Religious Right Watch

Proposed Kansas Law Would Allow Doctors to Withhold Information from Women to Prevent Abortion | Right Wing Watch

The main argument that anti-abortion activists and legislators tend to give in justifying the increasingly strict requirements like ultrasounds and face-to-face visits with a doctor and waiting periods is that women should be given access to as much information as possible to allow them to make informed decisions. 

But that does not appear to be a motivation behind legislation in Kansas, which would protect doctors who refuse to provide women with information that, were they informed, might lead them to choose an abortion

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Religious Right Reacts To Komen's Latest Statement with Confusion, Anger and Warnings of God's Wrath | Right Wing Watch

Mona Charen of the National Review Online lamented that “it’s extremely disappointing that Komen has caved” but “it’s hardly surprising given the onslaught they’ve endured over the course of the last few days,” and NRO’s Daniel Foster charged Planned Parenthood with “gangsterism.” Of course, just days prior Kathryn Jean Lopez on NRO hailed Komen’s initial decision as a major victory, noting “this Komen-Planned Parenthood relationship has long been a target of pro-life activists.”

Catholic Family and Human Rights Initiative (C-Fam) president Austin Ruse told LifeSiteNews called potentially successful effort to have the Komen foundation reverse their decision defunding Planned Parenthood a “mafia shakedown”

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Religious Right Now Demands More from Komen After Getting Komen to Defund Breast Exams at Planned Parenthood

 

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, following a long campaign from anti-choice group, decided to end its partnership with Planned Parenthood, which received grants to provide breast exams along with mammogram referrals. Planned Parenthood provides an estimated 750,000 breast exams a year and 16% of their services are related to cancer prevention and screening, compared to just 3% for abortion services.

But anti-choice activists wanted Komen to sever ties with Planned Parenthood even if that meant denying women access to healthcare, and won a preliminary victory when they convinced LifeWay, the bookstore of the Southern Baptist Convention, to stop selling Komen’s “Pink Bibles” over their Planned Parenthood ties.

The Religious Right also scored a victory when Komen appointed former Georgia Secretary of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel, who as a candidate pledged to “eliminate” Planned Parenthood funding, Senior Vice President for Public Policy.

The foundation’s less than believable reason for cutting of funding for breast exams at Planned Parenthood was the politically-charged investigation launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) into the women’s health group, which is greatly based on the smear campaign by Lila Rose, who recently told WORLD magazine that lying is appropriate as long as it’s for a worthy cause.

Now, anti-choice activists are demanding that Congress, like Komen, defund Planned Parenthood, and even calling on Komen to continue to bend to their demands by dropping its support for stem cell research.

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Santorum Tells A Mother Her Gay Son Is Engaging In Unhealthy Activity That Government Should Not 'Promote' | ThinkProgress

Rick Santorum railed against the LGBT community at a campaign stop at Community Christian Academy in Stuart, Florida on Tuesday, telling a woman that her gay son engages in unhealthy activity that the government should not “promote“:

via thinkprogress.org

Crazy For Creationism: Legislators In Ind. And N.H. Seek To Undermine Instruction About Evolution

Rob Boston at Talk To Action:

It looks like opponents of creationism are going to have their hands full in 2012. The new year is just a few days old, and already we've seen several anti-evolution bills popping up in the states.

In Indiana, state Sen. Dennis Kruse has introduced S.B. 89, a bill that would allow public schools in the state to "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation."

Kruse has been on this crusade for a number of years and has introduced versions of this bill before. They always died. But Republicans now control the state Senate, and Kruse is chairman of the Senate Education Committee. From this powerful perch, he can agitate for this misguided legislation.

There remains one huge problem with the bill: It is patently unconstitutional. As Genie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette,  Kruse's bill would run afoul of Edwards v. Aguillard, a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Louisiana law requiring "balanced treatment" between creation science and evolution.

"The law is very, very clear on this," Scott said. "If this bill is passed, it is going to be challenged, and they will lose. The case law is so strong against them."

Meanwhile, some New Hampshire legislators have introduced a pair of truly kooky bills. State Rep. Jerry Bergevin's bill, H.B. 1148, would order the state board of education to "[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism."

via www.talk2action.org

Yellow Cat Offers Rebuttal to Creationist Rabbi | Philly

It’s not only rational to propose that the origin of life happened through natural processes, it’s irrational to think otherwise. Why? In solving other problems, science has always found natural solutions and never supernatural ones. So believing in a natural process behind the origin of life is as rational as believing the Earth will journey around the sun again in 2012.  

Furthermore, science gives us some good reasons to think life could emerge through natural processes. First of all, there are no components of living things that are not found in the earth’s crust or atmosphere. Secondly, the laws of chemistry allow simpler molecules to assemble themselves into quite complex structures.

via www.philly.com

Hat-tip to the NCSE on Facebook. Like 'em at: https://www.facebook.com/evolution.ncse

Few suspected the Higgs would be so cuddly.

Rick Santorum: "the dangers of contraception in this country"

"One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea ... Many in the Christian faith have said, 'Well, that's okay ... contraception's okay.'

"It's not okay because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They're supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal...but also procreative. That's the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that's not for purposes of procreation, that's not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can't you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure. And that's certainly a part of it—and it's an important part of it, don't get me wrong—but there's a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

"Again, I know most presidents don't talk about those things, and maybe people don't want us to talk about those things, but I think it's important that you are who you are. I'm not running for preacher. I'm not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues."

- Richard John "Rick" Santorum (b. May 10, 1958), sometime U.S. Senator representing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Senior Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and a contributor to Fox News Channel.

Hat-tip: MMA via dKos

Avila Resigns Over Anti-Gay Column | Right Wing Watch

Major kudos to Right Wing Watch for their continued good work exemplified by their spotting in a Roman Catholic publication the indefensible demonization of an entire swath of humanity.

As first reported by Right Wing Watch, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ point person on marriage issues Daniel Avila claimed in a Catholic newspaper, The Pilot, that Satan was responsible for making people gay by “disturb[ing] otherwise typical biological development.” Following our story and criticism from his fellow Catholics, Avila’s column was retracted and both Avila and the newspaper’s editors apologized. The column can still be found here at the Religion News Service.

The Associated Press is now reporting that Avila is resigning his post.

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Avila apparently said good riddance after his rubbish was deemed bad enough by his handlers. It might be pointed out that what Avila did is not only unethical and immoral, but theologically juvenile at best, heretical at worst, even from the standpoint of Roman Catholic doctrine which is anti-modern and anti-science enough as it is already (except when it comes to some matters of physics and astronomy, because it would seem that The Vatican has a big telescope and now feels sort of kind of bad about having excommunicated Galileo, or maybe sort of kind of doesn't:

Atila Sinke Guimarães, a conservative Catholic writer, dismisses the church's mistreatment of Galileo as a "black legend." The scientist, he says, got what he deserved. "The Inquisition was very moderate with him. He wasn't tortured.")

(Image: Galileo Galilei Before the Holy Office (1847), by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, depicting an imagining of events in 1633. Click to enlarge...a bit.)

NAR and Dominionism Have Been a Concern of Conservative Christian Groups for Many Years

As [Rachel Tabachnick has] stated in a previous article [on Talk2Action], C. Peter Wagner[, President of the Global Harvest Ministries and Chancellor of the Wagner Leadership Institute,] has attacked the secular press for negative coverage of the [New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)], but many of his recent responses were clearly replies to the critiques of other conservative Christians. Following are some of these critiques.

via www.talk2action.org

Personhood Ohio Claims Bible Dictates Criminal Penalties for Abortion | Religion Dispatches

Personhood Ohio has submitted the necessary signatures to begin an official citizen-led initiative for a fetal personhood amendment. This amendment will define the words "person" and "men" to "apply to every human being at every stage of the biological development of that human being or human organism, including fertilization." A fertilized egg would become, legally, a human person.

At the press conference announcing the success of their signature drive, one of the presenters is scheduled to be Jason Storms, of Missionaries to the Preborn—an organization which features, on its website, a video comparing an abortion provider to a sniper who is running around killing children at an elementary school; which describes abortion clinics as "death camps" and a clinic employee as "one of the crazy women;" and which adopts militaristic language like "regiment" and "brigade" for its local groups. On the Personhood Ohio website, meanwhile, there are implications that God’s curse resides upon Ohio as long as abortions happen there, and that "sooner or later, judgment will fall on a land that sheds innocent blood."

via www.religiondispatches.org