sex/gender/sexuality system is unneeded; and allowing for the acceptance of difference...

The Tides of Vatican Influence in Italian Reproductive Matters

Posted on July 13, 2009
Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion: "This paper will consider the past and present Vatican influence over Italian reproductive laws, while discussing the future direction of Vatican action and Italian legislation."

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