Stand to Reason Blog

Veterans Day

The eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Today we honor our veterans who are worthy of our deep gratitude and to whom we owe a debt beyond repayment.  Our way of life is due to their service to us.  Here is the history of Veterans Day.  And I'm very proud that my father (WW2) and my brother (career Navy) are veterans.

Thanks you to our veterans for your service, your sacrifice, your commitment.

Stopping Federal Funds for Destructive Stem Cell Research

A lawsuit has been filed to stop Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research citing the Dickey-Wicker Amendment.  That amendment, passed in 1995 and renewed each year since, bars tax dollars from funding the creation of embryos for research and research that involves the destruction of embryos.

Advocates International, co-counsel for the plaintiffs, explained the lawsuit:

A lawsuit filed today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to enjoin and overturn the controversial guidelines for public funding of embryonic stem cell research that the National Institutes of Health issued on July 7, 2009. The implementation of these guidelines marks the first time that taxpayer dollars will be used to fund research that will result in the destruction of human embryos. Since 1994, Congress has expressly banned NIH from funding research in which human embryos “are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.”
 
According to Thomas G. Hungar, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, “the language of the statute is clear. It bans public funding for any research that leads to the destruction of human embryos. NIH’s attempt to avoid Congress’s command by funding everything but the act of ‘harvesting’ is pure sophistry. The guidelines will result in the destruction of human embryos and are unlawful, unethical, and unnecessary.”
 
The plaintiffs contend that the NIH guidelines violate the congressional ban because they “necessarily condition funding on the destruction of human embryos.” In addition, the plaintiffs also allege that the NIH guidelines were invalidly implemented, because the decision to fund human embryonic stem cell research was made without the proper procedures required by law and without properly considering the more effective and less ethically problematic forms of adult and induced pluripotent stem cell research.

Anti-Christian Violence

Pakistan:

Hundreds of residents of the Christian enclave of Gojra are standing in a defiant vigil around seven chipboard coffins on the train tracks running through town. Until the Government finds those responsible, they say, they will not remove the bodies.

A spasm of religious violence came to this rural town on Saturday morning when a mob of Muslims marched to avenge what they believed was the desecration of a Koran. When it was over, dozens of houses had been torched and the Faith Bible Pentecostal Church lay in ruins. Two villagers were shot dead. Five others, including two children, were burned alive.

Discussing Same-sex Marriage (Audio)

How do you make a reasonable argument against same-sex marriage rights?  Greg answered that on a recent radio show.

North Korea Executes Christians

The BBC reports:

Human rights groups in South Korea say North Korea has stepped up executions of Christians, some of them in public.

The communist country, the world's most closed society, views religion as a major threat....

A report by a number of South Korean groups highlights one particular case of a woman allegedly executed in public last month, in a northern town close to the Chinese border.
She was accused of distributing Bibles, spying for South Korea and the United States and helping to organise dissidents.

Her parents, husband, and children were sent to a prison camp.

…[J]ust owning a Bible in North Korea may be a cause for torture and disappearance.

(HT:  John Mark Reynolds on Facebook)

Hate Crime Legislation

Christianity Today reports on the hate crime legislation pending before Congress.  While there is a debate over the implications of this bill for religious free speech, hate crime legislation is in principle antithetical to the great tradition of freedom of speech in our country. 

Andrew Sullivan makes the cogent point about hate crime legislation:

The real reason for hate crime laws is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that - and Matthew Shepard's murderers were successfully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in a state with no hate crimes law at the time. The real reason for the invention of hate crimes was a hard-left critique of conventional liberal justice and the emergence of special interest groups which need boutique legislation to raise funds for their large staffs and luxurious buildings.

He also quotes another writer pointing out that hate crimes punish motivation, not intent.  Motivation has never been part of the crime, though it sometimes helps prove the crime.  (Note that a motive never has to be proved to make the case for a crime because it's not part of the crime.)  Intent is part of the crime.  So hate crimes add a new element to the crime increasing the punishment.  "Exactly," Sullivan points out.  One of the reasons motivation has never been a part of the crime and punished is because our beliefs and affections are not accessible to the government, who prosecutes the crimes, and probing them as part of the crime is extremely intrusive into individual beliefs.  Government doesn't tell us what to believe or punish us for what we believe because that has always been considered a dangerous slippery slope of government intrusion.  Hate crime legislation introduces a new and unique precedent for government intervention into a sphere American law has always considered off limits.

Hate is wrong, it's immoral - against anyone for any reason.  But our legal system has wisely recognized until now that not all morality should be legislated.  And the affections of citizens, good or evil, is the purview of morality not law.

Greg explains it this way:

Hate crime legislation, then, turns out to be not really about hate, but politics. It's not hatred for the victim that is punished. That's covered under existing statutes. Rather, it's hatred for a protected class--African-Americans, Jews, homosexuals, etc.--that's punished under hate crime laws.

Such legislation makes two crimes out of one. The assault is a crime against the victim. The hate is a crime against the victim's group. Yet how does one make sense of a crime against a group that is a different crime from the one against the victim? Groups have no rights according to the Constitution.

Sci Fi & Stem Cells

Dr. Oz visits a research lab where they are already creating new organs that will soon be able to be used for human transplant - from adult stem cells.  Now, if we are to have our public policy guided by science rather than ideology, it seems this is where our policy should be focused.

Church and State

The Equity Law in the U.K.:

According to the Daily Telegraph, starting next year, the British government is going to begin forcing churches and other religious institutions to hire open, practicing homosexuals. It will happen under the provisions of the so-called Equity Bill, which forbids discrimination against homosexuals or transsexuals.

The law would “cover almost all church employees,” according to Deputy Equities Minster Maria Eagle. “The circumstances in which religious institutions can practice anything less than full equality are few and far between,” Eagle said. Church groups, she said, “cannot claim that everything they run is outside the scope of anti-discrimination law.”

Chuck Colson reminds us to pray for the church in Britain and, as God directs us, to pray for our governments.

Students Defy ACLU for Religious Freedom

The ACLU regularly uses the power of the courts to violate people's freedom of religious expression with an unconstitutional standard.  The U.S. Constitution, of course, states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."  Ironically, this is interpreted by the courts these days to do exactly the opposite of what it explicitly states - "prohibit the free exercise" of religion.  Prayers at school events do not establish a religion, which in the historical context of our Founders was a state religion, not public religious expressions at government-sponsored institutions.

A Florida school district and two school officials needs our prayers for protection because they exercised their First Amendment rights.

The Christian Examiner reports on the ACLU's latest violation of First Amendment rights:

On June 4th, the entire Senior Graduating class of Santa Rosa County Florida defied the wishes of the ACLU by praying during their 2009 Graduation Ceremonies. For nearly the entire 08-09 school year the Board of Education had been taken to task for Principal Frank Lay and teacher Michelle Winkler each allowing and even leading prayer during school activities and ceremonies. The school pointed out that at no point in time were any students forced to comply with prayer time but it was offered for those who chose to participate; and for most of Pace High School, that didn’t seem to be a problem.

In a bold move the entire 2009 Graduating class decided to take it upon themselves and stand up for their right to free speech by reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the midst of their commencement ceremonies. Some students even emblazoned crosses on their graduating caps in protest of their constitutional religious freedoms being taken away.

Earlier in the school year a lawsuit was filed against the Santa Rosa County School District by the ACLU, claiming some of the teachers and administration endorsed religion....

Ironically, ACLU attorney Benjamin Stevenson told a local Florida ABC Channel after the event: "Our feeling is that it's regrettable that the students took over the ceremony to impose their religious views on the audience who may not have shared the same religious views. School officials have a responsibility to protect the silently held religious views of others."
 
It’s interesting that the ACLU would insist that other’s religious views be protected yet the majority was apparently supposed to shut up, sit down and ignore their own religious convictions. I do believe the students themselves did just what Stevenson was suggesting school officials do…they were protecting their own religious views.

Principal Frank Lay refused to prevent students from the demonstration at their graduation ceremony.  The Pensacola News Journal reported:

It may cost him his job, but Pace High School Principal Frank Lay says he won't sit back and watch student leaders be denied a chance to speak at their own graduation — despite worries they may violate a federal consent decree.

"No way are we going to back down, back off, lay down or roll over," he said to the applause of more than 700 people who attended a Students' Rights Rally at Pace Assembly of God on Tuesday night.

A federal judge issued an order in January prohibiting district employees from promoting or endorsing prayers at school functions and organizing school-sponsored religious services.

The order came in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit on behalf of two unnamed Pace High School students.

Lay and Winkler are being sued, and they're hearing in Federal Court was recently rescheduled for July 29.  The ACLU is considering further legal action because school officials did not stop the students' recitation of the Lord's Prayer at the graduation ceremony.  Please pray for these individuals.

More Late-term Abortions

In addition to the murder of Dr. George Tiller being immoral in its own right, it, of course, did nothing to stop abortions either.  Others are already stepping into his place.  The only effective way to stop abortions is to change hearts and the law.