Tag Archives: rights

Bold Voice

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Teen
Punished for Speaking Against Homosexuality Wants Apology
By Jim Brown
April 29, 2004

“(AgapePress) – A Christian student is asking his Boone, North Carolina, high
school to apologize for censoring his opposition to a pro-homosexual event on campus.”

Unfortunately for this lad, court precedent says that a public school has the right
to enforce dress codes. His shirt could be construed as being in violation of his
school’s dress code. Besides, the message was a bit harsh. We’re not likely to win
back too many homosexuals to right living by telling them they’re going to hell.
Yes, homosexuality is a sin, but we’re all guilty of sins and some are pretty nasty.
And unless we’re saints, we’re not confessing them all (privately or publicly).
I like the kid’s idea though. Someone should stand up for Christian sexual ethics.
If gays can “speak” their minds during the Day of Silence, we should be
free to “speak” ours, through t-shirts or other means. The trick is to
do so compassionately.

Real Choice

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A cliched phrase keeps coming back to haunt me: “It’s better to be safe than
sorry.” I can’t help but wonder why it doesn’t seem to apply to the abortion
debate. Roe v. Wade decision said that the government can’t say when life begins.
It doesn’t say a fetus is or isn’t a person. It seems to me (and this idea was the
main reason I stopped being pro-choice) that if we can’t be certain, we ought not
kill it. Why don’t people wish to err for life rather than death? If an action has
an unknowable outcome that kills (and let there be no doubt about that part) either
something or someone, shouldn’t that action only be taken in the most
dire of circumstances, lest a person be killed unjustly?

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Church and State

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I had an debate a few hours ago about the nature of the separation of church and state and the role of religion in politics. This First Things article sheds an interesting light on that dialogue.

Publick Religion: Adams v. Jefferson

“The civic catechisms of our day still celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s experiment in religious liberty. To end a millennium of repressive religious establishments, we are taught, Jefferson sought liberty in the twin formulas of privatizing religion and secularizing politics. Religion must be ‘a concern purely between our God and our consciences,’ he wrote. Politics must be conducted with ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’ ‘Publick Religion’ is a threat to private religion, and must thus be discouraged. ‘Political ministry’ is a menace to political integrity and must thus be outlawed.”

Dawn of Patriot Act

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'Twould seem the greatest court in the land got duped – and we're paying the price.

How the Death of Judy's Father Made America More Secretive
Sun Apr 18, 7:55 AM ET
By Barry Siegel Times Staff Writer

"In a box delivered by rolling handcart on the morning of Feb. 26, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court received 40 copies of a petition so unusual a clerk decided he couldn't accept it for filing. First, though, he turned through its pages."

"In a preliminary statement, he read these words: Three widows stood before this court in 1952. Their husbands had died in the crash of an Air Force plane. The lower courts had awarded them compensation. But the United States was bent on overturning their judgments, and — to accomplish this — it committed a fraud not only upon the widows but upon this Court."

A Daughter Discovers What Really Happened

"[…]To this day, U.S. vs. Reynolds represents the Supreme Court's only substantive examination of the state secrets privilege. Law professors consider Reynolds the judicial foundation of national security law."

Update 09/28/06: The most recent action taken in this case seems to be a petition to the US Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari made on December 21, 2005.

Big Brother Bush is Watching

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It's not happening all at once, but it's happening. Perhaps that's what makes it so insidious. It's sneaking up on us.

Slouching toward Big Brother
By Bruce Schneier

"Last week the Supreme Court let stand the Justice Department's right to secretly arrest noncitizen residents. Combined with the government's power to designate foreign prisoners of war as 'enemy combatants' in order to ignore international treaties regulating their incarceration, and their power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without charge or access to an attorney, the United States is looking more and more like a police state."