c. 2003 Religion News Service
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Poll: Half of Americans Say Out-of-Wedlock Births Acceptable
(RNS) Half of Americans now believe it is morally acceptable to have a baby outside of marriage, a Gallup Poll shows.
Pollsters found that 51 percent of U.S. adults polled in May said out-of-wedlock births were morally acceptable, compared to 46 percent who said they were morally wrong. One year ago, slightly fewer _ 45 percent _ thought such births were acceptable, while 50 percent thought they were wrong.
Views on the subject varied greatly depending on respondents’ church- attending habits.
While 26 percent of those who attend church weekly said out-of-wedlock births were morally acceptable, 71 percent of those who seldom or never attend church agreed with that statement.
Married Americans are less likely than unmarried Americans to say such births are acceptable, 45 percent to 58 percent respectively.
Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of liberals think having a baby outside of marriage is morally acceptable, compared to 55 percent of moderates and 38 percent of conservatives.
While 64 percent of respondents ages 18 to 29 think out-of-wedlock births are morally acceptable, lower percentages of older age groups voice approval. For example, 53 percent of 30-49 year olds, 51 percent of those ages 50 to 64 and 33 percent of those 65 and older said having a baby outside of marriage is acceptable.
The findings are based on telephone interviews with 1,005 adults nationwide conducted May 5-7 and have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The Gallup Organization has recently polled Americans on a number of moral issues, such as abortion, the death penalty, homosexual behavior and divorce.
The Following is suitable for a graphic:
American Views on Morality of Out-of-Wedlock Births:
May 2003
Morally acceptable: 51 percent
Morally wrong: 46 percent
May 2002
Morally acceptable: 45 percent
Morally wrong: 50 percent
“Morally Acceptable” Views of Out-of-Wedlock Births Based on Church Attendance:
Attend weekly: 26 percent
Seldom or never attend: 71 percent
Source: The Gallup Organization
_ Adelle M. Banks
Bush Reaffirms Government Partnerships With Faith Groups
WASHINGTON (RNS) President Bush reiterated his support for partnerships between the government and faith-based organizations Wednesday (July 16), adding an international perspective from his recent trip to Africa.
Speaking of his five-year plan to spend $15 billion on global AIDS, the president told urban and religious leaders that he believes strategies are in place in Africa to receive and distribute new medical and other assistance from the United States.
“We saw good infrastructure,” he told more than 100 leaders in a 25-minute speech in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “The Catholic Church, for example, in Uganda is fully prepared to pave the way for distribution of anti-retrovirals (and) at the same time help with education and prevention.”
He thanked religious leaders’ for pushing Congress to fund the AIDS initiative, which faces lower first-year appropriations than he had hoped as Congress debates the budget.
Bush ticked off some of his accomplishments through the faith-based initiative, such as the executive order he signed in December that aims to give faith-based organizations equal consideration for federal funding.
“We waited for Congress to act,” he said. “They couldn’t act on the issue, so I just went ahead and signed an executive order … which says that federal agencies will not discriminate against faith-based programs.”
The president also held up a new 76-page catalog that details for faith-based organizations the kinds of grants for which they can apply.
Other examples of work on the initiative, he said, include the recent decision to provide historic preservation funds to Boston’s Old North Church as well as millions of dollars in funding for faith-based after-school programs and low-income senior housing.
Calling faith-based groups “neighborhood healers” he said he hopes to expand the range of those organizations that receive funding.
“Now, what’s happening is that the same programs are being funded over, and over, and over again,” he said. “And that doesn’t encourage the entrepreneurial spirit that we’re interested in.”
During his remarks, the president was flanked by seven black religious leaders, including Boston pastor Eugene Rivers, Dallas pastor Tony Evans and Church of God in Christ Presiding Bishop Gilbert E. Patterson.
Rivers said the audience Bush addressed included mostly inner-city pastors from small and medium-sized churches.
“For many of them this was new information about services that are available from the White House,” he said. “Although there’s been enormous discussion within the Beltway around faith-based (initiatives), most of the faith-based organizations in the country aren’t fully aware of what is available.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Three Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Endorse Gay Marriage
WASHINGTON (RNS) Leaders in the Democratic race for president expressed their commitment to gay-rights issues at a forum Tuesday (July 15), but most stopped short of endorsing gay marriage.
Speaking to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay-rights organization, the seven Democratic presidential candidates who attended endorsed measures to prevent discrimination against gays. But only three candidates _ the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio and former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois _ said they supported gay marriage. All three are considered longshots for the nomination.
“That’s like asking me, `Do I support white marriage or black marriage?’ The inference of the question is that gays are not human beings and cannot make a decision like other human beings,” Sharpton said when asked whether he supported gay marriage, according to media reports.
Other candidates were more ambiguous in their statements, saying they supported civil unions that would grant gay couples most of the rights heterosexual married couples enjoy, such as hospital visitation rights and survivor’s benefits under Social Security.
Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut both came out in favor of civil unions but said marriage is a “historic, cultural” institution between men and women.
With the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn a Texas law that criminalized sodomy and Canada’s recent legalization of gay marriage, presidential candidates are facing pressure to come down on the issue, which may prove a stumbling block for Democrats seeking votes from both liberals and social moderates. Americans remain split on the issue of gay marriage, according to a recent Gallup poll, which found that 55 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage.
Meanwhile, conservative Republican leaders, including President Bush, have spoken out against gay marriage.
Republican leader Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told reporters at a news briefing Tuesday that he favors upholding the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed into law by Democrat President Bill Clinton.
“The restatement of that is that marriage is very simple: a union between one man and one woman, not two men or three men or four men, or one man _ or one woman _ or two women, three women, or three women and three men. It’s not that. It’s one man, one woman. It’s what the law of the land is. I will support that,” Frist said, according to a New York Times report.
_ Alexandra Alter
Religious Groups Divided on House Vote for U.N. Family Planning
WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious groups have criticized the U.S. House of Representatives’ decision to withhold funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), calling it a crippling blow against women’s rights and the fight against AIDS.
“This decision will severely impact the well-being of thousands of women around the world, will increase the number of abortions and the spread of HIV/AIDS,” Jim Winkler, the general secretary of the United Methodist’s General Board of Church and Society, said in a statement. “We view this as an affront to women and to the United Nations.”
Critics said the House’s 216-211 vote Tuesday (July 15) to defeat an amendment to a State Department spending bill that would restore $50 million in funding will further damage ties with the United Nations.
Government support for the U.N. Population Fund has generated controversy since December 2001, when President Bush and Congress allocated $34 million to the organization, which promotes family planning and reproductive and sexual health.
Shortly after the bill was signed, the president withheld funding at the urging of members of Congress and the Population Research Institute, a nonprofit research organization, which said the UNFPA money would support family planning institutions in China that engaged in forced abortions and sterilization.
But opponents of the House measure say a fact-finding mission to China revealed no evidence that UNFPA money supports such programs. “The House’s decision today would be understandable if proof of the UNFPA’s complicity in forced abortions was found by the team, but it wasn’t,” Linda Bales, director of the Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project, a United Methodist initiative, said in a statement.
Other religious leaders, however, expressed support for the House’s decision to block tax-payer money from going to the organization.
Gail Quinn, the executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, called the House’s decision a victory for women in developing nations.
“Coerced abortion has been condemned throughout the international community as a crime against humanity and as an act of violence against women,” Quinn said in a statement. “The House took the right action, and we hope the Senate will do so as well.”
_ Alexandra Alter
Judge Orders Ten Commandments Monument Removed from Wisconsin Park
(RNS) A Wisconsin judge has ruled that the display of a Ten Commandments monument in the city park of downtown La Crosse was unconstitutional and it must be moved.
Chief U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin made the decision Monday (July 14) in the case involving a monument installed by the Fraternal Order of the Eagles in the 1960s.
The suit, filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, prompted the city to sell the parcel of land around the monument to the fraternal organization. But Crabb said that was not enough to remove the violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
She said the city’s “sale of a minuscule portion of the park to the Eagles in order to preserve the presence of the monument proves rather than extinguishes defendant’s endorsement of the monument’s religious message.”
The foundation called the decision a “resounding victory” in a case that dates to 1985. Initially dismissed in 1987, the decision came after the foundation filed a new suit in 2002.
“It’s been a long legal battle, but persistence has paid off,” said its president, Anne Gaylor, in a statement. “The courts seem to be shifting. We now have recent decisions out of four federal appellate circuits opposing such Ten Commandments entanglements, with only one appeals court recently going in the opposite direction.”
La Crosse Mayor John Medinger was disappointed with Crabb’s decision, saying, “I thought when we sold the monument and the property around it to the Eagles Club that we had pretty much complied with the various court decisions.”
But he added he was not completely surprised. “Communities across the country have been losing these Ten Commandments fights,” he said.
Medinger told Religion News Service that some community members want the city to appeal but he will suggest that the monument be moved to the property of a local church.
“Several churches in the last 24 hours have told us that they would take it,” he told Religion News Service Wednesday (July 16). “That would get the matter behind us and stop the divisiveness in the community.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
British Think Tank Urges Church to Cut Ties to Monarchy
LONDON (RNS) A liberal British think tank has called for breaking the link between the British monarchy and the Church of England, and said a law that bans Catholics from the throne should be repealed.
The Fabian Society, which dates to 1884 and which helped form the Labor Party in 1900, said Tuesday (July 15) that “Church and state need to be distanced, ending the formal link between the office of head of state and Anglicanism. At the same time the incumbent should be allowed to express his or her personal faith if desired.”
Currently, the monarch is supreme governor of the Church of England. On ascending the throne, the regent must declare that he or she is a faithful Protestant who will secure the Protestant succession to the throne.
The proposal would involve, among other things, repealing the 1701 Act of Succession, which bars from the throne “all and every person and persons who … is or shall be reconciled to or shall hold communion with the see or church of Rome or shall profess the popish religion or shall marry a papist.”
Ending the monarch’s position as supreme governor of the Church of England would in effect constitute “a partial disestablishment” of that body from the state. The Fabian Society report said other elements of establishment _ such as Parliament’s control of church legislation and the prime minister’s appointment of bishops _ are matters for the government and the church to sort out.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Religious Broadcaster Pat Robertson
(RNS) “One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?”
_ Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, writing in an open letter on the network’s Web site about his prayers for a future Supreme Court that is more conservative.
KRE END RNS
