Current Events

Pro-Lifers Granted Human Rights Hearing

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal will hear a complaint of alleged religious discrimination filed by a student group at Capilano College against the students’ union executive committee, as reported in Today’s Family News. The Capilano College Heartbeat Club claims it was twice denied official “club” status because of its pro-life stance on abortion. The decision means it is denied the use of space on campus for holding meetings and events and the privilege of free photocopying. Robert Gunnarsson, the club’s lawyer, insists that his clients have no desire to use the complaint process to make a statement about abortion. “This complaint is only about not being discriminated against on the basis of their religion,” he told the North Shore News. Gunnarsson contends that because their pro-life views flow from their religious convictions, his clients “feel they have been denied a certain access to services on the basis of their religious belief. And that’s basically why they are doing this.”

“We note that the [student union] has defined itself as an official ‘prochoice organization,'” Heartbeat Club president Minerva Macapagal stated in her complaint. “This self-definition is in itself an ongoing state of affairs which leads to discrimination against pro-life clubs such as the one to which the complainants belong.”

Texas Seminaries Win Freedom from State Regulation

In an important ruling for religious freedom, the Supreme Court of Texas has ruled in favor of three theological seminaries in an eight year tug-of-war over state regulation, as stated in CitizenLink. The 8-0 ruling overturns two lower court opinions and a Texas law that gave the state power over seminaries and their training of pastors and religious leaders for the ministry. The state had fined Tyndale Theological Seminary $173,000 for issuing degrees and calling itself a seminary without state approval of its curriculum, professors, and board. The Texas law was designed to crack down on diploma mills that require little or no course work. The Supreme Court, however, said that the state’s interference “impermissibly intrudes upon religious freedom protected by the United States and Texas Constitutions.” Tyndale will get its $173,000 back, according to Liberty Legal Institute (LLI), which represented the case. “This decision is a huge victory for all seminaries, not only in Texas but nationwide,” said Kelly Shackelford, LLI chief counsel. “This ruling now gives freedom to many small seminaries that had been quashed by an attempted government takeover of religious teaching and training.” Only two other governments have taken seminary regulation that far, he said—Vietnam and China.

Judge Strikes Down Iowa Defense of Marriage Act

County Judge Robert Hanson decided recently that he will make the laws for Iowa, as reported in CitizenLink. He struck down the state’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional and ordered Polk County to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Roger J. Kuhle, an assistant county attorney, argued that the issue is not for a judge to decide. The county, home to state capital Des Moines, is expected to appeal the ruling to the Iowa Supreme Court. Dr. James C. Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family Action, called it another example of a judge legislating from the bench. “Once again, we see an activist judge handing liberal activists what they have not been able to achieve legislatively or at the ballot box—government sanctioning of same-sex marriage,” he said. “This purely political ruling proves yet again that nothing short of a federal marriage-protection amendment is sufficient to preserve one-man, one-woman marriage in our nation. “By striking down Iowa’s DOMA, Judge Robert Hanson has shown that he believes the desires of adults should trump what’s best for children. His ruling represents social engineering at its worst.”

Study: Videos Hurt Babies’ Speech Skills

Parents could be unwittingly impairing their babies’ future language development by letting them view age-appropriate videos and DVDs, according to the findings of a new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics. As Today’s Family News reported, American researchers analyzing data provided in a survey of 1,000 parents concluded that watching videos such as Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby could cause infants between eight and sixteen months of age more harm than good. Compared to babies who were not exposed to so-called “baby videos,” these children understood six to eight fewer words for every hour they spent viewing them. While the videos in question did not appear to harm the vocabularies of toddlers aged seventeen to twenty-four months, the study found they did not actually benefit them either. “Frankly, the take-home message for parents is that if they’re using these videos under the belief that they actually enhance their child’s cognitive development, they should think again,” co-author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrics researcher at the Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute, said.

The Walt Disney Company, Baby Einstein’s parent company, responded by demanding the immediate retraction of what it called the “deliberately misleading, irresponsible, and derogatory” news release that had accompanied the study. Disney claimed that it “ignored the study’s own explicit acknowledgment of its limitations and shortcomings.” “Baby Einstein products are designed as tools and a catalyst to promote interaction between parents and their young children,” said Baby Einstein Company general manager Susan McLain. But Christakis said that babies find the videos’ simple images and shapes and repetitious flashing images so transfixing that it becomes almost impossible for parents to interact with them at the same time.

Abortion is the #1 Killer in Black Community

Since 1973, more than 13 million black babies have been killed by abortion, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than twice the number of black deaths attributed to AIDS, violent crimes, accidents, cancer, and heart disease during that period.

“Planned Parenthood kills more black people in three days than the Klan has killed in its entire history of existence,” said Joseph Parker, pastor of Campbell Chapel AME Church in Pulaski, Tennessee, the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. “Yet many in the African-American community don’t even see Planned Parenthood as an enemy; (they) would see them as a friend. Right now the biggest killer of the African-American community is abortion.”

Dawn Vargo, associate bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said, “Pro-abortionists—with the help of anti-life organizations like Planned Parenthood—often succeed in making women think abortion is their only choice.” This choice, which isn’t a true choice at all, hurts both mother and child.

— R.V.S.

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