In the days before Gov. Martin O’Malley came out in support of same-sex marriage, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien privately urged him against “promoting a goal that so deeply conflicts with your faith.”

“Preserving the central role of the natural family unit has always been — and should continue to be — the reason why our government recognizes marriage as existing between one man and one woman,” the archbishop wrote to the governor in a letter dated July 20.

Two days later, O’Malley said he would introduce legislation next year to allow gay couples to marry.

“As a free and diverse people of many faiths, we choose to be governed under the law by certain fundamental principles or beliefs, among them ‘equal protection of the law’ for every individual and the ‘free exercise’ of religion without government intervention,” O’Malley said. “Other states have found a way to protect both these rights. So should Maryland.”

A same-sex marriage bill cleared the state Senate this year, but it was pulled from the House floor after vote-counters determined they were a few delegates shy of a majority. With O’Malley’s active support, backers are hopeful of success next year.

O’Malley, who is Catholic, opposed same-sex marriage when he first ran for governor in 2006. He said at the time that he had been “raised to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

His announcement last month came weeks after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that made New York the sixth state to allow gay couples to marry — and enjoyed a boost in his national profile.

“I am well aware that the recent events in New York have intensified pressure on you to lend your active support to legislation to redefine marriage,” O’Brien wrote, in a letter released Monday by the governor’s office.

Continue reading "O'Brien urged O'Malley against backing gay marriage" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

The National Association of Evangelicals is joining Jews and Muslims in opposition to the proposed ban on circumcision of male children in San Francisco.

“Jews, Muslims, and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham,” Leith Anderson, president of the Christian organization, said Thursday in a statement. “No American government should restrict this historic tradition. Essential religious liberties are at stake.”

Opponents of circumcision have gathered enough signatures to get the ban on San Francisco's city ballot in November. The measure would make circumcision of a male under 18 a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.

The National Association of Evangelicals says the ban would violate the First Amendment guarantee of the freedom to exercise one’s religious beliefs. The organization says its guiding policy document affirms the principles of religious freedom and liberty of conscience, which it describes as both historically and logically at the foundation of the American experiment.

“While evangelical denominations traditionally neither require nor forbid circumcision, we join Jews and Muslims in opposing this ban and standing together for religious freedom,” Anderson said.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

The Vatican told bishops around the world Monday that it is important to cooperate with police in reporting priests who rape and molest children and said they should develop guidelines for preventing sex abuse by next year.

But the suggestions in the letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are vague and nonbinding, and they contain no enforcement mechanisms to ensure bishops actually draft the guidelines or follow them.

That is a significant omission given that the latest scandal in the United States involves allegations Philadelphia's archbishop left accused priests in ministry despite purportedly tough U.S. guidelines, and evidence that Irish bishops were stonewalling an independent board overseeing compliance with the guidelines of the church in Ireland.

The document marks the latest effort by the Vatican to show it's serious about rooting out priestly pedophiles and preventing abuse following the eruption on a global scale of the abuse scandal last year with thousands of victims coming forward.

But it failed to impress advocates for victims who have long blamed the power of bishops bent on protecting the church and its priests for fueling the scandal. Without fear of punishment themselves, bishops frequently moved pedophile priests from parish to parish rather than reporting them to police or punishing them under church law.

"There's nothing that will make a child safer today or tomorrow or next month or next year," said Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the main U.S. victims group Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests.

Critically, the letter reinforces bishops' exclusive authority in dealing with abuse cases. It says independent lay review boards that have been created in some countries to oversee the church's child protection policies and ensure compliance "cannot substitute" for bishops' judgment and power.

Recently, such lay review committees in the U.S. and Ireland have reported that some bishops "failed miserably" in following their own guidelines and had thwarted the boards' work by withholding information and by enacting legal hurdles that made ensuring compliance impossible.

"Our central concern is that bishops and religious leaders retain enormous discretionary powers to decide if an allegation is credible," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of the Irish victims group One in Four.

Continue reading "Vatican suggests bishops report abuse to police" »

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Associated Press writer Julie Pace reports:

President Barack Obama says those opposing a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. shouldn't have amnesia about how the country began. He says America is a nation of immigrants.

Speaking at an annual Hispanic prayer breakfast in Washington, Obama also recalled times past when religious communities helped change the country. He talked about Episcopalians in Boston, where early patriots planned the Revolution, and Baptist churches in the South that sparked the civil rights movement.

Obama says he'll keep pushing and trying to work with Congress on the immigration issue. But he said again that building a widespread movement is the only way to get a comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The Associated Press reports:

A Georgia judge has reversed a decision that blocked a Muslim man from his courtroom because he was wearing religious headwear.

Henry County State Court Judge James Chafin said he found "through his own research that there is a basis in the Quran for both men and women to cover their heads as a religious observance."

Three separate times, the judge had blocked Troy "Tariq" Montgomery from entering his courtroom to dispute a traffic ticket because he was wearing a kufi, a traditional Muslim head covering. Montgomery said he was surprised by the decision but hopeful no other Muslims will have to face similar objections.

The Judicial Council of Georgia decided in July 2009 to allow headwear that is worn for religious or medical reasons after a similar dispute.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

The Associated Press reports:

A Roman Catholic priest in Connecticut has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading no contest to stealing more than $1 million in church money and spending it on male escorts and a lavish lifestyle.

The Rev. Kevin Gray, former pastor at Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Parish in Waterbury, was also sentenced Wednesday to three years of probation.

The Republican-American reports that a plea of no contest was entered on Gray's behalf, which means he didn't admit guilt, but a conviction for first-degree larceny was entered on his record.

Prosecutors say the 65-year-old Gray won't have to pay back the money because the Diocese of Hartford did not ask for restitution.

Gray's attorney called many of the charges against his client overblown.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Associated Press writer Amy Taxin reports:

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a group of Muslim activists and organizations cannot review additional records of FBI inquiries into their activities but berated the government for misleading the court about the existence of the files.

U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said six Muslim groups and five individuals who sued in 2007 to gain access to records they believed the FBI was keeping do not have a right to much of the information because of national security concerns.

The ruling came amid a nearly five-year battle by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Muslim activists to obtain files they believe would show the FBI has been unlawfully targeting Muslims in Southern California.

Carney reached his decision after privately reviewing more than 100 pages of documents to ensure the government had complied with the Freedom of Information Act in denying access to plaintiffs.

In his 18-page ruling, Carney declined to reveal the number or nature of the records the FBI kept on the plaintiffs, citing national security concerns.

He also reached the conclusion that federal government attorneys misled the court about the existence of the documents.

"The government's representations were then, and remain today, blatantly false," Carney wrote. "The government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the court."

Continue reading "Judge rules Muslim plaintiffs can't see FBI files" »

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Associated Press correspondent Dena Potter reports:

Virginia's prison system did not violate a Muslim inmate's religious rights when it refused to allow him to grow a 1/8-inch beard, which he believes is required by his religion, a federal judge has ruled.

William Couch, a 50-year-old Sunni Muslim, is a medium-security prisoner serving multiple life sentences for rape and other convictions. He challenged the Virginia Department of Corrections' grooming policy, which bans long hair and beards.

U.S. District Judge Samuel G. Wilson in Harrisonburg sided with the department in a ruling Thursday. Couch's attorney, Jeffrey Fogel, filed an appeal Monday.

Department spokesman Larry Traylor declined to comment on the case.

Fogel argued a 1/8-inch beard would be too short to allow Couch to easily change his appearance if he escaped or hide weapons or other contraband, which is why the department argues the policy is needed.

"There is no conceivable security issue for a Muslim, with concededly sincere beliefs, to grow a 1/8-inch beard," Fogel said Monday.

It will be difficult for Couch to convince the federal appeals court, however.

Continue reading "Judge denies Muslim inmate's beard lawsuit" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The former Alabama judge known for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse says he is forming an exploratory committee for a possible presidential run.

Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore made the announcement Monday on the Des Moines, Iowa, radio station WHO. He said he would immediately begin a weeklong tour of Iowa. January's Iowa Caucuses will be the first test for 2012 candidates.

Moore said in a release that he is concerned about what he called the country's moral, economic and constitutional crisis.

Moore, a conservative Christian, came to prominence as a circuit judge when he posted the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. Later, he was removed from office as chief justice for refusing to move the Ten Commandments monument.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Associated Press correspondent Dave Collins reports:

A prosecutor says racism that had been brewing for years "reached its boiling point" when a white man and two friends burned a predominantly black Massachusetts church after Barack Obama's election as president.

Nicole Lee Ndumele presented her closing argument Monday in federal court in Springfield in the case of 26-year-old Michael Jacques.

Jacques and two friends were charged with setting fire to the Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield hours after Obama's election in November 2008.

Ndumele said Jacques told his friends Obama's election meant blacks and Puerto Ricans were taking over the country, and he confessed several times to his involvement in the fire.

The defense has said that Jacques only used racial epithets with his white friends and that his confession was coerced.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Associated Press correspondent Elaine Ganley reports:

Karima has a plan. If police stop her for wearing a veil over her face, she'll remove it — then put it back on once they're out of sight. If that doesn't work, she'll stay home, or even leave France.

For Muslim women in France who cover their faces with veils, it is the moment for making plans. Starting April 11, a new law banning garments that hide the face takes effect. Women who disobey it risk a fine, special classes and a police record.

The law comes as Muslims face what some see as a new jab at their religion: President Nicolas Sarkozy's party is holding a debate Tuesday on the place of Islamic practices, and Islam itself, in strictly secular but traditionally Catholic France.

The increasing focus on France's Muslims — who number at least 5 million, the largest such population in western Europe — comes with presidential elections a year away and support for a far-right party growing. A recent palpable rise in tensions has also been boosted by fears of a mass migration of Muslims due to disarray in the Arab world.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant put it bluntly Monday.

"This growth in the number of (Muslims) and a certain number of behaviors cause problems," he said in remarks carried on French radio. "There is no reason why the nation should accord to one particular religion more rights than religions that were formerly anchored in our country."

Continue reading "Veil ban comes amid tightening focus on Muslims" »

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Associated Press correspondent Jennifer Dobner reports:

Jailed polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs may no longer have control of his southern Utah-based church after a senior leader on Monday moved to replace him.

William E. Jessop filed papers with the Utah Department of Commerce to take over as president of the corporation that is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Jessop, who served as bishop of the twin FLDS border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., said Monday his rise to the presidency is not an attempt to take over the church, but rather the fulfillment of an earlier directive from Jeffs.

"It is an attempt to preserve ... the church," Jessop, 41, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

It remained unclear whether Jeffs would immediately lose all power in the church or share it with Jessop, at least for now.

Jeffs has not filed papers with the state indicating he had plans to resign. However, he would not have to formally step down as the church's president for Jessop to be installed, Commerce Department spokeswoman Jennifer Bolton said Monday.

An attempt to reach Jeffs at the Texas jail where is being held was unsuccessful Monday, and a telephone call to his criminal attorney was not immediately returned. A message left for Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney who represents the church in civil matters, also wasn't returned.

Jeffs, 55, was convicted in Utah in 2007 on two felony counts of rape as an accomplice and was ordered to serve life sentences, but the convictions were later overturned.

Earlier that year, while jailed and awaiting trial, Jeffs tried to cede authority of the church — both as president and spiritual leader — to Jessop in a series of recorded telephone calls to followers and to Jessop, himself.

"I know of your ordination, that you are the key holder, and I have sent a note with my signature so that there is no question," Jeffs told Jessop in a Jan. 24, 2007, telephone call from a Utah jail.

Continue reading "Church elder moves to replace Jeffs" »

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Associated Press correspondent Dave Collins reports:

A federal prosecutor told a jury Monday that a man and two friends were racists so upset when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 that they burned down a predominantly African-American church just hours after the voting ended.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Smyth gave his opening argument on the first day of the trial of Michael Jacques, 26, in U.S. District Court.

"We are here today because of racism," Smyth told the 16 jurors, including four alternates. "We are here today because of the depth of their intolerance."

Jacques and two co-defendants, Benjamin Haskell and Thomas Gleason, were charged with using gasoline to set the Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield on fire in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 2008. The building was under construction at the time. A few firefighters were injured, but recovered.

Authorities say all three men, who are white, confessed to setting the fire. Haskell, 24, of Springfield, pleaded guilty to civil rights charges and was sentenced in November to nine years in prison. Gleason, 23, who lives on the same street as the church, pleaded guilty last year, awaits sentencing and will be testifying against Jacques.

Smyth told jurors that all three men confessed during videotaped interviews and there is also incriminating audio recordings.

Jacques lawyer, Lori Levinson, told the jury that there is no physical evidence against her client and that authorities coerced him into confessing during a grueling seven-hour interrogation during which he suffered withdrawal from addictions to Percocet and cigarettes.

"You will learn that getting his next dose of his drug of addiction is what became the most important thing in the world ... and he would say anything," Levinson said.

Continue reading "Trial starts in alleged anti-Obama church fire" »

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Associated Press correspondent Joann Loviglio reports:

The Philadelphia archdiocese suspended 21 Roman Catholic priests Tuesday who were named as child molestation suspects in a scathing grand jury report released last month. The priests have been removed from ministry while their cases are reviewed, Cardinal Justin Rigali said. The names of the priests were not being released, a spokesman for the archdiocese said.

"These have been difficult weeks since the release of the grand jury report," Rigali said in a statement. "Difficult most of all for victims of sexual abuse but also for all Catholics and for everyone in our community."

The two-year grand jury investigation into priest abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia resulted in charges against two priests, a former priest and a Catholic school teacher who are accused of raping young boys. And in an unprecedented move in the U.S., a former high-ranking church official was accused of transferring problem priests to new parishes without warning anyone of prior sex-abuse complaints.

Since 2002, when the national abuse crisis erupted in the Archdiocese of Boston, American dioceses have barred hundreds of accused clergy from public church work or removed the men permanently from the priesthood. The actions of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia stand out because they come more than eight years after the U.S. bishops reformed their national child protection policies and pledged swift action to keep potential abusers away from young people.

The grand jury named 37 priests who remained in active ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse. After the release of the report, the second such investigation in the city in six years, Rigali vowed to take its calls for further reforms seriously.

In addition to the 21 priests placed on leave Tuesday, three others named by the grand jury were suspended a week after the report's release in February. There were five other priests who would have been suspended: one who was already on leave, two who are "incapacitated and have not been in active ministry," and two who no longer are priests in the archdiocese but are now members of another religious order that was not identified.

"The archdiocese has notified the superiors of their religious orders and the bishops of the dioceses where they are residing," the cardinal said.

Continue reading "21 Pa. priests named in abuse report are suspended" »

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Associated Press corrrespondent Lien Hoang reports:

The daily stroll had become routine for two elderly Sikh men in a Sacramento suburb, as well as for neighbors and friends accustomed to seeing the men walk by with their long beards and turbans.

But the traditional headwear might have singled them out late last week when they were gunned down, one fatally, in what police are investigating as a suspected hate crime. On Monday, local religious leaders pleaded for the community to come forward with leads but also said they will not be deterred by violence.

"Our community will continue to wear our turbans proudly," said Navi Kaur (NA'vee Kar), the granddaughter of Surinder Singh, 65, who died from his wounds.

His friend, 78-year-old Gurmej Atwal, remains in critical condition.

They were walking through their neighborhood in Elk Grove, just south of the capital, Friday afternoon when someone in what witnesses described as a pickup truck opened fire. Police said they have no suspects nor evidence the shooting was a hate crime, but said the turbans could have made the elderly men a target of extremists.

During a news conference Monday at a Sikh temple, a spokesman said the recent violence has scared some temple-goers into concealing any indicators of their religion.

Sikhs often are mistaken for Muslims and have been the subject of occasional violence across the country since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"The enemies of the United States don't wear turbans in the United States," said Amar Shergill, a Sikh leader and attorney. "They don't want to be singled out. The result is that Sikh Americans since 9-11 have borne the brunt of violent hate crimes."

Continue reading "Killing provokes outrage among Sikhs, Muslims" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The Associated Press reports:

The Supreme Court won't hear an atheist's latest challenge to the U.S. government's references to God.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Michael Newdow, who says government references to God are unconstitutional and infringe on his religious beliefs.

This appeal dealt with the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on U.S. coins and currency. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco says the phrase is ceremonial and patriotic and "has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion."

The court refused to hear Newdow's appeal of that decision.

"In God We Trust" was first put on U.S. coins in the 1860s and on paper currency in the 1950s.

The case is Newdow v. Lefevre, 10-893.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Associated Press correspondents Gillian Flaccus and John Mone report:

VENTURA, Calif. – Carl Sutphin was a problem priest who left ministry in the Roman Catholic church just before being charged nearly a decade ago with 14 counts of molestation for sexually abusing six children.

He was never convicted of the charges, and he now lives in a doublewide mobile home in a quiet neighborhood within two miles of a youth sports complex, a library, two day care centers and at least two elementary schools. Sutphin admits he molested children as a priest, but his name doesn't show up in a sex offender database because the charges were dismissed because too much time had elapsed.

"I don't remember the numbers. I won't say I deny it. I do not deny it, no," Sutphin, who has been accused of abuse by 18 people, told The Associated Press. "The church could have acted quicker, I think, and sometimes reports were not made right away. In my case, some of the cases didn't come forward until 15 or 20 years later. ... So the church didn't do anything about it, they couldn't do anything about it."

Sutphin is one of dozens of former and current priests and religious brothers accused of childhood sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who now live unmonitored by civil authorities in communities across the state and nation. For many, the statute of limitations had expired by the time the abuse was reported, making it impossible for prosecutors to land convictions and subject the priests to sex offender databases and monitoring.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have worked with private investigators since October to compile a list of the priests' addresses, the most comprehensive accounting of the whereabouts of the 233 clergy accused of abuse in civil lawsuits in the Los Angeles archdiocese. They hope to use it Thursday to persuade a judge to recommend the release of all church files for every priest or religious brother ever accused of sexual abuse in the sweeping litigation.

Those confidential files are at the center of a heated dispute between the church and plaintiffs' lawyers since the nation's largest archdiocese reached a record-breaking $660 million settlement nearly four years ago. Plaintiffs want the files — which could include internal correspondence, previous complaints and therapy records — released, saying it's a matter of public safety. The church is pushing for a more limited release of information.

The list of addresses, obtained by The Associated Press, contains nearly 50 former priests who live unmonitored in California, and another 15 in cities and towns from Maryland to Texas to Montana. More than 80 more cannot be located despite an exhaustive search by plaintiffs' attorneys. Four are believed to have fled to Mexico or South America. About 80 are dead.

Continue reading "AP: Abusive priests live unmonitored" »

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Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien is urging Catholics to contact the lawmakers following a committee vote in Annapolis Friday to send same-sex marriage legislation to the full House of Delegates.

O'Brien's statement:

"The Judiciary Committee's disputed decision to advance legislation that would redefine marriage in Maryland is both regrettable and irresponsible. Instead of strengthening and protecting marriage, our State has moved one step closer to dismantling it altogether, a move that would threaten the stability of society and families for current and future generations.

"It is only the relationship of a man to a woman, a father to a mother that can bring a child into the world, and it is this relationship that government, people of faith and all of society should be encouraging. Every child has the right to be loved and nurtured by his true father and mother, not only for his benefit but the benefit of our wider human family. How can this possibly be lost on people of good will today?

"I encourage every Catholic in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and all who value marriage and family, to immediately contact their elected officials in the House of Delegates to ensure that the voices of reason, faith and love of family are not lost in the ensuing debate."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (103)
        

Maryland's House Judiciary Committee has voted 12-10 to pass the same-sex marriage bill, sending it to the full House of Delegates. The 141-member chamber is expected take up debate as early as next week.

Del. Tiffany Alston, who had signed on to the bill as a sponsor but wavered and walked out on a planned vote earlier this week, voted against it. Committee Chairman Joseph F. Vallario Jr., a Democrat who does not support same-sex marriage, saved the legislation by voting to send it to the full House.

Before the final vote, Alston, a Prince George's County Democrat, attemped to amend the bill to establish civil unions instead of same-sex marriage. The effort drew praise from Republicans on the committee, but cricitism from her fellow Democrats. It failed.

Del. Jill Carter, the other holdout earlier this week, voted for the bill. The Baltimore Democrat supports same-sex marriage, but said she wanted to draw attention to education funding in Baltimore and her own legislation on child custody in divorce cases.

The bill's ride through the House already has been rockier than its passage in the Senate last week, raising new questions about its prospects in the full chamber. The House is expected to take up the debate next week, potentially the entire week.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has said he will sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.

Thanks to Julie Bykowicz, reporting from Annapolis.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Sun colleague Tricia Bishop reports:

In a dispute that began at a Marine's funeral in Westminster, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the First Amendment allows the Westboro Baptist Church to peaceably picket military funerals with its hate-filled, anti-gay messages.

"Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain," Chief Justice John G. Robert Jr. wrote in the opinion of the court.

"On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker," he continued. "As a Nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate."

The ruling, issued a day before the anniversary of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder's death, was a bitter disappointment for the Marine's father, Albert Snyder, who sued the Topeka, Kansas, church for picketing his son's 2006 funeral, claiming intentional infliction of emotional distress. But it was expected by free speech advocates, who found themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to align with a group that protests against gays, Catholics, Jews and others.

Read more on the Westboro Baptist Church decision at baltimoresun.com.

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Associated Press correspondent Thomas Watkins reports:

Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the FBI said Wednesday that the agency's use of a paid informant to infiltrate California mosques has left them and others Muslims with an enduring fear that their phones and e-mails are being screened and their physical whereabouts monitored.

The claims came at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The civil rights groups allege that former FBI informant Craig Monteilh violated Muslims' freedom of religion by conducting indiscriminate surveillance because of their faith.

The former fitness instructor with a criminal past spied on Orange County mosques for the FBI for more than a year from 2006 to 2007, recording conversations and meetings with a device concealed on his key ring and a camera hidden in a shirt button.

"To know that he was targeting me simply because I was a Muslim, it's sad," said Ali Malik, one of three plaintiffs named in the suit. "I live in paranoia. ... I just wish the FBI didn't do this."

Malik, a Pakistani-American, added that his wife had nightmares about him being snatched by agents.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said she could not comment on pending litigation but emphasized that the FBI does not target religious groups or individuals based on their religion.

"Any investigation would be based on allegations of criminal activity," she said.

Continue reading "Suit claims FBI violates Muslims' rights at mosque" »

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Associated Press correspondent Jennifer Dobner reports:

SALT LAKE CITY – Jailed polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs has resumed legal control over his Utah-based church even though he is jailed in Texas and court documents recently revealed that two 12-year-old girls had been taken from Canada to marry him in 2005.

Documents filed with the Utah Department of Commerce show Wendell Loy Nielsen, president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, resigned his post Jan. 28. Jeffs signed the documents retaking control of the church corporation Feb. 10 and filed the papers with the state five days later.

"I, the undersigned, Warren Steed Jeffs, have been called and sustained as the president," Jeffs writes in a cover letter to the Commerce Department.

The 55-year-old resigned the presidency in 2007 after he was convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice, but he remained the faith's spiritual leader.

The Utah Supreme Court overturned Jeffs' convictions last year. He's now in a Texas jail awaiting trial on aggravated sexual assault and bigamy charges.

Texas prosecutors say information uncovered during a raid on the church's Eldorado, Texas, ranch show Jeffs had sex with two children, one under age 14 and the other under age 17. A court entered not guilty pleas on his behalf.

Last week, new allegations surfaced about two 12-year-old girls who had been married or "sealed" to Jeffs in 2005. The information was in an affidavit in a British Columbia Supreme Court inquiry over whether banning polygamy is a violation of constitutionally protected religious rights.

Continue reading "Jeffs, still in jail, regains control of church" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Oregon lawmakers say they will push to end legal protection for parents who rely solely on faith healing to treat their dying children.

A proposed bill targets the Followers of Christ, an Oregon City church with a long history of children dying from treatable medical conditions.

State Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie, said the deaths of three children of church members in recent years prompted her to introduce the bill.

House Bill 2721 would remove spiritual treatment as a defense for all homicide charges.

Legislators and prosecutors hope the threat of long prison sentences will cause church members to reconsider their tradition of rejecting medical treatment in favor of faith healing.

"It's going to make it easier to hold parents accountable who don't protect their children," said Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote, whose office has prosecuted recent cases involving church members.

The legislation already has wide support from both political parties, prosecutors, medical providers and child-protection groups, and there is no organized opposition.

Followers of Christ Church leaders do not speak to the media and rarely issue statements, and the church did not respond to a request for comment.

The Christian Science Church, which opposed a similar bill that was proposed years ago, changed its position. The continuing deaths "reached a critical mass," said John Clague, Christian Science media and legislative liaison.

"This is not about Christian Science," Clague said. "This is all coming from another denomination. We should never risk the life of a child through the practice of spiritual care."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Associated Press reports:

A junior officer at a Connecticut submarine base has received an honorable discharge after suing the U.S. Navy, saying his religious beliefs prevent him from participating in the military.

Michael Izbicki, an ensign formerly stationed at the Naval Submarine School in Groton, was discharged Feb. 16 as a conscientious objector. The paperwork he filed to drop his lawsuit was approved and signed by U.S. District Court officials in Hartford on Tuesday.

Izbicki, who is Christian, said he plans to use the skills he learned in the Navy to remain in some type of public service outside the military.

The American Civil Liberties Union's Connecticut chapter sued the Navy on Izbicki's behalf last year after he was twice denied an honorable discharge, which he requested based on his religious opposition to all war and the potential that he might be expected to kill others.

"I believe that Jesus Christ calls all men to love each other, under all circumstances. I believe his teaching forbids the use of violence. I take the Sermon on the Mount literally," Izbicki wrote in his application for conscientious objector status.

Izbicki, 25, a native of San Clemente, Calif., has said he was following his family tradition by enlisting in the military and entered the Naval Academy in 2004 with plans of becoming an officer. He began to question his goals after graduating from the academy and beginning submarine training.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in New Haven, which represented the Navy, said they had no comment about the case.

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Associated Press correspondent Nedra Pickler reports:

A federal judge on has thrown out a lawsuit claiming that President Barack Obama's requirement that all Americans have health insurance violates the religious freedom of those who rely on God to protect them.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington dismissed a lawsuit filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, a Christian legal group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, on behalf of five Americans who can afford health insurance but have chosen for years not to buy it.

The case was one of several lawsuits filed against Obama's requirement that Americans either buy health insurance or pay a penalty, beginning in 2014. Kessler is the third Democratic-appointed judge to dismiss a challenge, while two Republican-appointed judges have ruled part or all of the law unconstitutional. Kessler wrote that the Supreme Court will need to settle the constitutional issues.

Three of the plaintiffs — Margaret Peggy Lee Mead of Hillsborough, N.C., Charles Edward Lee of San Antonio and Susan Seven-Sky of West Harrison, N.Y. — are Christians who said they want to refuse all medical services for the rest of their lives because they believe God will heal their afflictions. They say being forced to buy insurance would conflict with their faith because they believe doing so would indicate they need "a backup plan and (are) not really sure whether God will, in fact, provide," the lawsuit said.

The two other plaintiffs — Kenneth Ruffo of San Antonio and Gina Rodriguez of Plano, Texas — have a holistic approach to medical care and prefer to pay for their health services out of pocket, in part because insurance often doesn't cover their chosen methods of healing.

Continue reading "Judge tosses health care religious freedom suit" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

This week I read two very different articles in two very different publications that made the same point crystal-clear: Sometimes when you are dealing with a difficult ethical question, a useful short-cut is to figure out what the jerks think and pick the opposing view.

The Jewish Times carried an article describing the conversion of state Sen. Jim Brochin from con to pro on the gay marriage bill that his committee moved out of committee this week. Brochin had opposed same-sex marriage in favor of civil unions, and indeed lost out on an effort to amend the current bill accordingly. Still, he now supports same-sex marriage, and if you take him at his word the credit for his switch goes to the anti-gay marriage activists.

"Ideally," he told the JT's Phil Jacobs, "I support civil unions, not marriage, but I can't side with these people." By "these people," he meant the activists who spoke up at his committee's hearing "calling gay people androids and pedophiles ... saying that gays were beneath us, that they were second-class citizens." However uncomfortable Brochin is with legalizing same-sex marriage -- a position he opposed publicly as recently as two weeks ago -- Brochin was more uncomfortable with "be[ing] on the side on the senate floor demonizing homosexuality." The bottom line for Brochin: "I'm not backing hate and divisiveness."

Public Discourse is a publication of a quite different sort, featuring heady articles that often involve traditional conservatives arguing with one another about topics from philosophy to religion to ethics to aesthetics. I confess that many of its articles sail well above my head, but I always work to understand the pieces written by Hadley Arkes, an esteemed professor of Constitutional law at Amherst College. (That a Williams grad thinks well of an Amherst prof speaks volumes in and of itself.)

Arkes wrote in response to a few recent pieces in Public Discourse arguing that lying is always wrong. Hang on there, Arkes said. If you're not careful with this sort of absolute proscription of telling falsehoods you're going to have to say that the people who hid Jews from the Nazis and lied to the Gestapo were guilty of an immoral act. What's more, you have to say that a moral person could never serve in a position of authority, say, the presidency, that requires complicity with the sort of disingenuousness that enables an agent to infiltrate a terrorist cell.

Continue reading "Poling: Guilt by Association" »

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Associated Press correspondent Cassandra Vinograd reports:

In Britain, gay couples may get a chance to go to the chapel and get married — almost.

The British government on Thursday announced plans to allow gay couples to hold civil partnership ceremonies in houses of worship — a move gay rights activists say is a step in the right direction towards marriage, but falls short of affording full equal rights.

The government stressed, however, that houses of worship can opt out if they wish.

Although marriage and civil partnership are already similar under British law, civil partnership ceremonies are currently not allowed to have religious references, are banned from places of worship, and must take place in a public building overseen by a government registrar.

The new rules, being introduced under British equality laws, will give same-sex couples the chance to hold civil partnership ceremonies in religious buildings — an option that did not exist for Mark Harrison and his partner, who wore traditional tailcoats to their ceremony at a north London town hall in May 2009.

Harrison described himself as not religious "at all," but said its "about having the option" — all couples he knows who've married in churches are straight and not religious.

"It's the tradition and the dream to have a beautiful church wedding," he said. "If straight couples have that opportunity and want to get married in a church despite not being religious then it should be the same for everyone."

In Britain, only heterosexual couples can get married, while civil partnership is available only to same-sex couples. Activists argue both should be open to all couples.

Continue reading "Gay rights activists: New UK rules a positive step" »

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Associated Press correspondent Alison Mutler reports:

There's more bad news in the cards for Romania's beleaguered witches.

A month after Romanian authorities began taxing them for their trade, the country's soothsayers and fortune tellers are cursing a new bill that threatens fines or even prison if their predictions don't come true.

Witches argue they shouldn't be blamed for the failure of their tools.

"They can't condemn witches, they should condemn the cards," Queen witch Bratara Buzea told The Associated Press by telephone.

Superstition is a serious matter in the land of Dracula, and officials have turned to witches to help the recession-hit country collect more money and crack down on tax evasion.

In January, officials changed labor laws to officially recognize the centuries-old practice as a taxable profession, prompting angry witches to dump poisonous mandrake into the Danube in an attempt to put a hex on the government.

The new draft bill passed in the Senate last week. It still must be approved by a financial and labor committee and by Romania's Chamber of Deputies, the other house of Romania's parliament.

Bratara called the proposed bill overblown. "I will fight until my last breath for this not to be passed," she said.

Continue reading "Bill would hold witches responsible for predictions" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Authorities say a Florida man is accused of stabbing another man in the neck after learning he was Muslim during a discussion about religion.

According to an arrest affidavit, the man who was stabbed told 52-year-old Bradley Kent Strott that he was Muslim while the two talked on Saturday. Investigators say Strott then grabbed the man by his shirt and stabbed him with a pocket knife.

The man who was stabbed was treated for his wound, though details about his condition were not available.

Strott was charged with aggravated battery. He was released Saturday evening on $15,000 bond.

A message left at a telephone listing for Strott was not immediately returned.

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Police have arrested a 17-year old Pakistani boy for writing an allegedly blasphemous remark in an examination paper, an officer said Tuesday.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws have come under intense scrutiny since the murder last month of a prominent politician who had campaigned to change them. They allow for the death penalty for anyone found guilty of insulting Islam. Critics say they are often used to settle scores and unfairly target the country's non-Muslim minorities.

School authorities lodged a police complaint against the boy, identified as Sami Ullah, in January after reading an examination paper he took in the city of Karachi, said police officer Qudrat Shah Lodhi.

Lodhi said he could not repeat what the boy, who is a Muslim, had written because he would be committing blasphemy if he did. He said the boy told police he wrote the blasphemous material out of frustration when he was not able to answer the exam question.

"He submitted an apology to the examination authorities and feels ashamed and depressed," Lodhi said.

Continue reading "Pakistini student arrested for 'blasphemous' answer" »

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Associated Press writers Patrick Walters and Maryclaire Dale report:

A Pennsylvania abortion doctor who catered to minorities, immigrants and poor women was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to visit or inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them, District Attorney Seth Williams said.

Gosnell "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," Williams said.

Williams said patients were subjected to squalid and barbaric conditions at Gosnell's Women's Medical Society.

Authorities went to investigate drug-related complaints at the clinic last year and stumbled on what Williams called a "house of horrors."

"There were bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses were scattered throughout the building," Williams said. "There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose."

Continue reading "Abortion doctor charged with murder" »

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The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of a Maryland pastor and others seeking to overturn the District of Columbia's same-sex marriage law.

Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, has led the lawsuit against the district's elections board for rejecting a ballot measure defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman on the District of Columbia ballot.

The Supreme Court turned away the appeal on Tuesday without comment. Washington began recognizing sane-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions in 2009, and began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples last year.

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A priest who served as vicar of a Harford County church from 2001 to 2007 has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of child sexual abuse, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland said Wednesday.

The church has initiated the process of barring the Rev. Donald Belcher from exercising any priestly functions, the diocese said. The church has opened an investigation to determine whether the allegations are true and to determine whether pastoral care is needed for victims.

Belcher, 82, served as vicar of the Church of the Holy Cross in Street from 2001 to 2007, according to the diocese. He was ordained in Montana in 1997 and served parishes there before coming to Maryland.

Belcher currently lives in Montana, according to the diocese. He could not be reached for comment; telephone numbers listed in his name in Maryland and Montana had been disconnected.

"The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland takes very seriously our church's commitment to maintaining a safe environment for all who come to us seeking pastoral care and God's sacraments," the Rev. Canon Scott Slater said in a statement. "We are saddened and dismayed even when allegations are first made. So we pray for all concerned and will continue to work diligently to make sure we have safe churches for all who come seeking God."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (47)
        

Associated Press correspondents Asif Shahzad and Nahal Toosi report:

ISLAMABAD – The governor of Pakistan's most dominant province was shot and killed Tuesday by a bodyguard who authorities said was angry about his opposition to blasphemy laws carrying the death sentence for insulting the Muslim faith.

Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer, regarded as a moderate voice in a country increasingly beset by zealotry, was a close ally of U.S.-backed President Asif Ali Zardari. He is the highest-profile Pakistani political figure to be assassinated since former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto three years ago, and his death underscores the growing danger in this country to those who dare challenge the demands of Islamist extremists.

Taseer was riddled by gunshots while walking to his car after an afternoon meal at Kohsar Market, a shopping center in Islamabad popular with Westerners and wealthy Pakistanis.

Initial reports indicated the suspected gunman, a police commando guarding Taseer, unloaded up to 26 rounds from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. The gunman could have fired that number of rounds in a matter of seconds.

Other guards then forced the police commando to the ground, according to police and hospital officials.

"It was one shot first and then a burst," said R.A. Khan, a witness who was drinking coffee at the time. "I rushed and saw policemen over another police commando, who was lying on the road with his face down."

Continue reading "Pakistani governor who opposed blasphemy law slain" »

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Associated Press correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik reports:

Ireland's constitutional ban on abortion violates pregnant women's right to receive proper medical care in life-threatening cases, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday, harshly criticizing Ireland's long inaction on the issue.

The Strasbourg, France-based court ruled that a pregnant woman fighting cancer should have been allowed to get an abortion in Ireland in 2005 rather than being forced to go to England for the procedure. The judgment put Ireland under pressure to draft a law extending abortion rights to women whose pregnancies represent a potentially fatal threat to their own health.

Ireland has resisted doing that despite a 1992 judgment from the Irish Supreme Court that said Ireland should provide abortions in cases where a woman's life is endangered — including, controversially, by her own threats to commit suicide.

The 18-year delay has created a legal limbo, forcing many women to travel overseas for an abortion rather than rely on Irish doctors fearful of being prosecuted.

In an 11-6 verdict, the 17 Strasbourg judges said Ireland was wrong to keep the legal situation unclear and said the Irish government had offered no credible explanation for its failure. The Irish judge on the panel, Mary Finlay Geoghegan, sided with that majority view.

The judges wrote that Ireland's failure "has resulted in a striking discordance between the theoretical right to a lawful abortion in Ireland on grounds of a relevant risk to a woman's life, and the reality of its practical implementation."

Under Irish law dating back to 1861, a doctor and patient both could be prosecuted for murder if an abortion was later deemed not to be medically necessary.

Continue reading "Court: Irish abortion ban violates women's rights" »

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Associated Press correspondent Pete Yost reports:

The federal government sued a suburban Chicago school district Monday for denying a Muslim middle school teacher unpaid leave to make a pilgrimage to Mecca that is a central part of her religion.

In a civil rights case, the department said the school district in Berkeley, Ill., denied the request of Safoorah Khan on grounds that her requested leave was unrelated to her professional duties and was not set forth in the contract between the school district and the teachers union. In doing so the school district violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to reasonably accommodate her religious practices, the government said.

Khan wanted to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia which every adult Muslim is supposed to make at least once in a lifetime if they are physically and financially able to. Millions go each year.

Khan started as a middle school teacher for Berkeley School District 87 — about 15 miles west of Chicago — in 2007. In 2008, she asked for almost three weeks of unpaid leave to perform the Hajj. After the district twice denied her request, Khan wrote the board that "based on her religious beliefs, she could not justify delaying performing hajj," and resigned shortly thereafter, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Chicago.

Berkeley School District compelled Khan to choose between her job and her religious beliefs, the lawsuit said.

Continue reading "U.S. sues district for denying teacher's pilgrimage" »

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Associated Press correspondent Maryclaire Dale reports:

A fundamentalist Christian couple who relied on prayer, not medicine, to cure their dying toddler son was convicted Friday of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. Herbert and Catherine Schaible of Philadelphia face more than a decade in prison for the January 2009 pneumonia death of 2-year-old Kent.

"We were careful to make sure we didn't have their religion on trial but were holding them responsible for their conduct," jury foreman Vince Bertolini, 49, told The Associated Press. "At the least, they were guilty of gross negligence, and (therefore) of involuntary manslaughter."

The Schaibles, who have six other children, declined to comment as they left the courthouse to await sentencing Feb. 2.

Experts say about a dozen U.S. children die in faith-healing cases each year. An Oregon couple were sentenced this year to 16 months in prison for negligent homicide in the death of their teenage son, who had an undiagnosed urinary blockage.

Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore will ask the judge at sentencing to put the couple's other children under a doctor's care. She was not yet sure if she would seek prison terms for the two felonies.

Kent Schaible's symptoms had included coughing, congestion, crankiness and a loss of appetite, although his parents said he was eating and drinking until the last day, and they had thought he was getting better.

The lone defense witness, high-profile coroner Cyril Wecht, testified that a deadly bacterium could have killed him in hours.

Continue reading "Couple that only prayed convicted in toddler's death" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A French court has annulled a fine given to a woman driver wearing an Islamic face veil, months before a ban on wearing the garments goes into effect.

Traffic police in the western city of Nantes fined 31-year-old Sandrine Mouleres euro22 ($29.22) in April, saying she did not have a clear field of vision, but the court quashed the fine Monday.

Jean-Michel Pollono, Mouleres' attorney, said the court in Nantes had ruled "we are in a free country, and as a result, everything that isn't forbidden is allowed."

The initial fine drew widespread attention amid a nationwide debate over the place of Islamic veils. In September, the French parliament agreed to a ban on face-covering veils — such as the niqab or burqa — from being worn in public. The ban goes into effect in spring.

Many Muslims see the legislation as another blow to Islam — France's No. 2 religion — and fear it could raise levels of Islamophobia in a country where mosques are sporadic targets of hate.

Continue reading "French court annuls fine for veil-wearing woman" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Associated Press reports:

Days after the arrest of a Baltimore man accused of attempting to detonate a bomb outside an Army recruiting center in Catonsville, Attorney General Eric Holder reiterated his resolve to prosecute hate crimes, even as he defended the methods used in anti-terrorism cases.

Speaking Friday to Muslim Advocates, a San Francisco-based group, Holder told the group that he's heard from many Muslim and Arab Americans who feel uneasy and singled out by law enforcement.

The organization is one of several groups voicing concerns over hate crimes, alleged rights violations at the hands of law enforcement and the tactics used in anti-terrorism cases.

Carefully-crafted sting operations by FBI and Justice Department officials have included plots against a Portland, Ore., Christmas celebration, Dallas skyscrapers, Washington subways, a Chicago nightclub and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Undercover operatives in these cases have let suspects make clear they wanted to carry out an attack and gave them a chance to change their mind, according to authorities.

But Holder told the group he would make "no apologies" for the handling of the case against Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a Somali-born Muslim accused of plotting to set off a bomb in Oregon.

"Those who characterize the FBI's activities in this case as 'entrapment' simply do not have their facts straight or do not have a full understanding of the law."

Continue reading "Holder tries to reassure Muslims after arrests" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A social worker says the father of a dead toddler blamed the devil for the boy's death after he and his wife prayed for him rather than seek medical treatment.

Philadelphia social worker Kenneth Dixon testified this week that Herbert Schaible said "we tried to fight the devil, but in the end the devil won" when questioned about the January 2009 death of his 2-year-old son.

Schaible and his wife, Catherine, are on trial on involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of their son, Kent. Prosecutors say the boy died after a two-week battle with bacterial pneumonia because the couple failed to seek medical treatment for him.

Attorneys for the Schaibles say prosecutors cannot prove the couple knew the boy was in danger of dying.

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The Associated Press reports:

A Greek Orthodox church in New York City that was destroyed on Sept. 11 is taking legal action against the agency that owns ground zero, saying it has reneged on a promise to rebuild the church.

The Wall Street Journal reports that St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church filed a notice of claim against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on Monday. The papers seeks to compel the agency to live up to what it says is a "binding preliminary agreement" from 2008.

The two sides spent years negotiating a deal that would let the church rebuild on land south of its original site in exchange for financial help. Negotiations broke down in March.

The agency says it hasn't seen the papers and declined to comment.

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Associated Press correspondent Linda Stewart Ball reports:

A Texas woman who was promised a Christian working environment claims she was devastated after learning that her boss, a prominent televangelist, was having an affair and his company was trying to cover it up, according to a lawsuit she filed against her former employer.

Jeanette Hawkins levied the accusations against Daystar Television Network and its founder, the Rev. Marcus Lamb, in a lawsuit Wednesday — a day after Lamb and his wife told their television audience that three unnamed people who knew about the affair were trying to blackmail them for $7.5 million.

On Friday, Daystar countersued Hawkins, saying she and her attorney made "outrageous allegations" and amended their original lawsuit that they'd given to media outlets, according to a statement released by the company.

Lamb and his wife, Joni, said on the air Tuesday that they'd mended their marriage after his infidelity years ago, but decided to go public because they refused to pay extortionists.

Hawkins' attorney, James Fisher, declined to comment on the countersuit because he had not yet seen it. But he denied the claims of extortion, saying he met with Daystar attorneys last month about reaching a settlement for Hawkins and two other women in an effort to avoid filing any lawsuits.

"People have claims, which are legal rights. Not only is it common but it's Biblical to try to resolve disputes before going to court," Fisher told The Associated Press. "(Hawkins) didn't commit extortion. She hired a lawyer to present her claims and to explore the possibility of settling them, and that's not extortion."

Continue reading "Employee sues broadcaster over televangelist affair" »

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Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll reports:

A prominent televangelist appeared before a worldwide television audience Tuesday to admit that he had an affair with a woman years ago — and to allege that three people had tried to extort millions of dollars from him to stay quiet about his infidelity.

The Rev. Marcus Lamb, who created DayStar Television Network with his wife Joni, said he and his wife had healed their marriage and had hoped to keep his adultery private, but went public because they would not pay extortionists. The three people demanded $7.5 million, he said.

"They're trying to take our pain and turn it to their gain," said Lamb, during a one-hour live broadcast with his wife by his side and supporters surrounding him. "We're not going to take God's money to keep from being humiliated."

A spokesman for the Lambs, Larry Ross, said they went to authorities with their allegations, but he said he could not discuss specifics for fear of interfering with any investigation. He said the extortion attempt was made within the past few weeks.

DayStar, based in Dallas, airs some of the highest-profile evangelists in the world, including Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar and Joyce Meyers.

The network says it operates more than 70 stations in major U.S. television markets and also broadcasts to more than 200 countries.

Joni Lamb described her husband's affair as "an emotional relationship" with a woman that became "an improper relationship." When she learned of his infidelity several years ago, she was devastated and prayed to the Holy Spirit, who told her, "He's worth fighting for."

Continue reading "Televangelist admits affair, alleges extortion attempt" »

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Dr. Mohamed Esa, president of the Islamic Society of Carroll County has condemned "unequivocally" the alleged plot to attack a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in the alleged plot to set off a car bomb in downtown Portland last week while thousands of people gathered for the holiday ceremony.

"The Islamic Society of Carroll County (ISCC) condemns unequivocally the attempted terrorist attack on innocent people in Portland, OR and praises the FBI and the Portland police for stopping the would-be attacker from carrying out a senseless killing of innocent Americans gathered to witness the lighting of the Christmas tree, a symbol of peace and hope," Esa said in a statement.

"The ISCC calls on all Muslims to stand up and be vigilant and report any misguided individuals who harbor hateful feelings and ill will toward our nation. As president of the ISCC, I have already asked our Imam (leader of prayer) to dedicate his sermon at next Friday’s prayer on December 3rd to the topic of “The Rights and Obligations of American Muslims.” A good American Muslim is loyal to his/her country and does not plan anything that can harm the common good. He or she rejects all forms of extremism and adheres to and respects the laws of our nation."

Esa's complete statement follows, after the jump.

Continue reading "Carroll County Islamic president condemns plot" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Residents in the Oregon town of Corvallis are showing their support for an Islamic center where a teenager accused of plotting mass killings in Portland occasionally worshipped.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud pleaded not guilty Monday in federal court in Portland to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. The 19-year-old was arrested Friday.

The FBI is investigating a Sunday fire that destroyed part of the Islamic center where Mohamud attended while going to Oregon State University.

The parking lot in front of the charred prayer center drew community members and Corvallis religious leaders Monday to offer prayers and support against what they called an abhorrent act of arson.

People have left plants, flowers and cards in front of the entrance.

A defense attorney and friends suspect Mohamud was set up — groomed and talked into a plot to detonate what he thought were six 55-gallon drums of explosives in a van.

But prosecutors led by Attorney General Eric Holder say the teen plunged into a what turned out to be government sting, dismissing talk of backing out and also exhulting in the mayhem he expected as Portlanders gathered by the thousands last week for a Christmas tree-lighting celebration.

Mohamud "was told that children — children — were potentially going to be harmed," Holder said Monday as the 19-year-old native of Somalia appeared in court and his defenders attacked the government's case.

Outside the courtroom, a man who has played basketball with Mohamud said the teenager wouldn't have gotten involved in the plot without encouragement from the FBI.

"If you talk with someone enough, they'll be convinced they need to do something," said 20-year-old Muhahid El-Naser. He was among a small number of people gathered outside a federal court building about a five-block walk from what the government alleges was the target of the bomb plot last week, Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Continue reading "Town supporting alleged plotter's mosque" »

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Associated Press corrrespondents Jonathan Cooper And Nigel Duara report from Corvallis, Ore.:

Patrols around mosques and other Islamic sites in Portland have been stepped up as Muslim leaders expressed fears of retribution, days after a Somali-American man was accused of trying to blow up a van full of explosives during the city's Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams said Sunday that he beefed up protection around mosques "and other facilities that might be vulnerable to knuckle-headed retribution" after hearing of the bomb plot.

The move followed a fire Sunday at the Islamic center in Corvallis, a college town about 75 miles southwest of Portland, where suspect Mohamed Osman Mohamud occasionally worshipped, prompting an FBI arson investigation and concern about the potential for more retaliation.

Mohamud, 19, was being held on charges of plotting to carry out a terror attack Friday on a crowd of thousands at Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday afternoon.

His attorney, Stephen R. Sady, who has represented terrorism suspects held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, didn't return a telephone message left Sunday by The Associated Press.

The suspect's mother, Maryan Hassan, declined to discuss the issue when contacted by phone late Sunday by the AP, referring all questions to Sady. His father also refused to comment.

Somali leaders in Oregon — a state that has been largely accepting of Muslims — gathered with Portland city leaders Sunday evening to denounce violence and call for help for at-risk Somali youth.

"We left Somalia because of war, and we would like to live in peace as part of the American community," said Kayse Jama, executive director of a local organization founded after the 9/11 attacks to fight anti-Muslim sentiment. "We are Portlanders. We are Oregonians. We are Americans, and we would like to be treated that way. We are your co-workers, your neighbors."

Continue reading "Muslim leaders fear retribution after plot" »

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Associated Press correspondent Will Weisset reports:

A Roman Catholic priest has been arrested on charges that he solicited a hit man to kill a teenager who had accused him of sexual abuse. Authorities said John Fiala first offered the job to a neighbor, who blew the whistle and helped police arrange a sting. They said Fiala got as far as negotiating a $5,000 price for the slaying before investigators moved in.

The 52-year-old clergyman was arrested Nov. 18 at his suburban Dallas home and jailed on $700,000 bond. In April, he was named in a lawsuit filed by the boy's family, who accused Fiala of molesting the youth, including twice forcing him to have sex at gunpoint.

The abuse allegedly took place in 2007 and 2008, when Fiala was a priest at the Sacred Heart of Mary Parish in the West Texas community of Rocksprings, a rural enclave known for sheep and goat herding.

The family's lawsuit also named the Archdiocese of San Antonio and Archbishop Jose Gomez, alleging that church leadership should have known Fiala was abusive.

The suit was filed just a month before Gomez was introduced as the new incoming leader of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. He is currently serving as an assistant to Cardinal Roger Mahony, who will retire next year. Gomez then automatically becomes archbishop.

When he learned of the murder-for-hire investigation, the boy "was terrified and rightly so," said San Antonio attorney Tom Rhodes, who represents the family. As far back as 2008, Fiala threatened the teen, and repeatedly brandished a pistol, Rhodes said.

Fiala "began saying, 'If you tell anyone, I'll hurt you. I'll hurt your family, your girlfriend,'" Rhodes said. "It was more than once he threatened him with a gun."

Continue reading "Priest accused of trying to hire hit man" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A prominent Egyptian blogger jailed for four years for writings deemed insulting to Islam and for calling President Hosni Mubarak "a symbol of tyranny" has been released, his brother said Wednesday.

Abdel Kareem Nabil was the first blogger in Egypt convicted specifically for his writings in a case that government critics said was intended to serve as a warning to others.

His prosecution was part of a government crackdown on bloggers and media outlets and drew a flood of condemnation from international and Egyptian rights groups.

He was released Monday after being held 10 days beyond the end of his sentence without explanation, said his brother, Abdel Rahman. The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said last week that during that time he was subjected to repeated beatings by an officer at the State Security Investigation office in Alexandria.

His brother said Wednesday that Nabil needed a rest before talking to media and that the family was not yet prepared to release a statement.

Nabil, who wrote under the name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims.

Much of his criticism was directed at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the pre-eminent institution of religious thought in Sunni Islam, where he was studying law.

He denounced the school as "the university of terrorism," accusing it of promoting radical ideas and suppressing free thought. Al-Azhar "stuffs its students' brains and turns them into human beasts ... teaching them that there is not place for differences in this life," he wrote.

In other writings, he called Al-Azhar the "other face of the coin of al-Qaida" and called for the university to be dissolved or turned into a secular institution.

Continue reading "Egypt frees blogger convicted of insulting Islam" »

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Baltimoreans will gather at the Rising Sun First Baptist Church in Gwynn Oaks on Sunday to pray for Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson “and the dazed people of this county,” Pray at the Pump Movement founder Rocky Twyman says.

Johnson and his wife, Prince George’s County Councilwoman-elect Leslie Johnson, were arrested by federal agents on Friday and charged in corruption investigation that officials say will yield more arrests.

Twyman predicted a total of more than 300 would attend the services at 9:30 and 11 a.m. at the church on St. Lukes Lane. He said Del. Emmett C. Burns, the pastor of Rising Sun First Baptist, would talk about “the tragedy” in his sermon.

“Burns, who was a civil rights warrior in Mississippi is greatly disturbed about the arrest of Johnson,” Twyman says. “He recalls how hard it was to get black people registered to vote and into elected positions. However, Burns says that in spite of allegations that the Christian thing to do is to pray for Johnson and his family and for the new incoming Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker who will have to deal with the aftermath of the FBI sting.”

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Associated Press correspondent Diaa Hadid reports:

A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from the backwater West Bank town of Qalqiliya, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority — and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin — the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar — was leading a double life.

Known as a quiet man who prayed with his family each Friday and spent his evenings working in his father's barbershop, Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for "insulting the divine essence." Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

"He should be burned to death," said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public "to be an example to others," he added.

Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favor of atheism on English and Arabic blogs, where he described the God of Islam as having the attributes of a "primitive Bedouin." He called Islam a "blind faith that grows and takes over people's minds where there is irrationality and ignorance."

If that wasn't enough, he is also suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in verses that spoof the Muslim holy book, the Quran. At its peak, Husayin's Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.

His Facebook groups elicited hundreds of angry comments, detailed death threats and the formation of more than a dozen Facebook groups against him, including once called "Fight the blasphemer who said 'I am God.'"

Continue reading "Palestinian held for Facebook criticism of Islam" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Regional leaders of the United Methodist Church have sued an Eastern Oregon congregation that split from the denomination.

The Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, which oversees Methodist congregations in the region, claims in its lawsuit that members of the Ontario Community Church took property, funds and documents held in trust for the Methodist mission and ministry.

Leaders of the breakaway church, formerly the Ontario Community United Methodist Church, said their attorney advised them not to comment on the complaint, which was filed this month in Malheur County Circuit Court.

Congregations in California and Alabama have left the Methodist denomination in recent years, sparking legal battles over the United Methodist Church's trust clause, which holds that local congregations own property in trust for the entire denomination.

Greg Tollefson of Boise, chairman of the conference board of trustees, said in a statement, that the denomination has a duty to protect its property.

Greg Nelson, a spokesman for the Oregon-Idaho conference, said the national church does not keep track of how many churches have left the denomination. But, he added, in most legal disputes, the trust clause has been upheld.

Continue reading "Methodists sue breakaway congregation" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Parishioners have posted bail for a Roman Catholic priest charged with felony sex crimes against a 12-year-old California boy.

The Rev. Alejandro Jose Castillo was arrested Oct. 25 at his home in Ontario, Calif., and was charged with seven counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under age 14 and one count of forcible lewd and lascivious acts with a child under age 14.

Hundreds of people affiliated with the parishioners group Coalition to Exonerate Fr. Alex raised the $24,000 in bail money. Coalition director Ted Campos says they believe in his innocence.

As a condition for release, Castillo can have no contact with minors.

He was removed as pastor of Ontario's Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in June.

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Associated Press correspondent Dana Wollman reports:

Amazon is selling a self-published book defending pedophiles, sparking discussions about the retailer's obligation to vet items before they are sold in its online stores.

The book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct" by Philip R. Greaves II, offers advice to pedophiles afraid of becoming the center of retaliation. It is an electronic book available for Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader.

The book has triggered mounting outrage on Twitter and beyond. A chorus of Twitter users is calling for Amazon to pull the book, with a few threatening to boycott the Kindle store until it does.

Amazon did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether and how it vet books sold in its store.

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Associated Press correspondent Anne Gearan reports:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Congress should act quickly, before new members take their seats, to repeal the military's ban on gays serving openly in the military.

He, however, did not sound optimistic that the current Congress would use a brief postelection session to get rid of the law known as "don't ask, don't tell."

"I would like to see the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" but I'm not sure what the prospects for that are," Gates said Saturday, as he traveled to defense and diplomatic meetings in Australia.

Unless the lame-duck Congress acts, the repeal effort is considered dead for now.

The current, Democratic-controlled Congress has not acted to lift the ban, which President Barack Obama promised to eliminate. In his postelection news conference Wednesday, Obama said there would be time to repeal the ban in December or early January, after the military completes a study of the effects of repeal on the front lines and at home.

With Republicans taking control of the House in January, and with larger margins in the Senate, supporters of lifting the ban predict it will be much more difficult.

Gates also urged the Senate to ratify a stalled arms control treaty with Russia before the end of the current legislative session in January.

The defense chief said the huge midterm gains for Republicans will not set back Obama's strategy for the war in Afghanistan. Obama wants to begin pulling U.S. forces home next summer, so long as security conditions allow it.

Continue reading "Gates urges Congress to repeal 'Don't ask, don't tell'" »

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Associated Press correspondent Shelia Byrd reports:

The lesbian who successfully challenged a rural Mississippi school district's ban on same-sex prom dates says she wept when she read about the recent spate of gay teen suicides linked to harassment.

Constance McMillen, who was recently named one of Glamour magazine's "Women of the Year 2010," told The Associated Press that she became a bullying victim after she challenged the Itawamba School District over a policy that prohibited her from bringing her girlfriend to the prom and wearing a tuxedo.

McMillen, 18, said she became emotional after reading about the suicides of 13-year-old Seth Walsh, of California, who hanged himself outside his home after enduring taunts from classmates, and of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman who killed himself after his sexual encounter was secretly streamed online.

"I read it on Facebook. I was so upset about this that I could not sleep," McMillen said. "I knew it had to be terrible for them to choose death as a way to escape what they were living in."

McMillen said she has had her own suicidal thoughts.

"But I never really considered it to the point where I almost did it," she said. "Everybody thinks about it when times get hard."

Continue reading "Miss. teen talks about anti-gay bullies" »

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Associated Press correspondent Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili reports:

Iran's foreign minister said Wednesday that no final decision has been made about a woman who could be stoned to death for adultery, amid reports that her execution was imminent.

Manouchehr Mottaki's statement follows an international outcry over the stoning sentence against the 43-year-old woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

"Everyone has to be punished for murder," Mottaki said at a news conference in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. "The person has killed her husband and I think this fact will be considered as a crime in every country ... But in this case the final decision has not been made yet."

Earlier Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also said in a statement that Mottaki had told him that a final verdict in Ashtiani's case has not been issued yet and that reports "about her eventual execution don't correspond to reality." But Kouchner said France is "very worried" about the case.

Iran has temporarily suspended the stoning verdict and has suggested Ashtiani might be hanged instead.

The case has further elevated tensions between Iran and the West, already running high over suspicions about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The office of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his wife Laureen Harper sent an open letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad calling for Ashtiani's release. Mrs. Harper wrote that she was "deeply troubled by the flagrant disregard of women's rights in Iran" and said Ashtiani's case "is an affront to any sense of moral or human decency."

Continue reading "Iran foreign minister: No verdict in adultery stoning" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck has questioned the separation of government and religion, drawing criticism from Democrats who last week chided another tea party candidate for the same view.

Buck's opponents have been circulating a clip of him from a 2009 GOP forum in which he won applause from a conservative crowd at Colorado Christian University when he said the Constitution doesn't require church and state to be separate.

"I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution," Buck said on the video. "While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that's sanctioned by the government, it doesn't mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion."

Democrats spread the Buck video after Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell was panned for questioning in a debate last week whether the separation of church and state is in the Constitution.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this week called Buck's remark "extreme" and "egregious."

Democratic allies also spread a clip from Buck earlier this year in which he repeated his opposition to abortion rights. Buck said he believes the Supreme Court wrongly cited privacy rights in its Roe v. Wade abortion decision.

Buck clarified his church-and-state position Tuesday on CNN.

"I agree with the idea that there is a separation of church and state. That teachers should not be leading prayer, a particular kind of prayer in classrooms.

"What I have said is that I think the federal government and we as a society have come too far in trying to separate good organizations that perform good functions for people just based on the fact one has a religious association and one doesn't," Buck said.

Continue reading "Another GOP candidate questions church-state divide" »

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Associated Press writer Ben Evans reports:

Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience.

"You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution.

Continue reading "O'Donnell questions separation of church, state" »

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The Associated Press reports:

New York City police say four Staten Island teenagers accused of bullying a Muslim classmate are now facing hate crime charges.

The Staten Island Advance says the incidents occurred from October 2009 to June 2010. Authorities say the bullies called the boy a "terrorist," frequently punched him in the groin and spit in his face.

The boy said he hoped the bullying would end when he left intermediate school. He finally told his family after learning that two of the alleged tormentors were in his high school class.

NYPD Lt. John Grimpel says three 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old are charged with assault and aggravated harassment as a hate crime.

The Muslim family immigrated from Trinidad in the 1980s.

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Associated Press writer Mark Sherman reports:

Supreme Court justices on Wednesday pondered the vexing question of whether the father of a dead Marine should win his lawsuit against a fundamentalist church group that picketed his son's funeral.

The complexity and weightiness of the First Amendment issue were palpable in the courtroom as justices heard arguments in the case of Albert Snyder. His son died in Iraq in 2006, and members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested the funeral to make their point that U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are punishment for Americans' immorality, including tolerance of homosexuality and abortion.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the question is whether the First Amendment must tolerate "exploiting this bereaved family."

There was no clear answer from the court.

Snyder is asking the court to reinstate a $5 million verdict against the Westboro members who held signs outside the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, including ones that read "Thank God for Dead Soldiers, "You're Going to Hell" and "God Hates the USA." The Marine was killed in a Humvee accident in 2006.

The church also posted a poem on its website that attacked Snyder and his ex-wife for the way they brought up Matthew.

Continue reading "Court considers anti-gay funeral protest" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Officials in a rural upstate New York town are trying to force a group of Muslims to dig up two bodies in their cemetery, saying the burials were illegal.

But the Sufi group, which has documents that appear to support the cemetery's legality, says the town board's actions were motivated by a wave of anti-Islamic sentiment fueled by the uproar over a planned mosque near ground zero.

Hans Hass of the Osmanli Naksibendi Hakkani community, 130 miles northwest of New York City, said last week that the Sufi community learned only recently about the Sidney Town Board's vote in August to pursue legal action to shut down the community's cemetery.

"They knew we had the cemetery," Hass said. "I filed burial permits with the town. It wasn't an issue until the ground zero mosque came up."

Town Supervisor Bob McCarthy said the cemetery is illegal and bigotry had nothing to do with the board decision. He said no legal action has been taken yet and referred questions about the potential action to town attorney Joseph Ermeti, who didn't return a call seeking comment.

"These people just came up and buried bodies on the land," McCarthy said. "You have to have permits. They didn't have them. You can't just bury Grandma in the backyard under the picnic table."

Continue reading "Muslims say bigotry behind cemetery order" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Her tragic death notwithstanding, the career of Anna Nicole Smith delighted plastic surgeons, dieters and reality TV fans, not to mention readers of Playboy magazine and patrons of strip clubs. It was one of these last, J. Howard Marshall II, who became Mr. Anna Nicole Smith in the waning years of his life.

The facts are well-known to most readers: Ms. Smith, then 26, married Mr. Marshall, then 89, in 1994. Upon Marshall’s death 13 months later, his son E. Pierce Marshall contested Ms. Smith’s claim to half of his estate; the case ultimately wound up in the Supreme Court, which decided in Ms. Smith’s favor in 2006. Although both Ms. Smith and Mr. Marshall are now deceased, Mr. Marshall’s estate continued to pursue the matter, and the Supreme Court has announced that it will once again hear the case.

Oddly enough, this turn of events presents us once again with the reality that for a brief, shining moment, Ms. Smith replaced Michael Schiavo as the poster child for family values.

Obviously the disposition of a will can involve complicated decisions, and family tension is by no mean unknown in this sort of situation. Probate lawyers can explain all of the variables to anyone who’s interested in them, but the basic principle of law and the clear message of the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling is this: If the choice is between a spouse and another family member, the spouse wins.

Much the same conflict was operative in the Schiavo case: Ultimately the courts decided that when Terry Schiavo’s husband and parents disagreed over her medical care, it was her husband’s right as her spouse to make decisions for her despite her parents’ disagreement with his choices.

Continue reading "Poling: Two Cheers for Anna Nicole Smith" »

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A Georgia teen who officials said continued to evangelize outside a library after officials warned him to stop has been banned from the Chattahoochee Valley Regional Library System for six months, the Associated Press reports.

Kirsten Edwards, acting manager of the North Columbus Public Library, said in a letter that 16-year-old Caleb Hanson repeatedly asked patrons about their religious faith and offered biblical advice.

The teen said library employees had warned him to stop. "Then they took me into an office and told me not to do it," he said.

He said he then began talking to people outside the library, and patrons continued to complain.

Claudya Muller, director of the library system, said the ban had nothing to do with what the teen was saying. "As people came in, he would approach them. He prevented people from simply using the library."

Continue reading "Ga. teen barred from library proselytizing" »

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's plan to put Virginia's state-run alcohol sales in private hands and triple the number of liquor stores scored a big endorsement from the Christian right, the Associated Press reports.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University and namesake son of the late minister and political activist, endorsed McDonnell's liquor privatization proposal Tuesday.

Falwell said he felt the founders never intended for government to be in the liquor retailing business.

But McDonnell has encountered resistance to his plan from an interfaith coalition concerned that boosting the number of stores from 332 now to 1,000 will worsen alcoholism, damage families and put more drunks on the highways.

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Roman Catholic leaders in Iowa are urging voters to back a constitutional convention, saying the rare gathering would be the quickest way to overturn the court ruling that legalized gay marriage in the state, the Associated Press reports.

The Iowa Catholic Conference, which represents the state's four Roman Catholic dioceses, issued the statement Monday in favor of a yes vote on a Nov. 2 ballot question that would require a constitutional convention.

Gay marriage has been legal in Iowa since 2009, when the state Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision that found a same-sex marriage ban approved by lawmakers violated the Iowa Constitution. Since then, about 1,800 same-sex weddings have been held in Iowa, most by couples who live in other states.

Tom Chapman, executive director of the Catholic Conference, said the group was part of a larger effort to encourage Iowa's roughly 500,000 Catholics to vote their conscience on a number of issues.

Continue reading "Catholics strategizing to reverse gay marriage" »

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The prominent pastor of a 25,000-member megachurch near Atlanta denies allegations in a lawsuit that he coerced two young men from the congregation into a sexual relationship, his attorney said.

Lawyers for the men, now 20 and 21, say they filed the lawsuit Tuesday in DeKalb County Court against Bishop Eddie Long. The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they were victims of sexual impropriety.

President George W. Bush and three former presidents visited the sprawling New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia for the 2006 funeral of Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Long introduced the speakers and the Rev. Bernice King, the Kings' younger daughter, delivered the eulogy. She is also a pastor there.

The men who filed the suit were 17- and 18-year-old members of the church when they say Long abused his spiritual authority to seduce them with cars, money, clothes, jewelry, international trips and access to celebrities.

Craig Gillen, Long's attorney, says the pastor "categorically denies the allegations."

"We find it unfortunate that these two young men would take this course of action," Gillen said late Tuesday after news of the lawsuit broke. He said Long had not yet been served with copies of the lawsuits.

Continue reading "Megachurch pastor denies sex with young men" »

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British police arrested five London street cleaners over an alleged threat to Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, the second day of a papal trip to Britain that has brought both a warm welcome from Catholics and renewed anger over the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican said the pope was calm despite the pre-dawn arrests and planned no changes to his schedule.

Acting on a tip, police detained the men, aged 26 to 50, under the Terrorism Act at a cleaning depot in central London after receiving information about a possible threat. The men are being questioned at a London police station and have not been charged. Police said an initial search of that business and other related properties has not uncovered any hazardous items.

The pope's visit has divided opinion in officially Protestant, highly secular Britain. The trip has been overshadowed by disgust over the Catholic Church's clerical abuse scandal and opposition from secularists and those opposed to the church's stances against homosexuality and using condoms to fight AIDS.

The detained suspects worked for a contractor on behalf of Westminster Council, the authority responsible for much of central London. The pope will still address British politicians, businessmen and cultural leaders in Westminster Hall, part of the Houses of Parliament, later Friday.

Continue reading "British police arrest five in alleged plot against pope" »

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The French Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill banning the burqa-style Islamic veil in public, but the leaders of both parliamentary houses said they had asked a special council to first ensure the measure passes constitutional muster amid concerns its tramples on religious freedoms, the Associated Press reports.

The Senate voted 246 to 1 Tuesday in favor of the bill, which has already passed in the lower chamber, the National Assembly. It will need President Nicolas Sarkozy's signature.

Legislative leaders said they wanted the Constitutional Council to examine it.

"This law was the object of long and complex debates," the Senate president, Gerard Larcher, and National Assembly head Bernard Accoyer said in a joint statement explaining their move. They said in a joint statement that they want to be certain there is "no uncertainty" about it conforming to the constitution.

The measure effects less than 2,000 women.

Many Muslims believe the legislation is one more blow to France's second religion, and risks raising the level of Islamophobia in a country where mosques, like synagogues, are sporadic targets of hate. However, the vast majority behind the measure say it will preserve the nation's singular values, including its secular foundation and a notion of fraternity that is contrary to those who hide their faces.

Continue reading "French Senate approves Muslim veil ban" »

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The French Senate debates Tuesday whether to ban the burqa-style veil, a move that affects only a tiny minority of the country's Muslim women but has significant symbolic repercussions, the Associated Press reports.

Muslims believe the latest legislation is one more blow to France's second religion, and risks raising the level of Islamophobia in a country where mosques, like synagogues, are sporadic targets of hate. Some women have vowed to wear a full-face veil despite the law.

The proposed law was passed overwhelmingly by the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, on July 13. The expected green light from the Senate would make it definitive once the president signs off on it — barring amendments and an eventual legal challenge.

The measure would outlaw face-covering veils in streets, including those worn by tourists from the Middle East and elsewhere. It is aimed at ensuring gender equality, women's dignity and security, as well as upholding France's secular values — and its way of life.

Kenza Drider, however, says she'll flirt with arrest to wear her veil as she pleases.

"It is a law that is unlawful," said Drider, a mother of four from Avignon, in southern France. "It is ... against individual liberty, freedom of religion, liberty of conscience, she said.

"I will continue to live my life as I always have with my full veil," she told Associated Press Television News.

Continue reading "French Senate to vote on ban of full Muslim veils" »

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A federal judge said she will issue an order to halt the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, after she declared the ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ruled Thursday that the prohibition on openly gay military service members was unconstitutional because it violates the First and Fifth Amendment rights of gays and lesbians.

The policy doesn't help military readiness and instead has a "direct and deleterious effect" on the armed services by hurting recruitment efforts during wartime and requiring the discharge of service members who have critical skills and training, she said.

The Log Cabin Republicans sued the federal government in 2004 to stop the policy. Phillips will draft the injunction with input from the group within a week, and the federal government will have a week to respond.

Government lawyers said the judge lacked the authority to issue a nationwide injunction.

The U.S. Department of Justice can appeal the ruling but the government has not announced what it intends to do. After-hours e-mails and calls requesting comment from government attorney Paul G. Freeborne and from the Pentagon were not immediately returned Thursday evening.

The case was the biggest legal test of the law in recent years and came amid promises by President Barack Obama that he will work to repeal the policy.

"This decision will change the lives of many individuals who only wanted to serve their country bravely," said the group's attorney, Dan Woods.

Continue reading "Federal judge to stop 'Don't ask, don't tell'" »

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On Rosh Hashanah, Baltimore County Police Chief James W. Johnson has sent the local Jewish community a message of peace – and thanks.

In the video message, Johnson credits groups such as Shomrim, a citizens patrol organization formed five years ago by area Orthodox Jews, with contributing to a decline in crime.

“In the Pikesville precinct alone, for example, we have seen decreases in burglaries, robberies and auto thefts throughout this year compared to previous years,” Johnson says in the message, which appears on the website www.theyeshivaworld.com. “Participation in groups like Shomrim greatly contributes to the potential suppression of crime, making our streets safer.”

Rosh Hashanah began at sundown on Wednesday and continues through sundown Friday. The first of the High Holidays, it marks the start of the year in the Hebrew calendar.

City police have announced increased surveillance and patrols in the Jewish neighborhoods of Northwest Baltimore during the holiday after swastikas and other messages were spray-painted last month onto cars on Strathmore Avenue, Clarinth Road and Labyrinth Road.

Continue reading "On Rosh Hashanah, thanks from county police" »

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The lawyer for an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned on an adultery conviction said Monday that he and her children are worried the delayed execution could be carried out soon with the end of a moratorium on death sentences for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Associated Press reports.

In an unusual turn in the case, the lawyer also confirmed that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was lashed 99 times last week in a separate punishment meted out because a British newspaper ran a picture of an unveiled woman mistakenly identified as her. Under Iran's clerical rule, women must cover their hair in public. The newspaper later apologized for the error.

With the end of Ramadan this week, the mother of two could be executed "any moment," said her lawyer, Javid Houtan Kian.

The sentence was put on hold in July after an international outcry over the brutality of the punishment, and it is now being reviewed by Iran's supreme court.

Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 of having an "illicit relationship" with two men after the murder of her husband the year before and was sentenced at that time to 99 lashes. Later that year, she was also convicted of adultery and sentenced to be stoned, even though she retracted a confession that she says was made under duress.

"The possibility of stoning still exists, any moment," Kian told The Associated Press. "Her stoning sentence was only delayed; it has not been lifted yet."

Continue reading "Lawyer: Iranian woman could be stoned soon" »

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American-born Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh and another Muslim inmate have asked a judge to order a federal prison to allow them and other Muslims in their highly restricted cell block to pray as a group, in accordance with their beliefs, the Associated Press reports.

The American Civil Liberties Union last Thursday filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis for summary judgment on behalf of Lindh, 29, and Enaam Arnaout, 47, who claim that the prison's policy restricting group prayer in the Communications Management Unit violates their religious rights. The ACLU contends there are no disputes over the facts of the case and that the law is on the inmates' side, and asks the judge to rule in their favor.

Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence at the Terre Haute prison for aiding Afghanistan's now-defunct Taliban government, wrote in a legal declaration that his religion requires him to pray five times a day, preferably in a group. "This is one of the primary obligations of Islam," he wrote.

Praying in his cell is not appropriate, he said, because the Koran requires a ritually clean place for prayer and he is forced to kneel "in close proximity to my toilet."

Continue reading "John Walker Lindh seeks ruling on prison prayer" »

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A Roman Catholic diocese in Pennsylvania has begun the process to defrock a priest whose dalliances with a teenager were videotaped by her parents, the Associated Press reports. She later gave birth to a daughter.

But Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams says his office won't press charges against the Rev. Luis A. Bonilla Margarito because the relationship started when the girl was 18.

A spokesman says the Diocese of Allentown began putting paperwork together over the weekend for the process known as removal from the clerical state — popularly known as defrocking. The diocesan spokesman, Matt Kerr, says the final decision is up to the Vatican.

Last week, the girl's parents filed a lawsuit saying Bonilla carried on a sexual relationship with the girl while he was the chaplain of Reading Central Catholic High School and she was a senior there.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Authorities say the man suspected of fatally shooting a Mormon church official in a central California church was later shot to death in a confrontation with police, the Associated Press reports.

Police say 42-year-old Mormon lay bishop Clay Sannar was shot Sunday in his office at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Visalia, southeast of Fresno.

Visalia police chief Colleen Mestas says minutes later, a caller identified himself to police as the shooter. Police responded. The suspect was shot and died at a local hospital. No officers were injured.

Mestas says they've handed over the investigation of the officer-involved shooting to Tulare County sheriff's deputies.

Visalia police continue to investigate Sannar's shooting but haven't identified a motive. As far as police know, the shooter wasn't part of the church.

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Michael Enright once volunteered with a group that promotes interfaith tolerance and has supported a proposal for a mosque near ground zero — an experience distinctly at odds with what authorities say happened inside a city taxi, the Associated Press reports.

The baby-faced college student was charged Wednesday with using a folding knife to slash the neck and face of the taxi's Bangladeshi driver after the driver said he was Muslim. Police say Enright was drunk at the time.

A taxi drivers' labor group quickly used the attack to denounce "bigotry" over plans to build an Islamic center and mosque two blocks north of ground zero. While supporters of the mosque say religious freedom should be protected, opponents say the mosque should be moved farther from where Islamic extremists destroyed the World Trade Center and killed nearly 2,800 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a staunch supporter of the mosque project, invited the taxi driver to visit City Hall on Thursday.

"This attack runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe no matter what god we pray to," the mayor said in a statement.

A criminal complaint alleges Enright uttered an Arabic greeting and told the driver, "Consider this a checkpoint," before attacking him Tuesday night inside the yellow cab in Manhattan.

Continue reading "Hate crime charges in attack on Muslim cab driver" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Gay couples who had been gearing up to get married in California this week had to put their wedding plans on hold once again after a federal appeals court said it first wanted to consider the constitutionality of the state's same-sex marriage ban, the Associated Press reports.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals imposed an emergency stay Monday on a trial court judge's ruling overturning the ban, known as Proposition 8. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker had ordered state officials to stop enforcing the measure starting Wednesday, clearing the way for county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

"It's saddening just to know that we still have to keep waiting for this basic human right," Marcia Davalos, of Los Angeles, a health care advocate who had planned to marry her partner, Laurette Healey, said when the stay was issued Monday. "We were getting excited and then all of a sudden it's like, 'Ugh.' It's a roller-coaster."

Lawyers for the two gay couples who challenged the ban said Monday they would not appeal the panel's decision on the stay to the U.S. Supreme Court. They said they were satisfied the appeals court had agreed to fast-track its consideration of the Proposition 8 case by scheduling oral arguments for the week of Dec. 6.

"Today's order from the 9th Circuit for an expedited hearing schedule ensures that we will triumph over Prop. 8 as quickly as possible," said Chad Griffin, president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, a group funding the effort to get the voter-approved gay marriage ban permanently overturned. "Our attorneys are ready to take this case all the way through the appeals court and to the United States Supreme Court."

Continue reading "Gay weddings on hold in California" »

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Taliban militants stoned a young couple to death for adultery after they ran away from their families in northern Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports.

Amnesty International said it was the first confirming stoning in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban rule in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

The Taliban-ordered killing comes at a time when international rights groups have raised worries that attempts to negotiate with the Taliban to bring peace to Afghanistan could mean a step backward for human rights in the country. When the Islamist extremists ruled Afghanistan, women were not allowed to leave their houses without a male guardian, and public killings for violations of their harsh interpretation of the Quran were common.

This weekend's stoning appeared to arise from an affair between a married man and a single woman in Kunduz province's Dasht-e-Archi district.

The woman, Sadiqa, was 20 years old and engaged to another man, said the Kunduz provincial police chief, Gen. Abdul Raza Yaqoubi. Her lover, 28-year-old Qayum, left his wife to run away with her, and the two had holed up in a friend's house five days ago, said district government head, Mohammad Ayub Aqyar.

They were discovered by Taliban operatives on Sunday and stoned to death in front a crowd of about 150 men, Aqyar said.

Continue reading "Taliban execute couple in first stoning since 2001" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

The federal judge who overturned California's same-sex marriage ban has more bad news for the measure's backers, the Associated Press reports: He doubts they have the right to challenge his ruling that gay couples can begin marrying next week.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Thursday rejected a request to delay his decision barring Proposition 8 from taking effect until high courts can take up an appeal lodged by its supporters. One of the reasons, the judge said, is he's not sure the proponents have the authority to appeal since they would not be affected by or responsible for implementing his ruling.

By contrast, same-sex couples are being denied their constitutional rights every day they are prohibited from marrying, Walker said.

The ban's backers "point to harm resulting from a 'cloud of uncertainty' surrounding the validity of marriages performed after judgment is entered but before proponents' appeal is resolved," he said. "Proponents have not, however, argued that any of them seek to wed a same-sex spouse."

Walker gave opponents of same-sex marriage until Aug. 18 at 5 p.m. to get a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether gay marriages should start before the court considers their broader appeal. Their lawyers filed a request asking the 9th Circuit to intervene and block the weddings on an emergency basis late Thursday.

Continue reading "Judge doubts gay-marriage opponents can appeal" »

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An atheist is suing to force the administrators of a towering cross in southern Illinois to return a $20,000 state grant toward its restoration, saying Thursday it was "blatantly unconstitutional" to spend taxpayer money on a Christian symbol, the Associated Press reports.

Caretakers of the 11-story Bald Knob Cross of Peace near Alto Pass, Ill., some 130 miles southeast of St. Louis, insist the grant was legally awarded to the 50-year-old landmark in mid-2008 by classifying it as a tourist attraction, not a religious symbol.

Rob Sherman disagrees, pressing in his federal lawsuit in Springfield, Ill., that the grant violates the U.S. Constitution's establishment clause used to argue a separation of church and state.

"There has never been any question, outside of southern Illinois, that this state grant is blatantly unconstitutional," said Sherman, who successfully sued to have an Illinois law requiring a daily "moment of silence" in Illinois public schools overturned.

"The job of atheists is to take clergy to court to challenge the epidemic of civil wrongs that they have perpetrated, on the sneak, against the people of Illinois," Sherman said on his website. "It's a big job, but somebody's gotta do it."

Continue reading "Atheist sues to get back public money for cross" »

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Russia has rejected a U.S. court ruling to turn over a Jewish library to a Hasidic group in New York, the Associated Press reports.

A U.S. judge last week ruled against the Russian government for its refusal to return thousands of manuscripts that once belonged to a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi. The library was seized by Red Army in Nazi Germany as war booty.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said late Wednesday that the ruling is a "rude violation" of international law.

It said the library was nationalized because its owner, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, had no heirs. Schneersohn was forced to leave Russia in 1927.

The ministry said the library is available for scientific study and worship.

Chabad-Lubavich said it feared some manuscripts were headed to the black market.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

An attorney suing the Vatican on behalf of a clergy abuse victim in Oregon says the withdrawal of a similar lawsuit in Kentucky won't jeopardize other cases taking aim at Rome, the Associated Press reports.

The 6-year-old Kentucky suit that named the Holy See as a defendant virtually ended this week when the plaintiff's attorney filed a motion to dismiss his own case.

Jeff Anderson, the attorney in the lawsuit filed in Portland, noted the difficulty in taking on the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He says "it's not for the faint of heart (or) the weak of pocketbook."

And a legal expert says that the Oregon case has a tough road ahead in proving that American priests should be considered employees of the Vatican.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (36)
        

Polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs won't face a retrial in his Utah accomplice rape case until his criminal charges in Texas are resolved, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff told the Associated Press Wednesday.

The Utah Supreme Court last month overturned Jeffs' 2007 convictions on accomplice rape charges. The court said faulty jury instructions denied Jeffs a fair trial, and the justices sent the case back for retrial.

After talking with Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap and Texas authorities, Shurtleff said all sides agreed to let Texas step in.

"The plan is we all want him tried there first," Shurtleff said. "Then if it looks like we need to try him up here, we'll bring him back."

Jeffs, 54, is the ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints, a southern Utah-based church that practices polygamy in marriages arranged by church leaders. Historically, some marriages have involved underage girls, although church leaders say the practice has stopped.

Texas authorities have charged Jeffs with bigamy, aggravated sexual assault and assault based on alleged incidents with underage girls at a church ranch near Eldorado, Texas. The information that led to the charges was gleaned from church and family records seized during a raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch in 2008.

Continue reading "Utah AG: Jeffs headed to Texas for trial" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

New York Gov. David Paterson offered state help Tuesday if the developers of a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks agree to move the project farther from the site, the Associated Press reports.

Paterson, a Democrat, said that he doesn't oppose the project as planned but indicated that he understands where opponents are coming from. He said he was willing to intervene to seek other suitable state property if the developers agreed.

"I think it's rather clear that building a center there meets all the requirements, but it does seem to ignite an immense amount of anxiety among the citizens of New York and people everywhere, and I think not without cause," Paterson said in a news conference in Manhattan.

"I am very sensitive to the desire of those who are adamant against it to see something else worked out," Paterson said.

The developers declined to comment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last week made an impassioned defense of the project planned for lower Manhattan, declined to comment through a spokesman.

Continue reading "Governor offers help moving Ground Zero mosque" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Three men who sued the Vatican over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in Kentucky have asked a court to dismiss their case, the Associated Press reports.

Plaintiff's attorney William McMurry told the AP that the case is ending because of an earlier ruling that the Vatican is a foreign nation and can't be held liable for policies the suit contended shielded abusive priests. He said most U.S. victims have reached settlements with a diocese and can't go after the Vatican now.

McMurry said a months-long search for victims who haven't settled and could pursue the lawsuit failed to find any willing to come forward.

The dismissal motion was filed Monday in federal court in Louisville.

Vatican lawyer Jeffrey Lena says the case showed "absolutely no evidence of Holy See involvement in the abuses."

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Cardinal Norberto Rivera sharply criticized Mexico's Supreme Court on Sunday for upholding a law allowing homosexuals to marry in the capital, calling the ruling "aberrant" and "immoral," the Associated Press reports.

The Roman Catholic archbishop said it was wrong to go against Christian doctrine that recognizes only marriages between a man and a woman.

"The church cannot fail to call evil evil," Rivera said in a statement.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court on an 8-2 vote upheld the constitutionality of gay marriages in Mexico City under a law passed by the state legislature. The federal government had sought to nullify the law.

The Federal District is the only part of Mexico that allows gay marriages. The city government said last week that since 320 same-sex couples had married since March, 173 of them male and 147 female.

Rivera said homosexuals have suffered abuses from the broader society, but argued that allowing same-sex marriages is not the way to try to atone for such injustices.

Continue reading "Cardinal calls gay marriage 'inherently immoral'" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)
        

Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation's heartland, far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive, the Associated Press reports.

Foes of proposed mosques have deployed dogs to intimidate Muslims holding prayer services and spray painted "Not Welcome" on a construction sign, then later ripped it apart.

The 13-story, $100 million Islamic center that could soon rise two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks would dwarf the proposals elsewhere, yet the smaller projects in local communities are stoking a sharper kind of fear and anger than has showed up in New York.

In the Nashville suburb of Murfreesboro, opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer. They are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

"They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group," said Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area.

Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators recently who wore "Vote for Jesus" T-shirts and carried signs that said: "No Sharia law for USA!," referring to the Islamic code of law. Others took their opposition further, spray painting the sign announcing the "Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro" and tearing it up.

Continue reading "Far from Ground Zero, U.S. mosques face opposition" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

In Arizona, the shooting death of a rancher blew the lid off simmering anger over border security and helped solidify support for a tough new immigration law. Now a similar eruption threatens in Virginia, the Associated Press reports, following the death of a Catholic nun in a car accident involving a man in the country illegally and accused of drunken driving.

The Benedictine Sisters of Virginia tried to discourage using the death of Sister Denise Mosier as a "forum of the illegal immigration agenda" and pleaded for a focus on "Christ's command to forgive."

"The sisters' mission is peace and love," said Corey Stewart, chairman of Prince William County's Board of Supervisors. "My mission is law enforcement and the protection of public safety."

Prince William County, about 25 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., stepped up its immigration enforcement in 2007 amid explosive growth of its Hispanic and immigrant populations. Under Stewart's leadership, the county implemented a local policy requiring police to determine the immigration status of all people arrested on suspicion of violating state or local laws.

Stewart rushed back into the immigration debate after the Aug. 1 accident, firing off a statement that President Barack Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and members of Congress "all have blood on their hands."

"What I'm hoping is that this situation, which because it involves a nun has drawn the nation's attention, can serve as a catalyst for change and force the administration to come clean about its catch-and-release policies," Stewart said. He also says that the tragedy illustrates the need for Virginia to toughen its drunken driving laws.

Continue reading "Va. nun's death rallies anti-immigration forces" »

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Writer, public health professional and attorney J. Samia Mair of Baltimore is the author of the children’s books Amira’s Totally Chocolate World and The Perfect Gift.

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, several mosques in the United States have been targeted either by anti-Muslim protests or by hate crimes. Some speculate that it is due to the controversy over the proposed building of the Cordoba House, a few blocks from Ground Zero. For example, a children’s playground was torched at a Texas mosque and the parking lot had obscene graffiti, defiling the name of God.

There also have been protests against a Kentucky mosque and California mosque. A Florida mosque was recently bombed, which officials described as terrorism.

On Friday, angry protesters from the group Operation Save America accosted worshipers at the Bridgeport Islamic Society in Connecticut. Among them was a 13-year-old who held up a sign stating “Islam is a Lie.” One protestor shouted “murderers” as he apparently shoved a placard at a group of young Muslim children.

The Anti-Defamation League calls itself “America’s prime resource for information on and responses to bigotry.”

According to its website, “The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens" (emphasis added).

To meet these ends, ADL states that it:

• probes the roots of hatred
• fosters interfaith/intergroup relations
• mobilizes communities to stand up against bigotry

Where is the ADL in fulfilling its stated mission to combat bigotry in this case? The answer should surprise you. In a recent statement, ADL took the unbelievable stand that although legal, it is wrong to build the Cordoba House near Ground Zero.

Continue reading "Guest Post: Ground Zero bigotry: The ripple effect" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (43)
        

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who twice vetoed legislation that would have legalized same-sex marriage, has surprised gay rights supporters by urging a federal judge to allow gay couples to resume marrying in the state without further delay, the Associated Press reports.

Lawyers for Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Jerry Brown, two gay couples and the city of San Francisco all filed legal motions Friday asking Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker to implement his ruling striking California's voter-approved same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional.

"The Administration believes the public interest is best served by permitting the court's judgment to go into effect, thereby restoring the right of same-sex couples to marry in California," the Republican governor's lawyers said on his behalf. "Doing so is consistent with California's long history of treating all people and their relationships with equal dignity and respect."

In his 136-page decision overturning Proposition 8 Wednesday, Walker said he was ordering the state to cease enforcing the 22-month-old ban. But he agreed to suspend the order until he could review the briefs submitted Friday.

The measure's sponsors have asked the judge to keep the ban in effect until their appeal of Walker's ruling invalidating Proposition 8 is decided by higher courts.

Continue reading "Schwarzenegger: Resume same-sex weddings now" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker has always been characterized as a conservative with libertarian leanings. But after he struck down California's voter-approved gay marriage ban this week, the Associated Press reports, he was accused by some of being something else entirely: a gay activist.

Rumors have circulated for months that Walker is gay, fueled by the blogosphere and a San Francisco Chronicle column that stated his sexual orientation was an "open secret" in legal and gay activism circles.

Walker himself hasn't addressed the speculation, and he did not respond to a request for comment by the AP on Thursday. Lawyers in the case, including those defending the ban, say the judge's sexuality — gay or straight — was not an issue at trial and will not be a factor on appeal.

But that hasn't stopped a public debate that exploded in the wake of the 66-year-old jurist's Wednesday decision. Most of the criticism has come from opponents of same-sex marriage.

"Here we have an openly gay federal judge, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, substituting his views for those of the American people and of our Founding Fathers who, I promise you, would be shocked by courts that imagine they have the right to put gay marriage in our Constitution," said Maggie Gallagher, chairwoman of The National Organization for Marriage, a group that helped fund the ban, known as Proposition 8.

In response, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee for gay candidates, launched an online petition accusing Gallagher's group of "gay-baiting."

But the debate raises the question: Why is sexuality different from other personal characteristics judges posses? Can a female judge rule on abortion issues? A black judge on civil rights?

Continue reading "After Prop 8 ruling, judge's personal life debated" »

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, seen as a key player in the passage of California's 2008 ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage, says it regrets a federal judge's ruling Wednesday to overturn it.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker agreed with two gay couples that the ballot initiative, known as Proposition 8, violated their civil rights.

In a statement, the church says it "regrets" the ruling:

"California voters have twice been given the opportunity to vote on the definition of marriage in their state and both times have determined that marriage should be recognized as only between a man and a woman. We agree. Marriage between a man and a woman is the bedrock of society.

“We recognize that this decision represents only the opening of a vigorous debate in the courts over the rights of the people to define and protect this most fundamental institution—marriage.

“There is no doubt that today’s ruling will add to the marriage debate in this country, and we urge people on all sides of this issue to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different opinion.”

The church urged followers to give their time and money to support Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote.

According to the Associated Press, church members were among the campaign's most vigorous volunteers and by some estimates contributed tens of millions of dollars to the effort. In a statement, the church said the decision reopens a vigorous debate about over the right of the people to define marriage.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (42)
        

A federal judge has issued a judgment against the Russian government for its refusal to return a library of historic books and documents to a Jewish group, the Associated Press reports.

Royce Lamberth, the chief judge of U.S. District Court in Washington, ruled that taking the material was discriminatory, not for a public purpose and occurred without just compensation to the Jewish religious organization that is suing, Chabad-Lubavitch.

At issue are 12,000 religious books and manuscripts seized during the Bolshevik revolution and the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1925 and 25,000 pages of handwritten teachings and other writings of religious leaders stolen by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The documents seized by the Nazis were transferred by the Soviet Red Army as trophy documents and war booty to the Russian State Military Archive.

Last year, lawyers for the Russian government argued that judges have no authority to tell the country how to handle the sacred Jewish documents.

Under the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a sovereign nation is not immune to lawsuits in cases where property is taken in violation of international law.

Lamberth found that the religious group had established its claim to the material, which he said is "unlawfully" possessed by the Russian State Library and the Russian military archive.

Continue reading "U.S. judge rules against Russia on Jewish papers" »

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A federal judge overturned California's same-sex marriage ban Wednesday in a landmark case that could eventually land before the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if gays have a constitutional right to marry in America, the Associated Press reports.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker made his ruling in a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the voter-approved ban violated their civil rights.

Gay couples waving rainbow and American flags outside the courthouse cheered, hugged and kissed as word of the ruling spread.

"This is a victory for the American people. It's a victory for our justice system," said former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who delivered the closing argument at trial for opponents of the ban.

He said the ruling "vindicates the rights of a minority of our citizens to be treated with decency and respect and equality in our system."

Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will not be allowed to resume immediately. Judge Walker said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents of the ban pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Continue reading "Federal judge overturns California gay marriage ban" »

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Prison officials may ban employees from wearing religious headscarves out of concerns they pose a safety risk, a U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia ruled Monday in a split 2-1 decision.

The majority said that prison officials have legitimate concerns the headscarves can hide drugs or other contraband, or be used by an inmate to strangle someone, the Associated Press reports.

The ruling dismisses a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of three Muslim women employed at the Delaware County Prison in suburban Thornton. The EEOC had said they were being forced to compromise their religious beliefs to keep their jobs.

The suit was filed against the Geo Group, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based contractor that formerly operated the facility.

After the prison implemented a ban on hats and headscarves in 2005, nurse Carmen Sharpe-Allen was fired for refusing to remove her headscarf, or khimar, at work. Intake clerk Marquita King and correctional officer Rashemma Moss, after some deliberation, agreed to remove their headscarves on the job.

Continue reading "Court: Prison may ban Muslim headscarf" »

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... et bienvenue à nos amis francophones

The would-be robber who walked out of a cell phone shop empty-handed and apologizing after a clerk preached to him has been arrested -- after knocking over a shoe store just three hours later, reports the Sun-Sentinel, The Baltimore Sun's South Florida sister.

Authorities in Florida say investigators charged 37-year-old Israel Camacho in the crime, Sun-Sentinel reporter Sofia Santana writes.

Camacho was already in jail, charged in the hold-up of a Payless shoe store in Oakland Park after failing at a Metro PCS shop in Pompano earlier on July 23.

Nayara Goncalves, 20, who was working in the cell phone store alone that morning, had encouraged the would-be robber to "Go to Jesus." A surveillance videotape of the incident has become an internet sensation.

The devout Christian told him: "God has something better for you." Camacho told Goncalves that he, too, was a Christian, and they learned that they had attended the same church.

Goncalves was disappointed to learn Friday that the suspect in her case was linked to a robbery that happened later the same day.

"It's so sad," she said. "I thought God was giving him a second chance."

Continue reading "Police: Robber just moved on to another store" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Surveillance video footage of a young Christian talking a gunman out of robbing her cell phone store last week has become an Internet sensation.

The tape shows a man entering the MetroPCS store in Pompano Beach, Fla., last Friday, approaching the manager, identified in media reports as 20-year-old Nayara Goncalves, showing her a gun and demanding money.

But Goncalves changes the subject.

“Know what?” she asks. “I'm just gonna talk with you about the Jesus I have.”

She identifies herself as a Christian.

“You know you don't need this, Jesus got something way better for you,” she says. “For everyone that's out there. I'm not blaming you, I'm not judging. I don't know what you are going through, but all of us are going through a hard time right now – a very hard time right now.”

The man appears to agree.

Continue reading "Store manager invokes Jesus, dissuades robber" »

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A draft constitution that Kenya votes on next week guarantees women the same rights as men — unless a judge in a Muslim family court decrees otherwise, the Associated Press reports.

Critics, including some American evangelicals, complain that the document carves out too many exceptions for the country's Muslim minority and could create tensions between Muslims and Christians.

Creating a new constitution was a key part of a power-sharing deal that ended weeks of bloody riots 2 1/2 years ago. More than 1,000 people were killed in the violence after a disputed presidential election.

But the inclusion of the publicly funded Muslim courts has galvanized opposition among some Christians ahead of next Wednesday's vote. A clause in the bill — which polls show is likely to pass — grants equality to women, as long as it doesn't interfere with the application of Muslim law.

"All Kenyans should have the same rights regardless of ethnicity, religion or gender," said Oliver Kisaka, the deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Kenya. "This is the unfair creation of a system within a system. And why should taxpayers pay for a judicial system that doesn't include them?"

Muslim leaders call that kind of attitude scare mongering, and point out that Kenya's Islamic courts predate the country's independence from Britain, when they were formally brought under the Ministry of Justice. Muslims make up about 10 percent of Kenya's 40 million people.

Continue reading "Constitution would accommodate Muslim courts" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Police in Swaziland say they have arrested three traditional healers for allegedly desecrating graves to retrieve human skulls and bones for healing rituals, the Associated Press reports.

Police official Wendy Hleta said Thursday the three — who might be described in the West as witchdoctors — claimed a healer from neighboring Mozambique offered to make them "instant millionaires" if they dug up human bones.

Police found a skull on the property of one of the suspects who then identified a remote grave that had been opened.

Hleta said the healers were arrested Thursday and charged with violating grave sites in this tiny mountainous southern African kingdom.

Last month a Swazi court fined two traditional healers for using body parts of protected animals.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

A Utah Supreme Court decision that overturns polygamous church leader Warren Jeffs' 2007 criminal conviction won't automatically make him a free man, the Associated Press reports. Even if Utah doesn't retry him, Texas and federal prosecutors are waiting to move forward with their own cases.

Justices on Tuesday unanimously said Jeffs should get a new trial because state attorneys overreached in their argument that performing the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin amounted to facilitating a rape.

Utah officials now have two weeks to seek a rehearing before the state's high court and then a month to decide if they'll retry the 54-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on charges of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice.

A judge Wednesday set an Aug. 18 date for a hearing on a motion from Jeffs' defense attorneys seeking a "speedy trial before a jury of his peers."

Meanwhile, authorities in Texas are trying to get Jeffs sent there to face charges in connection with his own alleged marriages to underage girls in 2005. A federal indictment stemming from Jeffs' stint as a fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list is also pending.

"He would not go free," said Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Utah.

Continue reading "Texas, feds in line to try polygamist leader Jeffs" »

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered authorities to expel gypsy illegal immigrants and dismantle their camps, amid accusations that his government is acting racist in its treatment of the group known as Roma, the Associated Press reports.

Sarkozy called a government meeting Wednesday after Roma clashed with police this month after the shooting death of a gypsy youth fleeing officers in the Loire Valley.

Sarkozy said those responsible for the clashes would be "severely punished" and ordered the government to expel all illegal Roma immigrants, almost all of whom have come from eastern Europe.

He pushed for a change in France's immigration law to make such expulsion easier "for reasons of public order." He said illegal gypsy camps "will be systematically evacuated," calling them sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.

French Roma representatives were not invited to Wednesday's presidential meeting, which included the interior, justice and immigration ministers and top police officials.

Community leaders contend the very principle of the meeting — which singled out an ethnic group in a country that is officially blind to ethnic origins — is racist and warn of grave consequences if their side isn't heard. France's government does not count how many of its citizens are of a certain ethnicity; everyone is simply considered French.

"Today ... I am afraid we're preparing to open a blighted page in the history of France, which could sadly lead to acts of reprisal in the days ahead," said lawyer Henri Braun said at a Wednesday news conference by French Roma leaders. "There is a huge problem of racism in France towards this population, there is enormous discrimination."

Continue reading "France expels illegal Roma immigrants" »

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A Malaysian court fined 12 Muslims on Tuesday and sentenced one of them to a week in prison for illegally protesting the construction of a Hindu temple and parading a severed cow's head, the Associated Press reports.

The protest last August stoked tensions among Malaysia's three main ethnic groups — the Malay Muslim majority and Chinese and Indian minorities, most of them Buddhists, Christians or Hindus who have complained that their religious rights are often sidelined in favor of Islam.

The 12 men were among scores of Muslims who marched with a bloodied cow's head from a mosque to the central Selangor state chief minister's office to denounce the state government's plan to build a Hindu temple in their largely Muslim neighborhood.

The cow is the most sacred animal in Hinduism.

All 12 pleaded guilty in a Selangor district court to a charge of illegal assembly and were fined US$320 each, said defense lawyer Afifuddin Hafifi. They faced up to a year in prison and a fine for the charge.

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New York's attorney general is on the trail of a fake nun who dons a habit and cross to solicit donations for a phony church with a violent past, the Associated Press reports.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office said it issued subpoenas Monday in the case of Mindy LeGrand, 54, who was photographed by the New York Post on July 17 panhandling in Manhattan's Little Italy neighborhood. She then removed her habit and took the subway to Brooklyn.

According to the Post, the impostor told some donors that she was collecting money for an upstate New York orphanage and others that she was collecting "for the homeless." She said she was an Episcopal nun, but the Episcopal Church has never heard of her.

LeGrand actually is part of an unaccredited church that has operated at least since the 1970s, when founder Devernon LeGrand kept a stable of phony nuns who were sent out to beg. According to the Post, she is his daughter-in-law.

Devernon LeGrand and a son, Noconda LeGrand, were convicted in 1975 of raping a young woman in the four-story Brooklyn building that houses the LeGrand family and the church, then called St. John's Pentecostal Church of Our Lord.

The church founder was convicted in 1977 of murdering two teenage sisters in the same building to keep them from testifying in the rape case. He also was convicted of murdering his wife in 1970. He died in prison in 2006. Noconda LeGrand was released from prison in 1980 and runs the church now.

Continue reading "New York on the trail of tabloid 'nun'" »

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The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed the convictions of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and ordered a new trial, saying a jury received incorrect instructions before considering his role in the 2001 nuptials of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin, the Associated Press reports.

Jeffs, 54, was convicted in 2007 of two counts of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice. He is serving two consecutive terms of five years to life in the Utah State Prison.

A telephone call seeking comment from the Washington County attorney's office and the Utah attorney was not immediately returned Tuesday. Jeffs' lawyers scheduled a news conference later Tuesday.

Jeffs is head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The group, based on the Utah-Arizona state line, practices polygamy in marriages arranged by church leaders.

Jeffs performed the religious marriage of Elissa Wall and Allen Steed in a Caliente, Nev., motel and later counseled Wall to be obedient and give her "mind, body and soul" to her husband in an effort to make an unhappy marriage work.

During the trial and later in her book, "Stolen Innocence," Wall said she objected to the marriage and was forced into sexual relations with her husband.

Continue reading "Utah Supreme Court reverses Jeffs convictions" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

I, for one, am glad to see that the Sun is selling enough advertisements to necessitate the abbreviation of wire stories. But I was disappointed to see that the piece in today's paper ("Man arrested on terror charges," page A10) relating the arrest of one Zachary Adam Chesser failed to mention the infamy he earned by threatening the creators of South Park for their depiction of Muhammad.

No doubt Chesser's alleged association with notable terrorist figures like Anwar al-Awlaki and Nidal Hassan had earned him a spot on the no-fly list (and a federal wiretap) before he put Trey Parker and Matt Stone in his sights. His defenders at the time tried to portray him as a harmless blogger, parroting his statement that he was simply observing (rather than threatening) that Parker and Stone might end up like murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Chesser was picked up at JFK earlier this month when he allegedly tried to fly to Somalia in order to join up with the terrorist organization al-Shabaab, presumably not in the role of harmless blogger. Indeed, according to his own statements to FBI investigators, Chesser traveled with his infant son in order to deflect suspicion. Anyone who has attempted air travel with an infant knows that you don't do this unless you absolutely, positively, have to be there on an airplane. So clearly the guy was pretty serious.

What's especially sobering about this story is that Chesser is all of 20 years old. According to his interviews with the FBI, Chesser's commitment to the violent propagation of Islam was in considerable flux during the exactly two years between when he became interested in Islam and when he set off to another continent to join a terrorist organization. At times he was personally committed to violence, at times he was opposed; at times, Cuomo-esque, he supported others' violence but didn't want to perpetrate it himself.

Continue reading "Goin' after South Park? Goin' down to court" »

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The Mississippi school district that canceled a high school prom rather than allow a senior to bring her girlfriend has reached a settlement with the student, her attorneys said Tuesday.

The Itawamba County School District has agreed to pay 18-year-old Constance McMillen $35,000 plus attorneys fees, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The district also agreed to implement a policy banning discrimination or harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity – the first such policy in Mississippi – according to the ACLU.

"I'm so glad this is all over,” McMillen, a student at Itawamba Agricultural High School in in Jackson, Miss., said in a statement distributed by the ACLU. “I won't ever get my prom back, but it's worth it if it changes things at my school.”

According to the ACLU, McMillen suffered such harassment at IAHS that she transferred to another school to complete her senior year. The ACLU has accused district officials of staging a sham prom for McMillen while classmates attended a separate event elsewhere.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Culture, Education, Law and Courts, People, Politics, Sexuality
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Every once in a while I encounter something that forces me to question some of my most deeply held beliefs. Sometimes it's being told about an experience I don't think ought to be able to happen. Sometimes it's a person doing something totally unexpected that somehow works out for the good. And sometimes it's a bunch of bigoted jerks disrupting a military funeral.

For a small church in Kansas, the Westboro Baptist Church has a presence that looms large over our area. Their 2006 protest at the Westminster funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder prompted a lawsuit which will make its way to the Supreme Court this fall. For those who are unfamiliar, WBC's membership consists primarily of the pastor's relatives, and its activities consist primarily of stretching the limits of First Amendment protections and going to court against their opponents.

This spring WBC announced that it would protest at the funeral of University of Virginia lacrosse player Yeardley Love at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. Apparently a young woman's violent death presented an opportunity to address the issue of pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church by waving signs and shouting slogans with content unsuitable for a family blog.

I couldn't have been prouder that someone from our congregation was on site to hold up sheets and tarps to protect Love's family from seeing the WBC protesters (who, as it turns out, never showed). Much the same service was provided to Snyder's family by the Patriot Guard Riders, a corps of motorcyclists who fire up their Harleys at military funerals to drown out the voices of WBC protesters.

My libertarian streak runs deep and wide. Generally speaking I'm inclined to note that it's the right to free speech, not the right to not be offended, that is enshrined in the First Amendment. So on the question of offensive South Park episodes, as I argued on this blog several months back, a person who doesn't like how his prophet is being portrayed should change the channel rather than threatening violence against the show's creators.

So when people want to protest outside a political event, or a rock concert, or a Wal-Mart, or even an abortion clinic, I see that as an exercise of free speech that the people who don't like it have to tolerate anyway -- in this country, that's how we roll. To have true freedom of speech means to allow speech that is inconvenient, that is unwanted, that may be upsetting.

Yet at the same time there's a lot of sense in carving out space for civility and decorum in the midst of these freedoms in a few circumstances. And if there's any place where speech might legitimately be curtailed, I have to say as a pastor that it's at a funeral. I'd probably want to include weddings as well. It's not unreasonable for a free society to say, "You don't have the right to not be offended. But you do have the right to bury your son in peace," without people yelling across the street that his death should be celebrated as God's vengeance on America for its various moral failures.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Barbarians well outside the gates" »

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Banning a fundamentalist church from protesting homosexuality outside military funerals would have a chilling effect on free speech, according to briefs filed to the U.S. Supreme Court by an ideologically diverse group of supporters, the Associated Press reports.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., picket military funerals around the country. They argue that U.S. military deaths are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality and carry signs with slogans including "Thank God for Dead Soldiers."

Albert Snyder of York, Pa., filed a lawsuit accusing the church of inflicting emotional distress and invading his privacy. He argues that the church's free speech rights did not trump his right to peacefully assemble for the 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, in Westminster.

A jury awarded Snyder nearly $11 million in damages. A judge later reduced that award, and an appeals court overturned the verdict. The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall.

Continue reading "Briefs: Banning WBC protests would chill speech" »

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Mormon church leaders have restated the faith's unequivocal position against gay marriage in a letter to members in Argentina, where the government is debating whether to legalize gay unions, the Associated Press reports.

"The doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is absolutely clear: Marriage is between one man and woman and is ordained of God," said the July 6 letter from church President Thomas S. Monson.

A copy of the letter and its English translation began circulating over the weekend on websites for former Mormons.

Church spokeswoman Kim Farah on Monday confirmed the letter was sent to local leaders in Argentina, where the faith has more than 371,000 members, according to a 2010 church almanac. The country's population is more than 41 million.

Argentina's Senate is debating whether to approve either gay marriage or a civil union law. The country's other legislative body — the House of Deputies — approved same-sex marriage legislation in May. President Cristina Fernandez has promised not to veto the measure if it reaches her desk.

The letter falls short of calling for political activism by members in Argentina, but is an echo of a 2008 letter from Monson to Latter-day Saints in California. Monson had called for Mormons to give their time and money to help pass Proposition 8, a state ballot initiative to ban gay marriage.

The church was seen as a driving force behind that initiative's success, with members donating tens of millions of dollars to the campaign.

In a statement, Farah said "the church has taken no official position on the legislation being considered" in Argentina.

Still, Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn, said the letter is a significant step in political activism for the church outside the United States.

Continue reading "Mormon church restates opposition to gay marriage" »

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Liberal Jewish groups were angered Monday after a parliamentary committee in Israel approved a bill that would give Orthodox rabbis more control over the sensitive issue of conversions to Judaism, the Associated Press reports.

The Reform and Conservative movements, which are the largest Jewish denominations outside Israel but wield little clout inside the Jewish state, fear the new bill could increase the influence of Orthodox rabbis at their expense and undermine their own legitimacy and connection to Israel.

Nathan Sharansky, the former Russian political prisoner who now heads the Jewish Agency organization responsible for Israel's relations with Jews abroad, said he had received angry calls from Jewish leaders.

"The meaning of this is a split between the state of Israel and large portions of the Jewish people," he told Israel Radio.

Continue reading "Ire in Israel over changes to Jewish conversions" »

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The controversial death sentence by stoning for an Iranian woman convicted of adultery will not be implemented for now, said a judicial official on Sunday.

The world outcry over the death sentence has become the latest issue in Iran's fraught relationship with the international community, the Associated Press reports.

Malek Ajdar Sharifi, the top judicial official in the province where the mother of two was convicted, told the Iranian state news agency that her crimes were "various and very serious" and not limited to adultery, but that the sentence "will not be implemented for the time being."

He added Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's stoning would still take place if the judiciary wanted, despite the "propaganda" by the West.

The United States, Britain and international human rights groups have all urged Tehran not to carry out the sentence.

Continue reading "Iran halts stoning of woman 'for the time being'" »

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A judge's rulings in Massachusetts that the federal law banning gay marriage is unconstitutional could have implications far beyond the state if they're upheld by a higher court after an appeal by the Obama administration, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro said the law, the Defense of Marriage Act, interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and therefore denies married gay couples some federal benefits. He ruled Thursday in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to DOMA, which the administration of President Barack Obama has argued for repealing.

The rulings apply to Massachusetts, but if a higher court with a broader jurisdiction were to hear an appeal and agree with the judge's rulings, their impact would spread, said Boston College professor Kent Greenfield, a constitutional law expert. The rulings might encourage other attorneys general who oppose DOMA to sue to try to knock it down, he said.

"One thing that's going to be really interesting to watch is whether the Obama administration appeals or not," he said.

An appeal would be considered by the First Circuit, which also includes Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire.

The Department of Justice didn't immediately say whether it would appeal; it was reviewing the judge's decisions, spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said.

Continue reading "Gay marriage ruling could have far-reaching impact" »

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The fundamentalist church that picketed the Westminster funeral of a Maryland Marine killed in Iraq with anti-gay signs argued Wednesday that its actions were protected by the First Amendment, the Associated Press reports.

An attorney for the Westboro Baptist Church submitted a 75-page brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in a lawsuit against the church this fall. Albert Snyder of York, Pa., claims that the church's free-speech rights did not trump his right to peacefully assemble for his son's funeral.

The Topeka, Kan.-based church claims that U.S. military deaths are God's punishment for America's alleged tolerance of homosexuality. Founder Fred Phelps and six of his relatives picketed the 2006 funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster carrying signs that read "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "You're Going to Hell," among other statements.

Margie Jean Phelps, the daughter of Fred Phelps and, like several in the family, an attorney, will argue the case before the Supreme Court. She argued in her brief that Westboro did not disrupt the funeral in part because its protest was 1,000 feet away from the church, on a public street. Snyder did not see the protesters and could not read their signs during the funeral, but was aware of their presence.

"He was able to go to and leave the funeral without any slightest disruption or interference," Phelps wrote. "WBC was out of sight and sound; maintained a very reasonable distance; acted peacefully and engaged in no disruption or intrusion. ... This is the wrong case to decide whether there is a privacy interest in a funeral."

Phelps also argued that the church was engaging in public speech on a matter of public concern; that the funeral was a public event; and that the church did not assert provable facts but instead expressed "hyperbolic, figurative, loose, hysterical opinion."

Continue reading "WBC says First Amendment protects funeral protest" »

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Pope Benedict XVI will soon issue a document outlining the church's procedures for handling clerical sex abuse cases that will gather the norms now in use and make them permanent and legally binding, a Vatican official and canon lawyer said Tuesday.

The "instruction" from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been in the works for some time, the Associated Press reports. But its impending publication has taken on new relevance amid the abuse scandal that has roiled the Vatican for months, with hundreds of new cases coming to light of priests who raped and sodomized children, bishops who covered up for them and Vatican officials who turned a blind eye.

The norms concern the canonical procedures for dealing with abusive priests, with penalties as severe as being dismissed from the clerical state. Separately, the Vatican issued informal guidelines earlier this year saying bishops should follow civil reporting laws in terms of reporting abuse to police.

It's unclear whether the new set of norms will include any reference to civil reporting requirements. Since such requirements vary from country to country, it would be difficult to make reference to them in a document that is canonically binding on the church around the globe, noted the Rev. Davide Cito, a canon lawyer and consultant at the Congregation.

The norms now in place have been modified and updated from a 2001 Vatican document and set of procedures issued by Pope John Paul II outlining how the church should handle the abuse of minors by priests.

The 2001 documents require bishops to report credible accusations of abusive priests to the Congregation, which then decides how to proceed, including through a full canonical trial. In 2003 — a year after the U.S. abuse scandal exploded — the norms were amended to speed up administrative penalties against abusive clerics where the evidence them is overwhelming, among other things.

But those 2003 modifications were ad hoc and temporary in nature and had to be reconfirmed, for example, by Benedict after John Paul died in 2005. By gathering them together and including them now in an official, binding document, they become permanent church law.

As a result, the new instruction is expected to contain little that goes beyond what is currently the practice of the Congregation, Cito said. The instruction, for example, is expected to formally extend the 10-year statute of limitations for abuse cases that was imposed for the first time in the 2001 procedures. But those limits have been waived on a case-by-case basis already since 2002 since the 10-year limit was deemed too short.

Continue reading "Vatican to issue sex abuse case procedures" »

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Hawaii's governor on Tuesday vetoed legislation that would have permitted same-sex civil unions, ending months of speculation on how she would weigh in on the contentious, emotional debate, the Associated Press reports.

The action of Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, who had sought advice from rabbis on either side of the debate, came on the final day she had to either sign or veto the bill, which the Hawaii Legislature approved in late April.

"There has not been a bill I have contemplated more or an issue I have thought more deeply about during my eight years as governor than House Bill 444 and the institution of marriage," Lingle said at a news conference. "I have been open and consistent in my opposition to same-gender marriage, and find that House Bill 444 is essentially marriage by another name."

Had Lingle not vetoed it, the measure would have granted gay and lesbian couples the same rights and benefits that the state provides to married couples. It also would have made Hawaii one of six states that essentially grant the rights of marriage to same-sex couples without authorizing marriage itself. Five other states and the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage.

Lingle's decision is expected to be the last say on the proposal this year, because state House leaders have said they won't override any of Lingle's vetoes.

She said voters should decide the fate of civil unions, not politicians.

"The subject of this legislation has touched the hearts and minds of our citizens as no other social issue of our day," Lingle said. "It would be a mistake to allow a decision of this magnitude to be made by one individual or a small group of elected officials."

Continue reading "Hawaii governor vetoes same-sex unions" »

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The Roman Catholic Church is petitioning Chile's government for prisoner pardons that would include people responsible for crimes against humanity, angering rights activists and some conservatives, the Associated Press reports.

The church is asking for the pardons as part of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Chile's independence on Sept. 18. The church proposes pardons for those older than 70, any with a terminal decease and women who are mothers.

The controversy centers on the inclusion of some convicted of committing crimes during the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. According to official statistics, 3,065 opponents of Pinochet's regime were killed and 1,200 more disappeared.

"There shouldn't be any pardons under any circumstances for those guilty of crimes against humanity," Mireya Garcia, vice president of the Group of Families of Detainees and Missing People, told The Associated Press on Monday.

Last week, Garcia's group asked President Sebastian Pinera not to pardon anyone accused of committing such crimes during Pinochet's dictatorship.

Continue reading "Church seeks pardons for crimes against humanity" »

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An emotional debate over crucifixes in classrooms is opening a new crack in European unity, the Associated Press reports.

It all started in a small town in northern Italy, where Finnish-born Soile Lautsi was so shocked by the sight of crosses above the blackboard in her children's public school classroom that she called a lawyer to see if she could get them removed.

Her case went all the way to Europe's highest court — and her victory has set up a major confrontation between traditional Catholic and Orthodox countries and nations in the north that observe a strict separation between church and state. Italy and more than a dozen other countries are fighting the European Court of Human Rights ruling, contending the crucifix is a symbol of the continent's historic and cultural roots.

"This is a great battle for the freedom and identity of our Christian values," said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

The court case underlines how religious symbols are becoming a contentious issue in an increasingly multiethnic Europe.

French legislators begin debate next week on a draft law, vigorously championed by President Nicolas Sakorzy, that would forbid women from wearing face-covering Islamic veils anywhere in public.

Continue reading "Crucifixes in classrooms testing European unity" »

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A European ruling banning crucifixes in Italian schools should be overturned, nine European governments said in an appeal Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that crucifixes in Italian public schools violate religious and education freedoms last November. The case, part of a larger debate over the role of religious symbols in public places, has sharpened divisions between secular and religious advocacy groups.

Italian courts have previously ruled that the display of crucifixes is part of Italian national identity and not an attempt at conversion, an argument expanded by New York University legal scholar Joseph Weiler on behalf of the governments of Italy, Armenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, San Marino, Romania and Russia, who are appealing the ruling.

The decisions of the court — an arm of the Council of Europe, the continent's premier human rights watchdog — are binding on the council's 47 member states and therefore have an impact far beyond Italy.

"The democratic cohesion of society is dependent on the ability to uphold national symbols around which all society can coalesce," Weiler said. "It would be a strange (if Italy) had to abandon national symbols, and strip from its cultural identikit, any symbol which also had a religious significance."

Continue reading "Ban on crucifixes in Italian schools appealed" »

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Shaukat Malik is a Muslim-American Certified Public Accountant from Potomac. He left his native Pakistan in 1972 and has been living in the United States since 1980.

Western patience and capacity for continued spending on the Afghan war is running thin. The United Kingdom and other NATO countries are facing increasing opposition at home. The British Petroleum oil spill has added to the urgency for a speedy resolution in Afghanistan. We have reached a very critical stage in the Afghanistan war.

Creating a civil society in Afghanistan is a long-term project that may take a decade. Taliban rule of the 1990s, followed by nine years of continuous war and unrest, have destroyed local government and infrastructure necessary for bringing order to the ordinary lives of Afghans.

However, at least in Pakistan, where there is indeed an elected parliament, the politicians must earn their credentials and not allow critics to label them as useless rubber-stamp parasites hanging around for their monthly paychecks.

Time has come for Pakistan’s politicians to show maturity and counter criticism that they are inept, unqualified and unable to handle the problems of Pakistan. A free press in Pakistan has enough material for any politician to understand Pakistan’s important role in the war against terror and how it can directly influence the outcome of the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Ordinary Pakistani citizens must be convinced that the war against the Taliban is their war, and not just America’s war. The Taliban has supported Al-Qaeda. The organization that carried out the 9/11 murder of more that 3,000 innocent Americans in New York cannot be allowed to establish its headquarters in Pakistan to kill innocent Pakistanis. The Taliban are no different from cancer cells and must be neutralized or eliminated.

Continue reading "Guest post: Pakistan must rally against Taliban" »

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Belgium insisted Monday in a dispute with the Vatican over credibility that Belgian law enforcement authorities — not the potentially biased Catholic Church — will investigate sexual abuse cases involving clergy, the Associated Press reports.

A panel created by Belgian bishops 12 years ago to look into abuse cases disbanded on Monday, saying last week's seizure of its 500 case files rendered its existence pointless. Its chief, Peter Adriaenssens, accused authorities of betraying the trust of hundreds of victims and using his group to tap into information and testimony from abuse victims.

"We were bait," said Adriaenssens, a child psychiatrist. He urged Belgian authorities to clarify to abuse victims — many of whom talked after being promised anonymity — "what is going to happen" to the allegations they made to his church-appointed commission.

Belgium's government doesn't appear to be concerned about having pushed the panel to the sidelines, despite an outburst from the Vatican that Thursday's police raid was an unprecedented intrusion into church affairs.

"I respect Peter Adriaenssens, but his commission was created by the Church," Glenn Audenaert, head of Belgium's judiciary police, said after last week's police raids. "That commission cannot start a prosecution. Only the justice department can."

In Belgium, it has been doing that with unusual force.

Continue reading "Belgium: Police, not church, will investigate abuse" »

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An ideologically split Supreme Court ruled Monday that a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won't let gays join, with one justice saying that the First Amendment does not require a public university to validate or support the group's "discriminatory practices," the Associated Press reports.

The court turned away an appeal from the Christian Legal Society, which sued to get funding and recognition from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law. The CLS requires that voting members sign a statement of faith and regards "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle" as being inconsistent with that faith.

But Hastings, which is in San Francisco, said no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation.

The court on a 5-4 judgment upheld the lower court rulings saying the Christian group's First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise were not violated by the college's nondiscrimination policy.

"In requiring CLS — in common with all other student organizations — to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the 5-4 majority opinion for the court's liberals and moderate Anthony Kennedy. "CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings' policy."

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a strong dissent for the court's conservatives, saying the opinion was "a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country."

Continue reading "Court: School can deny $$$ to group that bars gays" »

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The pope on Sunday called the raids carried out by Belgian police investigating priestly sex abuse "surprising and deplorable" and voiced his support for the Belgian bishops who were held during the searches, the Associated Press reports.

In a message of solidarity to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference, Pope Benedict XVI said justice must take its course but also asserted the right of the Catholic Church to investigate abuse alongside civil law enforcement authorities.

It was first time the pope himself had commented on the June 24 raids, and his message to Monsignor Andre Joseph Leonard capped a daily ratcheting up of the Vatican's criticism. On Saturday, the No. 2 Vatican official said the raids were unprecedented even under communism.

In the raids, police searched the home and former office of former Archbishop Godfried Danneels, taking documents and his personal computer. The raid came as the country's nine bishops were starting their monthly meeting; the men were held for nine hours and — along with diocese staff — had to surrender their cell phones.

Police and prosecutors have not said if Danneels is suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person.

Separately, police seized the records of an independent panel investigating sexual abuse by priests, some 500 cases in all. The head of the panel called the raid a huge violation of the privacy of people — mostly men now in their 60s and 70s — who have lived with the shame of abuse.

Benedict said he wanted to write to Belgium's bishops "at this sad moment" to express his solidarity "for the surprising and deplorable way in which the searches were conducted." He noted that the monthly meeting of the bishops was to discuss precisely clerical abuse.

Continue reading "Pope: Police raids 'surprising and deplorable'" »

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A hidden-camera video showing Jews being harassed on the street in a Moroccan neighborhood of Amsterdam has led Dutch authorities to consider combating hate crimes with "decoy Jews" — undercover police officers wearing yarmulkes, the Associated Press reports.

Enthusiasm for the unusual idea is a sign of the ongoing tension between the Muslim minority and the rest of the Dutch population over issues of immigration and crime.

The idea of using "decoy Jews" to detect and arrest bigots has been embraced by both a prominent Moroccan politician and by Amsterdam's acting mayor, who is Jewish. Law enforcement officials say the idea is feasible but would only be of limited practical use due to entrapment concerns.

"It's important that it not provoke any intent to commit a criminal act that wasn't there in the first place," Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin told parliament in a debate Thursday night on how to combat discrimination.

Of course "it would be wrong to consider wearing a yarmulke itself a provocation," he said.

Continue reading "Authorities consider using 'decoy Jews' to fight hate" »

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The Vatican said Friday it was astonished and outraged that Belgian police investigating priestly sex abuse had conducted raids that also targeted the graves of two archbishops, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See to convey its anger over the raids, which also included the home and offices of the retired archbishop of Belgium. The ambassador was called in for a meeting with the Vatican's foreign minister.

In a statement, the Vatican said any sinful and criminal abuse of minors from members of the church must be condemned and repeated that there is a need for justice and amends.

But it added, "The Secretariat of State also expresses astonishment at the way in which the search took place." It expressed "outrage over the violation of the tombs."

On Thursday, police raided the home and former office of former Archbishop Godfried Danneels, taking documents and Danneels' personal computer. Police and prosecutors did not say if Danneels was suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person. He was not questioned.

Investigators also opened the graves of archbishops in the St. Rombouts Cathedral in Mechlin, north of Brussels, looking for possibly incriminating documents, said Jean-Marc Meilleur, spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor.

Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, Belgium's current archbishop, condemned the search of the cathedral, saying that is stuff for "crime novels and 'The Da Vinci Code.'"

Continue reading "Raids included bishops' graves; Vatican outraged" »

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The Vatican is asking a federal judge to reject an attempt to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath in a Kentucky sex abuse lawsuit on the grounds that there has been no evidence of a link to church officials in Rome, the Associated Press reports.

The arguments filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Louisville also say that forcing Benedict, a head of state, to give a deposition would violate international law. The U.S. considers the Vatican to be a sovereign nation.

The lawsuit accuses the Vatican, referred to in papers as the Holy See, of orchestrating a coverup of priests sexually abusing children throughout the U.S.

Louisville attorney William McMurry asked to depose Benedict and other Vatican officials in a motion in March and the filing on Thursday is a response. McMurry has also asked that the Vatican turn over administrative documents and respond to questions related to the abuse scandal in the U.S.

Attorneys for the Vatican argue that thousands of documents provided in a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville several years ago have turned up no connection to Rome. The Louisville archdiocese reached a settlement in 2003 with more than 240 abuse victims represented by McMurry for $25 million.

McMurry will have an opportunity to reply to the Vatican's latest arguments in a response to the court.

Continue reading "Vatican asks judge to block effort to question pope" »

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Police raided the home and former office of the recently retired archbishop of Belgium on Thursday, carrying off documents and a personal computer as part of an investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests, the Associated Press reports.

Police and prosecutors would not say if former Archbishop Godfried Danneels was suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person.

Separately, police seized the records of an independent panel investigating sexual abuse by priests, some 500 cases in all. The head of the panel called the raid a huge violation of the privacy of people — mostly men now in their 60s and 70s — who have lived with the shame of abuse.

The raids followed recent statements to police "that are related to the sexual abuse of children within the church," said Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office. He would not offer specifics on the case.

Police took documents, but did not question Danneels at his home in the city of Mechlin, north of Brussels, said Hans Geybels, the spokesman for the former archbishop.

"They did take away his computer," he said.

Continue reading "Police raid home, offices of retired archbishop" »

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A second man is expected to change his not-guilty plea in the arson fire that destroyed a predominantly black Massachusetts church hours after Barack Obama was elected president, the Associated Press reports.

Thomas Gleason Jr. has a change-of-plea hearing scheduled Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Springfield. Gleason had been scheduled to go to trial on civil rights and other charges later this week.

His lawyer, Mark Albano, declined to comment when reached Monday.

Gleason is one of three white men charged with burning down the Macedonia Church of God in Christ on Nov. 5, 2008, the day after Obama was elected the nation's first black president.

Last week, Benjamin Haskell pleaded guilty in a deal that calls for him to spend nine years in prison.

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A Mexican man says that leaders of an influential Roman Catholic religious order knew their founder was a child molester and did nothing to stop him, the Associated Press reports.

Jose Raul Gonzalez is seeking unspecified damages from the Legionaires of Christ in a lawsuit filed Monday in Connecticut. The international group has its U.S. headquarters in the state.

Gonzalez says the Reverend Marcial Maciel (mahr-cee-AHL' mah-cee-EL') was his father, and started sexually abusing him when he was a little boy. The 30-year-old Gonzalez says the abuse continued for years. Maciel died in 2008.

Legion officials have acknowledged Maciel fathered at least one child, a girl, and abused seminarians, but insist they only recently learned of his double life. A recent Vatican investigation concluded Maciel lived a "life devoid of scruples."

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A New Hampshire sex offender is asking the state's highest court to allow him to go to church with a chaperone, the Associated Press reports.

The case of 35-year-old Jonathan Perfetto of Manchester marks the first time the New Hampshire Supreme Court is being asked to rule on whether a probation condition that effectively bars church attendance violates a person's constitutional rights to religious freedom.

Perfetto was convicted in 2002 of possessing child pornography. A condition of his probation is that he have no contact with children. A lower court denied Perfetto's request to attend Jehovah's Witnesses services with a church elder acting as a chaperone.

The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union and Perfetto maintain the chaperone would eliminate any risk to children. The state says public safety trumps Perfetto's religious rights.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A man who claims he is the son of Legionaries of Christ founder Marcial Maciel plans to sue the group, saying the Roman Catholic clergyman molested him for years, the Associated Press reports.

Jose Raul Gonzalez of Mexico plans to file the claim of fraud and negligence Monday in Connecticut against the worldwide Legionaries of Christ, said his attorney, Jeff Anderson. The order has its U.S. headquarters in the state.

Gonzalez' mother, Blanca Lara Gutierrez, has said the late Rev. Marcial Maciel led a double life, had two children with her, adopted another, then sexually abused two of the three.

Lara Gutierrez said she was 19 when she met the priest, then 56, who passed himself off as "Jose Rivas," an employee of an international oil company, a private investigator and a CIA agent. She said she didn't discover his real identity until 1997, through a magazine article.

After decades of vehemently denying abuse allegations against Maciel, Legion officials have recently acknowledged the priest fathered at least one child, a girl who now lives in Spain, and sexually abused seminarians. Leaders of the religious order have met several times with Gutierrez but have not publicly affirmed her claim. Maciel died in 2008 at age 87.

Gonzalez has acknowledged previously asking the Legion for $26 million to keep quiet, saying Maciel had promised him and his brothers a trust fund. Anderson said in an interview Friday that Gonzalez had only asked for "what, in effect, had been promised to them."

Continue reading "Man says he is Maciel's son, sues Legoinaries" »

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Tens of thousands of black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews staged mass demonstrations on Thursday to protest a Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of a religious girls' school, the Associated Press reports.

Protesters snarled traffic in Jerusalem and another large religious enclave, crowded onto balconies in crowded city squares, and waved posters decrying the court's decision and proclaiming the supremacy of religious law. There were no reports of violence.

The showdown shined a spotlight on a wide array of social issues Israel has been grappling with for years, including discrimination inside the Jewish community, the disproportionate clout of the country's ultra-Orthodox minority and the precarious state of the country's education system.

Parents of European, or Ashkenazi, descent at a girls' school in the West Bank settlement of Emanuel don't want their children to study with schoolgirls of Mideast and North African descent, known as Sephardim.

The Ashkenazi parents insist they aren't racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated, as they have been for years, arguing that the families of the Sephardi girls aren't religious enough.

Continue reading "Ultra-Orthodox Jews protest school integration" »

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An anti-abortion protester arrested in 2007 had a First Amendment right to demonstrate on a sidewalk near the entrance the building that houses the Liberty Bell, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision overturns lower-court rulings that upheld the arrest of Christian evangelical leader Michael Marcavage, the Associated Press reports. Marcavage, who lives in suburban Lansdowne, had been sentenced to a year's probation for refusing a National Park Service order to move to a nearby designated demonstration area.

The appeals court tossed the two charges on free-speech and procedural grounds. The three-judge panel said Marcavage caused no more of a disturbance than other people near the Liberty Bell entrance, including a cancer-survivors group and the drivers of horse-drawn carriages hawking their services.

Marcavage founded a group, Repent America, that opposes abortion, homosexuality and the teaching of evolution.

He has been arrested repeatedly during protests up and down the East Coast. He successfully challenged a 2004 arrest for picketing at a Philadelphia street festival for gays and lesbians, but a Massachusetts court last year upheld a disorderly conduct conviction based on his refusal to stop using a megaphone at Salem's famed Halloween celebration.

Continue reading "Court tosses arrest of Liberty Bell protester" »

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Categories: Abortion, Christianity, Church and State, Evangelicalsm, Law and Courts, Politics
        

One of three white men charged with burning down a predominantly black Massachusetts church hours after President Barack Obama's election has pleaded guilty to civil rights charges, the Associated Press reports.

Benjamin Haskell pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to charges of conspiracy and damaging religious property because of race, color or ethnic characteristics.

Under the terms of a plea deal with prosecutors, he faces a sentence of nine years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 29.

The 23-year-old Haskell is one of three men charged in connection with the fire that destroyed the Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield, Mass. The fire was set in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 2008, the morning after Obama was elected as the nation's first black president.

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French police are banning a street party whose organizers planned to serve alcohol and pork-based sausage in a heavily Muslim Paris neighborhood, the Associated Press reports.

Police said Tuesday that the party, called "Sausage and booze," was banned because it could have been viewed as a provocation in the Goutte-d'Or neighborhood of northern Paris, where Muslims pray on the streets on Fridays because there are not enough mosques. Alcohol and pork are banned in Islam.

Organizers said they were organizing Friday's party to protest Islam's encroachment on traditional French values in the neighborhood. The party was backed by several extreme-right associations. Muslim groups had announced a counterparty serving halal food.

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A federal appeals court has decided not to immediately hear the case of a Connecticut school district that wants to hold high school graduations inside a megachurch, the Associated Press reports.

In denying the town of Enfield's request Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the school board had already decided to hold the 2010 graduations on school grounds even if the appeal succeeded.

The town wanted the court to overturn a temporary injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall. The judge found that holding the June 23 and 24 graduations at the 3,000-seat First Cathedral Baptist Church would amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.

Hall is expected to hear the full lawsuit before next year's graduation plans are set.

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Rabbis Itchel Krasnjansky and Peter Schaktman hail from different branches of Judaism and hold starkly contrasting views on whether same-sex couples should be permitted to form civil unions in Hawaii.

What they have in common, the Associated Press reports, is the ear of Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, who has until June 21 to announce whether she may veto the only pending civil unions legislation in the nation.

Lingle, in the final months of her second and last term, faces a momentous decision that carries political and legal implications, AP correspondent Herbert A. Sample writes. For the rabbis, with whom the governor has consulted on the issue, her choice is about much more.

Krasnjansky, who heads the Orthodox community group Chabad of Hawaii, said the Torah teaches that homosexuality, and by extension same-sex marriage, "is not something that should be condoned or should be legalized," he said.

But Schaktman, who leads the Reform Temple Emanu-El, insists Judaism teaches that all people regardless of sexual orientation are and should be treated as "children of God," and thus should not face discrimination.

"Civil unions are a legal arrangement," he said. "Therefore, anyone who uses religion to oppose civil unions is purely using religion to further homophobia."

Continue reading "Governor consults rabbis on same-sex unions" »

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A Saudi court convicted a man and sentenced him to four months in prison and 90 lashes for kissing a woman in a mall, a government-owned daily reported Thursday.

Saudi religious police arrested the man and two women after seeing them on mall cameras "engaging in immoral movements in front of other shoppers," the Al-Yom newspaper said.

The man, who is in his 20s, was seen with a woman "sitting on one of the chairs, exchanging kisses and hugs." It was unclear what the other woman was doing. Neither the man nor the women were identified by name.

The kingdom's powerful religious police, under the control of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, enforce Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam, which prohibits unrelated men and women from mingling.

Zealous officers routinely jail unrelated couples found sitting together in restaurants or coffee shops.

The policemen also patrol public places to ensure women are covered and not wearing makeup; shops are forced in most places to close several times a day for Muslim prayers and men go to the mosque and worship.

Such kissing busts have increased as economic pressures have made it harder for young couples to marry and as the ultraconservative kingdom grapples with a push to relax its strict social mores.

Continue reading "Saudi sentenced for 'kisses and hugs' in public" »

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California's political watchdog agency will fine the Mormon church for contributions to help pass the state's gay-marriage ban two years ago, the Sacramento Bee reports.

Roman Porter, executive director of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, tells Bee reporter Jim Sanders that the church has agreed to the $5,539 fine, which is scheduled for agency aciton on Thursday. Sanders continues:

The fine stems from 17 non-monetary contributions totaling $36,928 that were made by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints within about two weeks of the November 2008 election, an FPPC report said.

The watchdog agency concluded that timely disclosure was not made of the Proposition 8 contributions as required by state elections law.

In a written statement Tuesday, the Mormon church said it had not misrepresented contributions but had erred in timeliness of reporting.

Read more at sacbee.com.

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A Connecticut school board has voted to appeal a federal court ruling that would keep the town's two high school graduation ceremonies out of a megachurch, the Associated Press reports.

Tuesday night's 5-4 vote by Enfield's Board of Education reverses a board decision last week to let stand the temporary injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall.

Hall found that holding the June 23 and 24 graduations at First Cathedral Baptist Church in Bloomfield would amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.

Attorney Vincent McCarthy, who's representing the school district, plans to file with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney David McGuire says he's disappointed by the decision but believes the injunction will be upheld.

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A Pentecostal bishop who heads a church in Catonsville has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting one of his parishioners, Baltimore Sun colleague Nick Madigan reports.

Roan Samuel Faulkner Sr., 62, was taken into custody Wednesday and charged with second-degree sex offense, attempted second-degree rape, perverted practice and fourth-degree sex offense.

Faulkner is being held at the Baltimore County Detention Center in lieu of $300,000 bail. He is scheduled for a bail review hearing Thursday.

The incident Roan is accused of occurred at the victim's office on Baltimore National Pike, a statement from the police said. The accuser is a 43-year-old woman who attends Roan's church. Police have expressed concern that there may be other victims "because of Faulkner's position with New Life Pentecostal Ministries," in the 200 block of Melvin Ave.

Police say the victim contacted the department on May 29 to report an assault and told them the incident occurred Feb. 21. The woman, who has attended New Life Pentecostal Ministries for several years, told police she had been having some family difficulties and that Faulkner met with her in her office to "spiritually advise her," the police statement says.

Continue reading "Catonsville bishop charged with sexual assault" »

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Farmers sold pigs to help raise money to build the towering cross on southern Illinois' highest point as a year-round testament to faith. The 11-story monument draws thousands of visitors each year, and supporters say it has promoted self-growth and reflection for nearly half a century.

But over the years, the Associated Press reports, the once-glistening structure about 130 miles southeast of St. Louis began to show its age. The 650 or so white porcelain panels that cover the concrete and steel frame rusted or fell off. Some remained attached with only coat hangers and bailing wire.

A group cobbled together $360,000 of the $550,000 needed to restore the Bald Knob Cross of Peace, including a $20,000 grant from the state of Illinois. Now, AP writer Jim Surh reports, a Chicago-area atheist who objects to the grant as a bit of unconstitutional pork has threatened to sue if the group doesn't return the money to the state.

Pitching the project as the renovation of a major tourist attraction "is a nice cover story," Rob Sherman said in a telephone interview Wednesday. But the retired Chicago-area radio talk show host who successfully fought Illinois' "moment of silence" in public schools said he thinks it would be more appropriate to use the money for such public interests as schools and roads. If it isn't returned, he promised "a long and expensive" lawsuit.

That didn't deter the Friends of Bald Knob Cross. The money was used long ago as a down payment on the renovation of the monument near Alto Pass, Ill., said Bill Vandergraph, a minister and Friends board member.

"We're not shaken in any way," Vandergraph said Thursday. "We're trying to stay low-profile, and that's not out of fear. We're absolutely not intimidated."

Continue reading "11-story cross draws tourists, lawsuit threat" »

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A federal judge on Monday ruled that Enfield High School and Enrico Fermi High School will not be able to hold their graduations at First Cathedral, culminating a months-long debate over whether it is unconstitutional to host students' ceremonies at the megachurch, Baltimore Sun sister paper (and this blogger's first employer) The Hartford Courant reports.

The Enfield school system plans to appeal the judge's decision, Courant reporter Jenna Carlesso writes. Her report continues:

U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall last week heard closing arguments in a legal challenge that five Enfield residents — two high school seniors and three parents — filed to block the town from renting the 3,000-seat Christian church in nearby Bloomfield. The graduations are scheduled for June 23 and 24.

In her ruling Monday, Hall wrote that the school system's decision to hold graduations at First Cathedral violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"By choosing to hold graduations at First Cathedral, Enfield schools sends the message that it is closely linked with First Cathedral and its religious mission, that it favors the religious over the irreligious and that it prefers Christians over those that subscribe to other faiths, or no faith at all," Hall wrote. "In addition to the character of the forum, the history and context of the decision to hold the graduations at First Cathedral also support the conclusion that, in doing so, Enfield Public Schools has endorsed religion."

Continue reading "Judge blocks public school graduation in church" »

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A Nebraska man has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for his role in a cyber attack on the Church of Scientology's websites two years ago, the Associated Press reports.

Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, of Grand Island, Neb., was also ordered Monday to pay $20,000 in restitution and serve a year on supervised release after he gets out of prison.

The cyber attack was orchestrated by an underground group that calls itself "Anonymous" and protests the Church of Scientology, accusing it of Internet censorship.

Mettenbrink admitted being a member and pleaded guilty in February to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized access of a protected computer.

U.S. District Judge Gary Feess says the cyber attack had "a sense of hate crime."

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A rural Mississippi school district that was sued by a lesbian student who wanted to bring a same-sex date to the high school prom is denying accusations it routed her to a "sham prom" at a country club while most of her schoolmates partied elsewhere, the Associated Press reports.

The Itawamba County School District addressed the claims made by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Constance McMillen in papers filed Friday with the U.S. District Court in Aberdeen.

It's been nearly two months since McMillen attended a prom at the Fulton Country Club that drew fewer than 10 other students from Itawamba Agricultural High School. Most of her classmates attended a separate event at the nearby Evergreen Community Center, to which McMillen was not invited, and later posted pictures from the dance on Internet sites.

At the time, McMillen had already sued the district over its policy banning same-sex prom dates and for canceling an April 2 school-sponsored prom after the teenager pressed to bring her girlfriend to the event and wear a tuxedo.

U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson ruled in March that the district had violated McMillen's rights, but he didn't force the district to reinstate the prom. District officials had told the judge that McMillen was free to attend a parent-sponsored prom.

Continue reading "School board denies staging 'sham prom'" »

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Police in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki say they have arrested a Swiss national and a Greek Orthodox deacon for trafficking in what they said were holy relics, the Associated Press reports.

The Swiss man was arrested Sunday afternoon at Thessaloniki airport when he declared that he was carrying saints' remains. Police seized 197 bone fragments and 3 skulls, sprayed with fragrance and carrying stickers labeling them with names of well-known saints. The deacon who had given the Swiss man the supposed relics was arrested early Monday.

"This is an unprecedented case. ... We are investigating the provenance of these relics," Nikos Dimitriadis, head of Thessaloniki police's Financial Crimes division, said.

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One runs her own company, another is a housewife and a third, a divorcee, raises her children by herself. Like nearly 2,000 other Muslim women who freely wear face-covering veils anywhere in France, the Associated Press reports, their lives will soon change and they are worried.

On Wednesday, French Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie presented a draft law to the Cabinet banning Muslim veils that cover the face, the first formal step in a process to forbid such attire in all public places in France, AP correspondent Elaine Ganley writes. It calls for euro150 ($185) fines and, in some cases, citizenship classes for women who run afoul of the law.

"Citizenship should be experienced with an uncovered face," President Nicolas Sarkozy told the Cabinet meeting, in remarks released by his office. "There can be no other solution but a ban in all public places."

Although the Interior Ministry estimates there are only 1,900 women who cover their faces with veils, the planned law would be another defining moment for Islam in France as the nation tries to bring its Muslim population — at least 5 million, the largest in western Europe — into the mainstream, even by force of law.

The bill is to go before parliament in July, and despite the acrimonious debate that is sure to come, there is little doubt the measure will become law. Sarkozy, who says such veils oppress women, wants a law banning them on the books as soon as possible.

Sarkozy welcomed the bill, saying the government is embarking on "a just path" and urging parliament to take its "moral responsibility" and approve it.

The measure notably creates a new offense, "inciting to hide the face," and anyone convicted of forcing a woman to wear such a veil risks a year in prison and a euro15,000 ($18,555) fine, according to a copy of the text.

"If the law is voted, I won't take off my veil ... No one will dictate my way of life" but God, said Najat, a divorcee, who gave her age as "45 plus." She was one of a half-dozen women who, in a rare move, met with reporters on Tuesday to express their worries about changes they say will impact their lives to the core.

Continue reading "Women protesting French veil ban" »

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Shaukat Malik emigrated from Pakistan in 1972 and arrived in the United States in 1980. He was moved to write by the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, the alleged author of the failed bombing of Times Square.

Recession and hard times provide the catalysts for racism to flourish. If that were to happen now, it would indeed be a sad day in American history.

America reigns supreme as a country that offers equal opportunity to all its citizens. Only in America could a black man with the name of Barrack Hussein Obama be elected president. We must celebrate this fact.

I emigrated from Pakistan to the United Kingdom in 1972. However, having experienced racism firsthand in 1972, when I was chased down Kensington High street London by white supremacists, and having travelled many times on British Railways with an empty seat as my constant companion, I can confirm for you that the worst form of prejudice is indeed racism.

I attended a July 4th party at the U.S. Embassy in London in 1976 and was so moved by the ambassador’s speech on the U.S. Constitution and its recognition of inherent human rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that I decided I would move to the land of the free.

U.S. citizenship is cherished and celebrated by all Pakistanis who have been fortunate enough to acquire it. Our children were born here and we love the Unites States like any other U.S. citizen. Just because one man who happens to be an M.B.A. and is clean-shaven has gone raving mad does not mean we should condemn all U.S. citizens of Pakistani origin.

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The Vatican on Monday will make its most detailed argument yet for why it is not liable for bishops who allowed priests to molest children in the U.S., in a motion that could affect other efforts to sue the Holy See in American courts, The Associated Press has learned.

In a motion to dismiss a lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds, the Holy See is expected to argue that a key Vatican document calling for secrecy in church trials for sex abuse cases was not, as victims' lawyers say, proof of a Vatican-orchestrated cover up. The Vatican's U.S. attorney, Jeffrey Lena, said Sunday there was no evidence the document was even known to the archdiocese in question — much less used.

In addition, the Holy See is expected to assert that bishops aren't Vatican employees because they aren't paid by Rome, don't act on Rome's behalf and aren't controlled day-to-day by the pope — factors courts use to determine whether employers are liable for the actions of their workers, Lena told the AP.

He said he would suggest to the court that it should avoid using the religious nature of the relationship between bishops and the pope altogether as a basis for civil liability, because it entangles the court in an analysis of complicated religious doctrine that dates back to the apostles.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for the failure of bishops to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

Continue reading "AP: Vatican to detail new U.S. abuse defense" »

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A U.S. missionary should spend six months in prison for her failed attempt to remove 33 children from Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake, a prosecutor said Thursday on the first day of her trial, the Associated Press reports.

Prosecutor Sonel Jean-Francois told the court that Laura Silsby knew she was breaking the law by trying to take the children without proper documents to an orphanage she was starting in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

"Laura recognized she violated the law," Jean-Francois said as lawyers and a small group of spectators crowded into a a stiflingly hot tent in the parking lot of the quake-damaged courthouse.

He spoke after the Idaho woman testified. Silsby, who was leader of a group of Baptists detained by authorities, was the only person to testify on the first day of the trial. She spent much of the rest of the session reading the Bible.

The 40-year-old businesswoman told the court she thought the children were orphans whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake. An Associated Press investigation later revealed all the children had at least one living parent, who had turned their children over to the group in hopes of securing better lives for them.

Continue reading "Haitian prosecutor: U.S. missionary deserves jail" »

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In his most thorough admission of the church's guilt in the clerical sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday the greatest persecution of the institution "is born from the sins within the church," and not from a campaign by outsiders, the Associated Press reports.

The pontiff said the Catholic church has always been tormented by problems of its own making — a tendency that is being witnessed today "in a truly terrifying way."

"The church needs to profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness but also justice," he said.

"Forgiveness cannot substitute justice," he said.

Benedict was responding to journalists' questions, submitted in advance, aboard the papal plane as he flew to Portugal for a four-day visit.

In a shift from the Vatican's initial claim that the church was the victim of a campaign by the media and abortion rights and pro-gay marriage groups, Benedict said: "The greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church."

Continue reading "Pope: Church's own sins to blame for scandal" »

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Pastor Marcus Johnson of New Harvest Ministries stood outside Baltimore's City Hall on Friday and asked a crowd of about 100 to pray aloud and unrestrained.

A federal judge's ruling last month that the law that directs the president to proclaim a National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional did not diminish the enthusiasm of the faithful, who held Bibles, waved American flags and raised their hands to the heavens, Baltimore Sun colleague Mary Gail Hare reports.

"I have been called to pray," Johnson said. "If I am standing in line at the supermarket or the bank, I can pray. Prayer is who I am and what I do. It is my Christian duty. It is not just for Sundays within the walls of a church."

Similar gatherings were scheduled at government buildings around the nation, including those on the grounds of the Virginia state Capitol and on the lawn outside City Hall in Coral Springs, Fla.

In Annapolis, an evening prayer service with the theme "becoming better stewards" was set for Lawyer's Mall.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb of Wisconsin ruled last month the day violates the First Amendment's establishment clause, which prohibits Congress from creating a "law respecting an establishment of religion."

She said the government should not use its influence to decide when people should pray. The ruling does not cancel the National Day of Prayer until appeals are exhausted, she wrote.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled last month that the law that directs the president to proclaim a National Day of Prayer in unconstitutional, and for the second year, President Barack Obama has declined to host an event marking the day, as President George W. Bush and others did.

Still, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb stayed her ruling, pending appeals, including one by the Obama administration. And last week, the president issued a proclamation marking the day:

THE WHITE HOUSE

NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER, 2010

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Throughout our history, whether in times of great joy and thanksgiving, or in times of great challenge and uncertainty, Americans have turned to prayer. In prayer, we have expressed gratitude and humility, sought guidance and forgiveness, and received inspiration and assistance, both in good times and in bad.

On this day, let us give thanks for the many blessings God has bestowed upon our Nation. Let us rejoice for the blessing of freedom both to believe and to live our beliefs, and for the many other freedoms and opportunities that bring us together as one Nation. Let us ask for wisdom, compassion, and discernment of justice as we address the great challenges of our time.

We are blessed to live in a Nation that counts freedom of conscience and free exercise of religion among its most fundamental principles, thereby ensuring that all people of goodwill may hold and practice their beliefs according to the dictates of their consciences. Prayer has been a sustaining way for many Americans of diverse faiths to express their most cherished beliefs, and thus we have long deemed it fitting and proper to publicly recognize the importance of prayer on this day across the Nation.

Let us remember in our thoughts and prayers those suffering from natural disasters in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere, and the people from those countries and from around the world who have worked tirelessly and selflessly to render aid. Let us pray for the families of the West Virginia miners, and the people of Poland who so recently and unexpectedly lost many of their beloved leaders. Let us pray for the safety and success of those who have left home to serve in our Armed Forces, putting their lives at risk in order to make the world a safer place. As we remember them, let us not forget their families and the substantial sacrifices that they make every day. Let us remember the unsung heroes who struggle to build their communities, raise their families, and help their neighbors, for they are the wellspring of our greatness. Finally, let us remember in our thoughts and prayers those people everywhere who join us in the aspiration for a world that is just, peaceful, free, and respectful of the dignity of every human being.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 6, 2010, as a National Day of Prayer. I call upon the citizens of our Nation to pray, or otherwise give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I invite all people of faith to join me in asking for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection as we meet the challenges before us.

Today

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (29)
        

A company that denied a Baltimore woman the chance to become a foster mother after discovering she doesn't allow pork in her home defended its decision in a state-ordered corrective action plan, saying the woman lacks the flexibility needed to work with children, Baltimore Sun colleague Brent Jones reports.

Hyattsville-based Contemporary Family Services, which is authorized by the state to place foster children with families, said Tashima Crudup — a practicing Muslim — was unyielding in her stance, which in turn, could make her intractable in other issues involving children. Crudup initially had cleared a screening process and completed hours of training before her application was denied after a home visit from a CFS worker in August 2009.

Crudup took her case to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a complaint on her behalf with the Baltimore City Community Relations Commission, claiming religious discrimination. The commission is investigating the case and will set a hearing date.

Maryland's Office of Licensing and Monitoring, meanwhile, sent a letter to CFS outlining state discrimination laws and ordering the company to comply. The department also asked CFS to file a corrective action plan within 10 days.

CFS said in its response that it did not discriminate against Crudup. The company said it will now provide documentation of its nondiscriminatory policy to all parents and prospective parents.

Corey Pierce, chief operating officer for CFS, said his agency has never discriminated against potential foster parents and has clients of all religions and races.

"Why would we discriminate against her? Our issues with her are legitimate. It's not about religion, and really, it's not about pork," Pierce said.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)
        

The head of the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese has condemned a proposed Arizona crackdown on illegal immigrants, saying it encourages people to turn on each other in Nazi- and Soviet-style repression, the Associated Press reports.

The measure wrongly assumes that Arizonans "will now shift their total attention to guessing which Latino-looking or foreign-looking person may or may not have proper documents," Cardinal Roger Mahony said in his blog Sunday — a day before Arizona's Legislature sent the immigration enforcement measure to the Republican governor.

Gov. Jan Brewer has not indicated whether she will sign the bill, which creates a new state misdemeanor of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document. It would also require officers to determine people's immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally.

Arizona has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants. Proponents of the bill say it was prompted by concerns over the cost of providing services to illegal immigrants and by the slaying of an Arizona rancher near the Mexican border this month. Authorities believe he was fatally shot by an illegal immigrant possibly connected to a drug smuggling cartel.

Republican Arizona Sen. Russell Pearce, who sponsored the bill, has said it will take handcuffs off police and put them on violent criminals.

But Mahony, whose archdiocese has a huge Hispanic immigrant population, said the Arizona Legislature was passing "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law."

Continue reading "Cardinal links immigration bill to Nazis, Soviets" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

On Monday morning the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a case that has the potential to set tremendously important precedents for the exercise of First Amendment rights. Or for the protection of people from discriminatory treatment. It depends how you see it.

In a nutshell, the situation is this: A Christian student group at Hastings, a law school in the University of California system, was denied recognition because it requires that members sign a statement of faith and abstain from "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle." Without recognition, the group was treated like any other non-campus group: No preferential scheduling of meeting spaces, no access to campus-wide email, no access to student organization bulletin boards, no (modest) allocation for expenses.

So, they sued. (Remember, these are law students. Really, what better way to make use of an expensive education than a test case that would ultimately go to the Supreme Court?) The students claimed the school was infringing on their right to free association (and exercise of religion); the school claimed the students could only constitute as a student group if it followed the school's non-discrimination policy, which the organization's by-laws transgressed.

It's a difficult choice: Should a publicly funded institution provide support to an organization that operates against its principles? Should an organization be required to compromise its principles in order to function as a recognized student group? Do we really want to live in a world where the Folk Music Society can’t kick out its treasurer for being photographed in the front row at a Black-Eyed Peas concert?

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Free to believe, you but not me?" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Christianity, Church and State, Guest Posts, Jason Poling, Law and Courts
        

A German court convicted ultraconservative British Bishop Richard Williamson on Friday of denying the Holocaust in a television interview, the Associated Press reports.

A court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg found Williamson guilty of incitement for saying in a 2008 interview with Swedish television that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II.

The court ordered Williamson to pay a fine of euro10,000 ($13,544).

The Roman Catholic bishop was barred by his order from attending Friday's proceedings or making statements to the media.

His lawyer, Matthias Lossmann, told The Associated Press after the court ruling that Williamson has yet to decide whether he would appeal.

Denying the Holocaust is a criminal offense in Germany.

Continue reading "SSPX bishop convicted of denying Holocaust" »

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland has filed a complaint with a city agency on behalf of a Muslim woman whose application to be a foster mother was denied, in part, because she does not allow pork in her home, Baltimore Sun colleague Brent Jones reports.

Tashima Crudup, 26, said she contacted Contemporary Family Services in July and went through 50 hours worth of training classes to become a foster parent. The organization is a private company authorized by the state to place foster children with families.

The complaint alleges that Crudup's application was denied after it was discovered during the interview process that she prohibits pork products in her Middle River home. In a letter dated Oct. 12 from Contemporary Family Services, the company tells Crudup that the application is being denied out of "concerns raised by statements made during the home study interview, specifically your explicit request to prohibit pork products within your home environment. Although we respect your personal/religious views and practices, this agency must above all ensure that the religious, cultural and personal rights of each foster child placed in our care are upheld."

Crudup earlier this year reached out to the ACLU, who filed a complaint with the Baltimore City Community Relations Commission over the incident Wednesday.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

Telephone hot lines in Europe offering help to people claiming abuse by Roman Catholic priests are being deluged with calls as the crisis spreads — with one center reporting complaints jumping from about 10 cases a year to more than a thousand in the past few weeks, the Associated Press reports.

Experts say the record influx of calls reflects an increasing realization among victims that they are not alone and that they will not be scorned for breaking their silence about horrors that in many cases go back decades.

"Until now, many people were afraid they wouldn't be respected," said Max Friedrich, a prominent Austrian psychiatrist. "There's also a certain comfort knowing you're not the only one to have experienced such abuse."

In the Netherlands, the Help and Law line was set up in 1995 and generally dealt with roughly 10 reports of abuse per year. Since March it has received some 1,300 new reports, said Pieter Kohnen, spokesman for the Dutch Bishops' Conference, which runs the line.

As with similar help lines, not every complaint turns into an actual case — meaning the caller is assigned a legal adviser to guide him or her through the process.

Still, Help and Law is now dealing with nearly 50 cases, compared with 10 to 14 for most years, and the number is likely to rise further as the center plows through a backlog of complaints, according to spokesman Ben Spekman.

"We have started more cases in the last month than in the previous three years combined," Spekman said. "It is a significant increase."

Continue reading "European abuse lines field a torrent of calls" »

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This further response from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests to news the Vatican is directing bishops to report sex abuse to civil authorities just hit our inbox:

"It's sad when the Vatican has to make it clear to bishops that they must follow secular laws.

"It's fairly obvious that if you are saying you will now cooperate with the police then you are admitting that you have not been.

"What the Pope needs to do is to clearly order all bishops to turn over all records on clergy sex crimes right now to authorities across the world. And he should immediately disclose records on the thousands of cases that he personally handled as head of CDF from 2001-2005."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)
        

The Vatican responded Monday to allegations that it had concealed years of clerical sex abuse by making it clear for the first time that bishops and other high-ranking clerics should report such crimes to police if required by law, the Associated Press reports.

Victims have charged that the Catholic Church created what amounted to a conspiracy to cover up abuse by keeping allegations that priests raped and molested children secret and not reporting them to civil authorities.

The Vatican has insisted that it has long been the Catholic Church's policy for bishops, like all Christians, to obey civil laws. In a new guide for lay readers posted on its Web site, the Vatican explicitly spells out such a policy.

"Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed," the Vatican guidelines said.

That phrase was not included in a draft of the guidelines obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The rest of the guidelines follow previously known and public procedures for handling canonical investigations and trials of suspected abuse.

The Vatican offered no explanation for the addition.

Victims were not impressed.

"Let's keep this in perspective: it's one sentence and it's virtually nothing unless and until we see tangible signs that bishops are responding," said Joelle Casteix, western regional director for SNAP, the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests, the main victims' group in the U.S. "One sentence can't immediately reverse centuries of self-serving secrecy."

She said if the Vatican truly wanted to change course "it would be far more effective to fire or demote bishops who have clearly endangered kids and enabled abuse and hid crimes, than to add one sentence to a policy that is rarely followed with consistency."

Continue reading "Vatican tells bishops to report sex abuse" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A federal judge has dismissed part of a lawsuit brought against the Church of Scientology by a woman who alleged she worked 100-hour weeks for almost no pay for years while a member of Scientology's elite inner corps, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer issued a written order late Friday that dismissed the wage claims portion of Claire Headley's lawsuit. The judge did not address two other causes of action: allegations that the church coerces members of the inner corps to get abortions and engages in forced labor.

The church denies all the allegations and has called the plaintiffs liars motivated by greed.

Headley sued the church in federal court in Los Angeles last year seeking restitution for nearly 14 years of work done while a member of Scientology's inner corps, called the Sea Organization. The church argued in court papers that as a Sea Organization member, Headley was exempt from wage requirements because she was part of a religious order.

So-called Sea Org members work long hours, live and eat communally and sign a pledge that symbolizes a 1 billion-year commitment to Scientology.

Fischer sided with Scientology in her five-page ruling, saying the evidence showed that Headley was chosen for her work based on religious criteria and performed religious duties.

The ruling "reaffirms the fact that we're a religion and the people who dedicate their lives to us are religious workers," said Tommy Davis, church spokesman. "It's an absolute win for the church."

Continue reading "Judge dismisses wage claim in Scientology suit" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

An anti-abortion zealot who murdered one of the few U.S. doctors who performed late-term abortions was sentenced Thursday to life in prison and won't be eligible for parole for 50 years — the maximum allowed by law — the Associated Press reports.

Scott Roeder, 52, faced a mandatory life prison term for gunning down Dr. George Tiller in the back of Tiller's Wichita church last May.

Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert could have made the Roeder eligible for parole after 25 or 50 years, but gave him the harsher sentence because he said the evidence showed Roeder stalked Tiller before killing him.

Wilbert also sentenced Roeder to serve an additional year in prison on each of two counts of aggravated assault for threatening two church ushers in the melee. Allowing for possible time off those sentences for good behavior, Roeder won't be eligible for parole for 51 years and eight months.

Roeder testified during his trial that he killed Tiller to save unborn children.

In a rambling statement in court Thursday, Roeder blamed Tiller's death primarily on the state for not outlawing abortion.

"I stopped him so he could not dismember another innocent baby," Roeder said. "Wichita is a far safer place for unborn babies without George Tiller."

Continue reading "Abortion doctor's killer gets life in prison" »

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Lawyers in a Florida clergy sex abuse case say the Vatican office then headed by Pope Benedict XVI failed to remove an alleged pedophile from the priesthood for years, even when the priest himself asked to be defrocked, the Associated Press reports.

Attorney Jessica Arbour, who represents an alleged victim of the Rev. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Miami, also said Wednesday that the Vatican instructed church officials in Florida to shelter the priest after he was forced to leave Cuba, the AP reports.

The lawsuit was filed last year, but the lawyers released more details of the Garcia-Rubio case amid questions about the Roman Catholic church's response to European sexual abuse allegations, and about the role of Benedict as an archbishop in his native Germany and then as head of a Vatican office

The Archdiocese of Miami criticized the lawyers for attacking the archdiocese and Vatican during Holy Week.

"As always, the Catholic Church's concerns are for the victims and a prevailing sense of justice," archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said in a statement. "In addition, over these past eight years, it has been forthcoming and taken steps to keep our children safe through training and background screenings."

After arriving in Miami in 1968, Garcia-Rubio served as a church advocate for recent immigrants from Latin America, Arbour said, giving him access to child refugees from Cuba, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The priest would take the children in, and then require them to have sexual contact with him, she said. If the child refused, Arbour said, Garcia-Rubio would threaten to deport them. Arbour says her client was 15 when he came to the U.S. by himself from Nicaragua.

"He was given access to a very vulnerable population that had a constant stream of potential victims," she said.

Garcia-Rubio left Florida to work in Honduras in the 1980s. He first petitioned the Vatican in 1994 to remove him from the priesthood, or laicize him, Arbour said, after having gotten married the year before.

The request would have fallen under the jurisdiction of Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Arbour said.

"Six years later, he still hadn't been laicized," Arbour said. "It was because they had lost the paperwork in Rome."

Continue reading "Lawyer of alleged victim: Vatican protected abuser" »

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A Muslim woman sentenced to be caned for drinking beer has had her punishment commuted, in a surprising turnaround for a high-profile case that raised questions about Islamic laws intruding into personal matters in Malaysia, the Associated Press reports.

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a mother of two, received a letter Wednesday from the Pahang state Islamic department informing her that the state's sultan has decided to spare her the caning, her lawyer, Adham Jamalullail, said Thursday.

The order is likely to cool down a fiery debate over whether Islamic laws should intrude into people's private lives in this Muslim-majority country. Many people had condemned the punishment, saying it shows conservative Islamists are gaining influence over the justice system.

Kartika, a former model and nurse, was sentenced last July. Had the punishment been carried out at the time, she would have been the first woman to be caned in Malaysia, where about 60 percent of the 28 million people are Muslims.

She pleaded guilty and did not appeal her sentence, but the punishment was halted at the last minute following an uproar in the media and among rights activists.

Three other Muslim women were caned this year for having sex out of wedlock, becoming the first Muslim women to be caned. Their cases did not draw as much attention because the caning was kept a secret until after it was done. Subsequently, the women themselves appeared before local media and said they deserved the punishment.

Adham told the AP that "as a substitution for the caning, the sultan has ordered Kartika to perform community service for three weeks."

Read the Associated Press story.

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The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Five years ago, Terri Schiavo was pronounced dead more than 15 years after a heart attack put her into a persistent vegetative state. The battles leading up to that conclusion originated in a struggle between her husband Michael Schiavo and her parents Robert and Mary Schindler over who would determine proper care for her; they eventually managed to involve all three branches of the federal government, and hastened the political demise of Sen. (and Dr.) Bill Frist's once-promising Presidential candidacy.

As I watched the story unfold like a slow-motion car wreck, I was struck by the difficulty of the ethical issues involved. Does a feeding tube constitute "extraordinary measures" used to sustain life? Some liken it to the technological intervention of a ventilator, while others consider it basic nutrition and hydration which no-one could humanely deny. Did the widely disseminated videos of Schiavo reflect genuine intelligent response to people known to her or simply an involuntary reaction to external stimuli? Was Schiavo a living human being, or simply a metabolizing organism? Did she begin to rest in peace five years ago, or twenty?

The profound ethical questions raised in this case will continue to be debated, as well they should. But as long as they are unresolved the more pressing question for most of us is how a situation like Schiavo's is to be handled. Schiavo's autopsy revealed that she had indeed suffered massive and irreversible brain damage, but decisions about her care had to be made without this evidence. Absent a clear advance medical directive, does her husband make decisions for her? Do her parents have the right to trump her husband? Do the courts have the right to trump both? Congress?

Every day difficult medical decisions are made without certain knowledge about what will happen, or what would happen if a different path were taken. And every day these decisions are made among differences of opinion as what the “right” — or at least best — choice is. At the end of the day someone must make the call, and we as a society must have ways of ensuring that the appropriate person is making these decisions when the patient is unable to and has not authorized someone else to.

Among the most important things we learn from Scripture about the nature of marriage is that every wedding involves two funerals. “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Jesus commented on this verse, “So they are no longer two, but one” (Matthew 19:6). When I officiate at weddings I always point out that from that day forward the people being married are entering into a change in the very essence of their being: no longer will either be himself or herself apart from the other. (I then sign the marriage license, and hope to snag a few crab balls on the way out. They then spend the rest of their lives working that out.)

What surprised me the most about the controversy over the Schiavo case was that the same people who ordinarily defend traditional understandings of marriage — people who in the course of pastoral ministry and teaching emphasize to couples (and their parents) the importance of “leaving and cleaving,” who encourage couples to work out their problems rather than running to their parents, who really do believe that the two become one — were the ones who wanted Terri Schiavo’s parents, rather than her husband, to make decisions about her medical care. No doubt if the roles had been reversed, they’d have been taking loud and strong stands on the right of a husband to make decisions for his disabled spouse, and decrying efforts by the government and her parents to remove the feeding tube.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Terry Schiavo, five years on" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Catholicism, Church and State, Ethics, Guest Posts, Jason Poling, Law and Courts, People, Politics, Science
        

Word that the father of a dead Marine was ordered to pay court costs in his legal battle against Westboro Baptist Church after the Kansas-based hate group picketed his son's funeral has unleased a national outpouring of donations, Baltimore Sun colleague Robbie Whelan reports.

"I was appalled," said Sally Giannini, a 72-year-old retired bookkeeper from Spokane, Wash., told Whelan after contacting the newspaper about the court decision against Albert Snyder. "I believe in free speech, but this goes too far."

Whelan's story continues:

Living on a fixed income, Giannini said she could send only $10 toward the $16,510.80 that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Snyder to pay to Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., an anti-gay group that travels the country picketing military funerals. The group says military deaths are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.

Snyder sued Westboro because its members waved signs saying "God hates fags" and "God hates the USA" at the 2006 funeral in Westminster of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who had been killed in Iraq. A federal jury in Baltimore awarded Snyder $11 million in damages in 2007, saying Phelps' group intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the family. The award was later reduced to $5 million, and eventually overturned on appeal.

As news of the order to pay some of the court costs spread through the news media and online, strangers were moved to send money and set up funds to support Snyder's court battle.

On Tuesday, Mark C. Seavey, new-media director for the American Legion, posted a message on his Legion-affiliated blog, The Burn Pit, urging readers to donate to the Albert Snyder Fund. The American Legion's message was picked up by conservative political blogger Michelle Malkin, who called the Westboro protesters "evil miscreants" and urged readers to donate.

"Regardless of how you feel about the merits of the Snyders' suit, the Snyders deserve to know that Americans are forever grateful for their son's heroism and for the family's sacrifice. We shouldn't stand by and watch them bankrupted," Malkin wrote.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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The Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys' questions under oath, the Associated Press reports.

Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.

"This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country," he said in a phone interview. "There is no other defendant. There's no bishop, no priest."

The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or documents subpoenaed.

Read the Associated Press story.

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Nine suspects tied to a Christian militia that was preparing for the Antichrist were charged with conspiring to kill police officers, then attack a funeral using homemade bombs in the hopes of killing more law enforcement personnel, the Associated Press reports.

The Michigan-based group, called Hutaree, planned to use the attack on police as a catalyst for a larger uprising against the government, according to newly unsealed court papers. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said agents moved on the group because its members were planning a violent mission sometime in April.

Members of the group, including its leader, David Brian Stone, also known as "Captain Hutaree," were charged following FBI raids over the weekend on locations in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Seven people were arraigned in Detroit on Monday, and another one of Stone's sons, Joshua, is being sought.

Stone's ex-wife, Donna Stone, told The Associated Press before the arraignments that her former husband was to blame for pulling her son into the movement. She said David Brian Stone legally adopted her son, David Brian Stone Jr., who is among those indicted.

"It started out as a Christian thing," said Donna Stone, 44. "You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far."

Continue reading "Feds: Christian militia conspired to kill police" »

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The prom's still off at a Mississippi high school that canceled it instead of letting a lesbian student bring her girlfriend, but a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the district's actions did violate the teen's constitutional rights, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson refused the American Civil Liberties Union's demand to force the Itawamba County school district to put on the April 2 prom, AP correspondent Shelia Byrd writes. However, he said canceling it did violate 18-year-old Constance McMillen's rights and that he would hold a trial on the issue.

That would come too late for the prom to be salvaged at Itawamba Agricultural High School. Still, Kristy Bennett, ACLU Mississippi legal director, called the decision a victory.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the district to force it to put on the prom and allow McMillen to bring her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. School officials said in U.S. District Court this week that they decided to cancel it because McMillen's challenge to the rules had caused disruptions.

The judge noted that McMillen has been openly gay since she was in the eighth grade and that she intended to communicate a message by wearing a tuxedo and escorting a same-sex date.

"The court finds this expression and communication falls squarely within the purview of the First Amendment," Davidson said.

Continue reading "Court: Gay student's rights violated, but still no prom" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (33)
        

A federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the use of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments on Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state, the Associated Press reports.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who claimed the references to God disrespect his religious beliefs, the AP reports.

"The Pledge is constitutional," Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling. "The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded."

The same court ruled in Newdow's favor in 2002 after he sued his daughter's school district for having students recite the pledge at school.

That lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, but the high court ruled that Newdow lacked the legal standing to file the suit because he didn't have custody of his daughter, on whose behalf he brought the case.

So Newdow, who is a doctor and lawyer, filed an identical challenge on behalf of other parents who objected to the recitation of the pledge at school. In 2005, a federal judge in Sacramento decided in Newdow's favor, ruling that the pledge was unconstitutional.

"I want to be treated equally," Newdow said when he argued the case before the 9th Circuit in December 2007. He added that supporters of the phrase "want to have their religious views espoused by the government."

In a separate 3-0 ruling Thursday, the appeals court upheld the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on coins and currency, saying that the phrase is ceremonial and patriotic, not religious.

Reached on his cell phone, Newdow said he hadn't been aware that the appeals court had ruled against him Thursday.

"Oh man, what a bummer," he said.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it would consider whether the hate-filled anti-gay protests held at a Maryland soldier’s funeral in Westminster were constitutionally protected by the First Amendment, Baltimore Sun colleague Tricia Bishop reports.

The 2006 funeral for Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq, drew members of the enthusiastically hateful Westboro Baptist Church, who picketed outside with signs reading “Fag troops” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

The 75-member, mostly interrelated congregation based in Topeka, Kansas, says soldiers are dying because of the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. In 2007, a federal jury in Baltimore awarded Snyder’s father nearly $11 million in a civil suit against church leaders.

The amount was reduced to $5 million a few months later.

In September, a federal appeals court reversed the award, ruling that the protests were protected speech and that they did not violate the privacy of the Snyder’s family. The high court will review that decision.

Snyder's funeral was one of many picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church; our newsroom fax machine fills with notices of coming demonstrations. The Web address for the group is godhatesfags.com. The site once -- and might still, I can't be bothered to look -- ran an animation of murdered college student Matthew Shepard surrounded by flames with a counter purporting to track the number of days he had spent in Hell.

AP photo

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
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