Nearly one year later, gay rights issues have taken on a renewed prominence. Recent shifts in states from Iowa to New Hampshire have upped the tally to six states that now recognize same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, California’s high court recently upheld a voter-approved proposition blocking gay marriage. And on Monday, the Supreme Court denied a request to review the Pentagon’s ban on gays serving openly in the military.

Gay rights activists have noticed. Their patience has worn thin. Key leaders have privately expressed their frustration to top White House officials. Publicly, over the weekend, one gay rights activist proposed a march on Washington in October.

To the gay rights movement, the collage of issues is beginning to echo the crescendo of the civil rights movement in the mid 1960s. But, on social hot button issues, this is a cautious president. Obama is for now more similar to the slow-walk of John F. Kennedy than the bold action of Lyndon Johnson on civil rights, whose hand was in part forced by events like the march on Washington led by Martin Luther King Jr.

That Obama is the first black president adds one more deep and evocative layer to the decisions before him. By comparison, the choices Obama now faces are far less politically fraught than the battle Harry Truman or Johnson experienced.

The comparison between the push for progress on gay rights and the black civil rights movement remains contentious in American politics. But the Obamas’ straight line from the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, a breakthrough moment in the civil rights struggle, to the Greenwich Village Stonewall Riots, which forty-years ago sparked the gay rights movement, only intensifies the moral dilemma before Obama.

American life has gradually accepted gay civil rights. But Americans distinguish between equal protection and equal cultural status for homosexuals, based on an extensive study of public opinion polling. That distinction is most visible in the public’s support for civil unions but not gay marriage.

Obama exemplifies that view. His promises to gay rights groups are focused on issues of equality of opportunity but not equal cultural recognition.

During the campaign, Obama pledged to revive stalled hate crimes legislation and push for the reversal of the prohibition against gays serving openly in the military, as well as overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages and codified states’ rights to also deny gay unions legal in other states. About a half year into his presidency, none of those pledges have been fulfilled.

“The amount of stuff on the president’s plate is stacked higher than anyone could have imagined last fall,” said one lesbian and gay rights leader privy to White House strategy on gay rights issues. “But,” the leader added, “on the other hand, the landscape, like in Iowa and Maine, has shifted faster than anyone had expected. There is a lot of pressure to do what’s right–right now.”

Americans Shift on Gay Rights

A Gallup Poll last week underscored the change in Americans’ attitude on gay rights. Three of the voting blocs coolest on gay rights are conservatives, Republicans and weekly churchgoers. About six in 10 of all three blocs now back allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. That marks a more than double-digit shift against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” on the political right in the past five years.

In 1993, Bill Clinton backed “don’t ask, don’t tell” in a controversial compromise. Since the policy went into effect, about 13,000 men and women have been discharged from the armed forces–a trend that has continued under Obama’s watch.

No issue draws so clear a comparison to the dawn of the civil rights era than “don’t ask, don’t tell.” In 1948, Truman issued an executive order integrating the armed forces. That same year Gallup found that only 13 percent of Americans supported “having Negro and white troops throughout the U.S. armed services live and work together.”

That Obama has not acted on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” despite public support that Truman would have envied, spotlights the delicate political tightrope the president now walks.

Obama is consumed by an historic domestic agenda, ranging from stimulus legislation to health care reform. It’s no accident that he has withheld early engagement on the same issue that sidetracked Clinton’s first year.

But this is also not 1993. That year, one summer Gallup survey found that Americans were divided on the issue–48 percent supporting the policy and an equal share against. Today, about seven in 10 Americans are against “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Yet Obama clearly is not itching to enter the culture wars. He has, for example, said that fulfilling his campaign promise to eliminate hundreds of standing government restrictions on abortions was “not [his] highest legislative priority.”

This White House is also aware that many Democratic gains made in Congress in 2006 and 2008 were with culturally conservative constituencies.

But nationally, the momentum is there. In recent decades there has been a significant public shift on an array of gay rights issues, by Gallup’s tracking. As recently as 1987, 51 percent of Americans believed “school boards ought to have the right to fire teachers who are known homosexuals.” Only 28 percent agree today. Between 1978 and 2008, Americans support for gay equal rights rose from 56 to 89 percent.

Today, two-thirds of Americans believe hate crimes laws should protect homosexuals and that gay domestic partners deserve access to their partner’s employee benefits, like health insurance. More than seven in 10 Americans believe that gay domestic partners should have inheritance rights. A majority, 54 percent, support adoption rights for gay couples. As recently as 2004, public support for gay adoption was at 45 percent.

Cultural Acceptance and the M-word

Yet mainstream cultural acceptance for homosexuals remains another matter. Fifty-seven percent of Americans believe “homosexuality should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle,” merely a few percentage points higher than when the question was first asked in the early 1980s.

Only 35 percent of the public also believes a man or a woman is born gay, more than twice the portion who said the same in 1977. But that climb is hardly steep in the context of gays’ gains on civil rights issues.

That most Americans do not believe people are born gay is at the heart of the debate over whether the gay fight for equal rights is similar to hurdles faced by racial or religious minority groups. At the fore of this debate is gays fight for “marriage equality” and whether it’s an issue of rights or cultural recognition.

In recent years, a majority of the public has gradually come to support civil unions. But a majority of Americans, 57 percent in Gallup’s latest poll, remain opposed to terming those unions marriage.

Public opposition to gay marriage has held steady since Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same-sex wedlock five years ago. But stark fault lines do exist. Youth, Democrats and independents are far more likely to support gay wedlock than Republicans or seniors, for example.

In New England and across the East coast, where gay organizations have made the most progress, the Pew Research Center finds that a majority supports same-sex marriage.

And here to, on marriage, are echoes of the civil rights movement. As recently as 1983, Gallup found that half of Americans disapproved of marriage between blacks and whites. By 2007, only 15 percent disapproved.

But even this Democratic president has not, like the public overall, come to view the issue of gay marriage in the same terms as the push for unfettered wedlock between blacks and whites, which defines Obama’s own story.

For the time being, gay activists are earning concession prizes. Gay rights leader Kevin Jennings was assigned to a senior post in the Department of Education. Obama has also declared June gay pride month, to commemorate the Stonewall riots.

But in evoking Stonewall, Obama has again reached back to the civil rights battles that made his presidency possible. It’s an analogy, however, that begs another question. If the gay rights push is akin to the civil rights era, how far and how urgently is the first black president compelled to carry on the fight?  Article by David Paul Kuhn for RealClearPolitics.  For more news and information, click the link below.

Please add these those to this article.

Will Obama be Truman on Gay Rights? – Yahoo! News.

As president, Barack Obama has mentioned Jesus Christ in a number of high-profile public speeches — something his predecessor George W. Bush rarely did in such settings, even though Bush’s Christian faith was at the core of his political identity.

In his speech Thursday in Cairo, Obama told the crowd that he is a Christian and mentioned the Islamic story of Isra, in which Moses, Jesus and Mohammed joined in prayer.

At the University of Notre Dame on May 17, Obama talked about the good works he’d seen done by Christian community groups in Chicago. “I found myself drawn — not just to work with the church but to be in the church,” Obama said. “It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.”

And a month before that, Obama mentioned Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount at Georgetown University to make the case for his economic policies. Obama retold the story of two men, one who built his house on a pile of sand and the other who built his on a rock: “We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand,” Obama said. “We must build our house upon a rock.”

More than four months into the Obama presidency, a picture is emerging of a chief executive who is comfortable with public displays of his religion — although he has also paid tribute to other faiths and those he called “nonbelievers” during his inaugural address.

Obama’s invocation of the Christian Messiah is more overt than Americans heard in the public rhetoric of Bush in his time in the White House — even though Bush’s victories were powered in part by evangelical voters.

“I don’t recall a single example of Bush as president ever saying, ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ,’” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Christian group Family Research Council. “This is different.”

To Perkins, Obama’s overtly Christian rhetoric is a welcome development from an administration that he largely disagrees with on the issues, though Perkins sees a political motive behind it, as well.

“I applaud that. It gives people a sense of comfort,” Perkins said. “But I think it’s a veneer, a facade that covers over a lot of policies that are anti-Christian.” That includes, in his view, Obama’s stance in favor of abortion rights.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, the executive director of the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, doesn’t like the trend with Obama: “I don’t need to hear politicians tell me how religious they are,” Lynn said. “Obama in a very overt way does what Bush tended to do in a more covert way.”

Obama’s public embrace of his Christianity so far has not included choosing a church in the capital, and he has attended Sunday services only once since his election, on Easter Sunday. The White House said at the time the family was still looking for a spiritual home in Washington.

But inside his White House, Obama has placed his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships — run by a 26-year old Pentecostal minister named Josh DuBois — under the White House’s Domestic Policy Council. That was widely seen as an effort to involve a religious perspective in the administration’s policy decisions.

Also, religious leaders meet with White House policymakers on a regular basis — and help to shape decisions on matters large and small. A White House speechwriter working on Obama’s Egypt speech called several faith leaders to get their thoughts. After the White House unveiled its budget in April, officials convened a two-hour conference call with religious leaders to discuss how the spending plan would help the poor.

“President Obama is a committed Christian, and he’s being true to who he is,” DuBois told POLITICO. “There’s an appropriate role for faith in public life, and his remarks reflect that. And they also reflect a spirit of inclusivity that recognizes that we are a nation with a range of different religious backgrounds and traditions.”

Still, it is ironic that Obama, who rode a wave of young, Internet-savvy and more secular voters to the White House, would more freely invoke the name of Jesus Christ than did Bush.

In his first year as president, Bush mentioned “Jesus” or “Christ” a handful of times — but only in innocuous contexts, such as his Easter proclamation, a Christmas message and a proclamation on “Salvation Army Week.”

To be sure, Bush talked openly about his faith. On the day of his second inauguration as governor of Texas, Bush reportedly told Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, “I believe that God wants me to be president.” As a Texas governor running for president, Bush declared in a presidential debate that the philosopher he most identified with was Jesus.

And in an interview for Bob Woodward’s 2004 book “Plan of Attack,” Bush was asked whether he’d talked to his father, the President George H.W. Bush, about the decision to invade Iraq.

“There is a higher father that I appeal to,” Bush said.

But there are different political imperatives driving the two presidents. Obama has every incentive to broadcast his Christianity, while Bush, for other reasons, chose to narrowcast his religious references to a targeted audience.

For Obama, Christian rhetoric offers an opportunity to connect with a broader base of supporters in a nation in which 83 percent of Americans believe in God. What’s more, regularly invoking Jesus helps Obama minimize the number of American who believe he is a Muslim — a linkage that can be politically damaging. According to a Pew Research Center study, 11 percent of Americans believe, incorrectly, that Obama is a Muslim; it’s a number that is virtually unchanged from the 2008 presidential campaign.

Yet Obama has targeted his messages, too. He used speeches in Turkey and last week in Egypt to highlight the Muslim relatives in his past as a way to draw a connection with his Muslim audiences — something he shied away from during his presidential campaign.

For Bush, invoking Jesus publicly was fraught with political risk. He was so closely politically identified with the Christian right that overt talk of Christ from the White House risked alienating mainstream and secular voters. Bush instead quoted passages from scripture or Christian hymns, as he did in his 2003 State of the Union Address when he used the phrase “wonder-working power.” That sort of oblique reference resonated deeply with evangelical Christians but sailed largely unnoticed past secular voters.
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To some, the difference between the two presidents goes beyond rhetoric. David Kuo, a former official in Bush’s faith-based office who later became disillusioned with the president he served, worries that both men have exploited religious phraseology for political gain. “From a spiritual perspective, that’s a great and grave danger,” he said. “When God becomes identified with a political agenda, God gets screwed.”

And he suspects that Obama has an even larger goal: the resurrection of the largely dormant Christian Left, a tradition that encompasses Martin Luther King’s civil rights leadership and dates back as far as Dorothy Day, the liberal activist who co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in the 1930s.

Recast in 21st Century terms, that long-dormant stream of American political life could become a powerful political force. A Pew survey released May 21 found that even as Americans remain highly religious, there has there been a slow decline in the number of Americans with socially conservative values – especially among young voters. That creates an opening for Obama, especially at a time when some conservative evangelicals are telling pollsters they are frustrated and disillusioned with politics.

“In the long term, this could be huge,” said Stephen Schneck, director of the Life Cycle Institute at The Catholic University of America, who is active in left-leaning political efforts. “There are swing Catholics and swing Protestants even within the evangelicals. To the extent Obama can mobilize those people as part of a new Democratic coalition, that marginalizes Republicans even further.”   Article by Eamon Javers for Politico and Yahoo.  For more news and information, click the link for Yahoo and Politco.

Should Obama’s faith be on such bold display or is he over compensating for rumors about religious beliefs.

Obama invokes Jesus more than Bush – Yahoo! News.

President Barack Obama’s appointment of Alexia Kelley, founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, as director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives took the pro-choice movement by surprise. On Thursday, the day that news of the appointment leaked out, Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center and a quintessential Washington insider, told me that she “hadn’t heard anything about it till today, and we are trying to get to the bottom of it.”

What Greenberger and others will want to know is why the post, which includes oversight of the department’s faith-based grant-making in family planning, HIV and AIDS and in small-scale research into the effect of religion and spirituality on early sexual behavior, has gone to someone who both believes abortion should be illegal and opposes contraception. That’s right — Kelley’s group of self-described progressive Catholics takes a position held by only a small minority, that the Catholic church is right to prohibit birth control. Were there no qualified religious experts who hold more mainstream views on family planning and abortion, views that are consistent with those of President Obama?

The HHS budget for family-planning services grants to faith-based and community groups is more than $20 million. Can pro-family-planning religious groups expect a fair deal from a director who believes that birth control, even for married couples, is immoral? Will programs that provide contraception to adolescents get funded? Obama’s Feb. 5 Executive Order establishing a new Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships gave the office and its 11 satellites in federal agencies a policy role on the issues that are at the core of HHS’s sexual and reproductive health work: addressing teen pregnancy and reducing the need for abortion. How can an opponent of the single most effective way to do both — contraception — lead that effort in HHS enthusiastically and effectively?

Through Catholics in Alliance, Kelley has sought to narrow the interpretation of common ground on abortion to efforts to reduce the number of abortions by providing women who are already pregnant with economic support for continuing the pregnancy and making adoption easier. While pro-choice advocates have been in the forefront of efforts to increase funding for women and children and for pre- and postnatal care, few researchers believe that if pregnant women get the level of support common grounders are talking about, they will jump at the chance to have babies. If one is really serious about making it possible for women to avoid abortion, contraception is the single most important component of any program.

Kelley and other moderately progressive Catholic and evangelical groups owe their pull in the Democratic Party to the disappointment of 2004. They seized on the Democratic defeat in the 2004 elections as a means to push the party to the right on sex and reproduction. Democrats, stung by their near miss in Ohio, desperate to attract swing voters, eager to prove that they were “sensitive” to religion, took the bait.

With support from George Soros and Michael Kieschnick, the founder of Working Assets and Credo Mobile, groups like Sojourners, Faith in Public Life and Catholics in Alliance entered the electoral arena. Catholics in Alliance and its sister organization, Catholics United, were active in voter registration and organizing Catholic voters in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2006 and 2008. Presenting themselves as more Catholic than the pope — faithful to church teachings on contraception, abortion and everything else the majority of Catholics have long rejected — the groups insisted in press release after press release that good Catholics could vote for pro-choice candidates, so long as those candidates were also working to reduce the number of abortions. After all, they admitted, it was simply not possible in the current environment to make abortion illegal, so the next best option was pushing the numbers down.

In part, Kelley’s appointment is the usual political payback. Catholics and evangelicals including Kelley provided abortion cover for the president and for candidates like Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. A Democratic governor from a red state famous for the ferocity and electoral strength of its social conservatives, Sebelius won a second term in a landslide in 2006. Catholics in Alliance campaigned for her reelection. Though she faced heavy fire from the religious right when she was nominated, Sebelius is now the HHS secretary.

Kelley is a distinguished advocate of healthcare reform and the rights of poor people. For almost a decade, she worked for the Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Campaign for Human Development, a grant-making program roundly condemned by conservatives as too progressive. She entered electoral politics in 2004 when she served as the DNC liaison to the religious community. In 2005, she founded Catholics in Alliance. She has much to offer in government — but not at HHS. There are 10 other government agencies that have faith-based offices. A far less controversial placement could have been found at Labor, Housing and Urban Development, or the Department of Education.

A heated exchange about the appointment between Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice (disclosure: I was president of CFC for 25 years) and Catholics in Alliance/Catholics United is representative of the struggle between religious progressives who support gay marriage and reproductive freedom and those like Kelley who think war and abortion are the same evil. O’Brien was the first pro-choice leader to criticize Kelley’s appointment, and he went after her with a vengeance. In a press release, he called Kelley’s “abortion reduction rhetoric … simply a newly packaged antiabortion message,” claimed the group used “flawed economic data to support anti-poverty measures as a means to reduce the number of abortions,” and asserted the current policy fascination with “common ground” has devolved “into an abandonment of ideals.”

CFC backed up its assertions about the anti-family-planning and antiabortion agenda of Kelley and Catholics in Alliance with a report titled “The Trouble With Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.” The report asserted that the Catholic Alliance’s “position on abortion is firmly planted on the far right … In its own words: ‘Catholics in Alliance is pro-life. We support full legal protection for unborn children as a requirement of justice and as a matter of essential human rights.’” In a 2006 Voter Guide, Catholics in Alliance made a disturbing equation between war and abortion, saying that Catholics need to “build the essential conditions for a culture of life, to end affronts to human life such as poverty, abortion, torture and war.”

Statements like this undercut the alliance’s claim that its efforts at common ground seek to end the “culture war” that surrounds abortion. In response to the Catholics for Choice press release, Jennifer Goff, a spokeswoman for Catholics in Alliance, said her group “is working toward reaching common ground in order to make real progress on the moral and political challenges our country faces instead of resorting to spurious attacks launched by those who are more concerned with inflaming the culture wars than effecting positive change.” Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United, characterized O’Brien’s opposition and the CFC report as “simplistic,” “incendiary” and “a roadblock to progress.”

O’Brien’s most serious charge against Kelley is that under her leadership Catholics in Alliance used “flawed economic data to support anti-poverty measures as a means to reduce the number of abortions.” The misuse of research to promote ideology is a serious charge and if true would disqualify Kelley from an appointment that requires adherence to evidence-based policy setting. During the Bush administration, ideology was often a substitute for science, especially in the reproductive health field. Obama has promised a return to scientific integrity.

The charges relate to an August 2008 study by Penn State political science professor Joseph Wright commissioned by Catholics in Alliance. Called “Reducing Abortion in America: The Effect of Socioeconomic Factors,” the study is a perfect example of advocacy research gone awry. It claims that analysis of state level data on abortion from 1982 to 2000 shows that spending money on programs for job creation, primary and prenatal healthcare, and the nutrition program known as WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) substantially reduced abortion rates in states where such measures were taken. Given Kelley’s opposition to family planning, it’s the only hope she has that a credible argument could be made that abortions can be significantly reduced without family planning.

In November, following the elections, the study was removed from the Web site and later replaced with a new version that plays down the claims of significant reductions in abortion rates based on spending for programs such as WIC. The new version attempts to correct a series of serious methodological and interpretation errors in the original study. Social science researchers on both sides of the abortion issue expressed concerns about the study, and one coauthor, Professor Michael Bailey of Georgetown University, removed his name from the revised report. Given the serious methodological weaknesses of the first study, there is little reason to assume a second take by the same author can be trusted.

Pro-choice leaders other than O’Brien have not yet commented on the Kelley appointment; most are still reeling from Dr. Tiller’s murder. One hopes they will turn their attention to this appointment and demand a review of Kelley’s qualifications for this post. Pro-choice groups also contributed to the president’s election. They deserve appointees who agree with the platform on which the president ran. The pro-choice movement’s recommendations for pro-choice appointees to the faith-based office’s advisory council were ignored. Now, after the Kelley appointment, the mission going forward must be to ensure that any additional staff members appointed to faith-based centers in Cabinet-level agencies reflect the pro-choice, pro-family-planning values of the administration. As Greenberger and others try to get to the bottom of the Kelley appointment, greater oversight of, and consultation on, future appointments need to be secured.  Article by Frances Kissling.  Originally printed in Salon at www.salon.com.  Please visit their site by clicking the link below.

Frances Kissling is a visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the former president of Catholics for a Free Choice.

Obama’s poor choice for faith leader | Salon.

Asked whether “marriages between same-sex couples” should or shouldn’t be “recognized by the law as valid”, 40 percent of the sample said those unions should be valid while 57 percent said they should not.

Those number are essentially unchanged from a May 2008 Gallup survey but less optimistic for proponents of gay marriage than a May 2007 poll in which 46 percent said same sex marriages should be valid while 53 percent said they should not.

The USA Today/Gallup survey also asked whether “allowing two people of the same sex to marry” would change change society for the better, the worse or have no effect. Thirteen percent said it would make things better, 48 percent said it would make things worse and 36 percent said allowing gay people to marry would have no effect on society.

This poll data contrasts directly with data from several other national survey outlets that have shown a growing acceptance toward the idea of gay marriage.

In a late April Washington Post/ABC News poll, 49 percent said it should be legal for gay couples to marry — a thirteen point increase in that number since a June 2006 Post/ABC survey.

What gives? Opinions vary, although it’s worth noting that the wording of the question could well have some effect on the response. While USA Today/Gallup asks whether gay couples should have the “same rights as traditional marriages”, the Post/ABC survey simply asks whether it should be “legal or illegal for gay and lesbian/homosexual couples to get married”.

The first phrasing draws a direct contrast between gay marriage and “traditional” marriage while the second makes no mention of heterosexual marriage.

While the data out of Gallup does give us some pause when it comes to analyzing the political potency of the gay marriage debate, the majority of evidence suggests that gay marriage is still an issue that animates the bases of both parties — particularly social conservatives — but is not one that the middle of the country (ideologically) finds deeply objectionable.

That said, between the California ruling yesterday and the ongoing debate in New Hampshire about the legalization of gay marriage, this is an issue that will draw significant media attention over the coming months and will certainly be a topic of conversation in the 2012 Republican presidential primary fight.  Article by Chril Cillizza for the Washington Post.  Click the link below for more news and information at www.washingtonpost.com.  Support your local newspaper and the Washington Post.

How do you feel about the gay marriage issue?  Please share your thoughts below.

The Fix – The Gay Marriage (Polling) Conundrum.

It’s probably just wishful thinking.

Broun’s simple congressional resolution aimed at honoring the Good Book has produced a push-back of biblical proportion in the blogosphere, with critics dismissing it as either unconstitutional or a waste of time. Jews in Congress and atheist activists are dismissing the resolution, while none of the many Democrats in Congress who are Christian have bothered to sign on as co-sponsors.

According to GovTrak.us, the resolution is among the most-blogged-about pieces of legislation, with most posts less than complimentary in nature.

“Does that mean 2009 is not the year of the Bible?” mocked Rep. Barney Frank ­(D-Mass.), who is Jewish. “What is 2012 the year of? The Quran?”

“That’s an endorsement of religion by the federal government, and we shouldn’t be doing that,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), even though he has introduced his own legislation dealing with religion.

“Republican lawmakers with apparently too much time on their hands and no solutions to offer the country are pushing a resolution that will not address the nation’s problems or advance prosperity or even untangle their previous governing mistakes,” blogged the Progressive Puppy.

Broun rejects the critiques leveled at this effort.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Christianity,” he said in an interview with POLITICO. Rather, he says, it seeks to recognize that the Bible played an integral role in the building of the United States, including providing the basis for our freedom of religion that allows Muslims, Hindus and even atheists to vocalize their own beliefs.

And even as Nadler criticized Broun, he has done his own share of mixing religion and legislation.

Last year, he introduced a bill that would overturn a federal appeals court ruling — an “idiot” decision, he says — that a condominium board in Chicago had the right to ban Jews from installing mezuzahs, which consist of a piece of parchment inscribed with a specific religious text put inside a case and hung on a door frame.

Condo boards shouldn’t be able to interfere in an individual’s right to practice his or her religion, Nadler said.

But he himself declined to install a mezuzah on his congressional office door when asked by a rabbi, even though he does so at home.

“That’s my religious symbol, and the office does not belong to me; it belongs to the people of the congressional district, and no one should feel uncomfortable walking into the office if it’s not their religion,” Nadler said, describing his feelings on religion and Congress.

“Same thing with the Bible. … It’s not everybody’s religion. And the federal government should not be imposing religious viewpoints.”

Atheists, who might feel themselves a particular target with the declaration of a biblical year, aren’t even worried about Broun’s effort.

“Right now, we’re seeing atheism on such a rise,” said David Silverman, vice president and national spokesman of American Atheists, a group dedicated to fighting for the civil rights of atheists.

“We are seeing Christianity on such a dramatic decline that we’re not particularly worried about it. We’re thinking that this kind of old-style George W. Bush Republicanism is about to go away,” Silverman said, referring to the latest Pew Forum survey of American religious life, which showed nonreligious Americans as the fastest-growing group.

And it may be the best-selling book of all time, as Broun’s resolution points out, but the Bible isn’t such a popular legislative topic.

A search of Thomas, the online congressional database, for “Bible” yields just one other bill: a resolution to have the “Lincoln-Obama Bible” on permanent display in the Capitol Visitor Center.

The resolution specifically asks the president “to issue a proclamation calling upon citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of the Holy Scripture which has profoundly influenced and shaped the United States and its great democratic form of government.”

As for the economy, health care, global warming and all the other issues on Congress’ plate?

“While we must focus on fiscal policies that provide relief to families during these tough economic times, an endeavor I have been working tirelessly towards in this Congress, we must also not forget to protect and celebrate our fundamental freedoms that the Bible has influenced,” Broun said.

Broun has gathered 15 co-sponsors, all Republicans, but says he’s looking for more and hopes Democrats will sign on, as well.

“This is not a partisan issue,” he said. “I want it to be bipartisan.”

Whether he’s successful or not — the same measure didn’t go anywhere last year — at least Broun and his fellow supporters can take heart in one fact: They already had a “year of the Bible.”

Ronald Reagan designated 1983 as one, with Congress’ blessing.  Article by Victoria McGrane for Politico.com.  For more news and information, click the link below for www.politico.com and Yahoo news.

Please share your thoughts below.

The Bible bill? – Yahoo! News.

First and foremost are the labels, which cloud the issue by oversimplifying it — that’s why the advocates picked them. Most people are neither pro-choice nor pro-life, but both; we cherish life, we value choice, and we trade them off with great reluctance. Good luck explaining that to someone politely requesting a binary answer over the phone. (Read “The Grassroots Abortion War.”)

But if we place any stock at all in those labels, something dramatic has happened. In 1995, when Gallup started asking the question, the split was 56-33 in favor of abortion rights. Now the lines have crossed, and 51% call themselves pro-life while only 42% say pro-choice. It’s a shift that stretches past personal convictions and into legal constraints. For 35 years, a majority of Americans have wanted abortion to be, essentially, legal with limits. But the movement towards greater restraint is clear. In the mid 90s, when pro-choice forces were especially dominant, only 12% believed abortion was always wrong: that number has nearly doubled. At either extreme, slightly more people now believe abortion should be illegal under all circumstances (23%) than legal under all circumstances (22%). (See a TIME graphic on the growth of crisis pregnancy centers.)

So what’s changed? Gallup attributes the new numbers to Republicans purifying their views: 70% now call themselves pro-life, up 10 points in a year. But that’s to be expected; when fewer people call themselves Republican, the party condenses into a pool of true believers. It’s the people in the middle who are constantly weighing which restrictions are reasonable. A new Pew poll finds that while a majority of independents said abortion should be legal in most cases as recently as October, just 44% do so now. This may inspire some introspection on the part of political operatives in both parties who attribute the Republicans’ present frailty to its orthodoxy on social issues. The GOP may have fielded some hapless messengers, but their message, on abortion at least, may be closer to the mainstream than Democrats care to acknowledge.

I think the numbers, inadequate and simplified though they may be, reflect deeper changes — some generational, some legal, some technological. People under 30 are more opposed to abortion than those older, perhaps because their first baby pictures were often taken in utero. I also wonder if younger women are now sure enough of their sexual autonomy and their choices generally, that they don’t view limits on abortion as attacks on their freedom overall. The calculation of rights subtly shifts, and the fetus, as it develops, asserts its claim on the conscience.

Of course anti-abortion activists have worked hard to make the issue more intimate. Nebraska is the latest state to debate what activists call “window to the womb” laws, which require women be shown an ultrasound of the fetus before going ahead with an abortion. The Missouri Senate just passed a bill that would require doctors to talk about a fetus’ development and its ability to feel pain. Opponents of “informed consent” laws that talk about fetal pain warn that doing so just causes the woman pain, and call it emotional blackmail. But there is no denying that the battleground has shifted.

As, most obviously, has the political context. Abortion has forever been blown by electoral trade winds; when the right was in charge, people feared the return of coat hangers in back alleys. Now that the left leads, they fear abortion on demand. The very meaning of the labels adjusts; calling yourself pro-choice at a time when a liberal Democratic President and allies in Congress are lifting abortion restraints may imply no qualms at all, and that’s not where most people are. (See a TIME graphic on abortions.)

The President appeared to understand this when he spoke at Notre Dame’s commencement, addressing the possibility of common ground and need for “open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words.” The protesters were gathered outside; the issue of a Catholic university honoring a pro-choice president had roiled the campus for weeks. But rather than defending his position on the issue, or even explaining it, Obama talked about how to talk about it. “I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away,” he said. “Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it — indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory — the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.”

You can tell Obama isn’t interested in culture war. He’s left gay marriage to the states, dropped family planning money from the stimulus bill, refused to fund needle exchange and says he wants to “tamp down some of the anger” around the abortion debate. He is inviting all sides into the White House to discuss ways to reduce the number of abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies. (Read: “Unpacking Obama’s Notre Dame Address.”)

My theory? People always apply the brakes to whichever side has the momentum. The stakes are too high, the pain too private, whatever decision a woman makes, to see the issue treated as an ideological toy or fundraising tool. Obama got in trouble in his talk last August with Rick Warren for saying that the question of when life begins was “above my pay grade.” But just because he was glib doesn’t mean he was wrong.  Article by Nancy Gibbs for Time Magazine.  For more news and information, click the link below for www.TIME.com.  Support the printed word.  Time is the leading national news magazine.

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Understanding America’s Shift on Abortion – TIME.

“I plead with all those responsible to explore every possible avenue,” the pope said, “So that both peoples may live in peace in a homeland of their own, within secure and internationally recognized borders.”

He cited the Biblical prophet Isaiah on the meaning of “security” — a justification Israel often uses for its actions against Palestinians.

“Security — batah (in Hebrew) — arises from trust and refers not just to the absence of threat but also to the sentiment of calmness and confidence,” he said in a speech at Israeli President Shimon Peres’ residence.

Later, speaking to religious leaders at Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem, the pope called for interfaith understanding and cooperation.

“Since many are quick to point out the readily apparent differences between religions, as believers or religious persons we are presented with the challenge to proclaim with clarity what we share in common,” the pope said.

Controversy erupted after the pope’s statement when Taysir Tamimi, chief of Muslim Sharia courts in the West Bank and Gaza, commandeered the microphone and began to criticize Israel in Arabic. He was not scheduled to speak.

Some people clapped, but many appeared uncomfortable and the Latin Patriarch, Fouad Twal, walked across the stage and tapped Tamimi on the hand as he implored him to stop. Tamimi finished the speech after several minutes and sat down. It was not clear whether the pope understood the tirade, and he did not react.

Muslims and Christians must work together against Israel, Tamimi said.

“We struggle together and we suffer together from the injustice of the Israeli occupation and its oppressive practices, and we look forward to freedom and independence,” he said.

Tamimi also criticized Israel’s West Bank separation barrier as the “racist wall,” saying it “turned it [Palestine] into a giant prison and keeps Muslims and Christians from praying in their churches and mosques.” Speaking about Gaza, Tamimi said Israel’s “aggression violated human rights in a way unprecedented in this era.”

“His holiness the pope, I call on you in the name of the one God to condemn these crimes and pressure the Israeli government to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people,” Tamimi said.

Controversy dogged the pope even as he arrived in the country, with Israelis and Palestinians engaged in a dispute over the location of the press center for the papal trip.

Palestinian officials set up an alternative press center, arguing that the Jerusalem Municipal Building, the site of the official one, was linked to Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian homes built without permission in East Jerusalem.

Both sides claim the neighborhood.

Israeli police shut down the alternative press center, according to police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld, on the grounds that the Palestinian Authority was not allowed to host events in Jerusalem.

The pope also made reference to the Holocaust, an issue that sparked controversy for the Roman Catholic Church earlier this year.

“It is right and fitting that during my stay in Israel that I will have the opportunity to honor the memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Shoah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. “And to pray that humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude.”

The pope said anti-Semitism was “totally unacceptable.”

Benedict drew the ire of Jews and German Catholics this year by rehabilitating a bishop who had been excommunicated, and who had disputed the number of Jews killed in concentration camps during World War II. His excommunication was unrelated to his Holocaust denial.

The Catholic Church is “profoundly and irrevocably committed to reject all anti-Semitism,” Benedict said at the time.

The pope later on Monday laid a wreath at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, in memory of victims of the Holocaust.

He clutched a small cross and bowed his head in front of the eternal flame at the memorial, where he was accommpanied by Peres and other dignitaries.

The pope, quiet and somber, quoted the Biblical Book of Lamentations before saying he was “deeply grateful” for the opportunity to stand in silence and pray at the site.

The pope arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport as part of an eight-day trip that takes in places of unequaled religious resonance for the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics. He was due to meet Jerusalem’s Muslim grand mufti and two chief rabbis .

His first stop in the region was in Jordan, where he called for greater respect for women at a historic Mass in Amman on Sunday. 

In the 13-minute address, he urged Christians in the Middle East to persevere — an acknowledgment that the Christian population has declined sharply in the past 50 years in the region where the religion was born.

He also called on the faithful to oppose terrorism through good examples.

Benedict’s trip includes stops in Bethlehem and Nazareth, which Monday he called “the setting for the events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I take my place in a long line of Christian pilgrims to these shores,” he said.

It is the first papal visit to some of Christianity’s most holy places since Pope John Paul II made the pilgrimage in 2000.  Story filed by CNN.  For more news, information and video, click the link below for www.cnn.com.  CNN is the leading name in cable news.

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Pope addresses Holocaust, Mideast conflict on Israel visit – CNN.com.

“Sadly, this God-given role of the dignity of women has not always been understood and esteemed,” the pontiff said on his first visit to Jordan as pope.

“By its public witness of respect for women … the Church in the Holy Land can make an important contribution to the advancement of a culture of true humanity and the building of the civilization of love,” the pontiff said.

He also called on the faithful to oppose terrorism through their good example.

Living a good Christian life “means bearing witness to the love which inspires us to lay own our lives in the service of others, and thus to counter ways of thinking which justify taking innocent lives,” he said.

The pontiff called on Christians in the Middle East to persevere, an acknowledgment that the Christian population has declined sharply in the past 50 years in the region where the religion was born.

“May the courage of Christ our shepherd inspire and sustain you daily … to maintain the church’s presence in the changing social fabric of these ancient lands,” he said.

The pontiff addressed young people in particular, telling them: “Jesus needs you.”

He encouraged dialogue among Christians of different denominations and people of other faiths and cultures.

The 13-minute address at Amman International Stadium comes days after the pope arrived in the country as part of his weeklong visit to the Mideast to promote a good relationship between Muslims and Christians.

“Muslims and Christians, precisely because of the burden of our common history, so often marked by misunderstanding, must today strive to be known and recognized as worshippers of God, faithful to prayer, eager to uphold and lift by the almighty decrees,” the pontiff said Saturday in an address at King Hussein Mosque in Amman.

It is the first papal visit to some of Christianity’s most holy places since Pope John Paul II made the pilgrimage in 2000.

On Monday, the pope will fly to Tel Aviv to begin his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. He is scheduled to pay courtesy visits to Jerusalem’s Muslim grand mufti and two chief rabbis.  Article reprinted from CNN.com.  For more news, information and video, click the link below for www.cnn.com.

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Pope urges respect for women during Mass in Jordan – CNN.com.

The pope was met at the airport by Jordans King Abdullah and praised the moderate Arab country as a leader in efforts to promote peace in the region and dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

The pope rankled many in the Muslim world with a 2006 speech in which he quoted a Medieval text that characterized some of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman,” particularly “his command to spread by the sword the faith.”

The pope has already said he was “deeply sorry” over the reaction to his speech and that the passage he quoted did not reflect his own opinion.

“My visit to Jordan gives me a welcome opportunity to speak of my deep respect for the Muslim community, and to pay tribute to the leadership shown by his majesty the king in promoting a better understanding of the virtues proclaimed by Islam,” Benedict said shortly after landing in Amman.

But his past comments continue to fuel criticism by some Muslims.

Jordan’s hard-line Muslim Brotherhood said Friday before the pope arrived that its members would boycott his visit because he did not issue a public apology ahead of time as they demanded.

Brotherhood spokesman Jamil Abu-Bakr said the absence of a public apology meant “obstacles and boundaries will remain and will overshadow any possible understanding between the pope and the Muslim world.”

The Brotherhood is Jordan’s largest opposition group. Although it commands a small bloc in parliament, it wields considerable sway, especially among poor Jordanians.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Vatican has made all possible clarifications, telling Associated Press Television News that “we cannot continue until the end of the world to repeat the same clarifications.”

Despite the controversy, Benedict expressed hope his visit and the power of the Catholic church could help further peace efforts between Israelis and Palestinians.

“We are not a political power but a spiritual power that can contribute,” Benedict told reporters on the plane before he landed in Amman.

The pope will also visit Israel and the Palestinian territories during his week-long tour.

Jordan’s king praised the pope and said the world must reject “ambitious ideologies of division.”

“We welcome your commitment to dispel the misconceptions and divisions that have harmed relations between Christians and Muslims,” said Abdullah.

The pope was also met at the airport by diplomats and Muslim and Christian leaders. A Jordanian army band equipped with bagpipes and drums played the Vatican and Jordanian national anthems before the pope and the king inspected the honor guard.

Abdullah Abdul-Qader, a cleric at Amman’s oldest mosque, told worshippers during Friday prayers to welcome the pope’s visit.

“I urge you to show respect for your fellow Christians as they receive their church leader,” said Abdul-Qader at the Al-Husseini mosque.

Christians make up 3% of Jordan’s 5.8 million people.

Benedict’s three-day stay in Jordan is his first visit to an Arab country as pope. During his time in the country, Benedict is scheduled to meet with Muslim religious leaders at Amman’s largest mosque — his second visit to a Muslim place of worship since becoming pope in 2005. He prayed in Istanbul’s famed Blue Mosque, a gesture that helped calm the outcry over his remarks.

The pope is also expected to meet Iraqi Christians driven from their homeland by violence. About 40 young Iraqi refugees crowded into a tiny Catholic church in Amman on Friday, nervously practicing their last lesson before Benedict administers their first communion on Sunday.

“I really want to meet the pope,” said Cecile Adam, an 11-year-old whose family fled Baghdad. “I think he can do something to help Iraq because Jesus gave him a good position and Jesus wants us to be happy.”  Article by the Associated Press, via USA Today.  For more news and information, click the link below for AP and www.usatoday.com.

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Pope expresses respect for Islam in Jordan – USATODAY.com.

When Pew researchers set out last year to map the U.S.’s religious landscape with a groundbreaking survey of more than 35,000 people, they expected fairly straightforward answers to questions about individual religious affiliations. (The survey included more detailed questions about religious beliefs and practices than have been asked in past censuses; the 2010 census will not ask about religion at all.) What the Pew researchers didn’t anticipate is that fully 44% of Americans have changed faiths at least once. Some converted from one religion or denomination to another; others grew up with no tradition only to adopt one as an adult; still others left their childhood faith and found themselves with no religious home. (See pictures of John 3:16 in pop culture.)

“It was a phenomenon,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. “We needed to make greater sense of it.” So the researchers followed up with more than 2,800 of the original respondents who had reported changing religious traditions and asked why they had decided to leave and/or join a faith.

The answers were so varied that analysts nearly ran out of codes to categorize them. “The U.S. has an unmatched religious dynamism,” explains Lugo. “It’s an open religious marketplace as well as a very competitive one. This is the supermarket cereal aisle.” Without an established state religion, all faiths can freely exist in the U.S. but must compete for adherents in order to survive. (See pictures of a drive-in church.)

With all those options, choosing a church (or mosque or synagogue or temple) isn’t just a matter of theology for many Americans. They might decide where to worship because they adhere to a broad tradition — like Protestantism — or because they are drawn to a particular denomination, subdenomination or even an individual congregation. Or they might choose based on location or children’s activities or the quality of preaching or music or potluck offerings. The concept of church-shopping itself is uniquely American. “‘What is your religious preference?’ is such an American question,” Lugo says. “We can’t ask that on surveys in other countries. In most places, religion is an assigned identity. It’s part of your family, part of your heritage.”

Despite the fluidity of religious affiliation in the U.S., the Pew study discovered some commonalities among those who switch. Former Catholics who either switched to another tradition or became unaffiliated cited unhappiness with church teachings on abortion and homosexuality and disagreements over the role of women in the church. Protestants were more likely to switch because they married someone from another tradition. And if they eventually left religion altogether, they were most likely of all formerly religious adherents to have tried several different traditions before giving up — 38% of unaffiliated former Protestants had switched traditions twice, and 32% had switched three or more times.

But what did Americans mean when they checked the box marked “no affiliation”? Pew researchers found that this category challenges assumptions about those who have “left” religion. In the 2008 survey, 16% of Americans said they had no religious affiliations, but of that group, only 10% identified themselves as atheists and 15% as agnostics. Far from joining in religion-bashing, roughly 4 out of 10 currently unaffiliated said religion is at least somewhat important in their life. And many said they are still hoping to eventually find the right religious home. Among those who were raised Catholic or Protestant, the study says, “1 in 3 say they just have not found the right religion yet.” (Read “Finding God on YouTube.”)

For the most part, the unaffiliated report deep dissatisfaction with organized religion, believing that it focuses too much on rules and that religious leaders are too concerned with acquiring power and wealth. “In the 2008 survey, when we asked other religion questions — whether they believed in God, how often they prayed or attended religious services — it was clear that 40% of these unaffiliated people are fairly religious,” says Lugo. “They are not indifferent or hostile to religion.” Indeed, only 32% of the unaffiliated agreed with the statement that religion is superstition, and even fewer (23%) said belief was important in their decision to leave a religious tradition.

Perhaps most surprising to the Pew researchers was that of the 7% of Americans who were raised unaffiliated, only half remained unaffiliated as adults. “Only Jehovah’s Witness has a lower retention rate,” says Pew analyst Gregory Smith. Unlike the disillusioned Catholics and Protestants who fled organized religion, these new adherents tend to see the positive aspects of being affiliated with a religious institution. When asked for the main reason they joined their current religion, 33% of the formerly unaffiliated cited the benefits of being spiritually and socially connected to a community, and 20% said it was a choice driven by personal spirituality and a sense that something was missing from their life.

These findings won’t be music to the ears of Sam Harris or fans of his best seller The End of Faith. But they do confirm that a stubborn, insistent strain of religiosity continues to infuse Americans — even those who claim they’ve left organized religion behind. Article by Amy Sullivan for Time magazine.  For more news and information, click the link below for Time magazine on-line.

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Church-Shopping: Why Do Americans Change Faiths? – TIME.