Tag Archives: Religious Liberty

News

Christian apologists sue City of Dearborn and Carleton University

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First, the evil city of Dearborn, Michigan is being sued.

Excerpt:

If you’ve been following this blog for the past two years, you’ve seen Muslim security guards assault our sister Mary Jo Sharp at the Dearborn Arab Festival. You’ve seen Dearborn’s own Corporal Kapanowski assault our sister Negeen. You’ve seen falsified police reports, written by corrupt police officers trying to justify their unlawful arrests. You’ve seen police officers (who take an oath that they will support and defend the Constitution) take us into custody for attempting to hand out copies of the Gospel to Muslims outside the festival. You’ve seen lies from the Mayor, lies from police, and even lies from Christians trying to curry favor with the local Muslims.

For a complete summary of our experience in Dearborn, click here.

Enough is enough. Today, the Thomas More Law Center filed a massive 96-page Complaint against the City of Dearborn. Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Police Chief Ronald Haddad, seventeen Dearborn police officers, and two members of the Arab Chamber of Commerce are officially being sued. If the City of Dearborn refuses to honor the U.S. Constitution, we hope this lawsuit will help persuade them that, so long as Michigan is part of the United States, they have no choice in the matter.

Of course, the City of Dearborn is no stranger to civil rights lawsuits. A Christian wrestling coach sued the City after he was targeted for his faith by a Muslim principal. (The City settled out of court.) Two more Christian teachers at a majority Muslim high school are now suing after being targeted and persecuted for their faith.

And what about Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada?

Excerpt:

Members of an anti-abortion group at Carleton are suing the university for discrimination.

The $225,000 lawsuit filed in Ontario Superior Court Feb. 18 by Carleton students Ruth Lobo and John McLeod claims the university breached its own human rights policies and procedures by refusing to let a campus club called Carleton Lifeline set up a controversial display featuring large images of aborted fetuses and genocide atrocities in the Tory Quad, a high-traffic square at the centre of campus (university officials offered the group space at a different spot).

Claiming the university was trying to censor its message by suggesting the group set up its displays in an alternative location, Carleton Lifeline attempted to set up its display in Tory Quad last October and were arrested by Ottawa police and campus security.

“Carleton University’s decision to have Carleton Lifeline arrested, charged with trespassing and fined was excessive, unjustified and constituted an attempt to bully, intimidate and censor them,” the statement of claim says.

The lawsuit names the university, its president Roseann O’Reilly Runte and three other senior officials.

[…]Lobo, a human-rights major, and McLeod, who’s studying business, claim Carleton breached its fiduciary duty to provide them with a free and open campus environment to discuss and debate controversial ideas and, through its actions, stripped them of their freedom of expression and freedom from discrimination.

As a result, the students say their grades and reputations have suffered.

“Their university experience has been tarnished, their reputation, individually and as a group, has suffered and they have lost their trust in Carleton University’s professors and administrators,” the lawsuit claims.

The pair also claim being arrested and detained last fall infringed on their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

They are seeking $100,000 in general damages for wrongful arrest and pain and suffering, $100,000 for punitive damages and $25,000 for the Charter violations.

I have an idea. Let’s make more children into Christian lawyers. And then let’s make them work for the Alliance Defense Fund, the Thomas More Law Center, the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, American Center for Law and Justice, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Institute for Justice, etc. Yes, I know – the children won’t like it. They will prefer to play Nintendo and go to the movies with their annoying friends, (the same as what I wanted when I was a spoiled little brat!). But who cares what they think?

News

Left-wing media silent on Afghan Christian’s impending execution

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Map of the Middle East
Map of the Middle East

This is from National Review. (H/T Kelly)

Excerpt:

A terrible drama is unfolding in Afghanistan: There are reports that Said Musa, whose situation I described at Christmas, will soon be executed for the ‘crime’ of choosing to become a Christian. (For background, see here.)

Musa was one of about 25 Christians arrested on May 31, 2010, after a May 27 Noorin TV program showed video of a worship service held by indigenous Afghan Christians; he was arrested as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy. He converted to Christianity eight years ago, is the father of six young children, had a leg amputated after he stepped on a landmine while serving in the Afghan Army, and now has a prosthetic leg. His oldest child is eight and one is disabled (she cannot speak). He worked for the Red Cross/Red Crescent as an adviser to other amputees.

He was forced to appear before a judge without any legal counsel and without knowledge of the charges against him. “Nobody [wanted to be my] defender before the court. When I said ‘I am a Christian man,’ he [a potential lawyer] immediately spat on me and abused me and mocked me. . . . I am alone between 400 [people with] terrible values in the jail, like a sheep.” He has been beaten, mocked, and subjected to sleep deprivation and sexual abuse while in prison. No Afghan lawyer will defend him and authorities denied him access to a foreign lawyer.

Any and every human being who is imprisoned, abused, or tortured for the free and peaceful expression of their faith deserves our support, but Musa is also a remarkable person and Christian. In a letter smuggled to the West, he says, “The authority and prisoners in jail did many bad behaviour with me about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, they did sexual things with me, beat me by wood, by hands, by legs, put some things on my head.”

He added a thing much more important to him, that they “mocked me ‘he’s Jesus Christ,’ spat on me, nobody let me for sleep night and day. . . . Please, please, for the sake of Lord Jesus Christ help me.” (View the full letter here)

He has not, in fact, even appealed to be released, only to be transferred to another prison. He has also stated that he is willing to give his life for his faith. “Please, please you should transfer me from this jail to a jail that supervises the believers. . . . I also agree . . . to sacrifice my life in public [where] I will tell [about my] faith in Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, [so] other believers will take courage and be strong in their faith.”

Newspapers in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have reported the story, but with, the exception of the Wall Street Journal and, of course, NRO, American outlets have not found it worthy of attention. The Journal reports that “Afghan officials have been unapologetic: ‘The sentence for a convert is death and there is no exception,’ said Jamal Khan, chief of staff at the Ministry of Justice. ‘They must be sentenced to death to serve as a lesson for others.’”

It’s instructive to consider the types of victims that the left wing-media covers. There were thousands of stories about Matthew Sheppard and Rodney King. But almost no stories at all about Said Musa. I wonder why that is?

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.