Tag Archives: Religious Liberty

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Gay activist who vandalized Chick-Fil-A restaurant will not be charged

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From the radically left-wing Los Angeles Times.

Excerpt:

A West Hollywood artist who allegedly painted the words “Tastes like hate” on the side of a Chick-fil-A restaurant because of the company president’s stand against gay marraige won’t be criminally charged by the L.A. County district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors announced Wednesday they were declining to press charges after Torrance police submitted a case.

[…]The graffiti — accompanied by a representation of a cow holding a paint brush — appeared during a week of demonstrations at Chick-fil-A restaurants nationwide sparked by company President Dan Cathy’s public denunciation of same-sex marriage.

Discovered about 6:40 a.m. Friday at the Hawthorne Boulevard restaurant, the vandalism coincided with “National Same-Sex Kiss Day,” when gay rights supporters asked couples to take photos of themselves kissing at Chick-fil-A locations.

Castro took credit for the graffiti in an interview with the Huffington Post.

“Everybody is entitled to free speech, but it seems like for the gay tribe, this is more of an issue of equal rights — human rights,” he said. “I’m against what these people stand for, what this company stands for. They’re trying to take away what little rights we already have.”

A day before he was taken into custody, Castro made another statement to the Huffington Post, telling his critics the act was “meant to further a discussion about tolerance and acceptance.”

“I didn’t use violence. I used paint. Artists for centuries have expressed their opinions through this medium and I am no different,” he said. “I am happy to pay for the costs of repainting the wall, but I am not — nor will I ever be — happy to sit quietly at the back of the bus.”

The left-wing media thinks that a crime can only be a hate crime when the right kind of people are victimized. Oh, oh, and Christians aren’t being persecuted for their faith in places like the Sudan, China or North Korea, either. Only secular leftist people can be victims, don’t you know? And if you disagree with this double standard then you’re a racist bigot, so there.

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Chinese Communist Party members increasingly attending church

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

More Communist Party members in the Peoples Republic of China are attending church, according to the U.S. State Department’s latest report on International Religious Freedom.

“Although CCP members are required to be atheists and generally are discouraged from participating in religious activities, their attendance at official church services in Guangdong Province was reportedly growing, as authorities increasingly chose to turn a blind eye to their attendance,” the report stated.

Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who authored the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, backed up claims that more Chinese Communists as well as members of the media are becoming Christians, despite continuing religious repression in China.

“It is definitely taking place around the country,” Wolf told CNSNews.com. “There’s a large number of Chinese who have become Christian, there are a number of people in the government and even some in the media who have become Christians.”

[…]The International Religious Freedom Report, released on July 30, also noted that in 2011, there was a “marked deterioration” of religious freedom in China.

The report discussed the persecution of religious groups, including Christians, Uighur Muslims, Catholics and Tibetan Buddhists:

“Some religious and spiritual groups are outlawed. Tibetan Buddhists in China are not free to venerate the Dalai Lama and encounter severe government interference in religious practice,” the report said.

“The government continued to severely repress Muslims living in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and other parts of China. Crackdowns on Christian house churches, such as the Shouwang church in Beijing, continued.”

The report also noted that Chinese authorities broke up Christmas and Easter celebrations and designated many Christian groups as “evil cults.” Authorities also detained numerous Uighur Muslims without bothering to discern between peaceful worship and criminal activity.

Many Catholic clergymen who remain loyal to the Vatican instead of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) also have been detained by the Communist regime.

[…]The Chinese constitution permits the citizenry to hold religious beliefs, but restricts the practicing and worship of religion to “normal religious activities”—a term that is left undefined by the constitution.

Since 1999, China has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

What’s striking to be is how similar the views of the repressive Chinese government are to the views of many atheists in the West. In China, even religious people have to act like atheists in public. It’s an atheist paradise. It reminds me a little of what is happening here with Obamacare and religious institutions being forced to provide abortion-inducing drugs against their consciences.

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Ted Cruz wins Texas Republican Senate primary election 56-44

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CNBC reports on another Tea Party primary victory.

Excerpt:

Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz scored a stunning upset over a longtime Texas state officeholder in a Republican U.S. Senate primary runoff on Tuesday, transforming Cruz into a national conservative star and marking a resurgence of the movement to shrink the size of U.S. government.

Cruz, 41, a former state solicitor general who has never held elected office, became the third insurgent Republican this year to defeat an establishment Republican in a U.S. Senate primary.

He scored a surprisingly comfortable victory with about 56 percent of the vote to about 44 percent for Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, who a year ago was considered the frontrunner.

[…]Cruz spent a year and a half crisscrossing the state, introducing himself at Tea Party meetings and Republican women’s club gatherings as a “constitutional conservative.”

And he drew support from conservative stars such as former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and money from national conservative groups such as the Club for Growth. That group’s political action committee spent $5.5 million to support Cruz, the organization said.

Cruz, whose father came to Texas from Cuba with $100 sewn into his underwear, would become the first Hispanic U.S. senator from Texas if he wins in November.

Dewhurst and Cruz had similar policy positions. Both pledged to do away with President Barack Obama’s health care reform and to rein in Washington spending.

Cruz, a Princeton University debate champion and a Harvard Law School graduate, stood out with sharp debate performances.

This is the third big Tea Party victory in a Republican primary. Richard Mourdock beat Richard Lugar in Indiana and Deb Fischer beat Jon Bruning in Nebraska. You can read more about Ted Cruz here.