Monthly Archives: March 2012

News

Democrats consider making gay marriage part of their policy platform

1 Comment

From Fox News.

Excerpt:

More Americans are embracing gay marriage, adding to calls from Democrats for President Barack Obama— who has said he is not sure where he stands — to publicly express his support before the November elections.

[…]Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, chairman of the Democratic National Convention, said last week that a gay-marriage plank should be part of the platform, echoing recent comments from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Gay-rights activists say they have been making the case to the White Housethat polls show Obama has little to lose politically if he endorses gay marriage.Forty-nine percent of Americans now say they approve of gay marriage, up from 40 percent shortly after Obama took office in 2009.

It should be noted that Barack Obama is in favor of legalizing gay marriage. We know this because he refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. He is therefore opposedto traditional marriage, in practice. It does not matter what he says in campaign speeches. If he is elected in November 2012, then gay marriage will be rammed down the throats of Americans, especially through public schools.

Dissent and disagreement with the gay agenda will be criminalized as “hate speech” even more than it already is. Religious people will be forced to celebrate the gay lifestyle just as Catholic groups are being forced to subsidize contraception – against their religious beliefs – now. That’s the real agenda of the Obama administration: forcing Christians to act like atheists in public, and forcing Christians to subsidize an atheistic agenda.

You can read about how to make a secular case against gay marriage here.

News

Trial begins for former NASA employee fired for belief in intelligent design

2 Comments

From Fox News.

Excerpt:

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has landed robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, sent probes to outer planets and operates a worldwide network of antennas that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft.

Its latest mission is defending itself in a workplace lawsuit filed by a former computer specialist who claims he was demoted — and then let go — for promoting his views on intelligent design.

[…]David Coppedge, who worked as a “team lead” on the Cassini mission exploring Saturn and its many moons, alleges that he was discriminated against because he engaged his co-workers in conversations about intelligent design and handed out DVDs on the idea while at work. Coppedge lost his “team lead” title in 2009 and was let go last year after 15 years on the mission.

Opening statements are expected to begin Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court after two years of legal wrangling in a case that has generated interest among supporters of intelligent design. The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian civil rights group, and the Discovery Institute, a proponent of intelligent design, are both supporting Coppedge’s case.

“It’s part of a pattern. There is basically a war on anyone who dissents from Darwin and we’ve seen that for several years,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. “This is free speech, freedom of conscience 101.”

[…]Coppedge’s attorney, William Becker, says his client was singled out by his bosses because they perceived his belief in intelligent design to be religious.

 

If Darwinism was all it was cracked up to be, then why do they have to resort to silencing people who disagree with them, and ruining their careers? This is not an isolated occurrence.

News

UK government: Christians do not have right to wear a cross at work

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Tom sent me this article from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Christians do not have a right to wear a cross or crucifix openly at work, the Government is to argue in a landmark court case.

In a highly significant move, ministers will fight a case at the European Court of Human Rights in which two British women will seek to establish their right to display the cross.

It is the first time that the Government has been forced to state whether it backs the right of Christians to wear the symbol at work.

A document seen by The Sunday Telegraph discloses that ministers will argue that because it is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, employers can ban the wearing of the cross and sack workers who insist on doing so.

[…]The Government’s refusal to say that Christians have a right to display the symbol of their faith at work emerged after its plans to legalise same-sex marriages were attacked by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain.

A poll commissioned by The Sunday Telegraph shows that the country is split on the issue.

Overall, 45 per cent of voters support moves to allow gay marriage, with 36 per cent against, while 19 per cent say they do not know.

However, the Prime Minister is out of step with his own party.

Exactly half of Conservative voters oppose same-sex marriage in principle and only 35 per cent back it.

There is no public appetite to change the law urgently, with more than three quarters of people polled saying it was wrong to fast-track the plan before 2015 and only 14 per cent saying it was right.

The Strasbourg case hinges on whether human rights laws protect the right to wear a cross or crucifix at work under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

It states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”

The Christian women bringing the case, Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin, claim that they were discriminated against when their employers barred them from wearing the symbols.

They want the European Court to rule that this breached their human right to manifest their religion.

The Government’s official response states that wearing the cross is not a “requirement of the faith” and therefore does not fall under the remit of Article 9.

Lawyers for the two women claim that the Government is setting the bar too high and that “manifesting” religion includes doing things that are not a “requirement of the faith”, and that they are therefore protected by human rights.

They say that Christians are given less protection than members of other religions who have been granted special status for garments or symbols such as the Sikh turban and kara bracelet, or the Muslim hijab.

I think that many of the people in the UK who push for the marginalization of religion from society are probably the same people who decry the decline of moral standards. It is a secularist fantasy that people will act as they ought to act when people think that there is no way that the universe ought to be. The UK is self-destructing because they are cutting themselves off from the ground of morality, and one of the pillars of Western Civilization.