c. 2003 Religion News Service

Moore Loses Appeal for Ten Commandments In Ala. Judicial Building

(RNS) Groups advocating church-state separation are hailing an appellate decision that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore must remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building.

Affirming a lower court decision, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta found Tuesday (July 1) that the 5,280-pound monument violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

Groups such as the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism were pleased with the decision.

“Displaying the Ten Commandments on public property is not only a clear and direct violation of the separation of church and state, but also a disservice to religion,” said Mark J. Pelavin, the center’s associate director, in a statement. “It is precisely because of the special value we place on these teachings that we should teach them in our synagogues and churches, and in our homes, not in our court buildings, public schools or other government institutions.”

Tom Parker, a spokesman for the chief justice, said Moore would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Associated Press reported.

“This case is far from over,” he said.

The appellate judges wrote that Moore’s position in the case, if upheld, would permit sectarian religious murals on the walls of the Alabama Supreme Court’s courtrooom.

“Every government building could be topped with a cross, or menorah, or a statue of Buddha, depending upon the views of the officials with authority over the premises,” the ruling reads.

Christian Coalition of Alabama President John Giles said he was “shocked” by the appellate decision and hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case soon.

Other groups appreciated the ruling.

“This is a clear message from the courts: Thou shalt not merge church and state,” said Ayesha Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who argued the case against Moore in the courts.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Poll: Americans Oppose Gay Marriage, Agree With Sodomy Ruling

(RNS) Two weeks after Canadian officials said they would legalize gay marriage, a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans oppose same-sex marriage, but large numbers of younger people favor the idea.

The poll found that opposition to gay marriage, while significant, is eroding. Fifty-five percent of Americans oppose gay marriage _ down from 68 percent in 1996. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they favored the right of gay men and lesbians to marry.

In May, another Gallup poll found that Americans were evenly split at 49 percent in supporting or opposing “civil union” laws that give gay couples some of the same legal rights as married couples.

Younger people seem to be more accepting of gay marriage _ 61 percent of people between ages 18 and 29 support gay marriage, while only 37 percent of those ages 30-49 support it.

After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws on June 26, more than six in 10 Americans polled said consensual gay sex should be legal, while 37 percent said sodomy should be criminalized. In 1977, when Gallup first asked about legalized sodomy, only 43 percent of Americans said it should be legal.

Fewer Americans, however, said homosexuality is morally acceptable. A slight majority _ 54 percent _ said that “homosexuality should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle.” Forty-three percent said it was not acceptable.

A Gallup poll conducted in May asked Americans to rate whether certain activities were “morally acceptable.” Forty-four percent said homosexual acts were morally acceptable, ahead of abortion (37 percent) and human cloning (8 percent) but behind divorce (66 percent) and having a child out of wedlock (51 percent).

Americans were evenly split on whether gay couples should be able to adopt children _ 49 percent said they should have adoption rights, while 48 percent were opposed. Respondents were also evenly split at 46 percent on whether newspapers should print wedding announcements for gay couples.

The surveys of more than 1,000 adults have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Church World Service Ships $1.2 Million in Aid to Iraq

(RNS) Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches, is shipping $1.2 million in medical supplies to Iraq to bolster the country’s debilitated health care system.

In the chaotic aftermath of the war, Iraqi hospitals are operating at only half their capacity, the United Nations reported last week.

While the United States military remains preoccupied with security and law enforcement, the burden of meeting the medical needs of Iraqis falls on humanitarian agencies, said Rev. John McCullough, executive director of CWS.

Supported by 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations, CWS has been working to meet medical needs in Iraq since the start of the first Gulf War more than a decade ago.

Malnutrition among children has doubled in some parts of Iraq since the start of the war, according to a U.N. report. Already a widespread problem due in part to economic sanctions, acute malnutrition among children under the age of 5 in Baghdad has increased to almost 8 percent, marking a 4 percent rise since the start of the war.

“The public health system is deteriorating with an increase in child morbidity, child diarrhea, poor maternal management,” Richard Alderslade, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization, told Reuters.

The lack of security for humanitarian and medical workers makes providing health services difficult. Steve Weaver, the international disaster response consultant for CWS, said in a statement from Baghdad that medical facilities are still struggling to get organized.

“ There is quite a lot of confusion still,” Weaver said. “Authorities are not sure what medical supplies are in storage, and the distribution systems have broken down.”

Weaver will supervise the distribution of supplies, which include surgical kits and sterilized surgical implements, to local Iraqi hospitals and medical facilities. A significant portion of the supplies is expected to go to pediatric hospitals.

_ Alexandra Alter

American Baptists Urge Support of AIDS Victims, Pluralism

(RNS) Delegates to the biennial meeting of the American Baptist Churches USA adopted statements urging support for people affected by AIDS and the countering of terrorism with pluralistic views.

The statement of concern on AIDS’ global impact urged American Baptists to support AIDS prevention efforts and the sponsoring of a family in a developing world that needs health care assistance.

The statement responding to terrorism acknowledges that “hatred often uses religion as justification for violence” and asks church members to foster interfaith dialogues and mutual respect.

Delegates to the meeting, held June 27-30 in Richmond, Va., officially installed their new general secretary, the Rev. A. Roy Medley, who came to the post in January 2002.

American Baptists also adopted statements of concern _ which are nonbinding but reflect the views of those attending the meeting _ affirming the need for clergy and congregations to jointly agree on ethical standards and means of conflict resolution and recommending that congregations “create a climate of meaningful relationships between adults and young people.”

In other business, the denomination’s General Board gave final approval to the establishment of the Evergreen Baptist Association, which includes congregations in the northwestern United States that welcome gays and lesbians. Churches in that new association differed with more theologically conservative congregations in the larger American Baptist Churches of the Northwest.

American Baptist Churches USA is a 1.4 million-member mainline denomination that embraces both evangelical theology and ecumenical relations.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Vietnamese Sentence Minority Christians to Jail Terms

(RNS) Vietnam has sentenced nine members of a banned branch of Christianity to between 18 and 30 months in prison for their alleged actions against the state.

The nine members of the Montegnard ethnic minority founded a branch of “Dega Protestantism,” a type of evangelical Christianity followed by many Montegnards in Vietnam’s central highlands, in April 2001. The Vietnamese government approves a form of Protestantism among the six religions it recognizes, but regards all other faiths as illegal, Reuters reported.

The nine recruited 70 followers in Gia Lai’s Krong Pa District and were indicted for sabotaging national unity in May 2001, when two of the accused “incited local believers to flee Vietnam and speak ill of the regime,” according to a report the Official Vietnam News Agency issued Tuesday (July 1).

The communist Vietnamese government regards “Dega Protestantism” as a rallying creed for Montegnards seeking an independent homeland and has set out to eliminate its practice, Human Rights Watch reported earlier this year. More than 200 Montegnards have been detained over the last two years for participating in protests in 2001. Evangelical Christians have been heavily targeted in the government’s crackdown on indigenous highlanders.

British Prelate Criticizes Use of Aborted Fetuses

LONDON (RNS) The prospect of human eggs being produced from aborted fetuses has been greeted with grave concern by Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff, chairman of the department of Christian responsibility and citizenship of the Roman Catholic bishops’ conference of England and Wales.

“There is something deeply wrong with a society that can even contemplate harvesting eggs from the ovaries of aborted fetuses,” he said. “How is it that we can recognize that the aborted fetus is human enough to become a biological parent and yet not human enough to have the right to life?”

The development was announced at a meeting in Madrid of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology and was widely reported in English newspapers.

Tal Biron-Shental, of the Meir Hospital, Kfar Saba, Israel, said her team of Israeli and Dutch scientists had found that ovarian tissue from aborted fetuses, when treated with a hormone to stimulate the growth of follicles, survived for a month and that the primordial follicles inside it began to mature into primary and secondary follicles about halfway along the way toward fully mature follicles that could produce fertile eggs.

This is “the furthest stage anyone has got” in maturing eggs from embryos in the laboratory, said Biron-Shental, saying her team wants to know whether eggs grown in this way could be used by infertile couples.

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: Archbishop-elect Sean O’Malley of Boston

(RNS) “If I were ever tempted to vote for simply selfish reasons, tribal allegiances or economic advantages, rather than on the moral direction of the country, I should beat a hasty retreat from the curtain of the polling booth to the curtain of the confessional.”

_ Bishop Sean O’Malley, who was named Tuesday (July 1) as the new archbishop of Boston, writing last fall as bishop of neighboring Fall River, Mass., on Catholic voters. O’Malley said he could not support any politician who supported abortion, “no matter how appealing the rest of his or her program might be.”

DEA END RNS