California

For the first time since Lisa Miller disappeared with her daughter rather than transfer custody to her former partner due to her own refusal to abide by custody/visitation arrangement, a representative of Liberty Counsel has finally acknowledged her disappearance on the record:

Mathew Staver, Miller’s attorney from Lynchburg-based law firm Liberty Counsel, said neither he nor his office has had contact with Miller since last fall.

“We don’t know where she is and we don’t know anybody who does know her whereabouts,“ Staver said in a phone interview Tuesday.

...

Staver said efforts are currently under way to track down Miller through a locator service.

Staver also said that arrest warrant issued for Miller in Vermont will not have jurisdiction in Virginia, Miller's last known place of residence, unless it is recognized by a VA court, which just last week refused to hold Miller in contempt on the grounds that she had not been notified to appear in court due to the fact that nobody can find her.

Amazingly, even while this saga was unfolding, Liberty Counsel was waging the same fight in a similar case out of California ... and losing: 

In a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, a Bay Area woman has won the right to parental status and visits with the daughter of her former lesbian partner, who moved out when the girl was 3 months old.

The high court denied review Monday of an appeal by the birth mother, identified only as Kristina S., who challenged her former partner's right to be considered a parent. Kristina's lawyers, from the religious conservative group Liberty Counsel, argued that recognizing parental status after a few months of care violated a mother's right to control her child's upbringing.

The court left intact a June 2009 ruling by a state appeals court in San Francisco that said Kristina's partner, identified as Charisma R., had been fully involved in conceiving and taking care of the child and was legally her co-parent.

...

Liberty Counsel representatives were unavailable for comment. The group's chairman, attorney Mathew Staver, told the Supreme Court that the California appellate court had "ordered the breakup of the autonomous, natural family comprised of Kristina and her daughter ... in favor of a new, judicially created 'family.' "

As the vote on California's Proposition 8 neared last November, the organizers of the Yes on 8 effort suddenly began working hard to appear moderate and fair-minded in hopes of downplaying the radical nature of the groups that had endorsed the effort, including:

Alliance Defense Fund
American Family Association
California Family Alliance
California Family Council
Concerned Women for America
Coral Ridge Ministries
Eagle Forum of California
Eagle Forum of Sacramento
Faith2Action
Family Research Council
Focus on the Family
Liberty Counsel
Pacific Justice Institute
Traditional Values Coalition

Liberty Counsel's appearance on this list is especially interesting, considering that since Prop 8's passage, the folks behind Yes on 8 have gone into overdrive trying to prevent the organization from getting involved in the subsequent lawsuits and regularly fighting LC's efforts to intervene ... and succeeding:

It was a sunny summer morning, but inside a San Francisco federal courtroom the outlook for Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty Counsel was cloudy.

Charles Cooper, representing the official anti-gay marriage forces in a federal court challenge to Proposition 8, wasn't fighting hard enough, she insisted. He wouldn't try to prove, for instance, that homosexuality is an "illness or disorder."

"Individuals should be entitled to treatment to change your sexual orientation," Lindevaldsen argued.

Cooper's team quickly deflected Liberty Counsel's attempt to intervene, saying it just wanted to fight battles that "can't be won." That left Cooper -- a consummate Beltway insider who avoids the kind of language favored by Lindevaldsen -- and his firm the sole legal representatives for 7 million Californians that supported Prop 8.

...

The official Yes on 8 effort has tried to distance itself from "fringe" groups that are too "strident or combative," [Yes on 8 General Counsel Andrew] Pugno said.

"I think it's fitting that the demeanor and tone of our lead counsel would reflect the demeanor and civilized tone that we tried to maintain during the campaign," he said.

So it seems that Yes on 8 was perfectly happy to have Liberty Counsel's support - along with the support of other militantly anti-gay organization like TVC, AFA, and Faith2Action - when they were trying to pass Prop 8, but now wants to distance itself from those sort of "strident and combative fringe" groups, even though those groups were the backbone of the organization and played a key role in its passage.

The Lodi News-Sentinel reports on a complaint filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation against the Lodi (CA) City Council about it repeated prayers to Jesus Christ at the opening of council meetings.

FFRF says that "the prayers being offered do not fall into the narrow exception of constitutionally permissible government-sponsored prayer laid out by the Supreme Court."  In response, the Alliance Defense Fund has, according to the News-Sentinel, contacted the city in order to provide it with sample prayer policy that it has defended in court in the past and offer free legal assistance for the city if it gets sued for adopting said policy. 

The issue is set to be taken up at the next City Council meeting scheduled for August 5th and while FFRF, ADF, and the city itself all seem to be seeking to work out an acceptable solution in a low-key manner, certain Religious Right activists have other plans:

Groups in favor of prayers at public meetings will be at the August meeting to ask the City Council to continue to allow prayer.

Wiley Drake, a Southern Baptist preacher who has a radio show on www.crusaderadio.com, said he is working "to put Lodi on the map," with Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, of "In Jesus Name We Pray" and the Will of God Christian Center.

The religious leaders want to organize an international prayer meeting at 6 p.m. before the council meeting. Drake said he will work with the city on permits to broadcast the event on his radio show, and also set up an international telephone number for people to call in and listen.

Drake has encountered the Freedom From Religion Foundation and said the group bullies cities into compliance by threatening large, expensive lawsuits.

"They thought Lodi is a little country town up in Northern California, and it would be great if we can make them an example of them, so that's why they are picking on Lodi," Drake said.

He said the main aim of the prayer meeting ahead of time is to let the city know that citizens support them in keeping prayers that reference Jesus Christ.

For those who don't recall, back in April, Klingenschmitt issued a call for "imprecatory prayer" against employees at Americans United, calling on God to curse them and destroy their homes, livelihoods, and families.

And just last month, Wiley Drake, who once issued his own imprecatory prayer against AU, declared that he was praying for the death of President Barack Obama.

I presume that if the Lodi City Council was initially inclined to defend and maintain its current prayer policy by claiming that it is reasonable and constitutional, it is probably rethinking that now that two men who regularly use prayer to call for the deaths of their political enemies are planning on showing up to lead the crusade. 

The Pro-Life Educators and Students (PLEAS) have announced the first major anti-abortion demonstration since the killing of Dr. George Tiller. While the demonstration is nothing out of the ordinary, PLEAS isn't focusing its effort on a traditional target of anti-choice groups. Instead, they'll be protesting... the National Education Association. In a press release, Bob Pawson, a coordinator for PLEAS, announced that the group is organizing a July 2nd "prayer & picket" that will involve many different pro-life groups.

The NEA is hardly an outspoken reproductive rights group, rather an organization dedicated to advancing and improving the public school system. They devoted a mere three sentences of their 462-page handbook to "Family Planning":

The National Education Association supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom. The Association urges the government to give high priority to making available all methods of family planning to women and men unable to take advantage of private facilities. The Association also urges the implementation of community-operated, school-based family planning clinics that will provide intensive counseling by trained personnel.

Even stranger than PLEAS' choice to target the NEA are remarks made by Pawson in the press release. Pawson unveils the catalyst behind the economic recession: federal abortion policy. Oh, it's also why we don't have a cure for AIDS:

Abortion is the primary factor causing America's economic recession, said Pawson. America is suffering the consequences for killing fifty-million people who are supposed to be among us today as teachers, producers, consumers, taxpayers, leaders, inventors, and problem-solvers. It's no surprise that a nation which slaughters nearly twenty percent of its future customers, investors, and entrepreneurs also kills its own economy. Wrong moral choices have negative consequences. Evil acts generate their own punishment.

Abortion has led to the destruction of fifty-million students and simultaneously eliminated hundreds of thousands of teaching careers and education-related jobs. Surely, some of those dead students were the ones God sent to cure AIDS, end world-hunger, and create clean-energy technologies, said Pawson

Putting aside his "economic argument", Pawson should strongly consider protesting a group that devotes more than three sentences of their 462-page charter to reproductive rights.