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Election 2010: Conservative Fervor Gathering Steam Heading into November
By and large, results from Tuesday’s primaries in Alaska, Arizona and Florida have pundits and activists scratching their heads, the “establishment” leaders and incumbents in both political parties quivering in their boots – and Americans energized after flexing their collective “voting” muscle. New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin summed it up well: “(T)he conviction that [...]
SPECIAL REPORT: Mixed Findings on Homosexuality Still Produces Politically Leaning Outcome
The American Psychological Association (APA) sets the course for counseling and therapy programs in the United States. This powerful group recently assembled a Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation to examine the impact of therapy that addresses sexual orientation — an action that caused great concern among therapists who work with clients [...]
Federal Court Rules in Favor of World Vision, Religious Freedoms
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 on Monday that World Vision, a faith-based relief organization, was free to hire and terminate based on a statement of faith. The case has been closely watched by religious organizations and nonprofits who receive federal funding. At issue: Three employees of World Vision were found to [...]
Deadline for Title V State Funding, Aug. 30, 2010
According to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 70 percent of parents said it is “against [their] values for [their] adolescents to have sexual intercourse before marriage” and that “having sexual intercourse is something only married people should do.” Adolescents had similar responses. Title V block grants are [...]
Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Obama Stem Cell Funding
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth temporarily dealt the Obama administration’s embryonic stem-cell funding policy a decisive setback today. The Department of Justice said today that it will appeal the ruling. In his 15-page opinion, Lamberth wrote that the federal government guidelines have a strong chance of violating the Dickey-Wicker amendment –a 1996 law that [...]
Despite What You May Have Heard, ‘Morals Legislation’ is Alive and Well
Justices and judges of all different courts are fond of making sweeping generalizations in their written opinions that sound so pithy and “final” that they make for good quotes for TV commentators and newspaper summaries. In the hands of agenda-driven lawyers and other judges, however, these sweeping generalizations end up in new lawsuits trying to [...]
HHS Yields to Public Pressure, Releases Abstinence Study
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reluctantly bowed to public pressure on Monday and released a pivotal abstinence study with results that fly in the face of the Obama administration’s policy of “zeroing out” all abstinence-education funding. CitizenLink and pro-family organizations alerted people Wednesday that the administration had refused to release the study. [...]
Candidate makes news with promise to uphold the law
California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is making news because she said that, if elected governor, she will uphold the law. This is a headline in California. I wonder if it’s also shocking that she will uphold the law even if it means that she will not have the support of major Hollywood stars. Shocking. Weirdly, upholding the [...]
Citizen Action Prompts HHS to Release Abstinence Survey
Thanks to a flurry of citizen action, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was prompted to release the National Survey of Adolescents and Their Parents: Attitudes and Opinions about Sex and Abstinence – Final Report to the public late yesterday (8-23-2010). HHS had previously withheld the survey data, even after a doctor and researcher submitted [...]