Rev. Stephen Yeaney, 40, pastor of Rock Springs United Methodist Church, and Donna Yeankey, 39, a school psychologist, made the boy strip nude and go outside on the evening of January 16, when temperatures were in the 30s. His mother did not report him missing for eight hours. He was found in a neighbor's barn the next morning, wearing a choir robe taken from his father's church, and was treated for hypothermia. The couple apparently have not abused their two biological children.
"We strongly urge men and women to be willing to serve on school boards, city and county councils and commissions, state legislatures, and other high offices of either election or appointment, including involvement in the political party of their choice," according to a one-page statement released on Feb. 2 by the First Presidency of the church.
Church founder Joseph Smith ran for president of the United States in 1844, and his successor Brigham Young became governor of the Utah Territory in 1850. At least 90 of the 104 legislators in the Utah legislature are Mormon, leading to countless ties between church and state.
Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, chair of the Holocaust Museum's Church Relations Council, commented to the New York Times: "There was intense anti-Semitism within the Catholic and Protestant communities at a religio-cultural level which helped bring about the Holocaust. To pretend otherwise is to distort history."
The Jan. 19 meeting in Washington, D.C., between Falwell and the Prime Minister reportedly outraged President Clinton, as well as many liberal Jews. Falwell has used his TV program to sell a widely discredited videotape accusing the President of peddling drugs and being involved in the murders of political opponents in Arkansas.
Arian Golshani died in Tehran two days after a beating by her father, stepmother and stepbrother, her body emaciated and scarred from cigarette burns, her face unrecognizable.
Her mother's attempts to get custody of the daughter were thwarted by religious law, which automatically grants custody of sons to fathers, and allows daughters to remain with mothers only until age 7. The law now permits a court to remove a child from a home if the custodial parent is unqualified, and to grant custody to a relative or to the state.
A second appeal is before that Court, with oral arguments heard on March 4. Two years ago the court tied 3-3 when the law first came before it, sending the challenge back to the courtroom of Circuit Judge Paul Higginbotham, of Dane County, who ruled the law unconstitutional. The 4th District Court of Appeals upheld Higginbotham last August.
Since the last Supreme Court vote, Justice Roland Day, who voted against the law, has been replaced by Justice Pat Crooks, a rightwing Catholic endorsed by Gov. Tommy Thompson, the force behind the religious voucher law.
The 1995 law to support religious schools with tax dollars has never gone into effect. The State Supreme Court, in 1992, approved a 1990 version of the law giving vouchers to parents pulling students from public schools to attend nonreligious private schools. The 1995 law seeks to expand the $2.5 million-a-year program to a $70 million program involving 15% of Milwaukee students to attend mostly religious private schools.
Eighty-nine of the 122 schools considered eligible for the vouchers in Milwaukee are religious. The Wisconsin State Constitution guarantees state citizens shall not be forced to "support any place of worship" and bans the use of state money to benefit religious or theological seminaries.
Although Gov. Thompson hired Kenneth Starr to represent the state, the special prosecutor investigating President Clinton did not show up for the last round of oral arguments. Starr's law firm has received $387,693.65 through last September, reported Cary Segall for the Wisconsin State Journal (with the arch-conservative Bradley Foundation paying for $344,400.60 of that firm's bills in an unprecedented arrangement).
The State has also paid another private law firm $113.322.48, rather than permit the Justice Department to represent the state.
Challengers of the law include the ACLU and the NAACP.
Luther Burse, director of Civil Rights for the Forest Service, writes to inform the Foundation that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service originally had denied recognition to ACROSS. The Christian group then filed suit in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on May 6, 1997.
"As part of the settlement agreement for the lawsuit, ACROSS agreed to revise its charter and the government agreed to recognize ACROSS." Burse writes that ACROSS had already been permitted to use vacant government meeting space for meetings on nongovernment time, to post ACROSS meeting notices on agency bulletin boards, and to use government electronic mail to announce meetings.
"We do not anticipate providing any funding to ACROSS. Employees are not to attend ACROSS meetings or functions on government time."
Looks like its time to start a Freethought Association at the Forest Service!
The settlement calls for the course to be audiotaped until June 1999 to permit the plaintiffs to monitor its contents. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich issued an injunction in January halting the New Testament course, but urging the school board to try to settle the case. The judge has already ordered monitoring of a similar course on the Old Testament "as history," which began in January.