c. 2008 Religion News Service

California court reverses itself, declares home schooling legal

(RNS) A California court Friday (Aug. 8) reversed its previous ruling and decided that most forms of home schooling are legal.

Last February, the California Court of Appeal ruled in a juvenile court case that public school enrollment is generally required unless a child is tutored by a credentialed person or enrolled in a full-time private school.

In the new ruling, the court determined that while original education laws seemed to prohibit home schools in the definition of private school, later laws could be interpreted differently.

“The most logical interpretation of subsequent legislative enactments and regulatory provisions supports the conclusion that a home school can, in fact, fall within the private school exception to the general compulsory education law,” the court concluded.

“We therefore conclude that home schools may constitute private schools.”

But the court added that “an order requiring a dependent child to attend school outside the home in order to protect that child’s safety” is constitutional.

The case, which involved a family that home-schooled their children and had them tested occasionally at Sunland Christian School in Sylmar, Calif., drew the attention of home-school advocates including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.

“This is a tremendous victory for thousands of home-schooling families in California,” said Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, which represented the Christian school.

“The pall of uncertainty that has hung over so many families for the last few months is gone.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Mormons postpone meeting with gay group

(RNS) Leaders of a gay Mormon group say they’re disappointed that leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put off a meeting that was scheduled for Monday (Aug. 11).

In February, Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons, a Los Angeles-based group, sent an invitation to Mormon President Thomas Monson, and he responded by setting up a meeting in Salt Lake City with two of his representatives.

In a July 23 letter, one of those representatives informed Affirmation’s executive committee of the postponement.

“After much consideration, we have determined that it would be best to postpone our anticipated meeting,” wrote Fred M. Riley, who was a commissioner of LDS Family Services but has since accepted a new assignment.

“We feel badly about this but believe that for this to be the best experience for all parties involved and to ensure appropriate consistency and continuity of the process, it would be best to postpone the meeting until the new commissioner is named.”

Affirmation representatives said they will still meet in Salt Lake City and will present proposals they had intended to make to church leaders to members of the media.

“The items we had planned to discuss all focus on education and on toning down some of the rhetoric,” said David Melson, Affirmation’s senior assistant executive director. “Nothing that we will be proposing requires any change in doctrine.”

In a statement on the church’s Web site under the topic of “same-gender attraction,” Elder Dallin H. Oaks, a top leader of the church, distinguished between homosexual feelings and behavior.

“It’s no sin to have inclinations that if yielded to would produce behavior that would be a transgression,” he said. “The sin is in yielding to temptation.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

UpDATE: Poultry plant reinstates Labor Day with Muslim holiday

(RNS) Responding to intense criticism, a Tyson Foods plant in Tennessee that deemed a Muslim holy day one of its eight paid holidays has changed its stance.

The poultry processing plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., decided last year to drop Labor Day and instead count Eid al-Fitr _ which marks the end of Ramadan _ as a day on which all union members could either stay home or work for extra pay. The policy has been revised, and Labor Day is once again a paid holiday.

Outraged by a recent story in the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, many residents launched complaints at Tyson headquarters and at the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which drafted the original agreement to comply with requests made by a workers committee.

The union represents 1,000 of the plant’s 1,200 employees, 250 of whom are Somali.

Some letters accused the union of being unpatriotic, asking if it had forgotten the attacks of Sept. 11, according to the New York Times.

The vitriol had an impact. Union employees will have nine paid holidays this year. That includes both Labor Day and Eid al-Fitr.

After this year, the union will again cover only eight days, one of them a “personal holiday” that can be taken any day of the year _ including on Eid al-Fitr. The new policy affects only the Shelbyville plant.

“The union membership voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reinstate Labor Day,” the Tyson release said. “Tyson made this request on behalf of its Shelbyville plant employees, some of whom had expressed concern about the new contract.”

Representatives from the union and Tyson did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Religion News Service.

_ Mallika Rao

Episcopal Church to apologize for slavery

(RNS) Continuing its efforts to address a practice some members call “a stain on the church,” the Episcopal Church will hold a “Day of Repentance” to publicly apologize for its involvement in the slave trade.

The ceremony, mandated by a 2006 resolution at the church’s General Convention, will take place Oct. 3-4 in Philadelphia.

“We hope to set a model for other denominations about how to face this dark, tragic part of our history because we believe that only when you repent can you move on,” said Jayne Oasin, program officer for the church’s Anti-Racism and Gender Equality program.

In recent years, Episcopalians have attempted to come to grips with their church’s compliance in the “peculiar institution” of slavery.

After previous unsuccessful attempts, delegates to the 2006 convention overwhelmingly passed a resolution acknowledging the “deep and lasting injury which the institution of slavery and its aftermath have inflicted on society and on the church.”

That same year, delegates passed a resolution supporting efforts by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., to create a special commission for the study of reparations, although they did not explicitly endorse such payments.

Although the trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States in 1808, and slavery was prohibited at the end of the Civil War, some church members have long felt that the church continues to benefit materially from its involvement.

Many of its older churches were funded in part by profits from the slave trade, and the nation’s most famous Episcopalian, George Washington, was a slave-owner.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will conduct the service at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, which was founded by a former slave in 1792. The event will also feature discussions on the role of race in present-day society.

“Since we were part of the problem, I feel we need to be a part of the solution,” Oasin said.

_ Tim Murphy

Quote of the Day: Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman

(RNS) “I heard myself saying a lot, `God, you can’t ask this of me. You can’t ask this of my family. This is too much. We can’t do this.”’

_ Christian singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman, speaking on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Thursday (Aug. 7), about his initial reaction to the death of his youngest daughter Maria, who died in May in his family’s driveway after being struck by a vehicle driven by her older brother.

KRE/PH END RNS