OrthodoxNet.com Blog

NRO | Editors | Jun 26, 2008

In his opinion Wednesday for a five-justice majority in Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments” forbids imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child. Or, rather, he ruled that the Court’s modern rewriting of the Eighth Amendment as a license for the Court to impose its “independent judgment” of “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” yields that result. If any further evidence were needed that the Supreme Court’s death-penalty decisions have become entirely unmoored from the actual Eighth Amendment — as well as from the good sense of the American people — Kennedy’s opinion provides it. Continue Reading »

The Scriptorium Daily | John Mark Reynolds | Jun. 18, 2008

Whatever is going on in California, it is not marriage. Two men or two women can no more be married, than a man can be wife or woman a husband. Even if one believes (as I do not) that what is happening between two men or two women is a good thing, it is not the same thing. Continue Reading »

OrthodoxyToday.org | Timothy Birdnow | May 26, 2008

This is what “progressive” social policies and good intentions have wrought! (What is paved with good intentions?) Feminism, welfare, and the sexual revolution, along with the explosion of narcotics, have completely destroyed the black family. This woman had a father, who was probably a drug addict or alcoholic and who likely lived on welfare. In another time, he would have been poor and uneducated, but would have worked and cared for his children. Thanks to the compassion of the Left, he was freed of any responsibility and could destroy himself and everyone around him at his leisure. Because more children mean more government largesse, poor women frequently become baby factories, spitting out more hopeless welfare recipients and keeping our prisons full. Continue Reading »

OrthodoxNet.com | Jun. 9, 2008

Not all participants of the inter-Christian dialogue are ready to pursue partnership and solidarity, Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, Representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions, said.

“The divergence is so deep, that it can be compared to bottomless abysses,” Hilarion said in his interview to the Soyuznoye Veche, the newspaper of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia, commenting his dialogue with a Lutheran bishop. Continue Reading »

Exactly what Dennis Prager predicted will happen is now happening in California. The state is removing “bride” and “groom” from marriage licenses. Why only “2″ partners?

AP | Michael R. Blood | May. 22, 2008

You have to figure “bride” and “groom” are out. So, what will the California marriage license look like in the new era of same-sex marriages? Will it list “Partner A” and “Partner B”? “Intended No. 1″ and “Intended No. 2″? Or will it contain just blank spaces for the betrothed?

The court decision last week that legalized gay marriage in California has created a semantic puzzle with scant time to solve it. With the ruling tentatively set to take effect June 16, state bureaucrats must rapidly rewrite, print and distribute a marriage license application. Continue Reading »

Townhall.com | Dennis Prager | May. 20, 2008

Americans seem mesmerized by the word “change.” And, by golly, they sure got it last week from the California Supreme Court. It is difficult to imagine a single social change greater than redefining marriage from opposite sex to include members of the same sex.

Nothing imaginable — leftward or rightward — would constitute as radical a change in the way society is structured as this redefining of marriage for the first time in history: Not another Prohibition, not government taking over all health care, not changing all public education to private schools, not America leaving the United Nations, not rescinding the income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax. Nothing. Continue Reading »

American Thinker | Paul Shlichta | May. 19, 2008

As Lady Macbeth said, “what’s done cannot be undone” — except by constitutional amendment. In order to appease an intransigent minority group, the California Supreme Court has, in the manner of Roe v. Wade, resorted to inventing a new legal principle to justify their predetermined goal.

But one does wish that they had thought the matter out a little more carefully. In creating a mechanism for justifying gay marriage, the justices have set in motion an infernal machine with consequences far beyond their limited imaginations. Cliff Thier has already pointed out that these unintended consequences may include the invalidation of no-fault divorce and the legitimization of polygamy. Let us extend his line of argument further and assess the range of logical consequences of this decision. Continue Reading »

OneNewsNow | Pete Chagnon | Apr. 23, 2008

Children’s Hospital Boston, a world-renowned center for pediatric healthcare, is being criticized by a Massachusetts-based pro-family group for offering sex-change therapy to patients as young as ten years old. Continue Reading »

Ed. (Banescu) Slowly but surely we’re getting a clearer picture of the candidates.

ABC News | Teddy Davis & Lindsey Ellerson | July 18, 2007

ABC News’ Teddy Davis and Lindsey Ellerson Report: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”

Continue Reading »

Salvo Magazine, Spring 2007 (.pdf file) Visit Salvo Magazine website.

The going wisdom of the cultural elite, particularly those cut off from the real world within
the ivory tower of academia, is that one’s gender is an ever-changing, internal sense of being
male, female, or a combination of these. Indeed, they would say that, plumbing aside, there is no difference between men and women at all, only stereotyped roles into which we are socialized by the culture at large.

Continue Reading »

Forbes Richard C. Morais January 29, 2007

The demand for transplants can’t be met by altruistic organ banks, so Internet brokers are stepping into the breach. It’s not a pretty picture.

From his modest ranch home in the hills of Sun Valley, Calif., filled with didgeridoos picked up in Australia and German shepherd puppies, James Cohan, 66, sells organ transplant brokering services to the desperate. His customers face certain death if their diseased organs aren’t quickly swapped out. They find him on the Internet; his stated fee–$140,000 for a kidney and $290,000 for a heart, liver or lung–includes hospital and surgeon charges, and flights and accommodation for a fellow traveler, such as a nurse or spouse.

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Wall Street Journal October 27, 2006; Page A14

This week’s New Jersey Supreme Court’s judicial diktat on same-sex-somethings (name to be determined later) is a remarkable arrogation of power by the judiciary. The court’s belief that it is empowered to embark on social experimentation in the field of marriage is embodied in the words — “We have decided that our State Constitution guarantees that every statutory right and benefit conferred to heterosexual couples through civil marriage must be made available to committed same-sex couples . . .” (our emphasis).

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Acton Institute Anthony B. Bradley August 23, 2006

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The facts tell a powerful story: When the poor are invited to live as people with dignity, within structures of liberty, they will usually do so. Since the 1996 reforms child poverty has plummeted. Some 1.6 million fewer children live in poverty today than in 1995.

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Townhall.com Rebecca Hagelin August 17, 2006

Any parent who doubts the need for great vigilance in our Internet age should take note of a recent survey conducted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It found that more children are falling victim to the products of perverted pornographers.

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Townhall.com Diana West June 26, 2006

I can see it now — I think.

It’s on the right-hand page of a book by or about Winston Churchill, and it is a quotation by Churchill on the subject on war — specifically, what happens to a civilized society when it goes to war with a barbarous one. I can’t find it (yet), but what I remember as being the main point was that if — if — the civilized society is to prevail over the barbarous one, it will necessarily and tragically be degraded by the experience as a vital cost of victory. Partly, this is because civilized war tactics are apt to fail against barbarous war tactics, thus requiring civilized society to break the “rules” if it is to survive a true death struggle. It is also because the clash itself — the act of engaging with the barbarous society — forces civilization to confront, repel and also internalize previously unimagined depredations. This is degrading, too.

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CNSNews.com - More than 200 liberal organizations launched a nationwide campaign Tuesday to halt federal funding for abstinence-until-marriage programs. Conservatives responded that lawmakers should “stay the course” on abstinence education and reject the “old snake oil” of comprehensive sex education…

Wall Street Opinion Journal Josiah Bunting III June 6, 2006

Do Americans still understand the meaning of honor?

In our culture of therapy, self-absorption and celebrity, “honor” has very little cachet. An abuse of honor–say, by perpetrating a public fraud or acting duplicitously in private life–is but the occasion for the administration of comforting words of understanding, the application of medicines to assuage lingering anxieties and the invitation to appear on “Oprah,” the better to explain the forces that, overwhelming meager resources of conscience and character, impelled a dishonorable act. Next may come an invitation to undertake the labor of a book, more fully to explore and expiate the fall from grace. Closure (as it is called) will then, at last, be obtained.

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Christianity Today Nigel M. de S. Cameron April 27, 2006

For years, some of us have been saying that the issues raised by advances in biotechnology will dominate the 21st century—not just because new technology is always fascinating, but also because they will become the key issues in our culture and our politics. Think of the culture war over abortion, and then think much, much bigger. We will move from taking human life to making and finally faking human life—by design.

. . . more

BBC April 24, 2000

Russia’s population fell by more than half a million, or 0.3%, in the first eight months of the year, new statistics show.
Figures from the State Statistics Committee predict a further population decline of 11 million, to about 134 million, in the world’s largest country by 2015.

“It’s altogether a pretty terrible situation,” said Moscow-based journalist Oleg Glebov.

. . . more

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Egelko April 18, 2006

UC Hastings College of the Law is entitled to deny funding and official recognition to a Christian student group because it bars gays, lesbians and non-Christians as members, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White rejected the Christian Legal Society’s arguments that Hastings’ denial of student activity funds and its refusal to let the society use the school name and certain facilities at the San Francisco campus violated freedom of speech, religion and association. Hastings’ nondiscrimination policy, which the school cited in denying recognition to the religious group, “regulates conduct, not speech,” White said.

Continue Reading »