The ADF attorney argues that demonstrates the hostility towards religion on many college campuses. The lower court in Los Angeles issued a preliminary injunction against the school, saying its speech code -- allowing administrators to punish Lopez's "hateful propaganda" -- is unconstitutional. That has been appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
From LifeSiteNews
ADF attorneys file suit against Board of Education of Half Hollow Hills after officials shut Christian student club down
A student has teamed up with the Alliance Defense Fund to file a lawsuit against a New York school district after school officials cancelled her once-flourishing Christian club.At the beginning of her freshman year at Half Hollow Hills High School East, the student was told that the Ichthus Club, a student-led group where she was one of the leaders, had been cancelled without any advanced notification. Four years earlier, her older brother had met strong resistance before the club was finally allowed to form.
School officials claim that unspecified budget cuts and a lack of student popularity spurred their decision. However, leaders in the club point out that it had more than 55 student attendees last year, and complain that approximately 60 other student clubs, including the Gay-Straight Alliance and Amnesty International, were allowed to continue.
The student leader sought to work with the administration to keep the club, even offering to cut expenses by meeting every other week and finding a club advisor who would volunteer, but officials and the school board declined the offer.
“Christian student groups in public schools shouldn’t be discriminated against simply because they are religious,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman.
“Singling out a religious student club while letting the vast majority of the others remain constitutes viewpoint discrimination and is unconstitutional. In addition, it’s simply false that this club is not popular with students. More than 90 students signed a petition in favor of allowing the club to continue meeting.”
"It is arguable that anti-Christian hatred has spilled over into material forms of persecution in 2009," said Dr. Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. "Christians were killed and bullied for their witness, ministers and churches threatened with violence and vandalized for standing for marriage, and Christians were fired for not compromising their faith. If these are not bona fide examples of persecution, than I wonder what more it might take?"
The Top Ten Anti-Christian headlines for 2009 according to CADC subscribers are,
10. Pro-life Pastor Reverend Walter Hoye of Oakland, CA was jailed for exercising peaceful, pro-life speech.
9. Rev. Fred Winters was murdered while preaching in his pulpit in Maryville, Illinois.
8. HBO's program "Curb Your Enthusiasm" aired an episode where the main actor urinates on painting of Jesus. When confronted HBO would not apologize.
7. The overt homosexual participation in Obama's presidential inaugural events by "Bishop" Vickie Eugene Robinson, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington D. C., and a homosexual marching band.
6. Police called to East Jessamine Middle School in Lexington, Kentucky to stop 8th graders from praying during their lunch break for a student whose mother was tragically killed.
5. Pro-life activist Jim Pullion was murdered in front of his granddaughter's high school for showing the truth about abortion.
4. An activist judge ordered a home school mom in New Hampshire to stop home schooling her daughter because the little girl "reflected too strongly" her mother's Christian faith.
3. The Federal Department of Homeland Security issued a report entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate" that labeled conservative Christians extremists and potential terrorists.
2. President Obama's appointment of radical anti-Christians like homosexual activist Kevin Jennings as the "safe school czar;" pro-abortion advocate Kathleen Seblius made Secretary of Human and Health Services, and Chai Feldblum, pro-homosexual and anti-religious liberty judge nominated for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
1. The Federal Hate Crimes Bill that attacks religious liberty and freedom of speech. For the first time in our history ministers are vulnerable to investigation and prosecution for telling the truth about homosexuality.
Four house church leaders were sentenced to "re-education" through labor for one to one-and-a-half years. Katherine Cason, a spokesperson for CAA, says most of the crackdowns targeted future leaders of the underground church, who were also college students.
"The students came from 14 different universities, and so the school officials were called and then the students were actually questioned by their respective university officials, forced to write statements...guaranteeing they would not meet for religious events again" she explains. "And all of these students were of adult age; they were all over 18, [the age at] which, according to Chinese law, they're allowed to choose what religion they'd like to follow."
Cason, among other Christians, believes the large-scale persecution is part of the government's efforts to limit citizens' religious freedoms after the 2008 Olympic Games, which concluded in late August.
At the heart of the arguments in favor of Proposition 8 are concerns about eroding religious freedoms that come about as the same-sex agenda is advanced. Below are some of the legal cases heard across the country as compiled by Rancho Santa Fe Attorney Charles S. LiMandri. Affiliated with the Thomas More Law Center, LiMandri was involved in the Mount Soledad cross case and the first case listed below. He has also been involved in the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign.LiMandri’s list also includes source documentation, which can be found at his Web site at www.limandrilaw.com. Click on the resources link. The cases are listed in a Powerpoint presentation called “The Impact of Same-Sex Marriage on Religious Freedom.” The cases are listed on pages 4 to 11.
February 24, 2000: A professional printer refused to print material for the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Archives because he felt doing so would violate his religious beliefs. He was fined and ordered to print the material anyway. He took his case to the Ontario Supreme Court and then to the Ontario Court of Appeal and lost both times. His total legal bills exceed $170,000.
2001: An evangelical Christian employed as a prison guard in Canada placed an ad in the Saskatchewan Star Phoenix. The ad was a picture of two stick men holding hands, with a red circle with a bar superimposed on them. Below the picture were four Scripture references, but not actual Bible verses. He was convicted of a hate crime by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal. The judge suggested that using Bible verses in a newspaper ad like this could be construed as hate literature. Thus, there is now legal precedent in Canada that the Holy Bible is hate literature.
May 1, 2002: A Catholic high school in Whitby, Ontario was forced by the Ontario Supreme Court to allow a homosexual student to take his boyfriend to the graduation prom, even though the church-run school has strict prohibitions against condoning any kind of homosexual behavior.
An eyewitness from Zimbabwe, who for safety reasons must remain anonymous, has sent the following report to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN): "Two weeks ago we celebrated the opening of the Year of Saint Paul in our parish with a solemn Holy Mass -- at exactly the same time as the Holy Father was celebrating the Vespers of the vigil of the feast in the Church of Saint Paul's-Outside-the-Walls in Rome. As always in Africa, the Mass was very well attended, and despite the immense transport difficulties, the Catholic faithful had travelled from far and wide, some overnight on open trucks, in a biting cold wind. Needless to say, we also prayed for Zimbabwe. During his sermon, the priest told how shortly before, a woman had been snatched from a church during the middle of Mass. After Mass, he went looking for her and found her lying in a ditch just a few hundred yards away. She is now lying in a coma.
It almost seems to me that on such occasions, in praying and singing, the people are able to forget not only their worries but even their aching limbs and open wounds, at least for a few hours. After Mass, I met an acquaintance, a young woman somewhere in her mid-20s. Just a few days before, she had been brutally beaten up in her own home by ZANU PF thugs. Two of her fingers were broken, as she attempted to protect her head and her face from the blows of the clubs, and several of her ribs were cracked. Her back and legs were covered in black angry bruises. But despite her pain, she was determined to attend the Mass, and she did in fact come -- barefoot and limping on one foot, because her feet were so swollen that she could not even get them into her very wide, worn pair of sandals. If that is not faith... I thought to myself that evening that St. Paul himself would have been very pleased and proud if he could have seen and heard what these Christians have made of his words and how they are quite literally living out what he taught.
Yesterday they buried a young man. He had originally wanted to become a religious and a priest, but then changed his mind. He was very active in the Catholic youth movements and most recently he worked as a driver for the opposition party. Just about four weeks ago he was abducted at night time. Ten days ago they found his body, maimed and burned, on a farm belonging to an army general. He had obviously been horribly tortured before his death. They had put out both his eyes and poured burning plastic over his back. Photographs of his body were shown to Gordon Brown during the G8 summit in Japan, and he showed them to the other heads of state at the summit. If these pictures have contributed to the summit statement on Zimbabwe, then the death of this courageous young Christian will not have been entirely in vain. Despite this, the people here are very, very angry.
It is not easy to describe the situation in Zimbabwe. Alongside the unbelievable violence of the past few weeks, there are the countless absurdities of daily life which lead one to suspect that the end is near. Take the exchange rate last Friday, for example, when one Euro was worth 165 billion Zimbabwe dollars -- and in a week it will be worth three times this. The result is that commercial companies like our Internet service provider ZOL will no longer accept Zimbabwe dollars, because they are worthless. At the same time they will not accept US dollars either, because they are not allowed to, but only Old Mutual shares -- which we don't have -- or diesel coupons -- which we somehow have to find on the black market...
Still more ludicrous are the absurdities of the political situation. Now that Robert Mugabe has had himself crowned once more as president, following the second round of voting on 27 June, and with Bible in hand and the invocation of divine assistance on his lips has promised to observe the constitution and laws and to serve the people as a good president, the barbaric political cleansing campaign continues. (Mugabe himself likes to use the word "barbaric" when speaking of his terror campaign, while at the same time blaming it on the opposition). A British reporter, who tried to elicit details about the run-off election at the African Union summit in Egypt a week ago, was actually physically attacked by our president. Here, too, one can see the very dangerous side of this man, who now only breathes violence, talks violence, does violence -- so compulsively that for a brief moment he himself can forget his dignity as a head of state – for the sake of which he has after all declared war on his own people. This unpredictability, accompanied by an almost total lack of scruple, marks out almost all the decisions to which the people here are so defenselessly exposed. Since yesterday even Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, has spoken of the real possibility of a civil war. Anyone who lives here knows that the civil war has already begun, three months ago. Many people have failed to notice it merely because it is only one side that has the clubs, the knives and the guns. But for all that, and despite the madness around us, life continues -- somehow."
From Christian Solidarity WorldwideZmitser Dashkevich, the 26 year-old pro-democracy activist imprisoned in 2006 in Belarus, has been unexpectedly released after his 18 month prison term was shortened to a year.
On 1 November 2006 Zmitser was jailed for involvement in a youth pro-reform movement and charged with “organising or participating in the activity of an unregistered non-governmental organisation.” He was also fined the equivalent of £412 in November 2007 for refusing to reveal the names of his friends in the Young Front movement, prompting a European Commission statement urging the Belarusian authorities to release all political prisoners.
Zmitser’s release coincides with the publication of a report by Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) on freedom of religion in Belarus. The report, released this month, gives a detailed analysis of the gross violations taking place on a daily basis and calls on the international community to recognise the targeting of religious minorities and to urge Belarus to respect human rights, and the freedoms of expression and assembly.
Citing the frequent violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Belarus is a party, the report explains how religious freedom is restricted both directly and indirectly by the authorities. NGOs, religious institutions and religious leaders are subject to frequent harassment, prosecution, fines, repression and even imprisonment under the terms of the 2002 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations. Over the past eighteen months, two pastors and one human rights defender were arrested for so-called unregistered activities, a practice not heard of since the fall of the Soviet Union.
CSW’s Chief Executive Mervyn Thomas said, “While pleased that Zmitser Dashkevich has been released, he and many in Belarus like him should not have been detained in the first place. We remain gravely concerned at the severe and continuing violations of fundamental rights of Christians in the country, as is evident from our latest report. We urge the international community, and particularly the European Union, to recognise the scale of violations of the rights of religious minorities that is currently underway in the very heart of Europe. It is vital that the Belarus authorities begin to engage in meaningful dialogue with civil society activists like Zmitser, and to respect the international agreements to which they are subject."
Click here to view CSW’s Belarus report
Click here to find out more about CSW’s work in Belarus
New Delhi, Dec. 27, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Violence against Christians continues in India's eastern Orissa state, despite the curfew imposed by local authorities in an effort to curb the activities of Hindu mobs. 
