World News for June 4, 2008

June 4, 2008

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  • California voters will have the opportunity, as of Monday, to vote in November on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in the state. Backers of the initiative amassed 1.1 million signatures, and only 694,354 were needed for placement. Pro-gay groups say they will be getting ready to run a very aggressive campaign against the amendment, while supporters are confident that their campaign will draw support from not only voters in California but from concerned citizens all around the country. Meanwhile, state officials plan to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning June 17. Many opponents, including the attorneys general of ten states—Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah—have asked the California Supreme Court to delay finalizing its ruling to legalize the act until after the November election. However, no decision on the request has been made yet.
  • The Institute for Creation Research, long associated with the name of the late creationist champion Henry Morris, is fighting a Texas ruling that their school, now located in that state, be forbidden to offer a master’s degree in science education. A spokesperson for ICR said that the ruling paves the way for the group to file a lawsuit. ICR’s appeal, 755 pages long, includes supporting documents based upon a claim of “viewpoint discrimination” describing the state board’s decision as “academic (and religious) bigotry masquerading as Texas Education Code ‘enforcement.’ ”
  • The Answers in Genesis creation museum in Kentucky is planning to expand over the next year, focusing on programs for children. Kiosks and an outdoor playground are being planned. Ken Ham also announced that the museum is consulting with churches throughout the country to build one-room displays that will serve as mini creation museums. With crowds larger than expected, the museum already added more walking trails and a petting zoo and introduced new programming, a children’s reading program, and theatrical performances. Additional parking and an auditorium to host speakers and educational events are also in the future. Requests from other groups to build museums similar to the one in Kentucky are coming in, but at present there are no plans to do so.
  • Well-known syndicated columnist Cal Thomas has charged that presidential hopeful Barack Obama is not a Christian. Wrote Thomas, “Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement. One cannot deny central tenets of the Christian faith, including the deity and uniqueness of Christ as the sole mediator between God and Man and be a Christian. Such people do have a label applied to them in Scripture. They are called a ‘false prophet.’ ” Another commentator wrote concerning Obama’s recent resignation from his church after embarrassing statements made by its pastors/speakers, “Having now left Trinity United Church of Christ, can Barack Obama escape responsibility for his decades-long ties to Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright? No, he cannot. Obama’s connections to the radical-left politics espoused by Pfleger and Wright are broad and deep. The real reason Obama bound himself to Wright and Pfleger in the first place is that he largely approved of their political-theological outlooks.” The United Church of Christ is considered perhaps the most liberal Protestant denomination in the U.S.
  • Frank Kameny, said to be a hero to the homosexual community, as he was instrumental in pressuring the American Psychiatric Association to reclassify same-sex activities as normal, has written a pro-family organization to say that he believes bestiality is fine, “as long as the animal doesn’t mind.” Kameny said there is no such thing as sexual perversion. Last year the Smithsonian Institute honored Kameny for pressuring the APA. Kameny was the one who came up with the “Gay is good” slogan back in the ’60s. Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth, the organization that received Kameny’s letter, warned, “We know that they’re already attempting this idea of gay and lesbian history month. If that goes through, you’re going to see Frank Kameny taught.”
  • An Islam-promoting principal in Texas defied a superintendent-ordered prohibition against a class in which the five pillars of Islam were taught by two women from the Houston Council on American-Islamic Relations. The class also told students how to pray five times a day and instructed what Islamic religious rules require for dress. A pastor and spokesperson for the Houston Area Pastors Council confirmed the indoctrination had taken place and called it unacceptable. The students reportedly didn’t know what was going to be promoted until they were into it. Other reports indicate that these types of Islamic promotion in public schools are taking place, and several schools even have taught Islam as a required subject. In related news, a Michigan high school wrestling coach was dismissed from his post of 35 years for allegedly allowing his former assistant, a clergyman, to try “converting Muslim students to Christianity.” But the assistant insisted he never spoke about religion on school grounds or as part of his work with the team. He lamented that the principal “never, ever attended a practice or a wrestling meet, but he makes judgments on the team according to which Arabic parent complains about another parent, who is a Christian minister, and I get lumped in.”
  • Two American Christian missionaries associated with Gospel Fellowship Missions, Greenville, South Carolina, have launched legal action against British police after they had been witnessing and passing out gospel leaflets in a predominately Muslim area of Birmingham. The threatening officer, when discovering that the missionaries were American, launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He then said that they were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread the Christian message, saying the men were committing a hate crime. The incident is fueling concerns that there are indeed areas in Britain where the gospel is increasingly unwelcome. In April, Rev. Michael Naxir-Ali, bishop of Rochester and the Church of England’s only Pakistan-born bishop, wrote that certain pockets in England were becoming “no-go” zones, places too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter.
  • A Pennsylvania court has ruled that lay midwives may continue delivering babies in the state. A midwife of 25 years’ experience had been ordered to stop delivering babies after the State Board of Medicine redefined lay midwifery as the unlicensed practice of medicine. An attorney noted that “for communities who find home births to be important—particularly, say, the Amish community—by prohibiting lay-midwifery, it’s really going to have a significant effect on a way of life.” An appellate court sided with the midwife and “she can continue helping those in the community.” Had the original decision been upheld, the midwife would have been fined $11,000.
  • A marine in Iraq was pulled from duty after allegedly handing out coins promoting Christianity to Muslims. The coins on one side read, “Where will you spend eternity?” and the other side contained the words of John 3:16.
  • Colorado Governor Bill Ritter has signed a bill shocking to many of the state’s residents. It adds transgendered people to the list in a non-discrimination law, meaning that businesses will have to hire such even if the businesses are owned and operated by Christians who oppose the lifestyle on moral grounds. Bruce Hausknecht of Colorado-based Focus on the Family notes that the bill creates an opportunity for sexual predators to visit the restroom of their choice because someone of transgender status can’t be discriminated against. Colorado lawmakers also were said to slap voters in the face with a provision that prohibits a public referendum or petition drive to overturn the law. Hausknecht says the only choice Colorado voters have now is to send people to the legislature that will act to reverse the law.
  • Supporters of abstinence in sex education programs, specifically the National Abstinence Education Association, are launching a nationwide campaign aimed at enlisting one million parents to support the approach, which liberals have been castigating and trying to outlaw.
  • A large fire has destroyed many sets, videos, and other items at Universal Studios, one of Hollywood’s largest movie studios. Damage was in the millions of dollars.
  • A new study finds why so many single men are not marrying these days. In 1980, 6 percent of men in their early 40s had never married, but now the number is 17 percent. Carl Weisman, conductor of the survey, found three basic groups of bachelors: 8 percent who never want to marry, 62 percent who want to marry but of which half won’t settle for anything less than perfection, and 30 percent who are on the fence. While 72 percent said they are not afraid of marriage, half of them indicated that the situation that scares them the most is marrying the wrong person. Weisman also found that financial issues, both positive and negative, play a large part in men’s fear of commitment. Those who are financially sound fear what a bad divorce could do to them. Those who have little suffer self-image problems.
  • A bar fight at a North Kansas City casino, known as Voodoo Lounge, turned into a huge brawl involving dozens of people. Some 450 people were inside when the melee broke out. Police had to back off until officers from other communities could arrive to help quell the disturbance.
  • Peggy Vaughan, author of The Monogamy Myth, maintains that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in their marriages, meaning that the person who stays true to his or her spouse is in a growing minority. Vaughan suggested nine ways to affair-proof one’s marriage: nurture safe friendships (men need to have good guy buddies), recognize the drug (depressives and addicts are especially prone to affairs), keep dating one’s spouse, pray together, find creative outlets, hang out with happy couples, learn how to “fight,” be nice and listen, and remember certain tools such as talking positively to others about one’s spouse.
  • Citing widespread human rights abuses of the host Chinese government, certain Congressional members of President Bush’s own party urged him not to attend the opening ceremony of this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing. Some 100 million female babies have been aborted in that country since 1979. Senator Sam Brownback (R.-Kans.) said he learned from credible sources that the Beijing government had ordered American-owned hotels to install Internet filters to monitor information sent and received.
  • High rates of divorce and unmarried childbearing cost U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion each year, according to a study by the Institute for American Values, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, the Georgia Family Council, and Families Northwest.
  • Tattooing, once associated with idolatry and debauchery, is now a craze even with the Christian rock crowd. A study found that among women who get tattoos, 34 percent say they feel “sexier,” and 29 percent say they “feel more rebellious.”
  • News comes from the Ice Service and the Denmark Meteorological Institute that flies in the face of the global warming proponents. Record snows fell in the American West, the Northeast, and Canada. China experienced the harshest winter in a century. Snow cover in Siberia and Mongolia was greater than at any time since the mid-1960s. Even Iraq saw snow for the first time in recent memory. Ice was 10 to 20 cm thicker, and ice between Greenland and Canada was at its most expansive in 15 years.
  • A Virginia state law banning a type of late-term abortion is still unconstitutional, even though a similar federal ban was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal appeals court ruled. But pro-life groups in Michigan were encouraged by the House affirmation of the partial birth abortion ban there.
  • A federal appeals court in California reinstated a lawsuit challenging the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which allows gay men and lesbians to serve in the armed forces as long as their sexual orientation remains private.
  • A city clerk in England is suing her employer for the right not to officiate homosexual weddings due to her faith. The city council had informed her she could be fired unless she agrees to preside at the ceremonies. In Wales, a humanist association paid for the legal costs of a man who resigned from a charity in protest over an alleged “Christian only” recruitment policy. The worker won, but the decision may be appealed.
  • Six new billboards around Orlando, Florida, are advertising a coming “Love Won Out” conference sponsored by Focus on the Family to encourage those who are dissatisfied with their lifestyle to leave it behind. It is scheduled the same day as Disney World’s annual gay day promotion (June 7).