Legal Issues

Two ordained ministers, Donald and Evelyn Knapp, who operate a for-profit wedding chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho were threatened with a misdemeanor charge for refusing to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. The Knapps responded by filing a lawsuit and a motion for a temporary restraining order against the city in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.

An atheist airman at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada recently wasn’t allowed to re-enlist because he refused to sign an oath containing the phrase “so help me God.”

Initially, Air Force personnel reported that enlistees used to be allowed to opt out of the oath’s appeal to deity, but the provision had been withdrawn on Oct. 30, 2013. The Air Force claimed that only Congress could reinstate it.

However, when the American Humanist Association and the media became involved, the Air Force sought legal counsel and reverted to the former practice. But that didn’t please some Christians.

A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals last week unanimously struck down state bans on same-sex marriage in Indiana and Wisconsin. In a 40-page opinion (http://www.scribd.com/doc/238675754/14-2386-212#download), Judge Richard Posner blasted the two states for arguing that the reason why gay marriages were prohibited while heterosexual marriages were encouraged was that heterosexuals needed marriage to make couples take responsibility for their unplanned children. The states had argued that since homosexual couples could not accidentally conceive children, the state had no interest in them being married.

On September 10, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral argument in Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) v. Lew. The judges focused on whether FFRF had standing to bring the case.

Is a second Hobby Lobby case in the works? Meggan Sommerville is a sixteen-year Hobby Lobby employee in Aurora, Illinois who has been denied access to the store’s restroom because she is transgendered. Sommerville underwent legal gender transition in 2010 but has not yet had gender-reassignment surgery.

By Jason Hines – Today the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that Hobby Lobby and other closely held corporations can refuse to cover certain forms of contraception in the insurance plans they provide to employees because of their “religious beliefs.” Now I put religious beliefs in quotes because despite the Court’s decision, I refuse to admit that corporations, created in order to separate themselves from the people who create them, can have religious beliefs.

Most business owners set up corporations as legal alter-egos to avoid being held personally responsible if their businesses get sued, but in this case, the employers (in Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood, and Mardel) are saying that their corporations can still manifest the owners’ religious beliefs even if it comes at the potential expense of their employees. The Supreme Court agrees.

On June 16, 2014 the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in the much-anticipated case, Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. Justice Thomas delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court finding in favor of the Pro-Life group, Susan B. Anthony List (SBA). The court ruled that SBA and co-petitioner COAST (Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes) have standing to challenge an Ohio election statute under which they had been threatened with prosecution for holding members of Congress responsible for their voting record.

Agape love is the central premise of Protestant Christian theology. According to The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics, “Luther’s rediscovery of the primacy of agape was the linchpin of the Reformation and the rediscovery of genuine Christian ethics.” (See G. Meilaender and W. Werpehowski, The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics, 2007, p. 456.)

Many confuse the concept of agape love with the concept of caritas, or charity, but these are two separate ideas. The concept of agape love is the love of God reaching down to save humanity through grace, while caritas is about humans reaching upward toward God through works.

By Michael Peabody – Last November, a federal judge stuck a stick in a beehive when she found that a long-standing tax-exemption for clergy housing was unconstitutional. The case, Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) vs. Lew, is currently on appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and religious organizations are out in force defending the exemption.