News items during 2007-September

2007-SEP-10: CA: Senate approves bill legalizing same-sex marriage: The California Senate approved bill AB-43 by a vote of 22 to 15 to substitute the term "two persons" for "man and wife" in the state's marriage law. This would allow all loving committed couples to marry, whether they are of the opposite-sex or same-sex. All 12 Republicans and three Democrats voted against the bill. The bill will now go to Governor Schwarzenegger for either his signature or his veto.

VoteYesMarriage.com is proposing a marriage amendment to the state constitution that would prohibit same-sex marriage and retain marriage as a special privilege of opposite-sex couples only. ₁

2007-SEP-11: 9/11: This is the sixth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon by fanatical Muslim fundamentalists.

2007-SEP-11: Netherlands: Group of young Muslims promote religious freedom: The Committee for Ex-Muslims launched a campaign to make it easier for Muslims to change their religion. The committee's founder, Ehsan Jami, rejected Islam after the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001-SEP-11. He is currently in hiding, having received a series of death threats. There have been two assassinations in recent years of individuals who have taken a stance against traditional Islam: politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and film-maker Theo Van Gogh in 2004. ₂ More details.

2007-SEP-12: Canada: Focus on the Family Canada accepts validity of same-sex marriage: In what may be a first for any fundamentalist or other evangelical group in North America, Focus on the Family Canada appears to have accepted the validity of same-sex marriage (SSM). Focus and other conservative religious groups have always been careful to denigrate same-sex marriage by placing the word marriage or married in quotation marks when it refers to SSM, as in same-sex "marriage." This reinforces their assertion that SSM is not really marriage; they consider it a phony form of quasi-marriage.

However, in their SEP-12 issue of Today's Family News, they mentioned Statistics Canada new report on family structures in Canada. They conclude with the statement: "And for the first time, the number of same-sex married couples will be included." Note the absence of quotation marks! This is believed to be a first for Canada among religious conservative para-church groups; perhaps it is the first in North America. It only took them about 26 months for them to accept SSM as real marriage. We congratulate Focus. ₃

2007-SEP-13: World: Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The United Nations General Assembly approved the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was approved by an overwhelming vote after 22 years of intensive debate and negotiation. Only four countries voted against the Declaration: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. At least three of them -- Australia, Canada and the U.S. have histories of regular and cultural genocide against their own aboriginal people in past centuries. The case of Canada is interesting. The previous Liberal federal government played an active role in negotiating this Declaration. But then it was thrown out of office due to gross financial corruption, and replaced by a Conservative government that reversed Canada's position on the declaration. Meanwhile, 143 nations voted in favor of the declaration and eleven abstained.

Botswana Bushman Jumanda Gakelebone of First People of the Kalahari said: "We would like to say that we are really very happy and thrilled to hear about the adoption of the declaration. It recognizes that governments can no longer treat us as second-class citizens, and it gives protection to tribal peoples so that they will not be thrown off their lands like we were."

Kiplangat Cheruiyot of Kenya’s Ogiek tribe said today, "With the adoption of the declaration, the lives of indigenous peoples will be improved on an equal footing with the rest of world citizens." ₁₀

2007-SEP-14: NS: Two high school students start a movement: David Shepherd and Travis Price are two senior (Grade 12) students at Central Kings Rural High School in Nova Scotia on Canada's east coast. Reacting to an earlier event at the school when six to ten homophobic bullies harassed and threatened to beat up an anonymous student who wore a pink shirt to school, they organized a "sea of pink" day. About half of the students at the high school wore pink to indicate their opposition to bullying and homophobia. More info.

2007-SEP-18: TX: Lawsuit against Baptist Seminary to proceed: Dr. Sheri Klouda is suing her former employer, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, TX. She alleges breach of contract, fraud and defamation. She had taught biblical Hebrew at Southwestern and believes that she was on track for tenure. She was allegedly dismissed by the seminary because a new administration believes that women should not be allowed to teach male pastors-in-training on theological matters. A federal judge denied the Seminary's request that the lawsuit be dismissed. ₄

2007-SEP-20 & 21: Possible "denial of service" events: Over a two day interval, two fundamentalist Christian web sites reported denial of service (DoS) attacks on their web site. The Apologetic Index and related sites reported three attacks over a three week period ending in SEP-20.  Way of Life at http://www.wayoflife.org reported problems on SEP-21. One common denial of service attack involves many infected computers worldwide. Those computers initiate an enormous number of requests to access a specific home page or file on the victimized website. The owners of the computers are generally unaware that their computers are being used in this way. The victimized server gets overloaded and either slows down or fails completely. ₅

Attacks on these two websites may have been a coincidence, or may reflect a larger attack on religiously conservative websites.

2007-SEP-20: USA: Muslim civil rights groups criticizes representative's remarks on Islam: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR ) criticized Representative Peter King (R-NY) for saying in a recent interview:

2007-SEP-21: NY: State rejects abstinence funding: New York state officials decided to join at least ten other states and by not reapplying for its annual $3.5 million grant to teach abstinence funding. The funding requires that the state schools keep their students ignorant about safer-sex practices that greatly reduce the chances of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease (STD) transmission. They claimed that abstinence-only teaching is a "failed" Bush policy based on "ideology rather than on sound scientific-based evidence." Galen Sherwin, director of the Reproductive Rights Project for the New York Civil Liberties Union agreed, saying: