c. 2008 Religion News Service
Supreme Court declines to act on circumcision fight
(RNS) The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to intervene in the fight between a father who wants to circumcise his 13-year-old son against the wishes of the boy’s mother.
After the high court declined on Monday (Oct. 6) to consider the case, the fight is headed back to a judge in Medford, Ore.
James Boldt, who converted to Judaism, says his son wants to undergo the procedure for religious reasons. The boy’s mother, Lia Boldt, said her son is afraid to tell his father that he doesn’t want to be circumcised.
A trial judge sided with the father, who has custody. But the Oregon Supreme Court in January said the boy’s wishes needed to be determined.
James Boldt, who says he has a constitutional right to raise his child in his religion, attempted to get the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
No court date has been set for lower court to consider the case.
_ Ashbel S. Green
Poll: Monthly churchgoers swing toward Obama
WASHINGTON (RNS) Significantly more monthly churchgoers are supporting the Democratic nominee _ Sen. Barack Obama _ in this year’s presidential election than in the 2004 election cycle, according to a new poll.
Voters who attend religious services one to two times a month are supporting the Democratic nominee by 60 percent, up from 49 percent who supported Sen. John Kerry in 2004, based on a survey released Wednesday (Oct. 8) by the nonpartisan group Faith in Public Life.
“The fact that he’s getting 60 percent of those voters shows that there has been a movement overall in the last four years in terms of Democratic outreach with religious Americans,” said Amy Sullivan, whose book “The Party Faithful” examines Democrats’ outreach to religious voters.
“That might be related more to economic issues than anything else this year, but it does show that religious voters are willing to vote for Democrats.“
Exit polls in 2004 showed Bush won 51 percent of the vote among monthly churchgoers.
Sen. John McCain has 34 percent of the vote of monthly churchgoers in the survey, but maintains a significant advantage among voters who attend church more frequently. Obama has a similar advantage over McCain among those who attend less often.
“We took a look at one of the historically … strongest predictors of votes and that’s religious attendance,” said Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research and lead researcher and analyst for the poll.
The survey also found evidence of a generational divide between younger and older evangelicals, including support by younger evangelicals for a more active government and less conservative views on same-sex marriage.
“They (evangelicals) are more concerned about peace and prosperity than they are about abortion or same-sex marriage,” said Michael Lindsay, associate professor of sociology at Rice University. “This is why things are different in 2008 than they were in 2004.”
The survey polled 2,000 adults, and an additional 1,250 adults ages 18 to 34, and was conducted between Aug. 28 and Sept. 19. The margin of error for the overall sample was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points; the margin of error among younger adults was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
_ Brittney Bain
Humanists file suit over `Humanist Principles’ in courtroom
WASHINGTON (RNS) The American Humanist Association said it will support a lawsuit filed by the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union against a judge who displayed a poster of “Humanist Principles” in his courtroom.
Judge James DeWeese of the Richland County Common Pleas Court put up the “Philosophies of Law in Conflict” poster that lists the Ten Commandments in one column as moral absolutes and in another column the “Humanist Precepts” as moral relatives.
A quote from DeWeese lines the bottom saying, “The cases passing through this courtroom demonstrate we are paying a high cost in increased crime … for moving from moral absolutism to moral relativism.”
“This is not a religious effort at all,” DeWeese said in an interview. “The ACLU’s goal is to censor speech, and what they are objecting to is an essay on the wall by me.”
DeWeese said he has seen a sharp increase in crime since 1980, and he attributes the cause to a “philosophy war,” in which people have stopped considering morals as absolutes. What he called his “essay” depicts this “crisis of morality in America.”
“Judge DeWeese’s poster misrepresents Humanism,” said Ron Speckhardt, the executive director of the Humanist group. The “Humanist Precepts” the judge listed are from an outdated Humanist Manifesto, and Speckhardt claims DeWeese took the tenets out of context.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit because it said the poster violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against an establishment of religion. “Judge DeWeese is attempting to end-run around the Constitution while pushing his own religious agenda,” said Mel Lipman, president of AHA.
The ACLU successfully sued DeWeese over another Ten Commandments poster in 2002.
_ Ashley Gipson
Oregon court sees frozen embryos as property rights issue
PORTLAND, Ore. (RNS) A divorcing couple’s years-old agreement to thaw out frozen embryos trumps the husband’s recent desire to donate them to another woman trying to have children, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday (Oct. 8).
The case touched on a common and controversial social issue: how to dispose of the hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos made to assist infertile couples. The courts had to pose that new medical question against the old framework of family law, which sees things as personal property to be divided.
The three-judge opinion said the contractual “right to possess or dispose of the frozen embryos is personal property,” without directly stating that the embryos themselves are property.
The result of the case is in line with cases in eight other states, all of which sided with the person who did not want the embryos to be implanted.
“The outcome, in 100 percent of the cases, is we’re not going to force anyone to be a parent,” said William Howe III, the attorney for the woman in the case, pediatrician Laura Dahl.
Barring an appeal, the embryos will be discarded or donated for research. Mark Johnson, lawyer for orthodontist Darrell Angle, said his client hasn’t decided whether to appeal.
Dahl and Angle were married in 2000 and had a child. In 2004, they tried to have a second child through in-vitro fertilization. Doctors created several embryos from Dahl’s eggs and Angle’s sperm, and tried unsuccessfully for a pregnancy. When the couple decided to divorce soon after, six embryos remained frozen.
Dahl and Angle signed an agreement saying that if they disagreed about how to dispose of any excess embryos, Dahl should “have the sole and exclusive right” to decide. The agreement also said that if the couple died, the embryos should be used for research instead of being given to another woman.
The embryos became a sticking point during the divorce. According to the opinion, Dahl said the embryos were created for her and Angle and that she no longer wanted to have another child with him. Dahl did not want another woman to bear a child that is genetically hers.
Angle did not want the embryos used in research or discarded because “embryos are life,” the opinion said, and “there’s no pain greater than having participated in the demise of your own child.” Angle testified that he did not remember reading the agreement and thought he just signed the last page.
He said his desire to preserve what he sees as life should outweigh Dahl’s desire to not have another child. A trial court sided with Dahl, and said the embryos should be thawed and discarded unless Angle and Dahl agreed to have them used in research. The appeals court upheld the lower court.
_ Andy Dworkin
Quote of the Day: Roman Catholic Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz.
(RNS) “Unfortunately, preaching in our day can lose its savor, become formulaic and uninspired, leaving the hearer empty.”
_ Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., and vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Catholic News Service reported Kicanas’s comments at the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops on the Bible.
KRE/PH END RNS
