In an interview with Newsweek (Feb. 7, 2000), Al Gore discussed his Baptist beliefs. When asked if it would bother him if an atheist became president, Gore said: "No, it would not. I think that it would depend on who the person was, of course. But do I believe that someone can have an understanding of our Constitution [and] a true spirit of tolerance without affirming a particular and specialized belief in God? Yes, I do. I think that is incumbent upon anyone who affirms a respect for tolerance."
Roman Catholic priests in the United States are dying from AIDS-related illnesses at a rate four times higher than the general population, although the cause of death is often concealed on their death certificates, according to a widely-reprinted Kansas City Star series beginning Jan. 30.
Several hundred priests have died from AIDS and related illnesses since the mid-1980s and hundreds more are living with HIV, according to the report gleaned from death certificates and interviews.
The Star sent questionnaires last fall to 3,000 of the 46,000 priests in the United States, receiving 801 responses. Six of ten priests responding said they knew of at least one priest who had died of an AIDS-related illness. One-third knew a priest living with AIDS.
In Missouri and Kansas alone, at least 16 priests and two religious-order brothers have died of AIDS since early 1987.
Joseph Barone, a New Jersey psychiatrist and AIDS expert, puts the number of U.S. priests who have died of AIDS at 1,000--nearly 11 times the rate of the general population. AIDS is such a concern that most dioceses and religious orders require applicants for the priesthood to take an HIV-antibody test before ordination.
The Star cited as a typical example of AIDS cover-up the death of Bishop Emerson Moore, who left the Archdiocese of New York in 1995 and died at a Minnesota hospice of an AIDS-related illness. His death certificate attributed the death to "unknown natural causes," and listed his occupation as "laborer." After an AIDS activist filed a complaint, officials properly identified the cause of death, but did not correct the lie about Moore's occupation.
Pastor Howard Hunichen was sentenced to 6 years in prison on January 20, by a judge in Raleigh, North Carolina, for inflicting critical injuries last spring upon a 7-month-old infant.
The traveling street and radio preacher was found guilty of shaking, stomping and hitting the infant on a daily basis, in trying to force him to crawl and walk, and sometimes just to stop crying.
Malnourished Zachary Fortner, who sustained a broken pelvis, brain damage and 12 fractured bones, was left with severely limited mental and physical abilities. He is a ward of the state living at a center for brain-damaged children.
The Fortners testified the pastor, who called the baby "lazy" and a "crybaby," submitted their baby to two months of abuse. They had moved to Raleigh and lived with and supported the pastor, who dictated everything, from what Lisa Fortner cooked to how the couple's three children should behave. Fortner was fond of quoting Proverbs 20:30: "The blueness of the wounds cleanseth away evil."
Lisa Fortner, 26, who is pregnant, testified that Hunichen was abusive and controlling, forcing her into a sexual relationship while her husband worked six days a week to support the household. The couple's two other young children have been removed from home.
Misdemeanor charges of battering a teenaged resident of the Holyland commune in western Alabama have led the state to open an investigation of the religious compound.
Albert Lee Roberts, 48, a deacon at the Pentecostal commune, faces a March 13 trial date for assaulting a 13-year-old teenager who was trying to stop Roberts from hitting his little brother.
The compound, founded by Luke Edwards, who is black, faces allegations of widespread child abuse and exploitation of poor blacks. The commune is allegedly the center of a business network with millions of dollars in west Alabama and eastern Mississippi.
Two former inmates at the compound have come forward claiming that Edwards predicted at least two blazes that occurred there. State investigators ruled accidental a deadly 1998 blaze which killed four girls in the girls' dorm. Another Edwards-predicted fire also destroyed the boys' dorm, but no one was injured.
In 1976, a girl, 2, died at another Holyland fire.
Children at Holyland are separated from their parents.
Edwards has also been accused of adding to his flock by fathering children with numerous women who live at Holyland. He has acknowledged having 18 children with his two wives, but denies having any children out of wedlock.
History professors and scholars are urging the Texas Historical Commission to allow placement of a historic cenotaph, and to accept the original wording submitted by Texas freethinkers to honor the martyrdom of German freethought immigrants who founded Comfort, Texas, and many area Hill Country settlements. Many were slaughtered during the Civil War for their abolitionist views.
A limestone block, as yet unengraved, is at Comfort Park awaiting final action after some local residents objected to the wording, which had been approved at local and state level, including the phrase that the settlers "accepted no religious dogma [and] built no churches."
A suggested modification includes the phrase that Freethinkers "did not adhere to any formal religious doctrines."
Greg Krauter, a Comfort merchant who helped win local and state backing for the project, objects to the rewriting of facts to appease opponents, and says he may place a private Freethinker monument outside his store and resign from the commission.
History Professor Terry G. Jordan, University of Texas, supported the original wording and urged the commission: "Do not yield to those who prefer propaganda instead."
Walter Buneger, of Texas A&M, told the commission: "How ironic that 150 years later an organized religious group seeks to silence the memory of the Freethinkers and to undercut their understanding of what America was all about. They came to Texas to be free to think and free to change their minds. Can modern Texans live up to their ideals?"
The Chamber of Commerce recently voted that "Satan's Rock," as some have dubbed the cenotaph, be removed. (Source: San Antonio Express-News, Feb. 7, 2000)
Circuit Judge Lucy Chernow Brown issued a Feb. 7 ruling blocking distribution of Florida's "Choose Life" license plates in a lawsuit taken by the National Organization for Women. NOW argues the state improperly approved "a religious motto, which has frequently been used to harass, intimidate and at times kill and maim those who seek to exercise their rights, including the right to choose abortion."
An Air Force Academy holiday display including a cross painted with the words, "Wise people still seek the Lord," was removed from a giant plywood greeting card featured at the entrance to the Air Force Academy in Colorado.
A group of Christian students in February filed a federal lawsuit contending the Kenosha school district, Wis., violated their rights because the high school would not let them add a cross to a religious mural.
Student clubs are given space on walls near the cafeteria to paint murals depicting their purpose and activities. The Bible Club, also known as "Trojans Loving Christ," painted a mural titled "Bible Club" with praying hands, a bible open to John 3:16, and a large heart with two doves. The principal approved that design but refused to let the students add a cross.
Oregon transportation workers recently began removing religious memorials from roadsides following public complaints that the crosses and memorials are distracting and inappropriate, according to the Associated Press.
State Sen. Marilyn Shannon responded with a campaign to declare the religious memorials legal. Foes of the crosses are waging an ideological war by posting signs bearing black crosses with a red slash through them.
Tennessee law prohibits placing anything on a right-of-way. Florida and California have prohibited homemade crosses. Texas allows memorials only at the scenes of alcohol-related fatal accidents. Montana has allowed crosses along highways for nearly 50 years, according to an informal agreement with the American Legion.
Dave Fidanque of the ACLU of Oregon said that if the state allows religious memorials, it will also have to allow atheist placards on Oregon roadsides.
Two economists contend legalized abortion is responsible for the 1990's trend of a steadily dropping crime rate. The crime rate fell in 1998 by about 7%.
Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago and John J. Donohue III, currently at Yale, contend the Roe v. Wade 1973 decision legalizing abortion reduced the number of unwanted children, who are more likely to become criminals. The first set of children born after 1973 turned 18 in 1992, the first year crime began to fall. Most crime is committed by young adult males between the ages of 18 and 24.
The researchers, in an as yet unpublished paper "Legalized Abortion and Crime," say the advent of legal abortion may be responsible for up to 50% of the drop in crime. They noticed crime rates in New York, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, which legalized abortion earlier, dropped a few years before the rest of the nation. States with higher abortion rates have had steeper drops in crime.
Other researchers say the association may be turning up in other areas, as in the drop-off in teenage pregnancy and declines in drug use, sexual activity and suicides.
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