Religious Groups Object to Covering Birth Control (Fox News)
EXCERPT: They defied the bishops to support President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Now Catholic hospitals are dismayed the law may force them to cover birth control free of charge to their employees.
A provision in the law expanded preventive health-care benefits for women, and the administration said last week that must include birth control with no copays. The Catholic Health Association says a proposed conscience exemption is so narrowly written it would apply only to houses of worship. Some other religious-based organizations agree.
Circumcision Ban: Violating Religious Freedom? (Odyssey Networks)
A coalition including Jewish and Muslim groups have launched a lawsuit challenging a proposed ban on circumcision that is due to go before San Francisco voters in the Fall. The coalition asserts that a ban on circumcision, a ritual practice in both religious traditions, represents a violation of the right to religious expression, and that, legally, the city is not authorized to bar a medical practice. Proponents of the ban assert that women are protected from forced genital mutilation, and men are no less deserving of that protection. The proposal would ban all circumcisions on males under the age of 18; there is no religious exemption.
It doesn’t look like this will become law, but the arguments on both sides are interesting.
State and Federal Legislators Introduce Bill to Outlaw Local Criminalization of Circumcision
ReligiousLiberty.TV Bill Tracker – In November, San Francisco voters will decide whether to criminalize male circumcision within city limits. Doctors or others who perform the procedure could face misdemeanor charges and up to a $1,000 fine and/or 1 year of incarceration. (Note: A proposal of a similar measure in Santa Monica was dropped last week.)
While informal polls projecting that the ballot measure will lose by a large margin (see SF Gate – May 28, 2011), the response to the bill has attracted national attention. In a lawsuit filed by the Jewish Community Relations Council and Muslim individuals against the San Francisco Department of Elections and the bill’s primary promoter Lloyd Schofield, attorneys argue that current state law already prohibits local jurisdictions from preventing the practices of ”healing arts professionals,” which they say includes Jewish mohels.
California Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) and Assembly member Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) have introduced a bill that would directly ban local bans on circumcision. In a press conference held in Los Angeles yesterday, July 21, 2011, Ma and Gatto said that the bill would render the San Francisco ballot measure moot.
The first hearing on the bill (AB 768) is scheduled for August 15 when the Legislature reconvenes.
Congresman Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) has introduced a similar bill, “The Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act of 2011,” (H.R. 2400) on a Federal Level.
Click here to read the latest versions of California AB 768 and learn the current status.
The following is the latest information on the Federal bill:
Proposal to Ban Circumcision Draws Strong Criticism (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty)
EXCERPT: At Religion Clause, Howard Friedman notes that Santa Monica could become the second California city to place on the 2012 ballot a ban on circumcision. A similar measure will be up for public referendum in San Francisco, prompting fierce opposition by many religious liberty advocates and others. Here’s a sample:
The SF Chronicle’s editorial board urges voters to turn away this “wacky measure,” so they don’t have to depend on courts to throw it out.
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby calls the effort “madness.”
The Jewish Week finds the proposal to be “a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”
San Francisco Mulls Circumcision Ban (CBS News)
EXCERPT: Has the time come to cut out circumcision? Pro-foreskin forces say so, and some in San Francisco say they’ve collected enough signatures to put a proposal to ban circumcision before voters. The proposal would make it a misdemeanor to perform circumcision on a male under the age of 18 within the city. Anyone who ignored the ban would face a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.
Circumcision should be outlawed because “it’s excruciatingly painful and permanently damaging surgery that’s forced on men when they’re at their weakest and most vulnerable,” a leading proponent of the ban, 59-year-old Lloyd Schofeld, told Reuters.
Since circumcision is a ritual practice for Jews and Muslims, some legal experts say such a ban might prove an unconstitutional infringement of religious freedom, Time reported. But others say religions don’t get a “free pass.”
Federal judge dismisses religious challenge to Obama health plan
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=23917
The Health-Religion Connection by Joshua Crouch
The struggle between faith-healing and public health services may not be a mainstream topic, yet it continues to rage throughout our nation. Oregon has recently had a string of adolescent deaths tied to extreme Christian conservatism. The Christian Science Church has pushed law makers to allow parents to exempt their children from all medical treatment, replacing science with the prayers of the fervent. This has led to a moral and philosophical debate within not only Oregonian law, but also throughout our nation; what place does religion hold within our healthcare? It is a debate that is hardly new. Health and religion have historically been synonymous topics. Early Mediterranean and Mesopotamian societies worshiped gods such as Baal, Demeter, Isis, and Dionysius, who were all associated with fertility and health in some aspect. It was impossible to escape this symbiotic relationship between religion and vitality among many early civilizations and healthcare’s origins may have been found within religious faith.
Countless modern lifestyle choices, as well as health practices, are rooted in religious beliefs. Jews don’t eat pork because the Torah strictly forbids it (Leviticus 11:7), Muslims avoid alcohol because of the words of Muhammad found within the Qur’an (Surah 5:90), and according to the Bible, Christians are supposed to shun premarital sex (1st Corinthians 7:2). Contemporary epidemiologists and public health professionals are beginning to realize this connection between health and faith. The Journal of Religion and Health is a quarterly journal that is solely dedicated to research within this topic. Numerous studies and have been focused on this simple question: does religion affect health?
Increasing evidence is showing that physical, mental and emotional well being are attached to religion. Drs. Christopher G. Ellison and Linda K. George co-wrote a paper entitled, “Religious Involvement, Social Ties, and Social Support in a Southeastern Community.” This study used scientific reasoning to identify empirical evidence regarding customary churchgoers compared with those that don’t attend religious ceremonies regularly. Regular attendees of church reported, “…larger social networks, more contact with network members, more types of social support received, and more favorable perceptions of the quality of their social relationships than did their unchurched counterparts.” Another similar study considered the effects of religion on, “health practices, social support, [and] psychosocial resources such as self-esteem and self-efficacy, and belief structures such as sense of coherence.” The difficulty in isolating confounding statistics and creating a solid scientific experiment to measure the effects of religion on faith is obviously complicated at best. Therefore, continued study is important to help find empirical evidence of a shared relationship between spirituality and physical well-being.
Although it is difficult to pin-point pragmatic data regarding the effects of religion on health, the consensus of many professionals is that a relationship does exist. One study sums up this connection perfectly, “An important empirical question to pursue is whether positive emotions are among the active ingredients that account for the benefits that religious practices have for physical and mental health.” The evidence is so palpable that medical schools around the country have begun requiring students to take courses in spirituality and health. Physicians have until recently separated the scientific world of medicine from the subjective realm of faith, yet more and more doctors are asking patients about their spiritual lives. Pioneering this frontier is the Seventh-day Adventist medical center located in Loma Linda, California. Doctors at this institution regularly ask patients if they would like to pray before surgeries and are very open about melding spiritual communication with medical aid. Seventh-day Adventists, a protestant denomination very mindful of dietary practices, abstain from pork, alcohol, smoking, and focus on healthy lifestyles as part of their Christian journey.
While the full effects of religion on health may not be understood, it is becoming increasingly evident that your sacred community can aid in much more than just an existential spiritual journey. Extremism on either side continues to be dangerous though, whether it’s scientists denying someone’s faith or zealots ignoring logic. Therefore, perhaps we should follow the advice of Siddhartha and continue down the Middle Path.
After living in France and traveling in South America, Europe, and the Middle East, Joshua Crouch graduated from La Sierra University with a B.A. in history and is now a graduate student at Loma Linda University’s School of Public Health in Loma Linda, California.
Pope says European sex education an ‘attack’ on religious freedom (AFP)
EXCERPT: Sex and civic education in schools in Europe is an “attack” on religious freedom, Pope Benedict XVI said on Monday, following a Vatican row with Spain over a new course promoting liberal values.
“I cannot remain silent about another attack on the religious freedom of families in certain European countries which mandate obligatory participation in courses of sexual or civic education,” the pope said.
In his traditional New Year’s address to ambassadors to the Vatican, the pope said such courses “convey a neutral concept of the person and of life, yet in fact reflect an anthropology opposed to faith and to right reason”.
Benedict said this was an example of the “threats” against “the cultural roots which nourish the profound identity and social cohesion of many nations”.
The case against legalizing marijuana in California (Philadelphia Inquirer)
EXCERPT:
Prop 19 pushers argue that by taxing and regulating marijuana, the state will reap a tax windfall. But the act would let every landowner grow enough marijuana to produce 24,000 to 240,000 joints a year for “personal consumption.” Who would pay the $50-per-ounce tax on marijuana (a 100 percent tax) when he could grow it himself or buy some (illegally) from a neighbor.
Regular tobacco does not carry its economic weight. In 2007, the government collected $25 billion in tobacco taxes but spent more than $200 billion per year to cover health and other tobacco-related costs. It is the same with alcohol: In 2007, governments collected $14 billion in alcohol taxes but spent $185 billion to cover health, crime, and other alcohol-related costs. The economics of legalized marijuana will be no different, and perhaps worse.
Then there are the practical problems of Prop 19. Homeowners growing pot in their backyards will become targets for pot thieves and attendant crime, just as areas immediately around medical-marijuana dispensaries have already experienced an uptick in crime. And there remains the very real fact that possession, cultivation, and consumption of marijuana are still crimes under federal law – an inconvenient truth the act simply ignores. What are federal law enforcement officers to do?
Legalizing marijuana would serve little purpose other than to worsen the state’s drug problems – addiction, violence, disorder, and death. Nor will such legalization produce a tax windfall for the state; rather, it will end up costing Californians billions in increased social costs.
Read more at: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/20101003_The_case_against_legalizing_marijuana_in_California.html
Conference Held to Relaunch Protection of Work-Free Sunday at European Level (ARLP)
A conference whose aim was to relaunch the protection of a work-free Sunday debate at European level (see www.comece.org) was held on Wednesday the March 24, 2010 in Brussells.
ARLP has posted a story on their website along with a video of the keynote address.
Here are some of the reasons for the conference:
Purpose of Conference
The promotion of the first European Free Sunday Alliance by way of a five pronged appeal:
i. The establishment of a common weekly rest day for the improvement of social cohesion through the following: protection of workers’ health, the reconciliation of work and family and the preservation of the life of civil society.
ii. To call upon the Heads of State and Government of the 27 EU Member States, to firmly ‘resist the growing economic pressure to liberalise the laws providing for a work-free Sunday and to commit themselves to safeguard and promote a work-free Sunday as a pillar of the European Social Model within the laws of their respective nations.’
iii. To the European Commission to reinforce the European Social Model by harmonising EU legislation and internal market rules to ‘guarantee the central place of a work-free Sunday in the life of workers and of society and to guarantee that no new pressure is placed on the principle of a work-free Sunday’.
iv. To the Members of the ‘European Parliament to ensure that all relevant EU legislation both respects and promotes the protection of Sunday as a weekly day of rest for all EU citizens’.
v. To all ‘European citizens to sign a future Citizens’ Initiative to be expressed in favour of the protection of a work-free Sunday’.
From Protection of a Work-free Sunday: Call for a Work-Free Sunday booklet, pp. 1-2
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