News
| 08/16/11 | Show creators announce Bert and Ernie's fate Despite an Internet petition push by homosexual activists for the creators of Sesame Street to change Bert and Ernie's relationship, the makers of the long-running PBS show appear resolved to keep the two best friends. The online petition was launched to pressure Sesame Street to get Bert and Ernie married. But creators have responded on the show's Facebook page saying, "Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves." It goes on to say that the two male characters are puppets that "do not have a sexual orientation." |
| 08/16/11 | Bachmann, Perry, Santorum speak about their faith Three GOP presidential hopefuls took time recently in Iowa to speak openly about their faith in God. |
| 08/15/11 | Starved Budgets Inspire New Look at Web Gambling The District of Columbia is not thrilled that its residents are traveling to Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia to gamble in casinos. Starved for cash, like states across the country, the district wants some of the millions in revenue that gambling generates each year. So district officials want residents to gamble closer to home — inside their homes, actually. Or in cafes, restaurants and bars. By year’s end the district hopes to introduce an Internet gambling hub that would allow Washington residents to play blackjack, poker and other casino-style games. |
| 08/15/11 | Santorum: Why Do We Protect Rapist from Execution, But Not Unborn Child? In last night’s Republican presidential debate in Ames, Iowa, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) said that a country that decided it was not acceptable to execute a rapist but it was acceptable to abort a child conceived through rape “doesn’t have its morals correct.” “You know, the Supreme Court of the United States on a recent case said that a man who committed rape could not be killed--could not be subject to the death penalty--yet the child conceived as a result of that rape could be,” said Santorum. “That to me sounds like a country that doesn't have its morals correct. That child did nothing wrong. That child is an innocent victim.” |
| 08/12/11 | Free-expression rights trampled at fish festival There will be no "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19) at the Salmon Days Festival in Issaquah, Washington. But the town may pay a price for its actions. Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has filed suit in federal court on behalf of the owner of a small construction company who was prevented from freely distributing Christian literature in public areas during the festival. Paul Ascherl was threatened with arrest if he did not confine his ministry to two areas isolated from most of the event's traffic. |
| 08/12/11 | Virginia County Removes Sherlock Holmes From School Reading List Sherlock Holmes' first adventure has been removed from sixth-grade reading lists in a central Virginia county. Brette Stevenson, a parent of a Henley Middle School student, had complained that "A Study in Scarlet" is derogatory toward Mormons. The Daily Progess (http://bit.ly/oRCjig) reports that the Albemarle County School Board voted Thursday night to remove the book. A committee commissioned to study the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel said in a report that it's not age-appropriate for sixth-graders. |
| 08/11/11 | Mandatory Sex-Ed Returning to NYC Public Schools Mandatory sex-education classes are returning to New York City public schools for the first time in nearly two decades. The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/nwxKG8) reports that middle and high school students will be required to take sex-education classes beginning this year. |
| 08/11/11 | Abortions down in Nebraska Nebraska has seen a drop in its abortion rate -- and a pro-life organization believes it has to do with the passing of a recent measure. Nebraska has seen a 10-percent decrease in abortions done in the first six months of 2011 as compared to the first six months of 2010. |
| 08/09/11 | OPINION: Bad Pro-Abortion Logic: Rock is to Fetus as Adult is to… Just when I think I have seen every possible way a pro-choicer can perform mental gymnastics trying to convince themselves that somehow a fetus is not human, they surprise me. This one takes the cake. In the comments section on Salon.com: We think it is bad to kill an adult but not bad to destroy a rock. Why the difference? Well, an adult is conscious, self-aware and has feelings, thoughts, beliefs, plans, relationships, hopes and so on. A rock has none of those characteristics so destroying it doesn’t matter. So is a fetus closer to an adult or to a rock? I’d say a rock. That is why legal abortion is justified. |
| 08/09/11 | NBC's 'Playboy Club' pushing the envelope Parents Television Council has launched a campaign targeting NBC for the network's plan to air a new show this fall that the group says "glorifies and glamorizes" the porn industry. NBC describes The Playboy Club as a "provocative new series [that] captures a time and place that challenged the social mores, where a visionary created an empire, and an icon changed American culture." Canned responses from NBC affiliates across the U.S. praise the upcoming series as "a sophisticated series about the transitional times of the early 1960s and the complex lives of a group of working-class women." |
| 08/08/11 | NARAL: Force Religious Groups to Cover Birth Control, Abortion Reacting to last week’s decision by the Obama administration to adopt new guidelines forcing insurance companies to cover birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under Obamacare, NARAL is pushing the decision further. As LifeNews reported, the Obama administration has approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program. |
| 08/08/11 | China Vows Crackdown on Sex-Selective Abortions China is vowing to strengthen enforcement to prevent sex-selective abortions and close a yawning gender gap in a country that already has tens of millions more boys than girls. The pledge is in the outline of a plan for childhood development through 2020 but has no specifics. The plan said authorities would increase efforts against the non-medical use of ultrasound tests and abortion of fetuses based on gender. |
| 08/05/11 | OPINION: San Francisco Would Censor Internet to Attack Pregnancy Centers The city of San Francisco has launched an aggressive two-pronged attack on pregnancy centers there that help women find abortion alternatives — both a law going after the centers and a lawsuit falsely accusing them of engaging in misleading advertising. Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund, today tackles the second part of the attack — which would have San Francisco essentially censoring the Internet in order to get its way and prevent pregnancy centers from purchasing keyword advertising using the word abortion. |
| 08/05/11 | 'Culture of debt' a way of life With all the talk of a balanced budget amendment, one legal analyst who specializes in the Constitution explains why the Founding Fathers did not include one in the first place. The debt deal approved by Congress and signed by President Obama this week does not include a balanced budget amendment. Instead, it incorporates a requirement that the House and Senate hold votes this year on such an amendment. Conservatives have long argued a balanced budget amendment is a common-sense approach to government -- but why did the Founding Fathers not put one in the Constitution? |
| 08/04/11 | OPINION: Legacy of Population Control: 163 Million Missing Women 163 million women are missing from Asia. That is the entire female population of the United States. The culprit is sex selective abortion according to Mara Hvistendahl’s fascinating book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. Hvistendahl is not pro-life nor is she Catholic, but that is what, I believe, makes this book courageous. Of course in typical pro-choice fashion, she refuses to address the facts of when human life begins, but she does tackle the sacred cows at the root of the devastation that now faces Asia: widespread abortion and the population control movement of the West. |
| 08/04/11 | ACLU joins state against Catholic group A Chicago court has allowed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to intervene in the state's fight against Catholic Charities' adoption policies. Several of the Illinois agencies filed suit because in spite of the state's homosexual civil union law, the Catholic organizations do not permit same-gender couples to adopt through their agencies. The ACLU, while representing a lesbian couple, claims Catholic Charities is discriminating against their clients. But Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society says that is not so. |
| 08/03/11 | Cable Network ABC Family Gets 'Excellent' Rating From LGBT Group The advocacy group GLAAD rated ABC Family as "excellent" in its portrayal of gay and lesbian characters, only the second television network to get such a designation in the five years the group has monitored television content. ABC Family, the top-rated cable network among viewers ages 12 to 34 and particularly strong among girls and young women, was cited for both a large number of gay and lesbian characters and the way those characters fit naturally into the shows |
| 08/03/11 | U.S. Move to Create Envoy for Religious Freedom Seen as Meddling by Islamists A vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to establish a special envoy to promote religious freedom in parts of the Middle East and South Asia is causing ripples in Egypt, where a Muslim Brotherhood leader says the decision amounts to more U.S. “interference” in Egypt’s affairs. Concerns about the plight of Egypt’s Christian minority – along with those in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan in particular – featured prominently in hearings leading up to the passage of the Near East and South Central Asia Religious Freedom Act on Friday. |
| 08/02/11 | Religious liberty again being tested in courts A California city's certiorari petition to the nation's highest court may set precedence for churches. The city of San Leandro asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision of lower courts and to bring clarity to three subjects in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The city said the concepts of "substantial burden," "individual assessment," and "compelling interest" have created confusion among the courts. |
| 08/01/11 | Young adult dating trend slows road to marriage Young adults are slowing the road to marriage with "stayover relationships," a dating trend that allows them to enjoy committed relationships without living together, new research shows. A study from the University of Missouri-Columbia revealed that as an alternative to fully cohabiting couples are spending three of more nights together a week and still maintaining their own homes, which could help to explain recent U.S. census data that indicates people are getting married later. |
| 08/01/11 | Obama Admin Will Force Coverage of Birth Control, Abortion Drugs The Obama administration has approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program. The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days. |
| 07/29/11 | Appeals Court Upholds Pro-Life Pastor’s Free Speech Rights The liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous 3-0 decision late yesterday in a case involving pro-life pastor Walter Hoye and Oakland’s denial of his free speech rights in the context of abortion. Hoye, a pastor who has highlighted the problem of high abortion rates in the African-American community, saw his rights to provide abortion alternatives information to women outside local abortion facilities denied when Oakland city officials passed the buffer law preventing him, or any pro-life advocate, from coming within 8 feet of the abortion center or women heading to it. |
| 07/29/11 | Case against Perry, 'Response' dismissed A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed to block Texas Governor Rick Perry from having a role in an upcoming prayer event in Houston. U.S. District Judge Gray H. Miller on Thursday afternoon ruled that the group of atheists and agnostics that filed the suit, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, did not have standing to sue. The plaintiffs argued that Perry's day of prayer and fasting would violate the Constitution. The event, called The Response, is scheduled for August 6. |
| 07/28/11 | Babies Born Alive in Toilets at Abortion Center, Left to Die On July 21, 2011, a jury of six found that the notorious late-term abortionist James Scott Pendergraft IV was liable for injuries sustained by a pre-born baby during a failed abortion ten years ago. The jury stunned eye-witnesses in the courtroom by ordering Pendergraft to pay $36,737,660.16 in compensatory and punitive damages. The case is number 2004-CA-001202 captioned C. H. et al. v. James Scott Pendergraft IV, et al. |
| 07/28/11 | U.N. Group Stands Up for Children's Sexual and Reproductive Rights, Including Abortion Y-PEER, a youth initiative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), says "more needs to be done to ensure young people's sexual and reproductive rights" -- especially "the right to choose," a reference to abortion. The statement also says all young people globally have the "right to confidentiality" and the right to "be free from judgment." Tyler Ament of Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) told CNSNews.com, "The statement doesn't mention the age specifically, but the UN defines youth as those between the ages of 10-24." |
| 07/27/11 | American Atheists Sue Over World Trade Center Cross An atheist group sued today over the inclusion of cross-shaped steel beams, dubbed the "World Trade Center Cross," in the exhibit at the National September 11th Memorial and Museum. Last weekend the 17-foot cross, discovered in the rubble of 9/11, was given a "ceremonial blessing" by the Rev. Brian Jordan, removed from it's temporary post near St. Peter's Church and lowered 70 feet into its permanent home inside the museum. |
| 07/27/11 | Taxpayer Money Will Help Homosexual Activists Establish ‘Safe Spaces’ in Public Schools A homosexual advocacy group is getting taxpayer money to increase the percentage of schools that set up "safe spaces" for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth. The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) will receive $285,000 annually for five years to partner with 20 targeted school districts across the country to help keep LBGT students safe and healthy. |
| 07/26/11 | Cross on Livingston N.J. resident's lawn becomes First Amendment flashpoint It started as a simple gesture. But it could have implications far beyond the quiet Livingston street where Patrick Racaniello affixed a wooden cross on a tree in his front yard. Township officials say Racaniello’s display, which he intended as a celebration of Lent, violated an ordinance that generally prohibits postings on a structure, including a tree, "calculated to attract the attention of the public." |
| 07/26/11 | OPINION: Porn gets personal Last week radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham told a story of traveling by train from Washington, DC, to New York with her young daughter. Walking up the aisle to get a snack, the little girl pointed to the computer screen of a man sitting two rows ahead of them. "Why are those people swimming naked, Mommy," she asked. It turns out that their fellow passenger was watching "full blown porn," as Ingraham described it, in easy view of anyone who happened to be sitting nearby or walking past. How, she wondered, have we reached this point? |
| 07/25/11 | Gallup Poll: Americans Support Pro-Life Laws Limiting Abortions A new Gallup survey asked Americans their opinion about a slate of pro-life laws frequently considered by Congress and state legislatures across the country and the results show most Americans support most pro-life laws. “Large majorities of Americans favor the broad intent of several types of abortion restriction laws that are now common in many states, but have mixed or negative reactions to others,” Gallup reported in its new poll. |