Though Masterpiece is a decision upholding religious liberty, the Supreme Court’s ruling makes it clear that free speech about homosexuality does not enjoy broad protections… In the first of two momentous cases on its docket as to whether some Americans can be left alone as dissenters from the punishing orthodoxies of the progressive society and state, [...]
In the case of the now-deceased toddler, Alfie Evans, the British government, through its Royal College of Pediatrics and its courts, had legal authority. Alfie had legal “interests,” which the government defined in his case, but he did not have any “rights.” Alfie’s parents only had a right to be heard; they had no substantive rights or [...]
Patrick Deneen has entitled his book Why Liberalism Failed, but by his own analysis, he could have entitled it Why Liberalism Succeeded… Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen (248 pages, Yale University Press, 2018) In his comprehensive condemnation of three hundred years of modern liberalism, Patrick Deneen at one point speaks of “advanced liberalism,” and [...]
By state law, the state of California is now forcing pregnancy-support centers, whose sole purpose for existence is to offer alternatives to abortion, to “conspicuously” notify pregnant women of where they can receive abortions. The centers have objected that the law violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment by compelling them to engage [...]
In December, the Supreme Court decided not to hear a case that proposed to extend the Court’s sexual freedom cases to wife-swapping. In Coker v. Whittington, two sheriff’s deputies in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, and their wives agreed to swap spouses, and each deputy began living with the opposite deputy’s wife. Invoking his office’s code of [...]
With a “clear, plain, and palpable” eagerness to seize control of the Pennsylvania congressional map in time for the 2018 mid-term elections, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has gone beyond judicial activism and joined with the Democrats in their attempt to win control of the U.S. Congress. The details of how this came about and the [...]
If governments can directly instruct families about what to believe concerning homosexuality and about the correct frame of mind to have in conducting daily business, it is hard think that the policies and practices of religious schools and other institutions, like hospitals, will be left alone... In Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision of the [...]
Is a long-standing commemorative cross on public land socially divisive and a governmental endorsement of religion? Or, to the contrary, is a constitutional challenge to that cross an act of gratuitous social divisiveness? Recently, in American Humanist Association v. Maryland, the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling of the federal district court of [...]
In the potentially momentous case considering the issue of “political gerrymandering,” the Supreme Court last week spent almost no time discussing and demanding that the litigating parties address the language of the Constitution. In Gill v. Whitford, Wisconsin Democrats had won a 2-1 ruling of a three-judge federal district court that the 2010 re-apportionment plan [...]
In favor of Trinity Lutheran, the Supreme Court ruled that a government program cannot require a church “to renounce its religious character in order to participate in an otherwise generally available public benefit program for which it is fully qualified…” In its decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer this week, the Supreme Court took another [...]
Even those critics friendly to Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option have failed to take its implications seriously, likely because they are afraid to take the concrete steps he suggests to preserve their Christian way of life in this country… Does the United States need Christianity or at least the conventional morality based on Christianity? Until the [...]
With the grave worry of many Christians about living in a culture that seems to be antagonistic to Christianity itself, we ought to consider the radical alternative of intentional communities. In these days of the rise of the “nones,” said to be the fastest growing “religious” body in the country, and with the grave worry [...]
Recent books by Anthony Esolen, R.R. Reno and Bishop Charles Chaput comprise a compendium of trenchant social and cultural criticism. But do any of these authors provide a workable solution to the de-Christianization of America?… In Mere Christianity (1952), the published version of his radio talks delivered in the early 1940’s, C. S. Lewis asserted that [...]
The United States Civil Rights Commission has proclaimed that religion is an impediment to civil rights and has prepared a constitutional briefing designed to defeat religion’s “discriminatory” and “intolerant” status in society... In its recent report, deceptively entitled “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,” the United States Civil Rights Commission proposes that the [...]