Most Americans believe that religious businesses can refuse gay wedding-related services

This poll is from CBS News.

It says:

A majority of Americans (57 percent) continue to say it should be legal for same-sex couples to marry, although that’s down three points from a high reached in February. Most Democrats (66 percent ) and independents (61 percent ) think same-sex marriage should be legal, while most Republicans (61 percent ) do not.

Still, just over half of Americans (51 percent) think small business owners should be allowed to refuse wedding services to same-sex couples if it violates their religious beliefs; 42 percent think those businesses should be required to provide those services. There are sharp partisan differences on this issue.

I found the numbers in this poll troubling – it seems to me that the support for same-sex marriage over religious liberty is worse than I thought.

According to this Washington Examiner article, Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz appear to be the toughest defenders of religious liberty, with Walker and Rubio in the second tier.

It says:

Evangelical Christian voters are facing an unusual problem: they may have too many choices when it comes to the 2016 presidential election. Several Republican candidates are vying for their support, viewing the voting bloc as a key stepping stone to the nomination.

More than ever before, evangelical sources say, candidates will need to focus on the issue of religious liberty to win this crucial vote, especially in states like Iowa. Many evangelicals felt Indiana Gov. Mike Pence failed to stand up for his state’s Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, which animated conservative Christians across the country.

Steve Deace, a leading talk radio personality in Iowa, believes the impact of Pence’s decision on voters in his state cannot be understated. “There’s a better chance Hillary Clinton will be the [GOP] nominee next year than Mike Pence,” Deace told the Washington Examiner. “Religious freedom is going to be the biggest issue. It has become a transcendent issue. It’s bigger than life, it’s bigger than marriage.”

[…]Bob Vander Plaats, the CEO of the social conservative group the Family Leader, is a kingmaker of sorts in Iowa who has gained influence in the state by leading the effort to remove three Iowa Supreme Court judges from office because of a decision in favor of gay marriage. In 2008, he endorsed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. In 2012, he picked former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.

This time, Vander Plaats expects to endorse someone around the Thanksgiving holiday, and said Huckabee, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are the Republicans that have already impressed him.

[…]Deace said that after the candidate forum he moderated in Des Moines, Iowa, last month, he believes Cruz and Jindal to be the early favorites among evangelical voters. But many evangelical voters, he says, have interest in Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and have not yet made a decision. Unlike recent elections past, Deace says evangelical listeners who are loyal members of his audience want someone who has the organization and financing capable of winning the Republican nomination.

“They’re tired of the false choice of choosing between the guy who believes in something and the guy who raises a bunch of money,” Deace said. “They want the guy who believes in something to raise a bunch of money. … They’re not necessarily looking for the nice guy, or the guy who says ‘Jesus’ the most.”

Evangelicals have several good candidates this time in the primary. I am still favoring Jindal and Walker above all the others, and I’m happy to see that they are seen as solid on religious liberty.

Polk State College professor fails student for refusing to bash Christianity

This is from Campus Reform.

Excerpt:

A professor at Polk State College has allegedly failed a humanities student after she refused to concede that Jesus is a “myth” or that Christianity oppresses women during a series of mandatory assignments at the Florida college.

According to a press release from the Liberty Counsel, a non-profit public interest law firm, Humanities Professor Lance “Lj” Russum gave a student a “zero” on four separate papers because the 16-year-old did not “conform to his personal worldviews of Marxism, Atheism, Feminism, and homosexuality.” The law firm has called for a full, private investigation of the professor and the course curriculum.

His view is that all religions are false:

“The point of this is not to ‘bash’ any religion, we should NEVER favor one over another, they all come from the same source, HUMAN IMAGINATION and [sic] they demonstrate that humanity is one,” a copy of Russum’s class outline, riddled with grammatical errors, says.

But he targets Christians especially, of course:

“The point of this is not to ‘bash’ any religion, we should NEVER favor one over another, they all come from the same source, HUMAN IMAGINATION and [sic] they demonstrate that humanity is one,” a copy of Russum’s class outline, riddled with grammatical errors, says.

“We have much to thank of [sic] humans like Michelangelo who took a sacred space, a temple to god, and made it a HUMAN space, a space where humanism can meet with god and discourse,” one course assignment read. “Finally humanity and the gods are on equal footing and that is what the myths of Hercules, Apollo and Jesus are all about—the divine becoming human and human being divine.”

In her essay, the student, who Liberty Counsel identifies as “G.L.,” argued that “it is a logical fallacy to make the assumption that Christian humanism’s goal was to ‘blend mythologies and make man the center’ simply on account of Michelangelo’s artwork or because Renaissance artists incorporate classicism.”

The student apparently received a zero on that assignment.

Another assignment allegedly required students to discuss how “fortunate” Martin Luther was to be born in a historical moment that allowed him to “challenge the mythos of the power structure of the church.” The assignment required students to write only about the humanism of Luther and his reformation—and students were instructed in bolded text to keep theology out of the paper:

“WHAT YOU MUST NOT WRITE ABOUT: 1. This is NOT about Luther’s theology

“2. Any quotes from his sermons or writings MUST be about humanism and how the reformation is in the right place and right time in history NOT some divine providence of the gods

“3. You must stay focused on the history of the humanism of Luther and his reformation IF You turn this into a theological debate or divine providence I will NOT read it and you will be given a zero.”

She failed that assignment as well.

Another description on the course outline criticized Christianity as one of the “most violent forms of religion the world has ever seen,” and bashed the religion for its “dominance by powerful men.” The description, supposedly for a class centered on the role of religion in the Middle Ages, claims that today’s major religions “STILL attempt to regulate the bodies of women.”

That sounds like indoctrination to me, not education.

How did the college respond to complaints?

In an email to G.L.’s parents, obtained by Liberty Counsel, Dean of Academic Affairs Donald Paintersaid that he had reviewed the materials presented in Russum’s Humanities 2020 course and “believe[d] them to be appropriate.” Painter apologized that the student and her family found the course materials to be “distasteful,” but said the materials would not be modified.

Painter, who did not respond to an emailed request for comment from Campus Reform, reminded the student’s parents in the email that they had signed an agreement with her dual-enrollment that acknowledged they were aware that some course material may be developed for “the adult student, age 18 or older.”

Yet another reason to never go into non-STEM degree programs. There are certainly good humanities professors, but there are also secular leftist clowns. It’s just far too easy for knuckleheads like this professor, who are divorced from reality, to get teaching positions in most secular leftist universities. They get paid for spouting opinions, and if you disagree with them, then they fail you. Don’t give them any of your money. It just prolongs their retreat from the adult responsibilities.

How accurate are past global warming predictions ?

I like this article from The Stream, which lists a bunch of failed predictions by global warming socialists.

Here’s the list:

  1. 2015 is the ‘last effective opportunity’ to stop catastrophic warming
  2. France’s foreign minister said we only have “500 days” to stop “climate chaos”
  3. President Barack Obama is the last chance to stop global warming
  4. Remember when we had “hours” to stop global warming?
  5. United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there was only 50 days left to save Earth
  6. Let’s not forget Prince Charles’s warning we only had 96 months to save the planet
  7. The U.N.’s top climate scientist said in 2007 we only had four years to save the world
  8. Environmentalists warned in 2002 the world had a decade to go green
  9. The “tipping point” warning first started in 1989

Here are the 3 I thought were the worst:

7. The U.N.’s top climate scientist said in 2007 we only had four years to save the world

Rajendra Pachauri, the former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 that if “there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.”

“What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment,” he said.

Well, it’s 2015 and no new U.N. climate treaty has been presented. The only thing that’s changed since then is that Pachauri was forced to resign earlier this year amid accusations he sexually harassed multiple female coworkers

8. Environmentalists warned in 2002 the world had a decade to go green

Environmentalist write George Monbiot wrote in the UK Guardian that within “as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.”

In 2002, about 930 million people around the world were undernourished, according to U.N. data. by 2014, that number shrank to 805 million. Sorry, Monbiot.

9. The “tipping point” warning first started in 1989

In the late 1980s the U.N. was already claiming the world had only a decade to solve global warming or face the consequences.

The San Jose Mercury News reported on June 30, 1989 that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”

That prediction didn’t come true 15 years ago, and the U.N. is sounding the same alarm today.

Should we believe the global warming socialists? Based on past predictions, we should not. And we especially should not because current levels of solar activity – which is the actual cause of climate change – are extremely low. It’s getting colder, not warmer.