World News for April 22, 2009

April 22, 2009

Reading: World News for April 22, 2009
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  • OneNewsNow reports that a vote is coming up this week in Congress on a bill, HR 1913, that conservative activists warn would not only silence Christian opposition to homosexuality but wouldalso legitimize deviant forms of sexual orientation. The title of the bill is Local Law Enforcement and Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. House Democrats need only to give a 24-hour notice before the vote. Homosexual and transgender people would be added to a list of classes federally protected from so-called hate crimes. Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, remarked concerning the threat, “Your pastor could be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit a hate crime if it passes and becomes law. . . .[It] will be used to lay the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute, and persecute pastors, business owners, Bible teachers, Sunday School teachers, youth pastors—you name it—or anyone else whose actions are based upon the truth found in the Bible.” TVC says that the bill broadly defines “intimidation” and offers as an example, “A pastor’s sermon could be considered ‘hate speech’ under this legislation if heard by an individual who then acts aggressively against persons based on ’sexual orientation.’ ” The legislation has another serious problem, according to the pro-family group: Congress has failed to define the term “sexual orientation.” Thus many sexual orientations would be protected under the legislation, including behaviors that have been felonies or misdemeanors in most states. TVC argues that the bill is based on a “fraudulent premise” that an epidemic of so-called hate crimes exists against gay and various other people. Lafferty says that unless American Christians act, the hate crimes bill could be on President Obama’s desk in three to four weeks at the most. President Obama recently told a crowd at a college in Ohio that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions, and he dismissed as “obscure” the apostle Paul’s words against homosexuality in the book of Romans. Evangelical Christians believe the president takes the Sermon on the Mount out of context. Another group, Family Research Council, is promoting a petition against the bill. And Dr. Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission warned, “In other countries, like in Canada and Sweden, where these types of hate crime laws have been implemented, pastors and Christians have been jailed and fined for their faithful adherence to the biblical values.”
  • Moody Bible Institute has named a new president, its ninth. Dr. Paul Nyquist, 55, has been president and CEO of Avant Ministries (formerly Gospel Missionary Union), a longtime missionary board headquartered in Kansas City, Mo.
  • Republicans have criticized a Homeland Security Department intelligence assessment that characterizes military veterans as right-wing extremists, reports an Associated Press writer. The assessment was sent to law enforcement officials last week. “To characterize men and women returning home after defending our country as potential terrorists is offensive and unacceptable,” said House Republican leader John Boehner (Ohio). The commander of the veterans group the American Legion also wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, expressing concern, but Napolitano defended the assessment, which made its way into the mainstream press apparently only “after conservative bloggers got wind of the analysis.”
  • Various states continue to make news on moral issues facing them. OneNewsNow reports that pro-lifers in Findlay, Ohio, claimed victory after they were run off the streets by police when they tried to show large photographs of babies killed by abortion. The Alliance Defense Fund took up the pro-lifers’ cause, and the city settled the case by paying the pro-life group’s legal expenses, which amounted to about $25,000. In New Hampshire, the state Senate is considering a vote on gay marriage. The state’s House narrowly approved a bill last month that would legalize marriage for same-sex couples. The public hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee came on the heels of victories for same-sex marriage in Iowa and Vermont. In Florida, socially conservative bills on opening the door to school prayer, on discouraging the teaching of evolution, and on requiring ultrasounds for first-trimester abortions, stalled in the Florida Senate. Meanwhile, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, whom President Obama has chosen as a nominee for health secretary, reportedly received nearly three times as much money from late-term abortion doctor George Tiller than she disclosed, according Christianity Today and other sources. Various pro-life and pro-family organizations are opposing Sebelius’s nomination.
  • The so-called Day of Silence this year wasn’t necessarily silent, according to OneNewsNow. The day is supposed to be observed by students who refuse to speak while at school to show their support of the gay community and to bring awareness to any perceived homosexual bullying and name-calling. The day is sponsored by a leading gay group in the country. But pro-family people received death threats, voice mails, and e-mails. One said that the sender wished the Christian woman “would just go kill yourself.” She saved the voice messages and e-mails and posted them on YouTube.
  • Discovery Institute reports that an NPR interview on the Texas evolution situation revealed particularly hostile media bias, cutting from the story all of the discussions of the scientific weaknesses in neo-Darwinism and not getting names and other details correct.
  • A panel on religious liberty was denied entrance into Cuba, reports BP News. The panel had planned to discuss religious freedom with faith communities and government officials, but the Cuban government withheld the delegation’s visas. The commission has been concerned about religious freedom limitations in Cuba, including government refusals to grant permission for the construction of any new places of worship, churches and other religious groups being required to register, crackdowns on assembly and association, house church meetings being broken up, attacks and threats against religious leaders, prohibition of private religious schools, and religious organizations being denied their right to access the Internet. These concerns come even as Cuban leaders want more from the U.S. and President Obama seems inclined to give them what they seek.
  • Southern Baptists are continuing to provide desperately needed relief to families suffering in Zimbabwe’s tremendous economic disaster, reports BP News. The country was once a prosperous nation but in recent years has been stripped of almost everything due to the regime of the past years. The challenge staggers the imagination, said Mark Hatfield, who with his wife, Susan, directs work in Sub-Saharan Africa with Baptist Global Response.
  • A student undercover video shows a Tennessee Planned Parenthood counselor coaching a 14-year-old to lie about the age of her 31-year-old boyfriend so a judge wouldn’t find out and also so the girl could obtain a waiver for an abortion without her parents’ knowledge, reports ChristianNewsWire. The video marks the fifth investigation that documents Planned Parenthood’s repeated noncompliance with state mandatory reporting laws for sexual abuse of minors. Tennessee is the third state to be implicated, along with Arizona and Indiana.
  • A Baptist deacon in Uzbekistan has received a 15-day jail term for teaching Baptist beliefs to children, according to Forum 18. Secret police invaded his home. In a separate case, 17 people associated with a registered Bukhara church were each fined 100 times the minimum salary following a raid at a birthday party.