Tag Archives: ADF

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Germany puts parents in jail if they pull their kids out of sex education

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From Alliance Defense Fund.

Excerpt:

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys representing two German parents filed an emergency order Thursday with the European Court of Human Rights, calling for the mother’s immediate prison release. ADF attorneys filed an appeal on the parents’ behalf last year asking the ECHR to uphold national and international law against the German government’s unlawful incarceration and fines in violation of parental rights.

Heinrich and Irene Wiens chose to keep their four children from attending a mandatory play and four school days of “sexual education” that taught students an extremely permissive view of sexuality. For this they were fined and then sentenced to more than six weeks in prison for refusing to pay. The father already served his prison term. Both parents contend that the programs oppose their Christian beliefs and that forcing their children’s participation is unlawful. ADF has four similar cases before the ECHR, as Irene Wiens is the 10th Christian parent imprisoned.

“Parents, not the government, are the ones ultimately responsible for making educational choices for their children, and jailing them for standing on this universal right is simply unconscionable,” said ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. “Irene Wiens was well within her rights under the European Convention of Human Rights to opt to teach her children a view of sexuality that is in accord with her own religious beliefs, instead of sending them to four days of classes and an interactive play that she found to be objectionable. These types of cases are crucial battles in the effort to keep bad decisions concerning parental rights overseas from being adopted by American courts.”

In June 2006, the Wiens’ objected to their children’s attendance at both a mandatory stage play and four school days of so-called “sexual education” classes. Both parents believed the programs contradicted their sincerely held religious beliefs, as they and their four children are active in the Christian Baptist Church. The Wiens’ kept their children at home during the programs and instead instructed them in their own Christian values on sexuality.  The parents were subsequently sentenced by a lower court in June 2008 and both were fined a total of 2,340 Euros (approximately $3,250 U.S.), which they refused to pay on legal and moral grounds. As a result, Heinrich Wiens served 43 days in prison from August 26 to October 6, and Irene Wiens is still serving her 43-day sentence in jail.

School officials allege that the purpose of the compulsory play “Mein Köper Gehört Mir” (My Body Is Mine) was to introduce preventative measures for sexual abuse amongst children. Yet ADF attorneys argue that the play and “sexual education” lessons also promoted a very permissive view of sex and sexuality that strongly contradicts the Wiens’ Christian beliefs. Also, the Wiens’ contend that no scientific proof exists that the programs deter sexual abuse, but that they rather teach children to become sexually active by instructing them to observe their inner feelings of sexuality, ultimately teaching that if something feels good sexually, then it is an acceptable practice.

I really resent paying for teachers to indoctrinate children with their views of sexuality. Shouldn’t I get to keep my money and choose my school? What is the argument for me paying the government directly and taking whatever they give me? I don’t want these people or their sex education. Let me decide what’s best for my future children. I should be allowed to spend the money I earn on whatever I want. I don’t see why I should have to pay for something that doesn’t meet the needs of my future children.

News

Obama administration rolls back conscience protections for health care workers

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From Life Site News.

Excerpt:

The Obama Administration has rescinded a federal regulation from 2008 that protected the conscience rights of health care providers opposed to providing abortifacient contraception, such as the Plan-B “morning-after” pill.

The Health and Human Services Department under Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, issued the new “final rule,” which leaves health-care workers of federally funded entities a narrower conscience exemption that only protects them from having to participate in abortions or sterilizations.

The new regulation replaces the earlier one enacted in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, which broadened the interpretation of existing federal conscience statutes related to abortion to include health professionals opposed to emergency contraception, such as Ella or Plan-B, drugs which pro-life advocates say also act as abortifacients.

Sebelius alleged in the promulgation of the new final rule that the Bush-era conscience regulations “instead led to greater confusion”, citing comments received by HHS. She said her department was changing the rule because it was “unclear and potentially over-broad in scope.”

The HHS Secretary said in her statement that her department did share the concern of those in favor of rescinding the rule that it had the “potential to negatively impact patient access to contraception and certain other medical services” esp. for certain sub-populations, such as “low income patients, minorities, the uninsured, patients in rural areas, Medicaid beneficiaries, or other medically under-served populations.”

The ruling is a victory for Planned Parenthood and other “family planning” groups that have insisted that drugs like Plan-B (taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse) and Ella (taken within five-days of intercourse) should be defined as “contraception.” Pro-life groups countered that pro-life health providers should be protected from discrimination under federal statutes, because these drugs could prevent a conceived human embryo from implanting in the mother’s womb, thereby aborting it.

[…]“Today’s erosion of conscience protections for medical professionals is a blow both to medicine and the right to practice one’s deeply-held convictions,” said Dr. J. Scott Ries, on behalf of the 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA).

Ries said the new HHS final rule disregarded the findings of the previous HHS 2008 final rule which stated that allowing health professionals to practice according to their convictions would negatively impact patient services or create “new barriers.”

“Losing conscientious healthcare professionals and faith-based institutions to discrimination and job loss especially imperils the poor and patients in medically underserved areas,” said Ries. “We are already facing critical shortages of primary care physicians, and the Obama administration’s decision now threatens to make the situation far worse for patients across the country who depend on faith-based health care.”

As the days go on, I find myself missing George W. Bush more and more. Say what you like about him, he was a Christian. And now we have a non-Christian (atheist) president and an atheistic administration. Things like conscience protections are naturally under attack. Naturally, people on the secular left think that the state has a right to impose their views and overrule the religious and moral views of individual citizens. That’s what fascism is – and fascism is exclusively a phenomenon of the political left. The right values individual liberty and free market capitalism.

News

University of California Davis: only Christians commit religious discrimination

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From an Alliance Defense Fund press release.

Excerpt:

An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney sent a letter to the University of California at Davis Wednesday on behalf of more than 25 students who object to a policy that defines religious discrimination as Christians oppressing non-Christians.

“Christians deserve the same protections against religious discrimination as any other students on a public university campus,” said ADF Senior Counsel David French. “It’s ridiculously absurd to single out Christians as oppressors and non-Christians as the only oppressed people on campus when the facts show that public universities are more hostile to Christians than anyone else.”

The UC-Davis policy defines “Religious/Spiritual Discrimination” as “The loss of power and privilege to those who do not practice the dominant culture’s religion.  In the United States, this is institutionalized oppressions toward those who are not Christian.”

The letter from ADF-allied attorney Tim Swickard, one of nearly 1,900 attorneys in the ADF alliance, explains, “It is patently clear that UC Davis’s definition of religious discrimination is blatantly unconstitutional under both the Federal and California State Constitutions. The policy singles out some faiths for official school protection while denying the same protection to others solely on the basis of their particular religious views….. Moreover, the UC Davis policy is simply nonsensical given the environment on most University campuses where Christian students, if anything, are among the most likely to be subjected to discrimination because of their faith.”

The letter cites a recent study of more than 1,200 faculty at public universities that showed that professors admitted to having a significant bias against Christian students, particularly evangelicals. Fifty-three percent admitted to having negative feelings about evangelical students solely because of their religious beliefs. Mormon and Catholic students did not fare much better in the study. A 2004 Harvard Institute of Politics poll indicated that only 35 percent of college students call themselves “born again,” and only 22 percent identify as evangelical Christians. A 2000 study of teens by the Barna Research Group found that only 26 percent claim to be “committed to the Christian faith.”

But that’s not all. Apparently, laws can be applied differently to certain groups.

Consider this interesting column from the Toronto Sun.

Excerpt:

When Ontario’s McGuinty government and the leadership of the OPP sided with First Nations protesters against local residents in Caledonia in 2006, it outraged many people.

In her seminal book about the issue, Helpless, Christie Blatchford avoided the native rights issue and concentrated on the abandonment of rule of law which, curiously (or maybe not so curiously), offended many rank and file OPP officers who were ordered not to provoke Indians, but to hammer down locals who protested against the protesters.

Two of the victims of the temporary policy — Gary McHale and Mark Vandermaas, once arrested for raising the Canadian flag!

And here’s an example from Denmark:

When historian Lars Hedegaard was charged with making disparaging remarks about Muslims and Sharia law, Jesper Langballe, a Danish MP was similarly charged for supporting Hedegaard’s right to free speech.

Both were charged under Article 266b of a Danish law which, extraordinarily for a democratic country, does not allow “truth” as a defence.

Article 266b says “whoever publicly … issues a … communication by which a group of persons is threatened, insulted or denigrated … is liable to a fine or incarceration for up to two years.”

In other words, the truth of whatever might be said is irrelevant.

MP Langballe pleaded guilty, because he realized the Danish law doesn’t recognize “truth” as a defence.

And here’s an example from Austria:

Meanwhile in Austria, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff faces three years in prison if convicted on Tuesday, of denigrating religious teachings — specifically Muslim teachings with quotes from the Koran — and inciting hatred against a religious group.

Among other things, Ms. Wolff felt Sharia law was not compatible with a free and secular society, and referred to Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam where there are “no-go zones where Sharia is effectively the law … (where) immigrant youths (mostly Muslim) torch cars, throw stones at police, etc.”

She denies she sought to incite hatred and violence, but “we need to be informed, make people aware, to inform our politicians and write letters to the newspapers.”

It’s so strange because these laws are never applied equally – only some groups are protected, while other groups can only be offenders.