N.J. Supreme Court decision casts shadow on convictions in Tyler Clementi case | NJ.com

Arguments before a panel of appeals judges Wednesday highlighted just how much of an effect a recent Supreme Court decision might have on one of the highest profile New Jersey criminal cases in the past decade.
Dharun Ravi's lawyers told the appeals court that the former Rutgers student should have his record cleared and all of his convictions overturned in the Tyler Clementi webcam spying case.

And prosecutors conceded that one of 15 convictions, for hindering his apprehension, would likely have to be dismissed. But the rest, the state argued, could stand.

Ravi's lawyers argued that bias crimes law under which Ravi was convicted — Ravi set up a camera that spied on Clementi, his roommate freshman year at Rutgers, during an intimate encounter with a man — does not apply to any part of this case.

That's because the state Supreme Court struck down part of the law that laid out what needed to be proven for a bias crime: the victim's state of mind, rather than the defendant's. [See:  Could Dharun Ravi win new trial in Tyler Clementi webcam case?]

The state's case and Ravi's conviction on 15 criminal counts focused on Clementi's state of mind, rather than Ravi's, attorney Steven Altman argued. That, he said, has now been determined unconstitutional.

N.J. Supreme Court decision casts shadow on convictions in Tyler Clementi case | NJ.com

Lambda Legal Sues U.S. State Department on Behalf of Intersex Citizen Denied Passport | Lambda Legal

Lambda Legal today filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. State Department on behalf of an intersex client, Dana Zzyym, denied a U.S. passport because Dana could not accurately choose either male or female on the passport application form, and the form does not provide any other gender marker designation.

Though many intersex people identify as male or female, some – like Dana – do not.,,,

Dana, who uses the gender-neutral pronouns “they,” “them” and “their,” was born with ambiguous sex characteristics. Shortly after Dana’s birth, their parents and doctor decided to raise them as a boy. As a result, Dana underwent several irreversible, painful and medically unnecessary surgeries that didn’t work, traumatized Dana and left them with severe scarring.

It was only many years later, after serving six years in the U.S. Navy and then attending Colorado State University, where they also worked as a custodian, that Dana began researching the surgeries and came to understand they had been born intersex. Drawing on personal experience, Dana began educating the public about issues facing intersex people. Dana currently serves as associate director for the United States affiliate of the Organisation Intersex International (OII-USA).

As part of their work, Dana was invited to attend the International Intersex Forum in Mexico City in October, 2014, at which time Dana applied for a U.S. passport. The application requires that the applicant select a gender marker of either ‘male’ or ‘female.’ It also requires first-time applicants to submit a birth certificate, which in Dana’s case lists their sex as “unknown.”

Notwithstanding the information on their birth certificate and the fact that Dana’s doctors with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs confirm their gender as intersex, Dana’s application for a passport was denied.

Lambda Legal Sues U.S. State Department on Behalf of Intersex Citizen Denied Passport | Lambda Legal

ADDENDUM::Stetson graduate prepares churches to protect children | Stetson Today

As I said in an ealier post concerning Tchividjian, "Trying to figure out how he is able to rectify this view in light of where he teaches law? Criminality is suppressed and restoration of the "guilty" party back into leadership is the typical modus operandi of the evangelical crowd as recent headlines have shown (ie. Dino Rizzo and Sam Hinn)."  I still feel that way as he is still with Liberty.

But as a young assistant state attorney handling a variety of criminal cases, Tchividjian couldn’t ignore the horror of those that violated children. When he volunteered to aggressively prosecute all of the 7^th Judicial Circuit’s child sex abuse cases, the state attorney approved and established a sex-crimes unit that handled hundreds of cases, a third of them involving children.

It was the start of a lifelong passion for fighting child sexual abuse.

“As I was prosecuting, you really see the cases up close,” says Tchividjian. “You see the victims, the families, the devastation, but you also deal with the offenders. You see common characteristics and behaviors, and get a comprehensive picture of this offense.”

The issue remained heavy on his heart as he went into private practice in 2001. “What do I do with all of this information that I learned in the trenches?” Tchividjian asked himself.
 ,,,
“Churches are fearful of damaging their reputations, and it’s easier to buy the redemption narrative from offenders, because that’s what Christianity is all about,” explains Tchividjian. “The real narrative is that offenders are the most deceiving people you’ll ever meet, having abused multiple victims before they are caught.”

Facing sexual abuse is difficult for churches to grasp, so Tchividjian founded GRACE — Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment — to educate Christian organizations on how to prevent and respond to child abuse.

A culture of trust and naïveté can attract perpetrators to church environments. Moreover, many church leaders choose not to believe the allegations of victims and instead side with the offender, further devastating the survivors of abuse.

“We have to shift the cultures of our churches by highly valuing our children and being vigilant about their protection … always receiving up-to-date training, monitoring for these issues, with children’s safety classes for the adults, the parents, and also the kids,” advocates Tchividjian.

Stetson graduate prepares churches to protect children | Stetson Today

The utter inanity of eruvs, using magical wires to trick the Jewish god

This is just plain bizarre,,,

But some believers spend even more time figuring out ways around these prohibitions. An entire cottage industry has blossomed as a result, one that Bill Maher lampooned quite well in Religulous. The eruv is one of these attempts to circumvent what is supposedly god’s law. The Sabbath rules are more relaxed in one’s home so the eruv extends the boundaries of the home to the entire enclosed area. This is often many city blocks, outlined by wire or string, though sometimes with markers (lechi). If the wire or string breaks, the enclosure and the eruv’s magical spell are broken.

To sum it up, an eruv is a religious rule foisted upon the public and strung across public property so that religious individuals can trick their god into thinking they are not violating one of his rules. Never mind that he is supposedly omnipotent and omniscient, or that the penalty for violating the Sabbath rules is almost always death—they strung up some wire and now their house is 20 city blocks! Only in the religious mind does this make sense.

The utter inanity of eruvin is this: These believers are devout enough to want to follow the rule, but not devout enough to actually follow the rule. So they cast enchantments to make a magical boundary within which they can violate their deity’s command. Only in religion can such hypocrisy be labeled a virtue. But it seems that the more pious a believer is, the more hypocrisy their religion requires.

The utter inanity of eruvs, using magical wires to trick the Jewish god

America's Justice System Sure Doesn't Know Much Science | WIRED

James Holmes walked into a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in 2012 carrying three guns including a semi-automatic rifle and opened fire, killing 12 people and injuring 70 more. Nobody, not even his defense attorneys, denied that. But those attorneys still told a jury and a judge that Holmes was not guilty of those crimes—because he was insane. Last month, that jury rejected that assertion, finding Holmes guilty on all counts.

Holmes’ plea didn’t get him off, but it did get people talking about the insanity defense again. It’s a rare move for defense attorneys these days, even quaint sounding. Psychiatrists no longer call patients “insane.” It’s not a clinical diagnosis. Yet the term persists in the courtroom—along with many other practices unsupported by modern psychology and neuroscience.

Americans inherited a legal system shaped by history, not by science. “The legal system is resistant to change and resistant to paying attention to scientific research,” says Adam Benforado, a law professor at Drexel University and author of the recent book Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. The system assumes that innocent people don’t confess to crimes they didn’t commit. It presumes that eyewitness testimonies are reliable. It counts on the impartiality of jurors.

None of those things are borne out by evidence.


America's Justice System Sure Doesn't Know Much Science | WIRED

Indiana Mayor Gay Sex Scandal: Assault, Bribery, HIV, and Felony Charges | HIVPlusMag.com

A small town Indiana mayor was recently arrested for paying another man for sex while the alleged sex worker was charged with intimidation, prostitution, and "failure to disclose dangerous communicable disease status," despite the latter man's protestations that the sex was coerced not consensual and that he has an undetectable viral load with little chance of transmitting the virus.
,,,
According to the Indiana State Police, during the investigation conducted by Detective Roger Drew, “it was determined that in June of this year Fledderman paid Wigle-Stevens for sex acts.  It was also determined that Wigle-Stevens failed to disclose his HIV status to Fledderman prior to engaging in the sex acts.  The investigation also revealed that Wigle-Stevens threatened to go public with the encounter unless Fledderman paid him additional money.”
,,,
Local media reports say that the townsfolk seem supportive of the popular three-term mayor, and whether this is assault or bribery gone awry, the HIV charges are a conundrum for advocates in Indiana and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the recent cases of HIV-criminalization suggest that prosecutors and juries often reject the science in favor of their mistaken beliefs both about how HIV is transmitted and whether the virus itself is a death sentence. 

Indiana Mayor Gay Sex Scandal: Assault, Bribery, HIV, and Felony Charges | HIVPlusMag.com

Woman suing Fishbones after being mistaken for a man and kicked out of the woman s restroom - WXYZ.com

I highlight this case for 3 reasons,,,

1. So Peter LaBarbera, you still feeling like a Jew?  In other words, it is and LGBTI issue.
2. It is an LGBTI issue that may have "interesting" legal ramifications, especially in regards to the type of politicking that occurs - ie. Michelle Duggar.
3. It is something I can relate too.

You see I am not exactly the most feminine of individuals.  I smoke, I chew, I cuss like a sailor.  At points in my life my hair has been buzzed to a crew.  And as an athlete,,, lets just say I ain't no gymnast and I walk like I just got off a horse.  Although I'm a 44DD, while wearing a coat, many times I have been called sir.  I have had little kids ask me if I was a boy or a girl. 

It use to bother me especially when I was younger.  Now I laugh hysterically and flash my tits and threaten to make people feel 'em just so they are sure (uh,,,not the little ones , just adults).  But, I shouldn't have to. And yes, I am being blunt for a reason as I do not understand what the fuss is all about.

You see, as I pointed out in my first piece concerning Michelle Duggar, all she does is regurgitate the falsehoods perpetuated by Paul Cameron.  Falsehoods "which are derived from the false assumption that men who molest boys are gay, despite the fact that Groth's original study found that none of the men identified himself as homosexual. Instead, the pedophiles were either heterosexual outside of their criminal behavior or were what Groth termed 'fixated pedophiles with no interest in sex with adults.'"

By playing on the "bathroom predator" line of argument, Duggar et al are equating "transgender people to sex offenders and pedophiles, and suggesting that men will simply pretend to be trans as a means to assault women and children in private facilities. These talking points play on the public's fears, and ignore the fact that transgender individuals are far more likely to be the victim of physical or sexual assault in a place of public accommodation than they are to be the agressor."

It's not like Duggar et al have a leg to stand on with their arguments.  But fear wins out and people should know this by now.  It's not as if the "hets" are a persecuted and demonized minority as LaBarbera seems to think.  And it doesn't even matter if Bogorad is part of the LGBTI community.

What matters as Suzi Chase writing over at Suzi's Place points out,

Unless the manager and the guard are ruthless sociopaths who love to see trans people suffer,,,it’s likely that they just never thought about it,,,.  [I]t makes no sense that a woman whose gender history is recognizable should be required to use a different restroom from a woman whose gender history is not,,,.
,,, 
This world isn’t ideal. Transgender bathroom use isn’t on the radar of most cisgender people and won’t be, unless we change that. It is up to us to make sure that people understand why it simply can’t be any other way.

If we don’t, more incidents like the one in Detroit will occur, and more people will get hurt.

As the following will attest, what we have is the first known "innocent" victim of the false GOP narrative and moral panic about transpeople in the bathroom.

Cortney Bogorad has lived in Detroit all her life and has eaten and Fishbones multiple times. But, she hasn't returned since the January 23rd incident, when, she says, she was kicked out of the restaurant's women's bathroom - accused of being a man.

Bogorad says she went to use the restroom and a security worker yelled from outside for whatever man is in the restroom to come out now.

“As I came out of the stall, this gentleman - who was a security guard - came in the bathroom, and before I was even completely out of the bathroom he grabbed me by the arms and pushed me up against the wall, told me that boys aren’t allowed in this restroom," she says. "This could have happened to anybody. There are lots of females out there with short hair. some people might think we’re boys, but, at the end of the day, we’re not"

Woman suing Fishbones after being mistaken for a man and kicked out of the woman s restroom - WXYZ.com

Stricter child abuse laws go into effect in Pennsylvania | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Child care advocates hope a major package of child abuse laws that took effect this week will prevent more children at risk from slipping through the cracks.

The new regulations, a result of the recommendations from the Pennsylvania Task Force on Child Protection that convened in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, expand the state’s definition of child abuse, clarify who is a mandatory reporter and an alleged perpetrator of such abuse, and modernizes record-keeping, among other changes.

Pennsylvania had been considered an outlier among states for having a high threshold for what constitutes child abuse and far fewer reports of such abuse, said Cathleen Palm, founder of The Center for Children’s Justice in Berks County.

“Sandusky was the tipping point, but Pennsylvania’s law/practices really left too many children unprotected from serious physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect for years,” she said.

The law combines 21 pieces of legislation, most of which took effect Wednesday. Among the key changes is what legally is considered abuse — one that Mary Carrasco, director of A Child’s Place at Mercy, considers most significant.

Stricter child abuse laws go into effect in Pennsylvania | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Atheist Parolee Receives Nearly $2,000,000 After Being Punished for Refusing a Religious Drug Treatment Program

I know most of you who follow Havoc and Chaos are probably aware of the settlement reached concerning Barry A. Hazle in regards to his "false" imprisonment for seeking a secular alternative for AA. Hemant Mehta over at the Friendly Atheist has a good summation of all that has occurred.

In February of 2007, after spending time in prison for drug possession, Barry A. Hazle Jr. was finally released on parole.

Parole came with a few strings attached, though. Hazle had to attend a 90-day drug treatment program which, in his case, involved the Twelve-Step program most commonly associated with Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. As we’ve discussed on this site before, several of those steps include references to God and submitting to a “higher power.”

Hazle — an atheist — wanted no part of that, so he asked to be reassigned to a secular treatment program. Even as he began attending the Twelve-Step classes, he objected to them. Three days after his parole officer received the appeal, Hazle “was called out of a program class and arrested for violating parole… He was sent back to prison for four months.”

[,,,]
It’s hard to overstate how important this victory is. It should’ve been obvious to state officials (and Hazle’s parole officer) that they couldn’t mandate anyone to go to a religious drug treatment program. It should’ve been obvious that they couldn’t punish someone for not wanting to attend that particular kind of program. Yet, they tried to coerce Hazle into going there, anyway.

He fought back, he was right, and he (finally) got fair compensation after everything the state put him through. More importantly, it means that no other prisoner or parolee will have to fight the same battle in the future.

Atheist Parolee Receives Nearly $2,000,000 After Being Punished for Refusing a Religious Drug Treatment Program

Here’s why a lesbian golfer just won $359,000 from the University of Minnesota | The Raw Story

This week, a remarkable trial concluded with a detailed finding of facts by a judge in Minnesota. He awarded a woman named Katie Brenny almost $360,000 after a three-year lawsuit. And while there’s been a small amount of media attention paid to Brenny’s victory, it’s received little national media exposure.

And that’s a shame, because the 38-page decision by Hennepin County Judge Thomas M. Sipkins contains interesting details that describes a startling case of overt discrimination on a college campus.

In 2010, Kathryn “Katie” Brenny was a 30 year old professional golfer living in North Carolina when she was approached that July by John Harris, the new director of golf at the University of Minnesota.

Harris was a pro golfer himself, and today, at 61, he plays on the Champions Tour.

But in the summer of 2010, he needed a new coach for the university’s women’s team. He wanted to know if Brenny was interested. He told her that she would be responsible for the things a head coach does: helping players improve, recruiting new players, and traveling with the team to tournaments, as well as doing the other administrative duties that come with the job.

Brenny had played four years at Wake Forest before turning pro, and figured she knew something about what coaching a college team would be like. Excited at the opportunity, Brenny sent her resume. Harris, meanwhile, sent her a list of job duties which were identical to those for the coach of the men’s team, John Carlson.

[,,,]
UPDATE: Katie Brenny e-mailed us this statement… “I’m grateful for the judge’s ability to discern the truth. This is a win for me, but it’s so much more than that — it’s a victory for those who believe in equality, and it’s progress for college athletics. Hopefully, my experience and this lawsuit will help others by serving as a deterrent for discrimination in the future. It’s clear that we are moving forward. I just can’t tell you how grateful I am that the judge was able to see through it all and write up the decision he did. This is a huge win for coaches and student-athletes.”

Here’s why a lesbian golfer just won $359,000 from the University of Minnesota | The Raw Story

HRC Foundation Releases Comprehensive State-By-State Legislative Report | Human Rights Campaign

Today the Human Rights Campaign Foundation released a comprehensive state-by-state report detailing LGBT-related legislation in 2013, a year marked by huge victories for the LGBT community from statehouses across the nation to the United States Supreme Court. The report indicates that the majority of pro-LGBT legislation came in the form of marriage equality legislation. In 2014, HRC expects bills providing comprehensive, inclusive non-discrimination protections will take center stage, including those aimed at preventing health professionals from subjecting youth to sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts. This is the tenth year HRC has published this comprehensive guide to state legislation affecting LGBT people.

HRC Foundation Releases Comprehensive State-By-State Legislative Report | Human Rights Campaign

Cops Ordered to Return Over $1 Million Seized From Innocent Woman - and Fed Gov Ordered to Pay Nearly $40k in Legal Fees | The Daily Sheeple

Here is a "positive" news story to report.

Civil Forfeiture is slowly coming into the minds of the mainstream but in a very negative and IMO abusive way. Last year (August and September) I posted about two of the more prominent cases of abuse. One has reached its conclusion.

What one needs to remember in regards to Civil Forfeiture, and the article does point this out, "Mishra’s ordeal happened because of civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow law enforcement to seize property that is suspected of being linked to criminal activity. One does not have to be charged with anything to permanently lose their cars, homes, or cash."

Cops Ordered to Return Over $1 Million Seized From Innocent Woman - and Fed Gov Ordered to Pay Nearly $40k in Legal Fees | The Daily Sheeple

Government Attorneys Appealing Judges Order For Government To Return $1 Million To Woman

And yet again, the bullies in law enforcement trying to steal that which is not rightfully theirs. Last month I posted concerning this issue in regards to a small Texas/Louisiana border town. This case is from Nebraska,,,

In July, Nebraska police seized over $1 million dollars in cash from husband and wife during a traffic stop. At the time, officers claimed that the enormous sum of cash present in the car indicated it had been earned in the illegal drug trade.

But this wasn’t the case. The cash was actually given to the couple by exotic dancer Tara Mishra. Mishra says the money is her life savings, and that she gave the couple the money to invest in a New Jersey strip club.

The husband and wife were never charged after being pulled over, but police retained the money seized during the stop. The money is being retained under civil forfeiture laws which allow law enforcement to seize the money and property of people involved in crimes.

Police say they found drug residue on the money. But as U.S. District Judge Joseph Batallion points out, it is believed that almost all money in circulation is tainted with drug residue.

Mishra filed a claim to reclaim her money from the government, but her request was denied. Officials ruled that since Mishra had given money to the couple she no longer had a claim to it.

Government Attorneys Appealing Judges Order For Government To Return $1 Million To Woman

Sarah Stillman: The Use and Abuse of Civil Forfeiture : The New Yorker

On a bright Thursday afternoon in 2007, Jennifer Boatright, a waitress at a Houston bar-and-grill, drove with her two young sons and her boyfriend, Ron Henderson, on U.S. 59 toward Linden, Henderson’s home town, near the Texas-Louisiana border. They made the trip every April, at the first signs of spring, to walk the local wildflower trails and spend time with Henderson’s father. This year, they’d decided to buy a used car in Linden, which had plenty for sale, and so they bundled their cash savings in their car’s center console. Just after dusk, they passed a sign that read “Welcome to Tenaha: A little town with BIG Potential!”

They pulled into a mini-mart for snacks. When they returned to the highway ten minutes later, Boatright, a honey-blond “Texas redneck from Lubbock,” by her own reckoning, and Henderson, who is Latino, noticed something strange. The same police car that their eleven-year-old had admired in the mini-mart parking lot was trailing them. Near the city limits, a tall, bull-shouldered officer named Barry Washington pulled them over.

He asked if Henderson knew that he’d been driving in the left lane for more than half a mile without passing.

No, Henderson replied. He said he’d moved into the left lane so that the police car could make its way onto the highway.

Were there any drugs in the car? When Henderson and Boatright said no, the officer asked if he and his partner could search the car.

The officers found the couple’s cash and a marbled-glass pipe that Boatright said was a gift for her sister-in-law, and escorted them across town to the police station. In a corner there, two tables were heaped with jewelry, DVD players, cell phones, and the like. According to the police report, Boatright and Henderson fit the profile of drug couriers: they were driving from Houston, “a known point for distribution of illegal narcotics,” to Linden, “a known place to receive illegal narcotics.” The report describes their children as possible decoys, meant to distract police as the couple breezed down the road, smoking marijuana. (None was found in the car, although Washington claimed to have smelled it.)

The county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell, arrived an hour later. Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer, told Henderson and Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road. “No criminal charges shall be filed,” a waiver she drafted read, “and our children shall not be turned over to CPS,” or Child Protective Services.

“Where are we?” Boatright remembers thinking. “Is this some kind of foreign country, where they’re selling people’s kids off?” Holding her sixteen-month-old on her hip, she broke down in tears.

Later, she learned that cash-for-freedom deals had become a point of pride for Tenaha, and that versions of the tactic were used across the country. “Be safe and keep up the good work,” the city marshal wrote to Washington, following a raft of complaints from out-of-town drivers who claimed that they had been stopped in Tenaha and stripped of cash, valuables, and, in at least one case, an infant child, without clear evidence of contraband.

Sarah Stillman: The Use and Abuse of Civil Forfeiture : The New Yorker

Evangelical Corporations Try To Force Their Employees To Follow Their Religious Beliefs

In 2010 at the behest of the Koch brothers, Mitch McConnell, and corporate leaders everywhere, the U.S. Supreme Court granted personhood rights to corporations giving them power to control the direction of the government and buy the services of Republicans candidates without campaign finance restrictions. Dissatisfied with the inordinate power the conservative court gave corporations, they are likely headed back to the Supreme Court to demand power to impose their religion on their employees in the next logical step towards transforming America into a theocracy. Despite the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of, and from, religious imposition on the people, the extremist Christian fanatics intent on forcing all Americans to toe the evangelical line and fall under the purview of America’s version of Sharia Law are appealing to the conservative High Court for their blessing to impose their bastardized version of Christianity on the people and as usual they are focusing their attention on women.

The latest tactic of corporations with evangelical CEOs is a continuation of last year’s attempt to ban American women from using birth control as a result of President Obama’s inclusion of contraceptive coverage in the Affordable Care Act. At issue is whether a secular corporation with no business relationship or involvement in a religion can be considered religious and force its employees to follow the corporation’s religious beliefs and be prohibited from using contraceptives included in prescription coverage in health plans. The President gave religious organizations and churches permission to ban their employees from having access to contraceptives, but it still did not satisfy the neo-Christian fascist wing who sees the conservative Court as their ticket to impose, by Constitutional fiat, their religious convictions on their employees. It is noteworthy that the push to ban contraceptive use is being pressed by evangelical men who avoid using IUDs or hormonal birth control pills by choice, but their personal choice is not the issue; eliminating women’s choice is.

[,,,]
Writing for the 3rd Circuit’s majority, Judge Robert Cowen said although there was “a long history of protecting corporations’ rights to free speech,” there was no history of protecting a company’s free exercise of religion. “We simply cannot understand how a for-profit, secular corporation can exercise religion. A holding to the contrary … would eviscerate the fundamental principle that a corporation is a legally distinct entity from its owners.” A few weeks ago, the Colorado-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby Stores finding that corporations are entitled to assert religious rights and impose them on their employees. The court specifically noted that President Obama had offended the company’s religious beliefs with the contraception requirement. Now that there is a split between the 3rd and 10th Circuit decisions, it falls to the Supreme Court to rule if a corporation has the Constitutional right to impose its “religious convictions” on its employees.

Evangelical Corporations Try To Force Their Employees To Follow Their Religious Beliefs

Federal Judge: Catholic Church Has A Constitutional Right Not To Compensate Victims Of Sex Abuse | ThinkProgress

A federal judge in Wisconsin handed down an opinion yesterday granting the Catholic Church — and indeed, potentially all religious institutions — such sweeping immunity from federal bankruptcy law that it is not clear that it would permit any plaintiff to successfully sue any church in any court. While the ostensible issue in this case is whether over $50 million in church funds are shielded from a bankruptcy proceeding triggered largely by a flood of clerical sex abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Judge Rudolph Randa reads the church’s constitutional and legal right to religious liberty so broadly as to render religious institutions immune from much of the law.

The case involves approximately $57 million that former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan transferred from the archdiocese’s general accounts to into a separate trust set up to maintain the church’s cemeteries. Although Dolan, who is now a cardinal, the Archbishop of New York and the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has denied that the purpose of this transfer was to shield the funds from lawsuits, Dolan penned a letter to the Vatican in 2007 where he explained that transferring the funds into the trust would lead to “an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”

The issue facing the court is, essentially, whether the funds that Dolan split off into a separate trust can now be reabsorbed into the archdiocese’s assets in order to enable sex abuse victims and other creditors to be paid out of these assets,,,

[,,,]
And Randa does not stop there. He goes on to argue that senior church officials get to unilaterally decide what constitutes a “substantial burden” on their faith for purposes of federal law — “Archbishop Listecki’s declaration stands unopposed, and on the issue of religious doctrine, it is unassailable. Moreover, the issue of substantial burden is essentially coterminous with religious doctrin

Federal Judge: Catholic Church Has A Constitutional Right Not To Compensate Victims Of Sex Abuse | ThinkProgress

State bans gay-repair therapy for minors - SFGate

Altho a victim of this mentality, I never had to deal with this type of therapy,,,the "pray the gay" away was very popular in college in the 80s,,,

"LGBT youth will now be protected from a practice that has not only been debunked as

junk science, but has been proven to have drastically negative effects on their well-being. We commend Gov. Brown for putting children first, and call on all states to take California's lead on this issue," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign.

This legislation comes just months after psychiatrist Robert Spitzer repudiated his own 2001 study in which he claimed that homosexuality could be cured.

State bans gay-repair therapy for minors - SFGate

Bush-Appointed Judge Upholds Obama Administration's Birth Control Coverage Rules | ThinkProgress

A major victory not just for the ACA but separation issues as well,,,

[Federal religious freedom law] is a shield, not a sword. It protects individuals from substantial burdens on religious exercise that occur when the government coerces action one’s religion forbids, or forbids action one’s religion requires; it is not a means to force one’s religious practices upon others.

Bush-Appointed Judge Upholds Obama Administration's Birth Control Coverage Rules | ThinkProgress

Judge Halts Pennsylvania Voter ID Requirement | Northeast | United States | Epoch Times

A very important win,,,especially considering the fiasco in Florida and now engulfing more states,,,

Judge Halts Pennsylvania Voter ID Requirement | Northeast | United States | Epoch Times

Woman recants accusation of sex assault - San Antonio Express-News

Wonder what Mike Warnke and Mr Larson are thinking at this moment,,,one of the last "Satanic Panic" caused by the furor that began in the mid 80's,,,

Woman recants accusation of sex assault - San Antonio Express-News