3 posts tagged “law”
Biblical marriage vs. CA courts: Ruling
today Jeff Johnson - OneNewsNow - 6/16/2008 4:00:00 AM
Pro-family attorneys are trying another legal route to
block implementation of so-called "gay marriage" in California this
evening.
The California
Supreme Court has rejected appeals of its ruling that the state must
issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning at 5:01 p.m.
(local time) today. But the Supreme Court's decision merely hands the
case back down to the California Court of Appeal, which is charged with
deciding how and when to implement the high court's ruling. It is that
power that Matt Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, is appealing to now.
"It should clearly be stayed because the people are going to vote in
November with regards to the California marriage protection amendment.
That's a matter that, in fact, we addressed before the California
Supreme Court, which they denied. However, the California Court of
Appeals has a separate, independent obligation to consider this matter
as well," contends the attorney.
Liberty Counsel filed a petition last week with the appeals court on behalf of the Campaign for California Families,
asking the court to delay issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples
for that and other reasons. "The California Supreme Court only
addressed two of the many statutes regarding marriage. You can't simply
address two statutes when there's [sic] literally hundreds of others,
all of which reference 'men' and 'women,' 'male' and 'female,'
'husband' and 'wife,' all of which have to be addressed," Staver
explains.
The Liberty Counsel chairman says failure to take matters such as that
under consideration is one of the primary reasons the U.S. and state
constitutions do not let judges write laws. "All of the confusion
illustrates one point: judges should not be in the business of being
politically active lawmakers," Staver points out.
The appeals court, according to the attorney, should stay the decision
to give the legislature time to examine the hundreds of other state
statutes that could come into conflict with the Supreme Court's ruling.
"It's that court which is tasked with implementing the particular
ruling. It's at that level we're asking, now, this court to do its job,
to follow the rule of law and to stay this decision," Staver says.
Liberty Counsel's press release says this case "is far from over. We
will not give up. The people will have the final say on marriage."
I still have enough of an open mind about Islam to look around in search of signs that Islam can be reformed. There is precious little to be found but once in a while, as when panning for gold, I find a flake or two remaining after all the debunking or washing away the mud and sand of hype. Here is an article in an unlikely source featuring a defense lawyer who used to be a radical Islamist. Now he is risking his life by criticizing Islam in Islamic courts to defend his clients, many of whom he takes on a pro bono basis. This particular story of a 19 year old woman who was victim of a gang rape and now has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months imprisonment, would never have been known in the West if not for this defense attorney.
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Related Articles Dissident Watch: Abdul Rahman al-Lahim by Nathaniel Rosenblatt A Saudi court's sentence of 200 lashes and six-months' imprisonment for a 19-year-old victim of gang rape, known only as the "Qatif girl," recently made headlines across the United States. Her story would never have come to outside attention without the efforts of her lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahim. A specialist in commercial law, the 36-year-old Saudi also takes human rights cases on a pro-bono basis.[1] In his youth, Lahim was attracted to radical Islam and used his bachelor's degree in Islamic law to teach Arabic and work for As-Sahwa al-Islamiyya (the Islamic awakening),[2] a radical Islamist group critical of modernizing reforms in the kingdom.[3] It was not until he entered law school, Lahim says, that he shed their conservative ideology. In an interview with The Washington Post, he said that today he believes, "first and foremost, in human rights and rule of law."[4] It is Lahim's past that makes his arguments for reforming Saudi law effective. He not only crafts effective legal arguments, but he also understands the conservative forces that hold the gavel. As a result, Lahim is a marked man by Saudi Arabia's many reactionary forces. He has been arrested multiple times and is banned from traveling outside the kingdom. In 2004, he defended a high school chemistry teacher from a sentence of 40-months' imprisonment and 750 public lashes for speaking out against terrorism following a major terrorist attack on Saudi soil in May 2003. Only King Fahd's pardon, at the behest of his brother Crown Prince (now king) Abdullah, saved Lahim himself from imprisonment.[5] On December 16, 2007, Saudi justice minister Abdullah bin Muhammad ash-Sheikh reported that the rape victim had received a royal pardon, but the Saudi courts may yet disbar Lahim for mounting such a vigorous defense. He currently awaits a hearing on his license to practice law, which has been suspended indefinitely.[6] However, these threats do not deter Lahim's efforts to change the Saudi judicial system. "I would be disgraced if I sit back and don't support these people who need me," he says.[7] Despite the uncertainty of his future, Lahim remains upbeat about judicial reform in Saudi Arabia and suggests that the Qatif case "signals the death throes of the judiciary's old guard."[8] Saudi Arabia's road to a liberal judicial system is a long one, but with Abdul Rahman al-Lahim involved, Riyadh and Washington should pack for a lengthy trip.
[1] CNN.com, Dec. 5, 2007. Related Topics: Moderate Muslims, Saudi Arabia To receive the full, printed version of the Middle East Quarterly, please see details about an affordable subscription. |
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The point I have to make about this story is even though a hero Muslim is standing against terrible abuses of human rights in Islamic courts, he is still abiding by the Qu'ranic principal that you do not ally yourself with non-Muslims over Muslims. Even so, his life is endangered by the radical elements of Islam for his criticism of Islam by appealing to the West to put pressure on the Islamic courts for the sake of his innocent client being punished for suffering through a gang rape. This is the biggest indicator that Islam cannot be reformed. When a person is subjected to severe human rights violations and their lawyer's life is threatened for making the abuses known outside of Islam, then what hope for Islam? This is a clear case of preferring to continue the abuses of Islam than cleaning up the tragic systemic problems of Islam under threat of death to the critics of Islam, even by the critics adherent to Islam. Islam must give voice to the critics and expel the notions that the shame of Islam is found in the critic rather than in the abuses.
Listening to talk radio a couple of days ago, I heard a guest give an account of a teacher who truly taught his students about Marxism. He gave them two final grades on their hard work. One was the grade they'd actually earned but would not count, the other was the scaled grade for the average of the whole class. He nearly had a riot on his hands. The kids who'd earned great grades were angry at kids who'd done poorly, accusing them of laziness and idiocy. I wish I'd been able to catch the speaker's name, but work was demanding at that point and I couldn't find it online afterward.
Most people don't know that socialism has already been tried in this country, indeed at its earliest beginnings. The first settlement tried the communal lifestyle, where everybody's crops were stored in one common storehouse and the whole community would pull from that storehouse as food was needed. The leaders couldn't get everybody to work their fields because they knew they could count on somebody else's hard work to make it through the harsh winters. It wasn't until they assigned everybody a plot of land and let them keep their crops for themselves that the community began to thrive. Socialized benefits mean socialized effort. Capitalized benefits mean capitalized effort. Which one is evil in your eyes?
Philanthropy works in similar ways. If you want to save the world, do you vote for the programs and politicians who support them to do the work, or do you volunteer through a local outreach group and send money to successful aid organizations? Expecting government to fix all the ills is like voting for a communal storehouse for your potatoes. Donating to a successful privately run program is like putting your potatoes in your own storehouse. If the program is failing, you stop giving to that one and find one that does work. But the state won't let you stop giving them your tax dollars whether the programs they are used to support are successful or not. Legislating gifts is dangerous to the very people you want to help. If you see a need and think, "What can I do? What difference can one person make?" start doing something and find out how much one person can do!
China is a communist country, but decades after the revolution, their leaders recognized the communist regulated industry was a failure and implemented capitalist programs. Capitalism in China is making China an industrial success. Not so the communist social, legislative, and law enforcement programs. Constant revelations about their moral atrocities are leaking out into the international media. All Muslim nations are bottomless pits of moral piety resulting in torturous death sentences and mutilations for millions. A few of them are economically successful based solely on the oil revenues. The king and princes of Arabia are funding the spread of Islam throughout the world with these revenues. So the world is struggling to break the oil addiction and break the funding of this stone age ideology. There is no room for success in the absence of freedom.
During my research for this article, I came across a reference to California Law that prohibits the advocacy of communism in schools. Here is that state law:
51530. No teacher giving instruction in any school, or on any property belonging to any agencies included in the public school system, shall advocate or teach communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism.
In prohibiting the advocacy or teaching of communism with the intent of indoctrinating or inculcating a preference in the mind of any pupil for such doctrine, the Legislature does not intend to prevent the teaching of the facts about communism. Rather, the Legislature intends to prevent the advocacy of, or inculcation and indoctrination into, communism as is hereinafter defined, for the purpose of undermining patriotism for, and the belief in, the government of the United States and of this state.
For the purposes of this section, communism is a political theory that the presently existing form of government of the United States or of this state should be changed, by force, violence, or other unconstitutional means, to a totalitarian dictatorship which is based on the principles of communism as expounded by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
Any teacher sporting a poster of Che Guevara, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Kim Jong Il, Putin, Castro, or any other socialist advocate, and found promoting communism should be fired and charged with a crime against children. Any teacher discovered participating in communist or registered with communist organizations should be fired.
When this ideology comes home to roost, when its applied to your work, your rewards, it isn't nearly as attractive as when its applied to others, to the 'rich and the powerful.' Smart people either learn how to use communism to their benefit or they look for ways to escape it. Capitalism isn't perfect but its, at least motivating. That motivation is what this great country was built on. Do you think the kids who had worked hard would have worked just as hard the next year knowing that their grades would only be balanced against the lazy and dull? It isn't that the quick and sharp kids are evil, it is that the whole class benefits by the success of the achievers. In the same way, it isn't that rich and powerful people are necessarily evil, it is that their success keeps the rest of us employed and civil. Their is no social Robin Hood in social programs. For there to be a Robin Hood, there has to be criminal injustice in the authority charged with collecting taxes. Now we'd all agree there have been transgressions in American tax collecting and spending, but 'We The People' do still have the power to vote them out or otherwise hold them accountable without legislating taxes to even out the distribution. It isn't just about being fair, it is about keeping the motivation the founding fathers built in to the bedrock of our society.