There wasn't even a single complaint from the 6,000 personnel at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, but because the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) complained directly to the Pentagon, the Christmas Nativity scenes were removed from the dining halls.
"No one's ever complained to me about it. We've been doing it for 10 years." -- Capt. John R. Nettleton, base commander
"Our military members here endure many hardship," the letter [made public by the MRFF] states. "When they finally have time to relax with their military family, they should not have to feel uncomfortable, out of place, or insignificant because their beliefs are not represented."
Troops are generally expected to take complaints to their immediate supervisor, but [MRFF president Mikey] Weinstein said the 18 service members [who complained to the MRFF] feared retribution.
The commander of the Guantanamo Bay naval base decided Wednesday to move Nativity scenes from two dining halls following complaints that the decorations improperly promoted Christianity.
Both Nativity scenes will be moved to the courtyard of the base chapel, said Kelly Wirfel, a spokeswoman for Capt. John Nettleton, commander of the base in southeastern Cuba.
The displays were set up by foreign contractors who manage the two dining facilities and were "not intended to endorse any religion," Wirfel said in response to concerns raised by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Nettleton said only that he wished they had come to him directly with their concerns, noting that base residents have a way to register complaints anonymously too.
At noon Wednesday, the doghouse-sized Nativity scene was on display at the Navy base’s main cafeteria, Gold Hill Galley. Over at the prison camps, a civilian snapped a photo inside the guards’ cafeteria showing figurines of the Holy Family outside a gingerbread house and the message “Merry Christmas!!!”
Signs of the Christmas holiday season abound on the base, which has a holiday parade with floats and a hillside is decorated with holiday lights that depict Santa Claus, a sleigh, a Christmas tree and candy cane among other holiday symbols.
The latest Pew Research pollagain demonstrates the cognitive dissonance of Americans. Although 73% of U.S. adults believe, presumably by faith, that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, including 32% of those with no religious affiliation, only half of respondents consider Christmas more than a cultural holiday, complete with Santa Claus.
"Younger adults are less likely than older adults to see Christmas a religious rather than cultural holiday, they're less likely to say they will attend Christmas services and they are less likely to believe in the virgin birth." -- Greg Smith, director of U.S. religion surveys at the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project
A poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found only half of Americans consider the holiday religious, even though nearly three-quarters said they believed Jesus was born to a virgin. One-third consider Christmas a cultural celebration.
Church attendance will be higher than usual during the holiday. But the survey found fewer adults are holding to the tradition of attending worship services. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they attended Christmas services as a child. Only 54 percent will do so this year.
Overall, 31 percent of U.S. adults play up the Santa role in their holiday season, according to a survey released Wednesday (Dec. 18) by the Pew Research Center.
The survey finds that 73 percent of adults believe Jesus was born of a virgin — the act of God at the theological heart of the Christmas story, the birth of the Christ child.
That belief is held overwhelmingly by Christians of all stripes and even by some people with no formal religion: 32 percent of “nones” say they, too, believe in the Virgin birth of Jesus.
Women are more certain of this than men, though: 78 percent of women and 69 percent of men say they believe it.
While 72 percent of the 2,001 adults polled in representative samples from across the U.S. during Dec. 3 to 8 said their families pretended Santa Claus visited their home when they were growing up, only 31 percent said they still perpetuate the Santa Claus story in their own households -- although the rate remains at 69 percent of those with little kids still in the house. So while Santa is losing his grip, Jesus is, barely, hanging on. Of the 92 percent of Americans who say they celebrate Christmas, just 51 percent say that Christmas remains more of a religious holiday than a cultural holiday for them.
But then, the observance of Christmas activities in general is showing consistent, if slight, declines, according to the survey, which asked people what they typically did for Christmas as a child and what they plan to do this year.
Attending a religious service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day is decreasing from 69 percent to 54 percent, mirroring an overall decline in religious participation in the United States. But Christmas Eve or Day attendance is still double the 36 percent of Americans who say they typically attend a religious service during an average week. And while caroling, in the surveyed people’s memories, was never a common practice, from a remembered 36 percent who went to sing to someone, only 16 percent of people will carry songs into the streets this year.
At 82 percent, evangelical protestants were most likely to see Christmas as a religious holiday, following by white Catholics (66 percent), black Protestants (60 percent) and white mainline protestants (56 percent). About half of Hispanic Catholics said it was a religious holiday.
The Public Religion Research Institute survey also found Americans largely prefer businesses to use the phrase "happy holidays" or "season's greetings" instead of "merry Christmas."
Pew found that religious and non-religious Americans largely celebrate the holiday the same. . . .
In a move that American liberal media outlets tout as Pope Francis' focus toward inclusion, culture warrior Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, the archbishop emeritus of St. Louis, Missouri, has been removed from the Congregation for Bishops.
“One gets the impression, or it’s interpreted this way in the media, that [the Pope] thinks we’re talking too much about abortion, too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman. But we can never talk enough about that.” -- Cardinal Raymond L. Burke
Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington was appointed Monday to the Congregation for Bishops. The pope also reconfirmed Cardinal William Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco and former head of the Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog office.
Some members of the congregation were not reconfirmed. Cardinal Raymond Burke will no longer serve in the office. The former St. Louis archbishop had been a member for several years. Burke retains his position as the head of the Vatican high court, the Apostolic Signatura.
Burke drew attention in the U.S. in 2004 when he said he would deny Communion to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Roman Catholic who supports abortion rights.
Some observers of the Roman Catholic Church said the move by Pope Francis is yet another example of his effort to tone down highly publicized stances on divisive social issues such as gay marriage, contraception and abortion, on which Burke has made strong remarks.
National Catholic Reporter journalist John Allen said in an email that the “face-value reading” of the changes was that Francis wants more moderate bishops, fewer who are “heavily invested in culture wars.”
In a blog post Monday after the news hit, [Religion News Service reporter David] Gibson described Burke as a “very conservative holdover from the Benedict XVI era and a fan of the kind of high liturgical finery that Pope Francis does not take to, at all.”
The pope’s decision to remove Cardinal Raymond L. Burke from the Congregation for Bishops was taken by church experts to be a signal that Francis is willing to disrupt the Vatican establishment in order to be more inclusive.
“[The Pope] is saying that you don’t need to be a conservative to become a bishop,” said Alberto Melloni, the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna, Italy, a liberal Catholic research institute. “He wants good bishops, regardless of how conservative or liberal they are.”
Cardinal Burke, who came to the Vatican in 2008 after serving as archbishop of St. Louis, is a favorite of many conservative Catholics in the United States for his upholding of church rites and traditions favored by Pope Benedict XVI. . . .
Burke has been known for his outspoken championing of the high priority that Popes Benedict and John Paul II gave to the Church’s pro-life and pro-family teachings. He has especially been both praised and criticized for his frequent insistence that persistently pro-abortion Catholic politicians must be denied Holy Communion according to Canon law requirements which Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became pope, directed the US bishops to follow.
John Smeaton, President of the UK Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, told LifeSiteNews, "Cardinal Raymond Burke is a giant man of the Catholic Church and a fearless defender of unborn children, whom Mother Teresa rightly called the poorest of the poor.”
“While other leading churchmen downplay or dismiss the priority to be given to the right to life of babies before birth, billions of whom have been killed in recent years, Cardinal Burke stands strong and says such an attitude is wrong,” Smeaton added. “We need churchmen like Cardinal Burke to become bishops and so it's puzzling and disappointing to see him lost to the Congregation for Bishops which has the responsibility for appointing good bishops and to see other men appointed who don't have Cardinal Burke's clear commitment to the greatest human rights issue of the day and the gravest crisis facing the Catholic Church today.”
In an interview with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on Dec. 13, Cardinal Burke explained that it is necessary to protect the Sacrament, the Communion wafer offered at Masses, from “being profaned, being violated by someone receiving unworthily,” someone “who knows that he or she is unworthy and yet presumes to come forward and to take the Holy Eucharist.”
Cardinal Burke, whose official title is Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, or chief of the Vatican’s highest court, said, “I’ve thought about it because I’ve received very severe criticism, both at the time that I was insisting on applying the discipline and also in my writing and other situations. But I have to say that, I think about it again, the discipline itself, and it’s a consistent discipline from the time of St. Paul, from the very first years of the Church, and it makes perfect sense.”
The cardinal continued, “The Holy Eucharist is the most sacred reality. It is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And I simply wouldn’t approach to receive Holy Communion if I was in a state of sin, and neither would I give Holy Communion to someone who I knew was in a state of sin.”
Lawmakers want Ohio to be one of over a dozen states to pass a law that preserves freedom of religion, in opposition to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The Ohio Religious Freedom Restoration Act, currently under consideration, would allow, for example, religious displays and prayer in school.
“We want to be sure, perfectly sure, that if someone wants to put up an expression of their religion, wants to pray in school, that they will not be denied. . . . God gave us our rights, not the government, not the neighbor, but God. Government is here to protect those rights.” -- Rep. Bill Patmon, D-Cleveland.
Under the bill, separation of church and state would be enforced with the least restrictions possible and only when promoting a “compelling government interest.”
For instance, public teachers or workers in Ohio should be able to wear a cross necklace or display a Nativity scene, said state Rep. Tim Derickson, R-Hanover Township.
The bill has the support of groups that include the Ohio Catholic Conference, Agudath Israel of America, the Ohio Council of Churches and Citizens for Community Values.
Rep. Tim Derickson, a Republican from Oxford and one of the co-sponsors, called the bill introduced yesterday “a preventive attempt” to block further encroachment on expression of religious freedom. He cited examples such as prohibition of prayer in schools and public places, zoning issues for churches, and public expression of religious faith, such as wearing crosses and displaying Nativity scenes.
Patrick Elliott, a staff attorney for Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., called the proposal bad policy and “dangerous.”
The bill reportedly mirrors the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed [in 1993 and signed] by former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1993 that protects First Amendment rights by requiring strict scrutiny in cases that would restrict religious freedom. A court would only be allowed to rule to restrict religious freedom in a case if the ruling supports "compelling government interest," the bill states. So far, 17 states have implemented religious freedom laws mirroring the federal one.
Once again, predictions of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia have materialized . . . In ruling that the Utah law banning polygamy is unconstitutional, U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups, cited two Supreme Court decisions: the 2003 ruling favoring sodomy, and this year's ruling favoring same-sex "marriage." The Gay Agenda is proving to be the epitome of the "slippery slope" metaphor.
“Homosexuals and polygamists do have a common interest: the right to be left alone as consenting adults. There is no spectrum of private consensual relations — there is just a right of privacy that protects all people so long as they do not harm others.” -- Attorney Jonathan Turley, plaintiff counsel and law professor at George Washington University
The ruling was a victory for the polygamist Brown family — stars of the reality TV show “Sister Wives” — and other Fundamentalist Mormons who believe polygamy brings exaltation in heaven.
Anne Wilde of the polygamy advocacy group Principle Voices says polygamous families have lived under the threat of arrest for decades and no longer have to worry that “someone will knock on their door and take away their kids” because the ruling decriminalizes polygamy in Utah.
The Utah attorney general’s office has not yet said whether it’ll appeal Waddoups’ decision.
The U.S. District Court, District of Utah, Central Division has ruled that plural marriages do not constitute a crime. While this does not open the door immediately to plural marriage licenses or other rights, it does one thing – families that practice polygamy may not be persecuted by the state as criminals.
In its decision, the court struck down the part of the statute that criminalizes co-habitation between consenting adults. The effect of the decision would also limit future prosecutions of traditional bigamy in cases where individuals have multiple marriage licenses.
Of course, this throws open a door of thousands of other issues like inheritance, and rights of wives and their children, but as the case makes clear – criminalization of polygamy also did not serve to address those more important issues, but served to suppress them.
A federal judge has struck down parts of Utah’s anti-polygamy law as unconstitutional in a case brought by a polygamous star of a reality television series. Months after the Supreme Court bolstered rights of same-sex couples, the Utah case could open a new frontier in the nation’s recognition of once-prohibited relationships.
Judge Waddoups, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote a 91-page decision that reflects — and reflects upon — the nation’s changing attitude toward government regulation of personal affairs and unpopular groups. The Supreme Court supported the power of states to restrict polygamy in an 1879 decision, Reynolds v. United States.
As same-sex marriage has gained popular approval and legal status in recent years, some have hoped — and some feared — that other forms of cohabitation might follow. Justice Antonin Scalia, in his bitter and famous dissent from the 2003 Lawrence case, said the nation was on the verge of the end of legislation based on morality, and was opening the door to legalizing “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity.”
After learning of the ruling Saturday afternoon, Marvin Wyler exclaimed "hallelujah" and said polygamy never should have been criminalized in the first place. Wyler — who left The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints more than a decade ago but continues to believe in polygamy — said that in the past polygamists feared legal repercussions for their criminalized lifestyle. The ruling lifts that threat — which surprised Charlette Wyler, a wife of Marvin’s.
But Marvin Wyler also doubted the new court ruling would have a major impact on Hildale [Utah] and adjacent Colorado City, Ariz., collectively known as Short Creek. He didn’t know of the ruling until Saturday afternoon — hours after a polygamous wedding happened in the town — and life would likely continue for most people as usual.
"It won’t be any different," he said.
The limited impact of the ruling was the theme of the day in the community, which seems to have learned to live without much attention to bigamy laws.
U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby's ruling Monday comes three days after he struck down Utah's ban on same-sex marriage.
Shelby said lawyers for the state had offered no evidence that opposite-sex marriage would be affected and that their "fears and speculations are insufficient to justify the State's refusal to dignify the family relationships of its gay and lesbian citizens."
Shelby held a hearing on the matter Monday and denied Utah's request to stay his decision, according to Mary Jane McNamee, his courtroom deputy.
Utah voters approved a law banning same-sex marriage in 2004.
This week's congressional budget deal demonstrated that winning power in D.C. is priority "numero uno" for the Republican Party -- principles and moral beliefs "take a back seat." In fact, House Speaker John Boehner is backing the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) in its financial support for at least two openly homosexual candidates who vehemently advocate the Gay Agenda and abortion on demand, in opposition to the GOP platform.
“Our decisions on the Republican nominees we support will not be based on race, gender or sexual orientation but will be based on the strength of their candidacy and their ability to defeat Democrats.” -- Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the NRCC
The NRCC is tasked with recruiting and helping to elect candidates, as well as incumbents, to the House every two years. For part of its financial substance, it collects millions of dollars in membership dues from incumbent lawmakers.
In next year’s midterm elections, there are two openly gay GOP candidates who are well positioned to challenge Democratic incumbents. Richard Tisei, a former state lawmaker who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2012, is running again for a Massachusetts seat.
In San Diego, former city councilman Carl DeMaio is challenging Democratic Rep. Scott Peters. DeMaio ran for San Diego mayor last year, but lost to the now-disgraced Democrat Bob Filner, who resigned after facing a barrage of sexual harassment claims.
Both candidates would have to face primaries before being guaranteed a spot on the November general election ballot. But if they do win their respective primaries, they’ve been widely praised as potential pick-ups for the GOP in the House. Rep. Patrick McHenry, who serves as the NRCC’s top recruiter, has touted both as top-tier candidates.
On Thursday, following POLITICO’S report, House Speaker John Boehner said his party should support gay Republican congressional candidates. . . .
In recent years, Republicans have slowly tried to make inroads with the gay community. As gay marriage becomes more common, many GOP officials have softened their stance. Since the 2012 election, Republicans have similarly tried to make inroads with other neglected voting blocs, including women and Hispanics.
Many senior House Republicans haven’t shied away from giving money to Tisei or DeMaio. The NRCC supported Tisei in 2012, and many top Republicans contributed to his campaign. The political arm of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) gave DeMaio $10,000 in June. And Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) chipped in $5,000 the same month.
Many Republicans seem willing to back DeMaio. Rep. Darrell Issa, a senior California Republican who has endorsed him, said that “he will be supported by the NRCC when he wins the primary.”
Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said if DeMaio is the “Republican candidate, that’s who we’re going to back.”
"Typically, most, if not all, members of the House Republican Conference were focused on one thing — winning the majority," said one former NRCC senior aide. "That requires diversity in the candidate recruitment class whether it that has to do with positions on issues from the Second Amendment to abortion rights or a candidate's ethnicity or sexual orientation."
"Most of the people who are really wealthy, they don’t care about gay marriage, for or against it," said one Republican fundraiser. "The NRCC is not going to lose any donors because they give to gay candidates."
Despite – or perhaps because of – their unorthodox positions on social issues, both DeMaio and Tisei have become darlings of the GOP leadership, who have named both men as picks for the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program, which funds the most promising would-be Congressional freshmen. Their candidacies are part of a larger strategy being referred to among Republican insiders as the “new generation,” seemingly a reference to a 95-page election year post-mortem by the College Republicans examining what went wrong between the GOP and young voters.
That report, titled “Grand Old Party for a Brand New Generation,” argued that as public support for same-sex “marriage” increases, especially among so-called “Millennials” between the ages of 18 and 29, the party should downplay its opposition to gay unions and seek out “diversity of opinion” in its candidates.
“There is hardly an appetite from this generation to see the GOP crusade against same-sex marriage,” the group wrote. “In the short run … the best course of action for the party may be to promote the diversity of opinion on the issue within its ranks (after all, for quite some time, former vice president Dick Cheney was to the left of President Obama on same-sex marriage) and to focus on acceptance and support for gay people as separate from the definition of marriage.”
The same report described the party’s pro-life platform as a liability with young voters who, although largely supporting limits on legal abortion, see the Republican Party as “extreme” on the issue.
Concerning Tisei’s congressional run, [GOP House Minority Leader Eric] Cantor said, "We all came here from somewhere. It is the opportunity that drew us here, and he will have every bit of opportunity, as an openly gay Republican, as any other Republican. I told him, we're fully behind him. I'm supportive of his candidacy and look forward to serving with him."
According to the Washington Post, Tisei’s candidacy “has won the support of the entire House Republican leadership, including a $5,000 check from the PAC run by the vice-presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).”
The 2012 Republican Party Platform opposes abortion and homosexual marriage. The GOP Platform references abortion in several sections and says, among other things, “Through Obamacare, the current Administration has promoted the notion of abortion as healthcare. We, however, affirm the dignity of women by protecting the sanctity of human life. Numerous studies have shown that abortion endangers the health and wellbeing of women, and we stand firmly against it.”
As for “gay marriage,” the 2012 Republican Party Platform says, “We reaffirm our support for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. We applaud the citizens of the majority of States which have enshrined in their constitutions the traditional concept of marriage, and we support the campaigns underway in several other States to do so.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee announced on Nov. 21 that Tisei and DeMaio were among 36 candidates placed "On the Radar" level of the "Young Guns" program.
"‘On the Radar’ is the first level of the committee’s ‘Young Guns’ program, and will help to provide candidates and their campaigns the tools they need to run successful, winning campaigns against their Democratic opponents," states the NRCC. "As participants in this program, these candidates will continue to work with the committee and the program’s original founders to ensure that their campaigns remain competitive, well-funded and communicative within their districts."
On the "About" page for "Young Guns," it states the program was co-founded in 2007-08 by Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and that it "seeks to grow the Republican Majority in the House of Representatives." It further says, "Candidates who achieve Young Gun status have successfully collaborated with the NRCC and completed the benchmarks that establish a path to victory on Election Day."
Neither the DeMaio ["Young Guns"] page nor the Tisei page mentions that the candidate is gay or that both men support abortion and same-sex marriage. Nor does Tisei's "Young Guns" page mention that he is "married" to his partner.
Once the Pentagon was notified by atheists that a Christmas nativity scene had been placed by volunteers near a lake on Shaw Air Force base in South Carolina, the display was removed by base officials within two hours. Then, following a week of public outcry, the Air Force issued a policy to allow only "approved displays" and the nativity scene was then placed outside the base chapel.
Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Keavy (kev-EE) Rake said Tuesday a Nativity display was set up Friday by a group of volunteers from the base chapel at a small lake on the installation. The site was near where a tree lighting ceremony was scheduled Friday evening.
Rake says the Military Religious Freedom Foundation lodged a complaint about the display through the Air Force in Washington.
Rake says Air Force officials want a holiday display that reflects more than a single group, so the Nativity scene was taken down . . .
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation [MRFF] praised officials at Shaw Air Force Base for removing a Nativity scene located near Memorial Lake on Friday. The traditional Nativity included plastic statues of Mary, Joseph, the Baby Jesus and an assortment of animals.
Hiram Sasser, the director of litigation for Liberty Institute, told me the military's actions were unconstitutional.
"This was private speech," he said. "The military can say no displays on a base but it cannot allow a display and then ban it simply because of its religious viewpoint."
Sasser said the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that viewpoint discrimination even in a non-public forum such as a military base in unconstitutional.
"It appears that Mikey Weinstein [lead atheist at MRFF] has a special hotline to call his friends in leadership at the Pentagon to alert them to engage in unnecessary and, in this case, unlawful censorship of private religious speech," he said.
To read the entire opinion column above, CLICK HERE.
A human-sized portrayal of the Nativity that had been removed at an Air Force base in South Carolina last week has been moved to a new location.
South Carolina Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott and Rep. Mick Mulvaney said they had complained to officials at Shaw Air Force base in Sumpter, S.C., about the scene’s removal.
A spokesman at the base told Fox News that Pentagon attorneys were afraid the presence of the plastic baby Jesus would imply the military is endorsing Christianity.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which promotes the separation of church and state, had requested that it be removed.
A report released today by the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) shows that the rate of breast cancer increased 14% in the past four years but with massively higher increases in developing nations that have abandoned traditional child birth patterns in favor of contraception, sterilization, and abortion. Unfortunately, the mainstream media is NOT reporting these well-documented, known principal causes of breast cancer.
"Breast cancer is also a leading cause of cancer death in the less developed countries of the world." -- David Forman, head of the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
. . . breast cancer killed 522,000 women last year . . . And 1.7 million women were newly diagnosed with breast cancer last year, up by more than 20 percent from 2008.
Projecting forward, IARC experts said they expected "a substantive increase" in cancer cases worldwide, with annual new cases predicted to rise to 19.3 million by 2025 as the global population both grows and ages.
Worldwide trends show that in developing countries going through rapid societal and economic change, the shift towards lifestyles more typical of richer industrialized countries leads to a rising burden of cancers linked to reproduction, diet and hormones.
The most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide were those of the lung (1.8 million, 13 percent of the total), breast (1.7 million, 11.9 percent), and colorectal (1.4 million, 9.7 percent). . . .
Breast cancer continues to soar.
According to the WHO, in 2012, 1.7 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer, and there were 6.3 million women alive who had been diagnosed with the disease in the previous five years.
. . . Breast cancer is also the most common cause of cancer death among women and the most frequently diagnosed cancer among women in 140 of 184 countries worldwide. It now represents one in four of all cancers in women.
Generally, worldwide trends show that in developing countries going through rapid societal and economic changes, the shift towards lifestyles typical of industrialized countries leads to a rising burden of cancers associated with reproductive, dietary, and hormonal risk factors.
Reproductive factors associated with prolonged exposure to endogenous estrogens, such as early menarche, late menopause, late age at first childbirth are among the most important risk factors for breast cancer. Exogenous hormones also exert a higher risk for breast cancer. Oral contraceptive and hormone replacement therapy users are at higher risk than non-users. Breastfeeding has a protective effect (IARC, 2008, Lacey et al., 2009).
The differences in breast cancer incidence between developed and developing countries can partly be explained by dietary effects combined with later first childbirth, lower parity, and shorter breastfeeding (Peto, 2001). The increasing adoption of western life-style in low- and middle-income countries is an important determinant in the increase of breast cancer incidence in these countries.
Abstract: An international collaborative study of breast cancer and reproductive experience has been carried out in 7 areas of the world. In all areas studied, a striking relation between age at first birth and breast cancer risk was observed. It is estimated that women having their first child when aged under 18 years have only about one-third the breast cancer risk of those whose first birth is delayed until the age of 35 years or more. Births after the first, even if they occur at an early age, have no, or very little, protective effect. The reduced risk of breast cancer in women having their first child at an early age explains the previously observed inverse relationship between total parity and breast cancer risk, since women having their first birth early tend to become ultimately of high parity. The association with age at first birth requires different kinds of etiological hypotheses from those that have been invoked in the past to explain the association between breast cancer risk and reproductive experience.
A second scientific review in 2014 has strongly urged physicians to warn patients about the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link before an abortion and argued the evidence for a cause-effect relationship is substantial. A. Patrick Schneider and his colleagues authored the latest review entitled, “The breast cancer epidemic: 10 facts,” for the journal, The Linacre Quarterly.
Schneider’s team said, “…having more than one risk factor compounds the risk of breast cancer via synergistic mechanisms,” meaning the risk increase the woman incurs is greater than the sum of the risks for each of her risk factors. They explained:
“The strength of the breast cancer epidemiological evidence substantiates the necessity that all females receive full and accurate informed consent before they are provided hormones, induced abortion, or both. This informed consent is especially imperative for a girl (and parent/guardian) or a young woman, who is in the pre-FFTP (first full term pregnancy) breast cancer ‘susceptibility window.’ As a family history of breast cancer, of which the child may be unaware, increases the risk for the girl considering an abortion, the presence of a parent may provide clinical information critical to accurate informed consent.”
Schneider’s team cited “evidence of an emerging breast cancer pandemic.” Noting the words of Harvard’s Professor Brian MacMahon, the “founder of modern epidemiology,” who said “many of the prevalent forms of human cancer are preventable,” and citing his landmark research, they listed other ways women raise their risk: delay (or avoidance) childbearing, reduced duration (or avoidance) of breastfeeding.
India's Supreme Court ruled that the historical law against homosexual sex shall remain in place in the world's largest democracy unless or until the Parliament changes such laws. The highest court decision negated a lower court ruling from 2009 that decriminalized homosexual behavior.
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:
The law, dating back to the 1860s, when Britain ruled over South Asia, states that "whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal" can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
The 2009 New Delhi High Court ruling, which said the law violated fundamental human rights, infuriated conservatives and religious groups who say homosexuality represents a threat to traditional Indian culture.
In a rare alliance, the groups — including the All India Muslim Law Board, Christian groups and Hindu spiritual leaders — argued that gay sex is unnatural and that India should maintain the law.
Lawyers and supporters of gays, lesbians and transsexuals vowed to continue pressing for the removal of the law, which they say encourages discrimination, even if it is rarely invoked by prosecutors.
Human rights activists called the move a “major setback” to the decade-long fight against the law — known as “Section 377” — which was ruled unconstitutional by a Delhi High Court in 2009. That victory has long been seen as watershed moment for the country’s burgeoning gay-rights movement — in a still traditional and deeply religious society where many homosexuals have long felt the need to conceal their sexual identities, and even marry members of the opposite sex, because of the stigma attached.
. . . in the years since homosexuality was decriminalized, human rights activists say, more gay, lesbian and transgendered Indians have felt freer to gather and talk about their sexuality openly. Colorful pride parades are more common, and there is even a gay radio station — Q Radio — in Bangalore, the country’s high-tech capital.
. . . Indians are in the main deeply conservative about issues of sexuality and personal morality. National surveys show that Indians widely disapprove of homosexuality and, on average, have few sexual partners throughout their lives.
Asian nations typically take a more restrictive view of homosexuality than Western countries. In China, gay sex is not explicitly outlawed, but people can get arrested under ill-defined laws like licentiousness.
India’s judges have a long history of judicial activism that would be all but unimaginable in the United States. . . . But legalizing gay sex was one step too far for India’s top judges, and in a rare instance of judicial modesty they deferred to India’s legislators.
There is almost no chance that Parliament will act where the Supreme Court did not, advocates and opponents of the law agreed. And with the Bharatiya Janata Party, a conservative Hindu nationalist group, appearing in ascendancy before national elections in the spring, the prospect of any legislative change in the next few years is highly unlikely, analysts said.
As homosexualists in "Old Europe" and other western nations claim dominance in the culture, and the "inevitability" of same-sex "marriage," nearly all eastern European nations vehemently reject the Gay Agenda.
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:
A majority of Croatians voted in a referendum Sunday to ban gay marriages in what is a major victory for the Catholic Church-backed conservatives in the European Union’s newest nation.
The state electoral commission, citing near complete results, said 65 percent of those who voted answered “yes” to the referendum question: “Do you agree that marriage is matrimony between a man and a woman?” About 34 percent voted against.
Croatia’s liberal president, Ivo Josipovic, said he voted against amending the constitution. Josipovic said the referendum result must be respected, but added the government is preparing a law to allow some rights to gays and lesbians living together.
Since 2004, 13 nations have joined the European Union and 10 of them either prohibit or do not recognize homosexual marriage, while the remaining three allow some legal "partnership" recognitions but not on the same level as heterosexual marriage.
Besides Croatia, 12 other nations, all from Eastern Europe, have joined the EU since 2004. Not one of those nations legally recognizes homosexual "marriage" and only three permit some legal standing for same-sex couples.
To read the details of the countries in the article above, CLICK HERE.
In Ukraine, confirmation of the decision not to sign up to closer ties with the EU has brought more people onto the streets of the capital Kiev (Kyiv) – on both sides of the east-west tug of war.
Evidence of an anti-EU campaign has been visible in Kiev, with posters warning that closer ties would bring job cuts, high prices and gay marriage.
The protesters have tried to model themselves on 2004’s largely peaceful Orange Revolution. Despite their efforts, violence has broken out several times over the weekend. On Sunday, clashes between security forces and protesters left dozens of people injured, including around 50 journalists, scores of students, and hundreds of police officers. Some activists accuse individuals close to pro-Russian extreme right-wing parties of orchestrating the violence. Others assert that people are being paid to provoke disorder.
"What we are seeing in Ukraine and in a lot of other countries is an intense interest in propaganda laws that were passed in Russia," says J. Lester Feder, a foreign correspondent for Buzzfeed in Ukraine.
Feder says the anxiety over the relationship with the West is something that is playing out throughout Eastern Europe. And as the EU continues to expand towards Russia, Russia is trying very hard to hold on to its influence in this part of the world.
Feder says you really can't talk about LGBT rights in Ukraine in isolation.
"There is a much bigger geo-political debate happening," he says. "You have real competition between two very large economic and political powers in the region and this debate ... will be heavily shaped by those actors — by Russia and the EU — [and] not primarily by activists whose primary concerns are LGBT rights."
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is accusing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops of negligence in a federal lawsuit because a Michigan Catholic hospital would not perform an abortion in the case of early labor, but rather allowed a natural miscarriage of a pregnancy.
Basically, the ACLU said the group’s anti-abortion guidelines were to blame for the woman’s negligent care, and that the woman never should have been put in the position of seeing her child die during early labor, Newsmax reported. The woman was treated at the Catholic-affiliated Mercy Health Muskegon in Michigan.
The ACLU faulted the bishops for not telling the woman, Tamesha Means, early in her pregnancy that her decision to continue to full term posed health risks for her and for her child.
The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Michigan said Ms. Means was 18 weeks pregnant in 2010. Her water broke and she went to Muskegon, the closest hospital, for treatment. Over the course of several emergency room visits, no medical profession ever advised her “the safest treatment option was to induce labor and terminate the pregnancy,” based on her condition. Why? The ACLU alleges the hospital purposely avoided this advice, because of ethical directives from the bishops group.
With USCCB et al. v. ACLU, the abortion debate is widened to include a more diverse array of cases, as Means’ predicament shows that directives set forth by religious authorities are sometimes indiscriminately generalized across all pregnancies — be they wanted or not. Writing for Slate, Amanda Marcotte submits that by refusing to acknowledge the state of the fetus and denying Means the care she obviously needed, the hospital essentially prioritized a faceless religious principle over the actual life of a mother of three children. Such decisions, she argues, call into question the anti-abortion movement’s purported goal of protecting all life.
The current case dovetails with the recent legal challenges to Texas Senate Bill 5 — a set of restrictive abortion provisions whereby a clinic offering pregnancy terminations must have inpatient admitting privileges at a fully equipped health center within 30 miles.
To read the entire opinion column above, CLICK HERE.
. . . [The ACLU] claims that our document titled “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” (ERDs) encourages or requires substandard treatment of pregnant women because it does not approve the direct killing of their unborn children.
This claim is baseless. The ERDs urge respectful and compassionate care for both mothers and their children, both during and after pregnancy. Regarding abortion, the ERDs restate the universal and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on defending the life of the unborn child—a defense that, as Pope Francis recently reminded us, “is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right” (Evangelii Gaudium, no. 213). This same commitment to the life of each human individual has motivated Catholics to establish the nation’s largest network of nonprofit health care ministries. These ministries provide high-quality care to women and children, including those who lack health coverage and financial resources. The Church’s rejection of abortion also mirrors the Hippocratic Oath that gave rise to the very idea of medicine as a profession, a calling with its own life-affirming moral code.
The Church holds that all human life, both before and after birth, has inherent dignity, and that health care providers have the corresponding duty to respect the dignity of all their patients. This lawsuit argues that it is legally “negligent” for the Catholic bishops to proclaim this core teaching of our faith. Thus, the suit urges the government to punish that proclamation with civil liability, a clear violation of the First Amendment.
When Michael Griffin told administrators of Holy Ghost Preparatory School near Philadelphia that he would be "marrying" another man, the leaders told him that such action would result in him being fired for breaching the employment contract requirement to live in conformance with Catholic teaching. After taking such action, and being fired, Griffin went before media cameras criticizing the school for holding him to his contract, thus advocating President Obama's insistence on passing new legislation (ENDA) to force Christian schools to hire anti-Christians.
Father James McCloskey, the school's headmaster, said in a statement that faculty at the school are required to follow church teachings, NBC Philadelphia reported.
He said in the statement that Griffin's decision "contradicts the terms of his teaching contract at our school, which requires all faculty and staff to follow the teachings of the Church as a condition of their employment. In discussion with Mr. Griffin, he acknowledged that he was aware of this provision, yet he said that he intended to go ahead with the ceremony."
Griffin, who graduated from the school and has taught French and Spanish there for 12 years, said that his relationship with his partner of 12 years wasn't a secret from the school and that his partner had even been to McCloskey's house.
Griffin lives in New Jersey, which became the 14th state to recognize same-sex marriage in October.
Michael Griffin says he emailed the principal of Holy Ghost Prep earlier in the week saying he may be late Friday, that he was applying for a marriage license. After an in-service day he says he was called into the office of School President Father James McCloskey, along with Principal Jeffrey Danilak.
Griffin explains, "He said, 'It's not really a secret here that you're gay.' I said, 'Correct.' He said, 'I assume this is a same sex marriage.' 'Yes.' He said if I go through with it, he had no choice but to terminate my position."
In tears, he left. His over a decade-long tenure at Holy Ghost was over.
Holy Ghost Preparatory is a 116-year-old all-boys private Catholic high school in Bensalem, Pa., about 15 miles northeast of Philadelphia. Griffin graduated from the school in 1996 and taught French and Spanish there for nearly 13 years before being fired on Friday, according to the school's website.
While Griffin's fate may sound outrageous, the U.S. still has a long way to go to protect homosexuals from workplace discrimination. Under federal law, Pennsylvania state law, and by law in 28 other states, it is still perfectly legal to fire someone because of their sexual orientation.
Months after atheists threatened the Bulloch County, Georgia school district concerning visible Christianity, teachers were recently notified that they are now forbidden to use Bible verses in E-mail and ordered to flee from any students who initiate a Christian prayer.
“The Bulloch County Board of Education has created a hostile environment toward religious liberty in general. It’s not religion that’s being driven out of the schools. It’s one single religion – Christianity. . . . Such intolerant bias and censorship that has been exhibited by the Board by its administrators is blatant viewpoint discrimination of the kind that both the Supreme Court of the United States and the (11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) have repeatedly rejected.” -- Jeremiah G. Dys, attorney from Liberty Institute
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:
Hundreds of concerned parents and others packed the Bulloch County Board of Education on Thursday night to get answers and voice their opinion on religious freedom and expression in schools.
Jon Cook, the husband of a Bulloch County teacher, presented a petition with 1,200 signatures. It asks the school board to reexamine their interpretation of state and federal laws on what teachers and other school employees can say, do, display when it comes to religious expression.
Cook's wife, Jill, spoke against requirements by the board that teachers not include Bible verses or scripture in their work email tag lines. She also took issue with a policy that forbids religious displays in classrooms or active participation in student prayer. Others who spoke believe the board's rules encroach on teacher's religious liberties.
More than 250 people crammed into the [William James Educational Complex] cafeteria, during a scheduled meeting of the Bulloch County Board of Education, to rebel against rules they say are unconstitutionally restrictive.
Schools Superintendent Charles Wilson, reacting to correspondence from Americans United for Separation of Church and State — who received complaints from a Bulloch County parent about teachers participating in prayer — reaffirmed [the school's interpretation of legal precedence] to school leaders . . .
Christian teachers and community members upset by the [school's] requirements rallied together, formed advocacy groups, and assembled for Thursday’s meeting.
Speakers, one after another, claimed requirements to be an attack on Christianity and a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm based in Plano, Texas, which says it is "dedicated to defending and restoring religious liberty across America," sent notice to the Bulloch County Board of Education Thursday evening that it could file suit if the school system does not, within 10 days, "put a stop to censoring the email signatures of the teachers and staff of Bulloch County Schools."
[Liberty Attorney Jeremiah] Dys spoke during the public comment section of the regular school board meeting Thursday evening and presented the letter to the board after his comments. More than 250 attended the meeting, and 19 speakers, including Dys, addressed the religious liberty debate.
On Thursday, Dys told the school board: "We represent a group of teachers and staff in Bulloch County Schools who have raised allegations of intimidation, discrimination and even censoring of their religious liberty by administrators of Bulloch County Schools."
In April, Americans United For Separation of Church and State filed a complaint with the school district over prayers at school events as well as teachers participating in the prayers.
. . . Mr. Cook [whose wife Jill teaches at Sallie Zetterower Elementary School in Statesboro, GA] started “Bulloch County Citizens for Religious Liberties, a grassroots gathering of local residents who want to stop the erosion of religious liberties in their community.
“For me, this is not so much a matter of Christianity as it is a matter of civil liberty,” [Cook said]. “I fear that if more of us do not stand firm against the progressive cancer of political correctness that is eating away at our society, we may not have much time left before we lose all individual liberty.”
Robb Kicklighter said his wife experienced that attitude first hand after she was told to remove a Bible verse screen saver on her school computer. She’s a third grade teacher at Brooklet Elementary School.
[Kicklighter said] another teacher in the school was told to stop listening to Christian music in the classroom.
