c. 2000 Religion News Service
UCC, ACLU Joins Anti-Chief Wahoo Protest
(RNS) The United Church of Christ has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in spearheading a move to allow people around Cleveland’s Jacobs Field to protest the use of the Cleveland Indians name and its mascot, Chief Wahoo.
Leaders of the 1.4 million-member church, which is based in Cleveland, say the team’s name and mascot are offensive to Native Americans. ACLU officials, meanwhile, say team efforts to bar protesters around the park violate the First Amendment.
The coalition filed suit on Friday (March 10) in U.S. District Court, asking a judge to allow the protesters around the stadium. Team officials say the six-year-old complex is private property and has barred and arrested some protesters.
In a statement issued by the ACLU, lawyers said the complex was built with public funds, is managed by a board appointed by Cleveland’s mayor and has an executive director “on loan” from Cuyahoga County. “The ties to local government are so broad and so deep that (the complex) is little more than an extension of the government,” said Gino Scarselli, an ACLU lawyer.
The Rev. John H. Thomas, the church’s president, said the First Amendment rights of Native Americans are especially important because “for far too long, the voice of some has been ignored and distorted.”
Since 1991, the church has pushed for the end of logos and mascots that “demean” Native Americans. Thomas said the end of Chief Wahoo would be a much-needed sign of respect toward Native Americans.
It would be “a symbolic step of hearing the voices of our sisters and brothers in the Native American community,” Thomas said, that would allow Americans to “move past the genocide and hatred of 500 years.”
Gay Think Tanks Launch Campaign to Count Same-Sex Couples
(RNS) Two prominent think tanks on gay issues have launched a campaign to encourage same-sex couples to be counted in the U.S. Census.
The “Make Your Family Count” campaign is being sponsored by the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies and the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
“This campaign has one simple message: Our families exist and we must be counted,” said Paula Ettelbrick, family policy director of the task force’s policy institute. “Over the last 10 years our community has had a major impact in changing family policies, from domestic partnership to second parent adoption. It’s time that we include our families in the official count.”
The campaign is encouraging same-sex couples living in the same household to check off the “unmarried partners” option when asked to describe their relationships on census forms.
The category of “unmarried partners” first appeared on the census form in 1990 and about 150,000 households self-reported as same-sex unmarried couples. The think tanks sponsoring the campaign believe that figure is a “severe undercount” of same-sex couples.
In a separate, but related matter, the West Virginia Legislature passed a ban on homosexual marriages on Saturday (March 11).
Gov. Cecil Underwood called the ban “the right thing to do.”
The House approved the legislation by a vote of 96-3 and sent it to the governor for his signature. The Senate previously passed the measure unanimously.
“We were concerned we didn’t have a statute,” Underwood said in an Associated Press report. “We could be forced into recognizing same-sex marriages from other states.”
The bill would permit marriage licenses to be issued only to couples consisting of a man and a woman.
Chuck Smith, co-chairman of the West Virginia Lesbian and Gay Coalition, voiced disappointment in the measure’s passage.
“The main purpose of the bill is to say, once again, that people who are gay and lesbian are second-class citizens,” he said.
Briefs Filed in Scouts Case
(RNS) Conservative Protestants and the U.S. Catholic Conference are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that said the Boy Scouts of America must accept an openly gay New Jersey scout leader, saying the ruling violates the right of private organizations to recruit leaders who share their views.
The USCC, social policy arm of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Family Research Council and American Center for Law and Justice have filed “friend of the court” briefs before the Supreme Court hears the case, Boy Scouts of America and Monmouth Council vs. James Dale, on April 26.
James Dale, an openly gay scout master, sued the Boy Scouts after they dismissed him, saying his sexual orientation was incompatible with the organization’s standards. The New Jersey Supreme Court said the Boy Scouts violated the state’s anti-discrimination law in firing Dale.
The brief filed by the Catholic Conference on Friday (March 10) said the issue was not about gays and lesbians but instead about the rights of a private organization to determine its own standards and who will represent those standards.
“We believe … that private associations may not be ordered to retain a leader who has acted contrary to an association’s mission and purpose,” the brief said. “This principle finds application in both common law and constitutional law, for to penalize a private institution for terminating a leader who acts contrary to the institution’s moral code offends the First Amendment.”
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said earlier this month the Boy Scouts case could set a dangerous precedent for churches and other religious groups.
“Most Southern Baptists understand that what we allow a government entity _ in this case the New Jersey Supreme Court _ to do to the Boy Scouts today, they may very well try with religious organizations and churches tomorrow,” Land said, according to the Associated Press.
Priest Charged Again in Guatemalan Bishop’s Death
(RNS) After nearly two years of investigation, Guatemalan authorities have again charged a priest in the death of Bishop Juan Geradi, the human rights crusader bludgeoned to death after releasing a report accusing the military of being responsilbe for gross human rights violations.
Although prosecutors had been looking into whether the military was involved in the slaying of the popular Geradi, the re-arrest of the Rev. Mario Orantes, suggests they have shifted their attention back to suspects within the Catholic church, the Associated Press reported Friday (March 10).
Orantes was Geradi’s assistant and lived in the parish rectory with the bishop at the time of the murder.
Gerardi was killed two days after releasing the church’s human rights report implicating Guatemala’s military in the overwhelming majority of the more than 200,000 deaths stemming from the country’s 36-year-old civil war.
The re-arrested priest had originally spent seven months in jail on murder charges but was released in February 1999, when Guatemalan and international human rights groups charged prosecutors were overlooking the possibility of military involvement in the slaying.
Two members of the military, Sgt. Byron Lima and his father, retired Col. Disrael Lima, are also in custody as is church cook, Margarita Lopez. None of the three has been formally charged as Orantes has.
Ill. Gov. Appoints Review Board, While N.H. Votes to End Death Penalty
(RNS) After suspending executions in his state pending further study of the death penalty, Illinois Gov. George Ryan appointed a panel on Thursday (March 9) to examine why more death sentences have been overturned than carried out in his state.
Ryan, a Republican and death penalty supporter, halted executions in January after state records showed the state has executed 12 death row inmates since 1977, while 13 have been released. A broad spectrum of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders have called on President Clinton and Congress to follow Ryan’s lead and impose a moratorium on federal death sentences. Clinton so far has refused to do so.
“Until I can be sure that anyone sentenced to death in Illinois is guilty and until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, nobody will meet that fate,” Ryan said, according to the Associated Press.
Ryan named former federal judge Frank McGarr to head the panel. Former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon and former U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan will co-chair the commission. A similar committee has been set up in Indiana, although Gov. Frank O’Bannon has not suspended executions.
Also on Thursday, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted to abolish the Granite State’s death penalty, even though the state currently has no prisoners on death row and hasn’t executed an inmate since 1939.
Death penalty supporters in New Hampshire say the state can use the death penalty as a bargaining tool to prompt plea bargains for life sentences, even though the state rarely uses capital punishment. The bill now moves to the state senate, but Gov. Jeanne Shaheen has vowed to veto the measure.
Senators Challenge Putin on Anti-Semitism
(RNS) Encouraging him to “make fighting anti-Semitism one of the priorities of your new administration,” two U.S. senators sent a letter to acting Russian President Vladimir Putin urging him to denounce “the rise in anti-Semitism rhetoric heard at both the national and local levels of Russian society and politics.”
The letter, dated March 9 and signed by 96 other senators, was sent by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Gordon H. Smith, R-Ore., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on European Affairs and a commissioner on the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets.
“Anti-Semitism in Russia must not become a weapon in the struggle for power by political parties,” the letter read.
“Indecisive actions on the part of the Russian government only further feed the belief that hate is an allowable and integral component of political life. The hate-filled rhetoric of a number of Communist Party leaders, some of whom retain important parliamentary positions, must be condemned by your strong deed and word. … I believe that it is imperative that you demonstrate, through your emphatic disagreement with those who espouse anti-Semitism in Russia, your understanding of the importance the Russian government places upon religious freedom.”
Last year Smith and Biden sent a similar letter to Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yelstin. In the letter sent to Putin, the senators also warned that “violence follows hate,” citing the bombing of several Moscow synagogues in May of last year.
“The threat of growing anti-Semitism in Russia remains real,” said Biden. “President Putin must establish a firm precedent that religious intolerance of any kind at any level is unacceptable.”
Carey Asks Review of Canterbury Role
(RNS) Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has commissioned a review of how his office, with its combination of diocesan, national and international responsibilities, works and how it should develop in the future.
The review will be conducted by a six-member committee headed by the former Foreign Secretary Lord Douglas Hurd.
Although there is no question of creating anything like an Anglican Vatican _ a concept church observers said makes members of the Church of England shudder with horror _ there has been a marked and significant increase in the size of Canterbury’s staff, especially in the last 30 years.
This reflects the office’s growing international responsibilities.
For example, church officials said, the Lambeth Conference, which brings together all the bishops of the Anglican Communion, was small enough in 1968 to meet in Church House, Westminster. The 1978 Lambeth Conference had to move to the University of Kent at Canterbury, and by the 1998 Conference even that venue was cramped.
Moreover, Lambeth 1968 instituted the Anglican Consultative Council, which meets every two or three years, and Lambeth 1978 asked the primates _ leaders of the church’s provinces around the world _ to meet every two years.
In addition, the custom has developed of the archbishop visiting the provinces of the Anglican Communion as a means of cementing the cohesion of a communion based on a shared history and theology rather than on a constitutional or hierarchical framework.
As a result, the archbishop usually spends at least a month, if not two, each year overseas. This year, he has visited South Africa. Later this week he is visiting Ireland before going to Portugal for the Primates’ Meeting to be held in Oporto from March 22 to 29.
At home his responsibilities are such that the actual running of his diocese of Canterbury has long been delegated to the Bishop of Dover, whose position as a virtual diocesan bishop rather than a mere suffragan was recognized by the general synod at its last meeting by making him an ex officio member of the House of Bishops.
Cardinal Ignatius Kung, Leader of Chinese Catholics, Dies
(RNS) Cardinal Ignatius Kung, who was imprisoned for three decades for defying Chinese government attempts to control Catholics through a state-run church, died Sunday (March 12) of stomach cancer. He was 98.
Pope John Paul II praised the cardinal for his “heroic fidelity to Christ amid persecution and imprisonment” in a telegram to the bishop of Bridgeport, Conn.
Kung died at the home of his nephew, Joseph Kung, in Stamford, Conn.
“Many people, because of his example, took the risk of defending the church, of defending the pope and, as a result, literally hundreds, or thousands, went to jail,” said Joseph Kung, president of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, which monitors government treatment of the millions of Catholics who worship outside the official Chinese Catholic Church.
Born in 1901 in Shanghai, Ignatius Kung was named bishop of Shanghai and apostolic administrator of the diocese of Suzhou and Nanjing shortly after communists founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
The bishop, later secretly named a cardinal, shunned the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association that was backed by the government and oversaw a group of devout Catholics called the Legion of Mary, the Associated Press reported.
He was arrested in 1955, accused of defying the church and sentenced to life in prison. He gained his release 30 years later and was given permission to travel to the United States in 1988 to seek treatment for health problems.
Quote of the Day: Gospel Music Artist and Pastor Andrae Crouch
(RNS) “Everything can’t be all contemporary. We still have to know how to sing `Oh, How I love Jesus.”’
Gospel music artist and pastor Andrae Crouch, speaking about the need for traditional Christian music at a March 8 banquet of the National Association of Evangelicals in Arlington, Va.
DEA END RNS
