SIGNATURE CAMPAIGN BEGINS ON CALIF. ANTI-DIVORCE INITIATIVE: Religion Clause

blogs:

The California Secretary of State announced last week that the proponent of an initiative petition to amend California's Constitution to ban divorce in the state may begin to collect signatures. The proposed amendment would still allow annulments, but would completely eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California. Proponents will need to collect the signatures of 694,354 registered voters to qualify the initiative for the ballot.

According to Huffington Post last month, the proponent, John Marcotte, introduced the amendment to mock the proponents of Proposition 8 who focused on protecting traditional marriage as a reason to oppose same-sex marriage. Last month, Cockeyed.com published an interview with Marcotte. Here is one exchange that gives the flavor of his remarks....

more

Labels: California, culture, divorce, gay marriage, Proposition 8

posted by Eve at 12:37 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Warning for California Egg Donors: BioEdge

reports:

After lobbying from a wide range of groups, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law a bill requiring that advertisements offering cash to egg "donors" describe the health risks posed by the procedure. According to Biopolitical Times, this is the first law of its kind in the US.

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Labels: California, donor conception, women

posted by Imapp Staff at 2:54 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

SIMMERING SEX-ED BATTLE HEATS UP IN CA: Santa Rosa Press-Democrat

reports:

A battle over sex education is under way in Sonoma County, pitting a longtime abstinence-only group against California Department of Education officials who say the group breaks state law when it teaches in the classroom.

Among the players in the unfolding debate are the ACLU of Northern California, the California Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Free to Be, a Sonoma County group that has been promoting abstinence until marriage for 17 years. ...

“The law specifically requires that all elements of sex education be balanced and accurate,” said Phyllida Burlingame, sex education policy director for the ACLU of Northern California, which has worked for months to keep Free to Be from giving presentations in public schools.

“Students (need to) receive a consistent message that is based on science, that includes accurate, effective information,” she said.

Free to Be was established in 1992 in association with Catholic Charities as an abstinence-until-marriage outreach program relying heavily on teen presenters. Free to Be ended the affiliation with Catholic Charities approximately 18 months ago, said executive director and founder Sue Bisbee.

As far back as 2000, Free to Be has received annual federal funding for its abstinence program, which helps train teen speakers to spread the word about waiting until marriage before having sex, as well as living drug free and making what it describes as “healthy choices.”

In 2007, the group received approximately $540,000 in federal funding from the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to federal tax forms filled out by the nonprofit.

To receive that money, groups must abide by federal guidelines that include teaching “that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity . . . that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects . . . that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society.”

“Those guidelines are in direct conflict with California education code,” said Sharla Smith, HIV/STD prevention education consultant for the Department of Education.

“California never took the federal abstinence-only-until-marriage money and certain groups did and Free to Be is one of them. They can do that education — they can’t do that education in California’s public schools.”

Not so, said Bisbee.

“What the department of education seems to be saying is that anyone who goes in has to thoroughly cover all issues, but that is not what the ed code says,” she said. “Public Health or Planned Parenthood goes in and does the contraception piece, United Against Sexual Assault goes in and does the sexual violence piece. There are many options for them. . . . We are a piece of the pie that teens need to hear.”

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Labels: abstinence, California, contraception, culture, premarital sex, schools, sex education

posted by Eve at 4:19 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

SAN FRANCISCO'S BLAST AT VATICAN WAS LEGAL, COURT RULES: The San Francisco Chronicle

reports:

San Francisco didn't cross into constitutionally forbidden territory of government hostility to religion when the Board of Supervisors denounced a Vatican order to Catholic Charities not to place adoptive children with same-sex couples, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 2006 resolution condemned the Vatican's "hateful and discriminatory rhetoric" and urged local church officials to defy the order by Cardinal William Levada. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights sued, contending the city was expressing hostility toward Catholicism in violation of the Constitution.

A federal judge threw out the suit, a decision that the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld Wednesday. It said the supervisors had acted for a legal secular purpose - to protect gay and lesbian couples from discrimination - and not to express the city's disapproval of Catholicism.

"The board's focus was on same-sex couples, not Catholics," Judge Richard Paez said in the 3-0 ruling. Promoting equal treatment for those couples in adoptions isn't anti-religious, he said, "regardless of whether the Catholic Church may be opposed to it as a religious tenet."

Judge Marsha Berzon, in a separate opinion, said the resolution was close to the constitutional boundary and might have been invalid if it contained binding regulations or was part of a "pervasive public campaign" against the Catholic Church. ...

In response, Catholic Charities of San Francisco stopped placing children for adoption, the same step it has taken in Massachusetts and other areas with similar nondiscrimination policies, said Brian Rooney, a lawyer at the Thomas More Law Center, which sued San Francisco on behalf of the Catholic League.

more (the Catholic Key blog has posted the resolution here, so you can decide for yourself whether it expresses "disapproval of Catholicism")

Labels: adoption, California, Catholic Church, religion

posted by Eve at 7:54 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Behind the Scenes of Proposition 8: Sonja Eddings Brown

blogs (Brown was the Deputy Communications Director and spokesperson for the Proposition 8 Protect Marriage Campaign):

...In the past week, I was tasked to find a location in Los Angeles where Protect Marriage might be able to offer comment when the California Supreme Court handed down its decision on Proposition 8. This may surprise you, but the Protect Marriage campaign was not welcome anywhere in Los Angeles following last November 4th’s election. Perhaps this does not surprise you. Either out of fear, or fear of appearing supportive of our odd tradition of marriage, facilities like the Museum of Tolerance, The Bonaventure Hotel, City Hall, Marriott Hotels, Hilton Hotels, or any hotel would not welcome Protect Marriage for fear of retaliation or protests. We feared using these locations as well because of the great potential for sabatoge. Calling City Hall, for instance, was a dead end for a democratic cause like Protect Marriage. Not only did Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa support legalization of gay marriage, but also the entire Board of County of Supervisors and virtually
everyone in City and County government. How helpful do you believe City Hall would be in facilitating a Protect Marriage press conference? When the Office of City Permits was contacted to schedule an event, our calls were not returned, our requests ignored.

Fortunately, a principled owner of the elegant Santa Ann Doubletree Hotel felt differently, and that is why Los Angeles Protect Marriage press conferences, for safety reasons, and out of necessity, were held in Orange County. Security was necessary, police protection was required, but our work was completed.

Seven months later, the environment in Los Angeles this week remained the same. The Los Angeles Press Club, whose express mission is to host public press conferences, didn’t return our calls. Dialing hotels in the San Fernando Valley was equally fruitless. Two prominent hotels, which shall remain nameless, agreed to host us, and then later in the day delivered polite phone calls, declining. A hotel north of the San Fernando Valley actually had one member of its catering staff call and offer us any room of our choice, and another member of their catering staff call and state that unfortunately, nothing large enough was available to accommodate Protect
Marriage.

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Labels: California, culture, gay marriage, Proposition 8

posted by Imapp Staff at 12:24 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

CA Supreme Court Upholds Proposition 8: GayPatriotWest

blogs:

I believe the justices made the right decision this time. The decision was 6-1. Now, the issue is developing a strategy to repeal the state constitutional provision defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. And to do so in a manner which respects those who favor that definition. ...

Basically, this means the state will still recognize same-sex relationships, but will not call them marriages.

more (and more here)

Labels: California, gay marriage, Proposition 8

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:35 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

GEEK CULTURE NOTE #2

For those who thought the X-Men 3: The Last Stand ex-gay parallel was handled too subtly... I bring you "Proposition X," one of the recurring plots in the Uncanny X-Men comic. In this comic, the X-Men live in California, where anti-mutant forces have introduced a ballot proposition which would require all mutants to be sterilized.

Somehow, I suspect we will not be seeing the Marvel Universe's version of the Knights of Columbus in this storyline; nor its black churches. That might muddle the message.

Labels: California, culture, gay marriage

posted by Eve at 8:45 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT