The state legislature has approved a state ballot proposal that will allow Tennessee voters to run back a pro-abortion ruling by the state Supreme Court that prevents lawmakers from putting in place any pro-life laws to limit abortion.
The amendment is necessary because the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled 4-1 in 2000 that the state constitution allows unlimited abortions. It is necessary, pro-life advocates say, to be able to pass laws to limit and reduce abortions. The ruling claimed the Tennessee Constitution contains a fundamental abortion right even broader than Roe v. Wade or the federal constitution and it resulted in the striking down of numerous pro-life Tennessee laws that were helping women and limiting abortions.
The Tennessee state House voted today 76-18 vote for the state ballot proposal sponsored by Republican Rep. Debra Maggart of Hendersonville. The text of SJR 127 returns authority for abortion regulation to the people of Tennessee and their state legislators and reads as follows: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”
Proposed amendments in Tennessee must be passed by two consecutive general assemblies, the second time by a two-thirds supermajority. with today’s vote, SJR 127 will now be placed on the ballot for approval by Tennesseans during the next gubernatorial election in 2014.
The bill was passed the first time in 2009 by a margin of 77-21. Tennessee must have a REALLY liberal Supreme Court, because the legislators are good. Then again, they passed TennCare and that was just socialized medicine.
The Supreme Court’s big school choice decision yesterday is notable mainly for its insight into the progressive mind. To wit, no fewer than four Justices seem to believe that all wealth belongs to the government, and then government allows citizens to keep some of it by declining to tax it.
At issue in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn was a state tax credit for donations to organizations that offer scholarships for private schools, including (but not exclusively) religious schools. A group of taxpayers sued, claiming that religion was being subsidized on their dime, in violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
The district court tossed out this novel church-state theory, only to have it revived by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yesterday’s 5-4 decision was another well-deserved rebuke to the nation’s leading judicial activists who dominate that appellate court.
[…]And what do you know, four Justices assume precisely that. Both of President Obama’s nominees joined the four dissenters, and newcomer Elena Kagan delivered a fiery 24-page apologia for that position, claiming that “the distinction” between appropriations and tax credits “is one in search of a difference.” There’s a good debate to be had about tax credits (see below), but one question for Justice Kagan: Is the government also establishing religion by not imposing a 100% tax rate on churches, mosques and synagogues?With one more vote, the current Court’s liberal minority would surely ban school choice involving any religious schools. The Arizona decision shows again that the Court is only a single vote away from many decisions not all that far removed from those of the Ninth Circuit.
Note that Obama’s two new appointees sided against Christian schools and private schools. Yet some brain-damaged Christians actually vote for Democrats, and claim to be Christians. (And they claim to want to get married and to raise children who will presumably be Christians, too!). School choice is as central an issue to informed Christians as is opposition to no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion.
The Central Bureau of investigation (CBI) wanted the death penalty for Singh, who was linked to extreme right-wing Hindu group Bajrang Dal. The GCIC has opposed the request for a death sentence. The wife of the slain pastor, Gladys Staines, had already forgiven Dara and his accomplices involved in the brutal murder of her husband and children. (20/01/2009 Widow of Graham Staines: “Do not give up hope, pray for India”).
Twelve years ago, Graham Staines was burnt alive with his children aged eight and ten years in the small village of Manoharpur, in the tribal area of Orissa. Graham Staines had worked for thirty years with leprosy patients in Orissa, and was sleeping with his children in a car, on his journey home on a cold December night. A group of attackers poured petrol on the car, and burned them alive.
The Staines tried to escape, but the assailants, fifty in all, prevented them. A witness said the attackers shouted slogans in praise of Dara Singh, the Hindu movement and the god Hanuman.
In 2003 a court in Khurda judged all 13 accused guilty. Life in prison for everyone else, a death sentence for Dara Singh. In 2005, the Orissa High Court commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment, judged Hembran guilty and exonerated the others.
Dara Singh killed Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons by setting fire to the vehicle in which they were sleeping, but the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that it was not a “rarest of rare” category crime to warrant death penalty for him.
In a judgment drawing curtains on court proceedings in the sensational incident of January 1999, a bench of Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan upheld the Orissa High Court judgment imposing life sentence on Singh alias Rabindra Kumar Pal and Mahendra Hembram. The trial court had awarded death penalty to Singh.
The bench said the Orissa HC was justified in awarding life term to Singh and Hembran as the crime was committed in the passion to teach Staines a lesson for his alleged attempts to convert tribals.
“Though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity,” it said.
“All these aspects have been correctly appreciated by the high court and modified the sentence of death into life imprisonment with which we concur,” the bench said.
Justice Sathasivam, writing the judgment for the bench, also dismissed the CBI`s appeal challenging the HC`s decision to acquit 11 other accused. “We have highlighted the weakness and infirmities of the prosecution case insofar as acquitted accused, who are poor tribals,” he said. The CBI had taken over the probe from Orissa Police on May 3, 1999.
“In the absence of definite assertion from the prosecution side about their specific role and involvement, it is not safe to convict them. We entirely agree with the reasoning and conclusion of the high court,” it said.
While condemning killings in the name of religion, the bench also expressed its disapproval of conversion. “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone`s belief by way of `use of force`, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other,” said the bench.
This story is interesting because it shows how the pluralist view that “all religions are valid” can actually lead to violence. The pluralist view is itself a point of view that takes itself to be true. Pluralists think that religions like Christianity, which claim to be true, are actually FALSE. In short, pluralism DOES disagree with Christianity. If disagreement with other religions is bad, then pluralists are just as guilty of being bad as Christians.
Is what they say about Christians being “exclusive” true? Does being “exclusive” make Christians dangerous? Well, the reason why the practice of Christianity DOES NOT result in violence is because part of the “truth” that Christians believe is that they should love their enemies and pray for the people who persecute them. That’s why the victim’s wife forgave the murderers for their crimes.
I actually have Hindus and Muslims in my family. They treat religion as a cultural or national identity – not really something to investigate to see if it is true or false. Hindus are not usually Hindus because they did some big investigation and found Hinduism to be true. (Hinduism requires an eternally oscillating cosmology, which contradicts physics and the Big Bang theory). It’s more like that they do it for personal reasons or community reasons – it’s like part of their national/cultural identity.
Why do some Hindus oppose evangelism?
A while back I posted this debate featuring a Hindu who disagreed with Christian evangelism and wanted to make it illegal. He complained about Christians using “force” (being kind and giving gifts) to convince people to become Christians. In the next breath he was pushing the government to use force his anti-Christian views onto Christians. He did not want them to evangelize, so he wanted to pass that view into law and force his neighbors to accept HIS views by force. He thought his view of Christianity and evangelism was TRUE, and he thought the traditional, Biblical Christian view was false. He actually insisted that his interpretation of the Bible was correct and all the Christian theologians were misinterpreting the Bible. He expected Christians to act like Hindus! And he thought that Christianity WAS Hinduism – or that it should be redefined to be understood to be Hinduism. Then he complained about Christians who thought that their views were TRUE and that his were FALSE.
The difference between Christians and Hindus is that committed Christians think they are right and use ideas and words to persuade, while militant Hindus think they are right and are willing to use force to make people agree with them. I think the difference is that a Christian can appeal to facts like the Big Bang theory, and the Hindu cannot really do that, as this Hindu commenter to another post showed.
I really recommend that you listen to that debate, and there is a play-by-play summary that I wrote in case the bandwidth is too high. And read my exchange with the Hindu commenter, too.
WINTERY KNIGHT 