'Big Mountain Jesus' gets OK from 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

This is one of those First Amendment cases that I just don't get the ruling handed down by the Court.  Seriously, how hard can it be.  There is a religious statue on publicly funded land, it needs to go.  As FFRF notes,

FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor called it "phony" and a "sham" to pretend that a "giant Jesus" is secular, thereby ignoring the Knights of Columbus' stated purpose. The Catholic men's club has "leased" at no cost the prominent parcel of land on the federal ski slope to display its Catholic shrine. "That means federal taxpayers are subsidizing religious speech, in this case Catholic," Gaylor said. She added that devout religionists should be offended at a decision that purports that a sacred image of a god is not religious.

But yet,,, 

“Big Mountain Jesus” is staying put.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled that a 12-foot statue of Jesus at Whitefish Mountain Resort “did not sprout from the minds of (government) officials and was not funded from (the government’s) coffers.”

The Ninth Circuit upheld a 2013 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen, who dismissed a lawsuit by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation objecting to the statue.

“Big Mountain Jesus” is located on public land that the U.S. Forest Service leases to a private organization.

“Thank goodness for common sense,” said Eric Baxter, senior counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who argued on behalf of the statue that has stood on a mountain at the ski resort for 61 years. “Today’s decision rejects the idea that history and the First Amendment ought to be enemies.”

As Simon Brown, writing for American's United states, "This is hardly a win for religion. The Knights of Columbus may have gotten what they wanted, but this is a hollow victory if ever there were one."

Essentially, the court justified its bad decision on the basis that an overtly religious statue is not really religious because a lot of people make fun of it. Seriously? That’s all they could come up with?

This is an embarrassment. Regardless of who paid for the statue, it’s clearly a religious symbol on federal land. Since that land is not an open forum, its placement gives the impression that the federal government endorses Christianity over all other viewpoints. Until others may place their own symbols next to Big Mountain Jesus, this will be a constitutional violation.  

And worst of all, the court makes the curious argument that the statue has somehow become secularized because people often poke fun at it. How is this a good thing for religion? If anything, the flap over Big Mountain Jesus only shows the depths to which some people will descend to keep a sectarian symbol on public land. They’ll go so far as to deny that it’s religious and sign off on people making fun of it – anything to keep it there.

'Big Mountain Jesus' gets OK from 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

Conservatives Seize On Hugely Flawed Study About Same-Sex Parents | ThinkProgress

Although dating to Febraury, Sullins research is important to note as he has in the past defended the Regnerus study, which is in the news again.  What it boils down to, "Conservatives praise these studies for their large samples, eagerly highlighting their negative results while ignore the distortions required to arrive at them."

Think of this as a precursor of what is to come.

Conservatives are excitedly promoting a new study that supposedly reveals negative outcomes for the children of same-sex parents. Like the infamously flawed Mark Regnerus study rushed out two years ago, the new study seems timed to impact the Supreme Court’s upcoming consideration of marriage equality for same-sex couples. It suffers, however, from some of the same flaws and biases as Regnerus’ study, and doesn’t actually support the argument against marriage equality that it tries to make.

The new study comes from Donald Paul Sullins, a Catholic priest and sociology professor at Catholic University of America. Sullins is a fellow of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, a project of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, and a Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus, which has funneled millions of dollars into fighting marriage equality over the past decade. In 2010, he co-wrote a study suggesting that female homosexuality was somehow connected to growing up in a broken home, and when he has written about same-sex marriage, he uses scare quotes around the word “marriage.”

Sullins conducted an analysis of data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) that had been collected from 1997-2013. He concluded that information about the 512 same-sex parents identified in the study demonstrates that their children have more emotional problems compared to couples raised by their biological different-sex couples. That these children fare worse, he concludes, “justifies social and policy concerns about differences between family structures, including between opposite-sex and same-sex families.” In other words, same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry because they make inferior parents.

One of the first major flaws, however, is the fact that Sullins has no information about whether the same-sex couples were actually married.  As he notes, “Almost all opposite-sex parents who are raising joint biological offspring are in intact marriages, but very few, if any, same-sex parents were married during the period under observation.” The same-sex couples were instead defined as “those persons whose reported spouse or cohabiting partner was of the same sex as themselves.” No conclusions can actually be drawn about the impacts of legalizing same-sex marriage because the study, by its own admission, collected no data about same-sex marriage or its effect on children.

Regnerus himself provides an overview of the research.  In his attempt to defend it, however, he in turn reveals that it also has the very same flaws as his own study. In particular, the NHIS similarly contains no information about family formation. Sullins notes that many of the children had a biological connection to one of the same-sex parents, but it’s unknown if these are from prior relationships, which would suggest their negative outcomes are related to a broken home instead of having two parents of the same sex. Regnerus used the same conflation; only two of the children in his study were actually raised from birth by same-sex couples and they did not exhibit the same negative outcomes as those children who had parents that separated before one entered a same-sex relationship. Incidentally, Sullins has likewise defended Regenerus’ conclusions about the supposed  inferiority “gay and lesbian families,” ignoring the significance of this flawed conflation.

Conservatives Seize On Hugely Flawed Study About Same-Sex Parents | ThinkProgress

How One Religious Organization Bankrolls America’s Social Conservative Movement | ThinkProgress

In 1882, a group of Catholic men gathered together by New Haven, CT pastor Father Michael J. McGivney incorporated an organization to provide for the families of its deceased members. More than 125 years later, the Knights of Columbus boasts of more than 1.8 million members and of “donating more than $167.5 million to charitable needs and projects” in 2012. Among its members: presidential 2016 hopeful Jeb Bush (R), Speaker of the House John Boehner (R), and Justice Samuel Alito.

But while much of the Knights’ charitable efforts in recent years have supported purely altruistic causes such as the Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity, millions of their charitable dollars have funded a very socially conservative ideological agenda: opposing abortion, LGBT rights, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and pornography, while supporting public funding for religious organizations.

[,,,]
In a November interview, the organizations’ top official noted that the Knights’ “first principle is charity,” and that its success has come due to its focus on “mission integrity.” But for several decades, that charity has also included work to overturn Roe v. Wade. Each year, the organization reaffirms, by resolution, its “deep and historic commitment to oppose any governmental action or policy that promotes abortion, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia, assisted suicide, or other offenses against life.” In so doing, the Knights also reaffirm their “long-standing policies of not inviting to any Knights of Columbus event, persons, especially public officials or candidates for public office, who do not support the legal protection of unborn children, or who advocate the legalization of assisted suicide or euthanasia.”

[,,,]
Beyond just words, the Knights of Columbus have invested millions into the “culture of life” agenda. Between local chapters and the national organization, the Knights’ “Ultrasound Initiative” have provided more than $14 million worth of ultrasound machines to local “pro-life pregnancy care centers,” based on the belief that “a free ultrasound exam often helps an abortion minded woman to decide to choose life for herself and her child.” They have also worked to defeat a successful stem-cell research amendment in Michigan ($100,000), to pass an unsuccessful proposal to ban public funding of abortion in Florida ($100,000), and to oppose a defeated a Massachusetts initiative to allow physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients ($450,000).

The Knights of Columbus see this as a charitable rather than social issue. Citing Catholic values and the words of Pope Francis, Cullen explained, “we believe that many of our contributions across the board have a social justice component. We do not understand how providing ultrasound machines to pregnancy resource centers is somehow a ‘social’ issue, but building houses with Habitat for Humanity is not.”

How One Religious Organization Bankrolls America’s Social Conservative Movement | ThinkProgress