Is It Offensive to Pray In Jesus Name?

Coercive Secularism is on the march in several American institutions, including the military and the Virginia State Troopers. Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt is under attack by attorney Michael Weinstein and others for his explicitly Christian prayers. Klingenschmitt is worth "friending" on Facebook, and the Pray in Jesus' Name website is worth book-marking. If Christians leave Klingenschmitt to his fate while he's fighting our battles, we'll deserve what we get.
Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt - The Pray In Jesus Name Project / Homepage

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California Governor Signs Harvey Milk Day for Public Schools

How shameful that innocent little California schoolchildren are considered fair game for the Sodomite propaganda machine. Shame on Arnold Schwarzeneggar, RINO governor of California.

Flip-flopper governor signs 'Harvey Milk' bill (OneNewsNow.com)

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Walter Hoye at the Abortuary

Although the text here is somewhat dated, the video is worth a look. You are always going to hear pro-abortion people accuse prolife "sidewalk counselors" of menacing or harassing the women seeking abortions. I've been to an awful lot of events outside abortuaries over the years, and I have yet to see that. But if somebody is willing to rip tiny defenseless children limb from limb, or to pour toxic saline into their eyes and mucous membranes, or to give the mothers muscle contraction medication in order to crush the babies to death, I guess we shouldn't be shocked that such a person might resort to fibbing. Just cut and paste this URL.

http://blog.inthepublicsquare.com/2009/07/17/walter-hoye.aspx

In California, Assisted Fertility Industry is No Place for Christian Conscience

The coercive Sodomite State of California has brought two Christian physicians to heel, at last, following a California Supreme Court decision that Christian conscience is no excuse to refuse artificial insemination to a lesbian in a domestic relationship with another lesbian. Christian physicians Douglas Fenton and Christine Brody were obligated to indulge a homosexual woman who requested to be artificially impregnated in order to produce children that she and her lesbian companion would raise without a father.

This follows the pattern that has been so fruitful for coercive Sodomites: first seek tolerance, as objects of pity, then demand validation and approval and, finally, coerce active collaboration and punish any who decline to cooperate. Tolerance is just a transitional phase en route to the Sodomites' imposition of their will on every person they encounter.

Lesbian's suit over procedure is settled
By Greg Moran, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

A long-running lawsuit between an Oceanside lesbian couple and two doctors that pitted the civil rights of same-sex couples against religious freedom for physicians has been settled.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. It ends a lawsuit filed in 2001 by Guadalupe Benitez against Drs. Douglas Fenton and Christine Brody at North Coast Womens Care in Vista.

Benitez alleged that the doctors told her they would not inseminate her because their religious convictions — they are Christians — prohibited them from doing the procedure for a lesbian couple.

Benitez went to another doctor, got pregnant and had a child with her partner, Joanne Clark. The boy is now 7. The couple also have 4-year-old twins.
But she sued the doctors and clinic, arguing that the state's civil rights laws do not allow doctors to discriminate against patients based on their religious beliefs.

A state appeals court in San Diego ruled in 2006 in favor of the doctors. But in August 2008, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously for Benitez, saying that religious-liberty claims cannot excuse illegal discrimination.

Both the doctors and the couple released a joint statement in which the doctors said they were sorry that Benitez and Clark felt they were being treated differently because of their sexual orientation.

The doctors said they want “all of their patients, including those who are lesbian and gay, to feel welcome and accepted in their medical practice, and are committed to treating all of their patients with equal dignity and respect in the context of the highest quality of medical care.”

The doctors contended as the case went on that they declined to do the procedure because Benitez was unmarried — not because of her sexual orientation. But there was also evidence in the case early on that the doctors had acknowledged that they did not inseminate her because she is a lesbian.

Benitez said yesterday that she is pleased that the case is over. “It was a really hard thing to go through, but it was worth it because we have hopefully paved the way for other people, and made sure that this is not going to happen to someone else,” she said.

The lawyer for the doctors could not be reached for comment yesterday. Throughout the litigation, the physicians have declined to comment publicly on the case.
The state's civil rights law prohibits discrimination in businesses that cater to the public. The law does allow doctors to opt out of some kinds of medical procedures, such as abortion.

But if a physician does offer to do certain procedures, they must be made available to all, said Jennifer Pizer of Lambda Legal, an advocacy group for same-sex rights.
While the exact amount of the settlement is private, Pizer said it was enough so that the couple's children “will be able to have whatever type of education they want to have in the future.” The doctors did not admit any wrongdoing, she said.

Union-Tribune
Greg Moran: (619) 542-4586;

Pro-life Victory at Indian Supreme Court: Mentally Retarded Rape Victim Has Right to Refuse Abortion

Regent University law professor Scott Pryor posted on his blog Pryor Thoughts today about an Indian Supreme Court judgment barring a compulsory abortion against the wishes of a mentally retarded 19-year-old woman. Pryor recently returned from India where he taught law under a Fulbright Scholarship.

A Mother's Rights Vindicated

On 4 September I posted about the Indian Supreme Court judgment barring the abortion of the unborn child against the wishes of a mentally retarded 19-year old: http://pryorthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/buck-v-bell-india-style.html. I have since read the court’s opinion and corresponded with Bedi Tanu, the appellant's advocate who has practiced law for only six years.

Along with her senior advocate, she argued the case to the High Court in Chandigarh but lost. Nevertheless, through the efforts of friends and colleagues in Delhi, an appeal was delivered to the home of the Chief Justice of India at 9:00 pm on Friday night, only hours before the abortion was scheduled to take place the next morning.

Ms. Tanu argued the case on Monday after which a three-judge panel of the Supreme Court issued a short written order indicating its decision in favor of life, which was followed by the lengthy written judgment the last month.

I can’t summarize the meaning of this case any better than in the words Bedi wrote to me:

Every life is very precious. We have to see the world of others from their eyes and not our eyes. This girl has her world. We are doing nothing for her. We have no right to interfere in her world. Her rape was and is a heinous offence. The offender is the rapist; the child is innocent. If the mother wants her child for any reason, we can’t question her motherhood instinct on the parameter of IQ analysis. The disabled may not express their desires so easily (though this girl expressed her's unequivocally) but that does not mean they have no wishes. Disability is more in our perception, in our bias, than in the world. Life for the disabled is difficult and now, when the law is recognizing their rights, we cannot allow our prejudice, our ignorance, our stereotyped approach, to come in the way of life of self-determination of the mentally disabled.

http://pryorthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/mothers-rights-vindicated.html#comment-form

Thought Police Deployed by P.C. British Left

The steady, benign "bobby" of previous generations is giving way in the formerly free United Kingdom to a more Orwellian sort of intrusive ideological police model. Hilary White wrote last month about episodes of British police enforcing P.C. views against a teen schoolgirl, a 10-year-old boy and an elderly lady. I'm sure most British police officers are good people, but it sounds like the thoroughgoing disarmament of the British citizenry has emboldened the worst elements of the police there.

UK Police Increasingly Used to Enforce Political Correctness
14 year-old-student arrested and taken to police station after requesting move to class with students who speak English
By Hilary White

BRITAIN - A few days before his election as pope, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger denounced a growing "dictatorship of relativism." The pope's rhetorical device, however, is increasingly becoming the lived experience of ordinary Britons visited and questioned by police for publicly expressing politically or religiously "incorrect" views.

In October 2006, the Daily Mail reported that a 14-year-old school girl, Codie Stott, was arrested by police and detained in a cell for three hours after she asked to be moved into a group of students who spoke English in class. Stott was denounced to police for "racism" by her teachers at Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester.

Codie told police that she had been placed in a group of five students who would or could not discuss the class work in English. When she asked to be moved to another group with whom she could communicate, the teacher responded, "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police." A week after the incident she was taken to Swinton police station under arrest. Codie told the Daily Mail, "They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewelry, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken."

In May this year, a shopkeeper in Manchester was threatened with prosecution under the race hate statutes if she did not remove a number of soft toys that some consider racist in origin. Moira Pickering, 62, was told by police to get rid of her stock of traditional English dolls called "gollywogs". Gollywogs, based on a children's literary character created by Florence Kate Upton, have been a staple of British children's toys since the late 19th century.

Pickering told the Daily Mail, "I find sex shops offensive, I find cabbage patch dolls offensive, but I wouldn't report them. Golliwogs have been going for years and I've always sold them. They sell very well. People are far too politically correct they go over the top."

In early April this year, a father of a ten-year-old boy was astounded when two police officers arrived at his Cheshire home to question his son for calling another boy "gay" in an email.

"I could not believe what I was hearing," Alan Rawlinson, aged 41, told media. "They told me they considered it a very serious offence. I thought they were joking at first… [T]his just seemed a huge waste of resources for something so trivial. I am furious about what has happened, it just seems the politically correct brigade are taking over."

"If somebody had called the police about something like this in my day they would have laughed - they certainly wouldn't have sent two officers out. It is completely ridiculous."

Perhaps more ominously, accusations of direct interference by police with the electoral process for ideological reasons are starting to be heard in Britain.

The British National Party, a far right but completely legal political party, is preparing a package of evidence to present to the Electoral Commission alleging that this May, West Midlands police interfered in the Birmingham local election at the behest of opposition parties. The party alleges that the police cooperated with a campaign of intimidation when they visited and questioned each of the 400 people in the Birmingham ridings who signed nomination papers for BNP candidates.

The BNP, a nationalist party opposed to non-ethnically British immigration, has been at pains recently to shed its early association with white supremacists. But its opposition particularly to Muslim, African and Pakistani immigration, and its nationalist anti-EU position, has earned the BNP the status of most politically incorrect, and therefore most publicly vilified party in recent British history.

Some observers have said that the combination of racial tensions and violence springing from mass immigration in densely crowded areas, together with a growing police and media suppression of free speech have created fertile ground for the nationalist party that excludes non-racially British members and is known for its blunt and forceful condemnations of politically correct ideology.

This backlash may explain why the BNP took 20,000 to 30,000 votes in the Birmingham area, despite police questioning their supporters, arrests of BNP party volunteers and organised "anti-fascist" opposition. Last week the BNP moved into fourth place behind the three main parties in a Parliamentary by-election in Sedgefield, County Durham, the riding recently vacated by former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Canadian Judge Holds That Christian Public Official Must Provide Gay Rites

Homosexuals and their allies are driving Christian conscience out of the public square, and Christians out of public service. There is unquestionably a great deal of synergy in this for coercive Sodomy, as it simultaneously removes existing obstacles to depravity and packs public institutions with willing soldiers for the next offensive campaign.

This summary of a recent Saskatchewan court decision comes from The Persecution & Prayer Alert, published by Voice of the Martyrs, Canada.

The Voice of the Martyrs, Canada
The Persecution & Prayer Alert
www.persecution.net

On July 23, Saskatchewan's Court of Queen's Bench Justice Janet McMurty
upheld the ruling of the province's Human Rights Tribunal that marriage
commissioner Orville Nichols did not have the right to refuse to marry a
same-sex couple in April 2004 on basis of his personal Christian beliefs.
(see www.persecution.net/ca-2008-06-25.htm) The tribunal had also ordered
Nichols to pay the complainant $2,500 in compensation.

Nichols had appealed the May 23 ruling, arguing that his religious beliefs
should be protected under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. McMurty
dismissed his argument, however, in her 39-page ruling dated July 17,
concluding that the Human Rights Tribunal was "correct in its finding that
the commission had established discrimination, and that accommodation of Mr.
Nichols' religious beliefs was not required." Nichols has 30 days to appeal
the decision. He has not indicated whether he will do so.

There is hope that the Saskatchewan government will introduce legislation
allowing marriage commissioners to refuse to perform same-sex marriages for
religious reasons. The government has referred two versions of new
legislation containing a religious exemption to the Saskatchewan Court of
Appeal to rule on their constitutionality.