c. 2005 Religion News Service
Editors: Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America is CQ
Judge Tosses Sex-Ed Program That Dismissed Baptist Views Toward Gays
(RNS) A federal judge has ordered a Maryland school district to revise its sex education curriculum after he said it seemed to favor religions that take a positive view of homosexuality.
Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jerry Weast said he will shelve the program after some parents convinced U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Williams that it unfairly singled out Baptists and fundamentalists.
The judge said the program, which was scheduled for eighth- and 10th-graders, “presents only one view of the subject _ that homosexuality is a natural and morally correct lifestyle _ to the exclusion of other perspectives.”
Williams objected to teachers’ materials that “offer up their own opinion on such controversial topics as whether AIDS is God’s judgment on homosexuals, and whether churches that condemn homosexuality are on theologically sound ground.”
The judge said the program “paints certain Christian sects, notably Baptists, which are opposed to homosexuality, as unenlightened and biblically misguided,” according to the Washington Post.
A group of parents calling themselves Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, joined by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, filed suit to stop the curriculum. The program was unanimously adopted by the county school board last fall, according to the Washington Times.
The parents’ attorney, Erik Stanley, said the school system had “no business putting its stamp of approval on one religion.
Conservative opponents hailed the ruling, claiming victory is keeping the “the pansexual agenda” out of the school system.
“Liberals insist on the separation of church and state when that suits their agenda,” said Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America, “but they are only too happy to welcome into the schools a funhouse mirror version of religion that supports the latest methods for sexualizing children.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Reese, Popular Catholic Commentator, to Leave Helm of America Magazine
(RNS) The Rev. Tom Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America and one of the country’s foremost commentators on the Catholic Church, said Friday (May 6) he is leaving the magazine.
Reese did not cite a reason for leaving the magazine he has headed for seven years. He said he will take a sabbatical and then work with Jesuit leaders to “determine the next phase of my Jesuit ministry.”
Reese is the author of “Inside the Vatican” and a frequent commentator and observer of American Catholics. During the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI, he appeared in countless news stories and on television.
Starting June 1, the Rev. Drew Christiansen, America’s associate editor, will take the helm of the magazine. Christiansen joined America in 2002 after serving as a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and directing the Office of International Justice and Peace for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 1991 to 1998.
“I know I am speaking for all the editors in saying that we are sorry to see Tom go,” Christiansen said.
Christiansen taught theology at the University of Notre Dame and the Jesuit School of Theology and Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Founder of LDS Church Analyzed at Library of Congress Conference
WASHINGTON (RNS) In what Mormon leaders call a concerted effort to increase scholarly study of their religion, a conference was held Friday (May 6) at the Library of Congress to discuss the life and legacy of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith.
“The Worlds of Joseph Smith” is one of two scholarly conferences to be held this year by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as part of a yearlong observance of the bicentennial of Smith’s birth. It also represents an effort to support the scholarly as well as the theological study of Smith, according to William S. Evans, a church spokesman who flew from Salt Lake City for the conference.
“I think Joseph Smith and Mormonism are starting to become more the subject of legitimate religious scholarship,” Evans said.
Smith founded the LDS Church in 1830 and was killed at age 38 by a mob while he was in prison in Carthage, Ill.
The two-day conference commenced with a topic that is one of the most heated and studied in scholarship about Smith: whether scholars have focused too heavily on American history and culture in the study of his life and actions.
“The context in which he is placed profoundly changes the way we view the prophet,” began noted scholar Richard L. Bushman, a history professor at Columbia University. “All of the narrowly American accounts strip the prophet of gravity and depth.”
But Robert Remini, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said Smith had been profoundly influenced by American culture and history.
“I don’t think anybody at any time is divorced from the period, the history, the country in which he lives,” said Remini. “Mormonism is an American religion, and we ought to be proud of it.”
Richard Hughes, a professor of religion at Pepperdine University in California, agreed both with Bushman that Smith was more than just a product of American culture, and with Remini that he was influenced by a larger religious movement.
“Joseph Smith emerges as a dialectical prophet, the man with one foot in American culture and one foot in biblical culture, and the man who fused the two,” said Hughes.
“We probably will continue to have these many perspectives that in no way implies there is no essential Joseph,” Hughes said. That Joseph Smith “continues to inspire all these multiple efforts is tribute to the man’s genius.”
_ Shawna Gamache
First Lady Reflects on Holocaust and Liberation of Concentration Camps
(RNS) First lady Laura Bush spoke in memory of the Holocaust at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Thursday (May 5), recalling the experiences of her father, who helped liberate the concentration camp at Nordhausen, Germany.
The remarks came on Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Bush spoke of the need to preserve the memory of the atrocities as those who experienced them age.
“As survivors and liberators leave us, the work of preserving their memories is all the more urgent,” she said.
Her father, who has died, never spoke of the horrors he witnessed as a U.S. soldier when he helped liberate the camp, she said.
“I think in retrospect, he couldn’t bear to tell his child that there could be such evil in the world,” she said.
Bush also emphasized educational efforts that stress the importance of teaching children about the Holocaust. She mentioned residents of a rural Tennessee town, mostly Christians, who collected 6 million paper clips, one for each Jewish victim of the Holocaust, to give themselves an idea of “what a staggering number 6 million is.”
Bush recalled visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp with her husband and being moved by enormous piles of eyeglasses left behind.
“It struck me how vulnerable we are as humans, how many needed those glasses to see, and how many people living around the camps and around the world refused to see,” she said.
“We see today and we know what happened and we’ll never forget.”
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
PETA Belatedly Apologizes for Comparing Animal Slaughter to Holocaust
(RNS) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has apologized for a controversial exhibit and ad campaign in which it compared the slaughtering of animals for meat to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
The organization sparked a heated debate in February 2003 when it launched the “Holocaust on Your Plate” exhibit, which displayed images of concentration camps juxtaposed with photos of animals being led to the slaughter.
Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s president, released a letter Thursday (May 5) apologizing for the exhibit, following a decision by the organization to omit another reference to a Holocaust-linked Yiddish song in a more recent ad campaign.
Newkirk’s letter was publicized on the observance of Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In the letter, Newkirk explained that the “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign was “designed to sensitize people to different forms of systematic degradation and exploitation, and the logic and methods employed in factory farms and slaughterhouses are analogous to those used in concentration camps.”
“By showing how humans were treated `like animals,”’ she continued, “it was never our goal to humiliate the victims further _ instead, we hoped to shed light on the process through which any living being can be reduced to an interchangeable, disposable `thing.”’
Newkirk added that PETA is “deeply sorry” about the pain that the campaign caused, and she hopes to work with Jewish groups in the future to promote the vegetarian and vegan lifestyles.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which led the public outcry denouncing the 2003 exhibit, responded to the apology with guarded optimism.
“We welcome the apology,” said Ken Jacobson, the ADL’s associate national director. But, he added, “It’s very late. There’s a lot of damage already done.”
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
It’s No Popemobile, but Benedict’s Old Car Fetches More Than $245,000
(RNS) The Golden Palace Casino of Austin, Texas, submitted the winning bid of almost 189,000 euros in an Internet auction of a used, 6-year-old Volkswagen Golf once owned _ but never driven _ by Pope Benedict XVI.
“The auction is valid,” Nerses Chopurian, a spokesman for the German eBay site, said in announcing that the casino had submitted the high bid of 188,938.88 euros ($245,620.54) one minute before bidding closed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday (May 5).
The metallic gray, 2,000-cylinder sedan with 75,000 kilometers (46,500 miles) on its odometer drew a record 8.4 million visitors to the Web site and attracted 227 bids since it was offered for sale April 25, eBay said.
Benjamin Halbe, 21, who put the car up for auction, said he discovered only after buying it for 9,500 euros from a dealer in Singen, Germany, in January that the previous owner was German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI on April 19.
_ Peggy Polk
Quote of the Day: Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates
(RNS) “If we are going to ask the Christian right to stop engaging in demonization, we need to inspect some of our own language. I’m uncomfortable when I hear people of sincere religious faith described as religious political extremists.”
_ Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a human rights watchdog group based in Somerville, Mass., speaking April 29 at a conference in New York City called “Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right.” He was quoted by The Washington Times.
MO/PH END RNS
