I want to thank our co-chairs Mark and Jeff; to my dear friend, the guy who always has my back, Vice President Biden.  (Applause.)  All the members of Congress –- Joe deserves a hand –- all the members of Congress and my Cabinet who are here today; all the distinguished guests who’ve traveled a long way to be part of this.  I’m not going to be as funny as Eric — (laughter) — but I’m grateful that he shared his message with us.  Michelle and I feel truly blessed to be here.

This is my third year coming to this prayer breakfast as President.  As Jeff mentioned, before that, I came as senator.  I have to say, it’s easier coming as President.  (Laughter.)  I don’t have to get here quite as early.  But it’s always been an opportunity that I’ve cherished.  And it’s a chance to step back for a moment, for us to come together as brothers and sisters and seek God’s face together.  At a time when it’s easy to lose ourselves in the rush and clamor of our own lives, or get caught up in the noise and rancor that too often passes as politics today, these moments of prayer slow us down.  They humble us.  They remind us that no matter how much responsibility we have, how fancy our titles, how much power we think we hold, we are imperfect vessels.  We can all benefit from turning to our Creator, listening to Him.  Avoiding phony religiosity, listening to Him.

This is especially important right now, when we’re facing some big challenges as a nation.  Our economy is making progress as we recover from the worst crisis in three generations, but far too many families are still struggling to find work or make the mortgage, pay for college, or, in some cases, even buy food.  Our men and women in uniform have made us safer and more secure, and we were eternally grateful to them, but war and suffering and hardship still remain in too many corners of the globe.  And a lot of those men and women who we celebrate on Veterans Day and Memorial Day come back and find that, when it comes to finding a job or getting the kind of care that they need, we’re not always there the way we need to be.

It’s absolutely true that meeting these challenges requires sound decision-making, requires smart policies.  We know that part of living in a pluralistic society means that our personal religious beliefs alone can’t dictate our response to every challenge we face.

But in my moments of prayer, I’m reminded that faith and values play an enormous role in motivating us to solve some of our most urgent problems, in keeping us going when we suffer setbacks, and opening our minds and our hearts to the needs of others.

We can’t leave our values at the door.  If we leave our values at the door, we abandon much of the moral glue that has held our nation together for centuries, and allowed us to become somewhat more perfect a union.  Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel — the majority of great reformers in American history did their work not just because it was sound policy, or they had done good analysis, or understood how to exercise good politics, but because their faith and their values dictated it, and called for bold action — sometimes in the face of indifference, sometimes in the face of resistance.

This is no different today for millions of Americans, and it’s certainly not for me.

I wake up each morning and I say a brief prayer, and I spend a little time in scripture and devotion.  And from time to time, friends of mine, some of who are here today, friends like Joel Hunter or T.D. Jakes, will come by the Oval Office or they’ll call on the phone or they’ll send me a email, and we’ll pray together, and they’ll pray for me and my family, and for our country.

But I don’t stop there.  I’d be remiss if I stopped there; if my values were limited to personal moments of prayer or private conversations with pastors or friends.  So instead, I must try — imperfectly, but I must try — to make sure those values motivate me as one leader of this great nation.

And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody.  But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”  I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs -– from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato.

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone.  And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.”  It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

When I talk about giving every American a fair shot at opportunity, it’s because I believe that when a young person can afford a college education, or someone who’s been unemployed suddenly has a chance to retrain for a job and regain that sense of dignity and pride, and contributing to the community as well as supporting their families — that helps us all prosper.

It means maybe that research lab on the cusp of a lifesaving discovery, or the company looking for skilled workers is going to do a little bit better, and we’ll all do better as a consequence.  It makes economic sense.  But part of that belief comes from my faith in the idea that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper; that as a country, we rise and fall together.  I’m not an island.  I’m not alone in my success.  I succeed because others succeed with me.

And when I decide to stand up for foreign aid, or prevent atrocities in places like Uganda, or take on issues like human trafficking, it’s not just about strengthening alliances, or promoting democratic values, or projecting American leadership around the world, although it does all those things and it will make us safer and more secure.  It’s also about the biblical call to care for the least of these –- for the poor; for those at the margins of our society.

To answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.”  And for others, it may reflect the Jewish belief that the highest form of charity is to do our part to help others stand on their own.

Treating others as you want to be treated.  Requiring much from those who have been given so much.  Living by the principle that we are our brother’s keeper.  Caring for the poor and those in need.  These values are old.  They can be found in many denominations and many faiths, among many believers and among many non-believers.  And they are values that have always made this country great — when we live up to them; when we don’t just give lip service to them; when we don’t just talk about them one day a year.  And they’re the ones that have defined my own faith journey.

And today, with as many challenges as we face, these are the values I believe we’re going to have to return to in the hopes that God will buttress our efforts.

Now, we can earnestly seek to see these values lived out in our politics and our policies, and we can earnestly disagree on the best way to achieve these values.  In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Christianity has not, and does not profess to have a detailed political program.  It is meant for all men at all times, and the particular program which suited one place or time would not suit another.”

Our goal should not be to declare our policies as biblical.  It is God who is infallible, not us.  Michelle reminds me of this often.  (Laughter.)  So instead, it is our hope that people of goodwill can pursue their values and common ground and the common good as best they know how, with respect for each other.  And I have to say that sometimes we talk about respect, but we don’t act with respect towards each other during the course of these debates.

But each and every day, for many in this room, the biblical injunctions are not just words, they are also deeds.  Every single day, in different ways, so many of you are living out your faith in service to others.

Just last month, it was inspiring to see thousands of young Christians filling the Georgia Dome at the Passion Conference, to worship the God who sets the captives free and work to end modern slavery.  Since we’ve expanded and strengthened the White House faith-based initiative, we’ve partnered with Catholic Charities to help Americans who are struggling with poverty; worked with organizations like World Vision and American Jewish World Service and Islamic Relief to bring hope to those suffering around the world.

Colleges across the country have answered our Interfaith Campus Challenge, and students are joined together across religious lines in service to others.  From promoting responsible fatherhood to strengthening adoption, from helping people find jobs to serving our veterans, we’re linking arms with faith-based groups all across the country.

I think we all understand that these values cannot truly find voice in our politics and our policies unless they find a place in our hearts.  The Bible teaches us to “be doers of the word and not merely hearers.”  We’re required to have a living, breathing, active faith in our own lives.  And each of us is called on to give something of ourselves for the betterment of others — and to live the truth of our faith not just with words, but with deeds.

So even as we join the great debates of our age — how we best put people back to work, how we ensure opportunity for every child, the role of government in protecting this extraordinary planet that God has made for us, how we lessen the occasions of war — even as we debate these great issues, we must be reminded of the difference that we can make each day in our small interactions, in our personal lives.

As a loving husband, or a supportive parent, or a good neighbor, or a helpful colleague — in each of these roles, we help bring His kingdom to Earth.  And as important as government policy may be in shaping our world, we are reminded that it’s the cumulative acts of kindness and courage and charity and love, it’s the respect we show each other and the generosity that we share with each other that in our everyday lives will somehow sustain us during these challenging times.  John tells us that, “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?  Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

Mark read a letter from Billy Graham, and it took me back to one of the great honors of my life, which was visiting Reverend Graham at his mountaintop retreat in North Carolina, when I was on vacation with my family at a hotel not far away.

And I can still remember winding up the path up a mountain to his home.  Ninety-one years old at the time, facing various health challenges, he welcomed me as he would welcome a family member or a close friend.  This man who had prayed great prayers that inspired a nation, this man who seemed larger than life, greeted me and was as kind and as gentle as could be.

And we had a wonderful conversation.  Before I left, Reverend Graham started praying for me, as he had prayed for so many Presidents before me.  And when he finished praying, I felt the urge to pray for him.  I didn’t really know what to say.  What do you pray for when it comes to the man who has prayed for so many?  But like that verse in Romans, the Holy Spirit interceded when I didn’t know quite what to say.

And so I prayed — briefly, but I prayed from the heart.  I don’t have the intellectual capacity or the lung capacity of some of my great preacher friends here that have prayed for a long time.  (Laughter.)  But I prayed.  And we ended with an embrace and a warm goodbye.

And I thought about that moment all the way down the mountain, and I’ve thought about it in the many days since.  Because I thought about my own spiritual journey –- growing up in a household that wasn’t particularly religious; going through my own period of doubt and confusion; finding Christ when I wasn’t even looking for him so many years ago; possessing so many shortcomings that have been overcome by the simple grace of God.  And the fact that I would ever be on top of a mountain, saying a prayer for Billy Graham –- a man whose faith had changed the world and that had sustained him through triumphs and tragedies, and movements and milestones –- that simple fact humbled me to my core.

I have fallen on my knees with great regularity since that moment — asking God for guidance not just in my personal life and my Christian walk, but in the life of this nation and in the values that hold us together and keep us strong.  I know that He will guide us.  He always has, and He always will.  And I pray his richest blessings on each of you in the days ahead.

Thank you very much.  (Applause.)

The Obama administration appears to have given a green light to an Israeli attack on an unarmed flotilla carrying peace and human rights activists — including a vessel with 50 Americans on board — bound for the besieged Gaza Strip. At a press conference on June 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Campaign by saying it would “provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves.”

Clinton did not explain why a country had “the right to defend themselves” against ships which are clearly no threat. Not only have organizers of the flotilla gone to great steps to ensure are there no weapons on board, the only cargo bound for Gaza on the U.S. ship are letters of solidarity to the Palestinians in that besieged enclave who have suffered under devastating Israeli bombardments, a crippling blockade, and a right-wing Islamist government. Nor did Clinton explain why the State Department suddenly considers the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the port of Gaza to be “Israeli waters,” when the entire international community recognizes Israeli territorial waters as being well to the northeast of the ships’ intended route.

The risk of an Israeli attack on the flotilla is real. Israeli commandoes illegally assaulted a similar flotilla in international waters on May 31 of last year, killing nine people on board one of the vessels, including Furkan Dogan, a 19-year old U.S. citizen. Scores of others, including a number of Americans, were brutally beaten and more than a dozen others were shot but survived their wounds. According to a UN investigation, based on eyewitness testimony and analysis by a forensic pathologist and ballistic expert, Dogan was initially shot while filming the assault and then murdered while lying face down with a bullet shot at close range in the back of the head. The United States was the only one of the 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council to vote against the adoption of the report. The Obama administration never filed a complaint with the Israeli government, demonstrating its willingness to allow the armed forces of U.S. allies to murder U.S. citizens on the high seas.

As indicated by Clinton’s statement of last week, the administration appears to be willing to let it happen again.

Congressional Response

Last year, 329 out of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter that referred to Israel’s attack that killed Dogan and the others as an act of “self-defense” which they “strongly support.” A Senate letter — signed by 87 out of 100 senators — went on record “fully” supporting what it called “Israel’s right to self-defense,” claiming that the effort to relieve critical shortages of food and medicine in the besieged Gaza Strip was simply part of a “clever tactical and diplomatic ploy” by “Israel’s opponents” to “challenge its international standing.”

But not everyone in Congress believes the assaulting and killing human rights activists on the high seas is legitimate. Last week, on June 24, six members of Congress signed a letter to Secretary Clinton requesting that she “do everything in her power to work with the Israeli government to ensure the safety of the U.S. citizens on board.” As of this writing, they have not received a response.

Earlier in the week, the State Department issued a public statement to discourage Americans from taking part in the second Gaza flotilla because they might be attacked by Israeli forces. Yet thus far neither the State Department nor the White House has issued a public statement demanding that Israel not attack Americans legally traveling in international waters. Indeed, on Friday, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland implied that the United States would blame those taking part in the flotilla rather than the rightist Israeli government should anything happen to them. Like those in the early 1960s who claimed civil rights protesters were responsible for the attacks by white racist mobs because they had “provoked them,” Nuland stated, “Groups that seek to break Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza are taking irresponsible and provocative actions that risk the safety of their passengers.” Again, The Obama administration didn’t offer even one word encouraging caution or restraint by the Israeli government, nor did it mention that the International Red Cross and other advocates of international humanitarian law recognize that the Israeli blockade is illegal.

Who’s On Board

Passengers of the U.S. boat, christened The Audacity of Hope, include celebrated novelist Alice Walker, holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, veteran foreign service officer and retired lieutenant colonel Ann Wright, Israeli-American linguistics professor Hagit Borer, and prominent peace and human rights activists like Medea Benjamin, Robert Naiman, Steve Fake, and Kathy Kelly. Ten other boats are carrying hundreds of other civilians from dozens of other countries, along with nearly three thousand tons of aid. Those on board include members of national parliaments and other prominent political figures, writers, artists, clergy from various faith traditions, journalists, and athletes.

Fifteen ships have previously sailed or attempted to sail to Gaza as part of the Free Gaza Campaign. None was found to contain any weapons or materials that could be used for military purposes. The current flotilla organizers have stated that their cargoes are “open to international inspection.” Despite this, however, the Obama State Department insists that the Israelis have the right to intercept the ships due to the “vital importance to Israel’s security of ensuring that all cargo bound for Gaza is appropriately screened for illegal arms and dual-use materials.”

Though the flotilla organizers have made clear that the U.S. boat is only carrying letters of support for the people of Gaza, the State Department has also threatened participants with “fines and incarceration” if they attempt to provide “material support or other resources to or for the benefit of a designated foreign terrorist organization, such as Hamas.”

As with many actions supporting Palestinian rights, the coalition of groups endorsing the flotilla includes  pro-Palestinian groups as well as peace, human rights, religious, pacifist and liberal organizations, including Progressive Democrats of America, Pax Christi, Peace Action, Nonviolence International, Jewish Voice for Peace, War Resisters League, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Despite this, Brad Sherman (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on terrorism, nonproliferation and trade, has claimed that organizers of the flotilla have “clear terrorist ties” and has called upon U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute U.S. citizens involved with the flotilla and ban foreign participants from ever entering the United States.

Israel‘s Position

Largely as a result of last year’s flotilla, Israel has somewhat relaxed its draconian siege on the territory, which had resulted in a major public health crisis. The State Department has gone to some lengths to praise Israel for allowing some construction material into the Gaza Strip to make possible the rebuilding of some of the thousands of homes, businesses and public facilities destroyed in Israel’s devastating U.S.-backed 2008-2009 military offensive, which resulted in the deaths of over 800 civilians. At no point, however, has the Obama administration ever criticized Israel for destroying those civilian structures in the first place.

As with many potentially confrontational nonviolent direct actions, there are genuine differences within the peace and human rights community regarding the timing, the nature, and other aspects of the forthcoming flotilla. However, the response to the Obama administration’s position on the flotilla has been overwhelmingly negative. Many among his progressive base, already disappointed at his failure to take a tougher line against the rightist Israeli government as well as his reluctance to embrace human rights and international law as a basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace, feel increasingly alienated from the president.

More significantly, the Obama administration’s response may signal a return to the Reagan administration’s policies of defending the killing of U.S. human rights workers in order to discourage grassroots acts of international solidarity, as when Reagan officials sought to blame the victims and exonerate the perpetrators for the murder of four American churchwomen by the El Salvadoran junta and the murder of American engineer Ben Linder by the Nicaraguan Contras. Perhaps the Obama administration hopes that giving a green light to an Israeli attack on the U.S. ship and other vessels in the flotilla will serve as a warning. Perhaps they hope that Americans volunteering for groups like Peace Brigades International, Witness for Peace, Nonviolent Peaceforce, Christian Peacemaker Teams, International Solidarity Movement, and other groups operating in conflict zones like Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Nepal, Indonesia and elsewhere will think twice, knowing that the U.S. government will not live up to its obligations to try to protect nonviolent U.S. activists from violence perpetrated by allied governments.

Indeed, nothing frightens a militaristic state more than the power of nonviolent action.

www.stephenzunes.org

Published: February 25, 2011 07:38AM

In his recent guest column (“Anti-science views of faith leaders cause concerns,” Opinion, Feb. 8), R. Dennis Hansen correctly points out that religion and science need not be at odds, but in our view draws the wrong conclusion that they are at odds to begin with, or that religion is the problem.

Alert! Alert! There is so much drivel in this ‘thesis’ that it isn’t worthy of point-by-point rebuttal. These three authors are involved with what they call the Foundation for Attraction Research. It is a transparent fraud. Go to its web page and it is readily seen that it is a very small and tight knit group of pseudo scientists who begin with a predetermined belief and set out to prove their hunches right. The problem with their hunches is that they are all based on religious fables.

They are not seeking riches or gold or the praise of the world. They are seeking the adoration of their church apostles and their devout neighbors and friends. They are looking to get praised in church every Sunday morning. They particularly want to come to the defense of one of The Twelve, Boyd K. Packer, to try to restore some dignity to his earthly  sojourn. This trio of lost souls is trying to find justification for the litany of sins their church has committed against gays.

These are scientists who believe that Joseph Smith saw God and that he was led to ancient Gold Plates and translated them into the Book of Mormon. They believe their church is the only true church in the world and that all the others are wrong. They believe that Three Nephites (Book of Mormon characters) are wandering the earth helping people until Christ returns, and that blacks were given a dark skin because they sinned in a pre-existent world. They believe in the superiority of males and that females should be submissive to their husbands. They believe the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any book ever published, but the ‘most corrected’ book would be closer to reality.

The ‘prophets’ that taught them this stuff also taught them that homosexuality was a sin, and for some unknown reason, this is the point they have decided to prove as true. Of all the problems with the truthfulness of their religion, this is the one they feel compelled to defend.

Go at it boys. When you get that burning in the bosom be very, very careful what it might mean.

We suggest that true religion and true science, when they are found, are never at odds. While such a hypothesis may seem implausible to some, we can find a glimmer of this universally hoped-for condition in, of all places, the debate over homosexuality. True religion teaches a love for all people, including those who identify themselves as gay. Some people who experience same-sex attraction, however, do not wish to practice homosexuality or adopt a gay identity. And fortunately for such people, hope can be found in both true science and true religion.

As to science, contrary to a source cited by Hansen that same-sex attractions are of purely biological origin, Dr. Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the current director of the National Institutes of Health, reached a very different conclusion. Collins, in addressing the etiology of homosexuality in his book, The Language of God, offers the conclusion that homosexuality is “genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.”

Interestingly, this scientific statement is remarkably similar to and supportive of Elder Boyd K. Packer’s recent statement

about homosexuality not being “preset.” Elder Packer, president of the LDS Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, also has a very long and well-documented history of teaching love for people with homosexual attractions. Contrary to media reports that sought to portray Elder Packer as intolerant and uninformed, he actually had the right religion and the right science, if people cared to look beyond the hype and headlines and consider his remarks in context.

Even the American Psychological Association, after a long period of supporting a purely biological view of the origin of homosexuality, recently adopted a position supported by Collins’ observations that homosexuality, like other traits, emerges from some combination of nature and nurture. As scientists would say, all human behavioral traits are polygenic and multifactorial. Janet Cummings eloquently summarized the evolution perspective on homosexuality: “The belief that homosexuality is always inbred flies in the face of available evidence that genetics, childhood environment, and personal choice are all factors. Granted, some may be more salient than others, but from a genetic standpoint alone, the genes responsible would have disappeared throughout the millennia from lack of reproductive activity.”

Collins offers the following additional insight on homosexuality: “There is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits. For virtually none of them is heredity ever close to predictive. Environment, particularly childhood experiences, and the prominent role of individual free will choices have a profound effect on us. Scientists will discover an increasing level of molecular detail about the inherited factors that undergird our personalities, but that should not lead us to overestimate their quantitative contribution. Yes we have all been dealt a particular set of cards, and the cards will eventually be revealed. But how we play the hand is up to us.”

Other reputable scientists, some of whom personally support gay rights, have concluded that homosexuality is not invariably fixed in all people, including Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist who is credited by some for spearheading the effort to remove homosexuality from the psychiatric manual.

Spitzer offers the following: “Like most psychiatrists, I thought that homosexual behavior could only be resisted, and that no one could change their [sic] sexual orientation. I now believe that to be false. Some people can and do change.”

It should also be observed that the type, degree, and potential for change vary with each individual, and many debates about change could be avoided by a more nuanced discussion about it.

Unfortunately, the dialogue about homosexuality has too often been reduced to a simplistic and divisive us-versus-them, religion-versus-science debate. When we bring true science and true religion together, however, they can and should unite us.

Dennis V. Dahle, John P. Livingstone and M. Gawain Wells are board members of the Foundation for Attraction Research. Dahle is a a Salt Lake City attorney and a FAR founder. Livingstone is an associate professor of Church History and Doctrine in Religious Education at Brigham Young University. Wells is a retired professor of psychology at BYU.

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© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune

by The Independent/UK

These Are Secular Popular Revolts – Yet Everyone is Blaming Religion
(Our writer, who was in Cairo as the revolution took hold in Egypt, reports from Bahrain on why Islam has little to do with what is going on.)
by Robert Fisk
Mubarak claimed that Islamists were behind the Egyptian revolution. Ben Ali said the same in Tunisia. King Abdullah of Jordan sees a dark and sinister hand – al-Qa’ida’s hand, the Muslim Brotherhood’s hand, an Islamist hand – behind the civil insurrection across the Arab world. Yesterday the Bahraini authorities discovered Hizbollah’s bloody hand behind the Shia uprising there. For Hizbollah, read Iran. How on earth do well-educated if singularly undemocratic men get this thing so wrong? Confronted by a series of secular explosions – Bahrain does not quite fit into this bracket – they blame radical Islam. The Shah made an identical mistake in reverse. Confronted by an obviously Islamic uprising, he blamed it on Communists.

Bobbysocks Obama and Clinton have managed an even weirder somersault. Having originally supported the “stable” dictatorships of the Middle East – when they should have stood by the forces of democracy – they decided to support civilian calls for democracy in the Arab world at a time when the Arabs were so utterly disenchanted with the West’s hypocrisy that they didn’t want America on their side. “The Americans interfered in our country for 30 years under Mubarak, supporting his regime, arming his soldiers,” an Egyptian student told me in Tahrir Square last week. “Now we would be grateful if they stopped interfering on our side.” At the end of the week, I heard identical voices in Bahrain. “We are getting shot by American weapons fired by American-trained Bahraini soldiers with American-made tanks,” a medical orderly told me on Friday. “And now Obama wants to be on our side?”

The events of the past two months and the spirit of anti-regime Arab insurrection – for dignity and justice, rather than any Islamic emirate – will remain in our history books for hundreds of years. And the failure of Islam’s strictest adherents will be discussed for decades. There was a special piquancy to the latest footage from al-Qa’ida yesterday, recorded before the overthrow of Mubarak, that emphasised the need for Islam to triumph in Egypt; yet a week earlier the forces of secular, nationalist, honourable Egypt, Muslim and Christian men and women, had got rid of the old man without any help from Bin Laden Inc. Even weirder was the reaction from Iran, whose supreme leader convinced himself that the Egyptian people’s success was a victory for Islam. It’s a sobering thought that only al-Qa’ida and Iran and their most loathed enemies, the anti-Islamist Arab dictators, believed that religion lay behind the mass rebellion of pro-democracy protesters.

The bloodiest irony of all – which dawned rather slowly on Obama – was that the Islamic Republic of Iran was praising the democrats of Egypt while threatening to execute its own democratic opposition leaders.

Not, then, a great week for “Islamicism”. There’s a catch, of course. Almost all the millions of Arab demonstrators who wish to shrug off the cloak of autocracy which – with our Western help – has smothered their lives in humiliation and fear are indeed Muslims. And Muslims – unlike the “Christian” West – have not lost their faith. Under the stones and coshes of Mubarak’s police killers, they counter-attacked, shouting “Allah akbar” for this was indeed for them a “jihad” – not a religious war but a struggle for justice. “God is Great” and a demand for justice are entirely consistent. For the struggle against injustice is the very spirit of the Koran.

In Bahrain we have a special case. Here a Shia majority is ruled by a minority of pro-monarchy Sunni Muslims. Syria, by the way, may suffer from “Bahrainitis” for the same reason: a Sunni majority ruled by an Alawite (Shia) minority. Well, at least the West – in its sagging support for King Hamad of Bahrain – can point to the fact that Bahrain, like Kuwait, has a parliament. It’s a sad old beast, existing from 1973 to 1975 when it was dissolved unconstitutionally, and then reinvented in 2001 as part of a package of “reforms”. But the new parliament turned out to be even more unrepresentative than the first. Opposition politicians were harassed by state security, and parliamentary boundaries were gerrymandered, Ulster-style, to make sure that the minority Sunnis controlled it. In 2006 and 2010, for example, the main Shia party in Bahrain gained only 18 out of 40 seats. Indeed, there is a distinctly Northern Ireland feel to Sunni perspectives in Bahrain. Many have told me that they fear for their lives, that Shia mobs will burn their homes and kill them.

All this is set to change. Control of state power has to be legitimised to be effective, and the use of live fire to overwhelm peaceful protest was bound to end in Bahrain in a series of little Bloody Sundays. Once Arabs learnt to lose their fear, they could claim the civil rights that Catholics in Northern Ireland once demanded in the face of RUC brutality. In the end, the British had to destroy Unionist rule and bring the IRA into joint power with Protestants. The parallels are not exact and the Shias do not (yet) have a militia, although the Bahraini government has produced photographs of pistols and swords – hardly a major weapon of the IRA – to support their contention that its opponents include “terrorists”.

In Bahrain there is, needless to say, a sectarian as much as a secular battle, something that the Crown Prince unwittingly acknowledged when he originally said that the security forces had to suppress protests to prevent sectarian violence. It’s a view held all too savagely by Saudi Arabia, which has a strong interest in the suppression of dissent in Bahrain. The Shias of Saudi Arabia might get uppity if their co-religionists in Bahrain overwhelm the state. Then we’ll really hear the leaders of the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran crowing.

But these interconnected insurrections should not be seen in a simple ferment-in-the-Middle-East framework. The Yemeni uprising against President Saleh (32 years in power) is democratic but also tribal, and it won’t be long before the opposition uses guns. Yemen is a heavily armed society, tribes with flags, nationalist-rampant. And then there is Libya.

Gaddafi is so odd, his Green Book theories – dispatched by Benghazi demonstrators last week when they pulled down a concrete version of this particular volume – so preposterous, his rule so cruel (and he’s been running the place for 42 years) that he is an Ozymandias waiting to fall. His flirtation with Berlusconi – worse still, his cloying love affair with Tony Blair whose foreign secretary, Jack Straw, praised the Libyan lunatic’s “statesmanship” – was never going to save him. Bedecked with more medals than General Eisenhower, desperate for a doctor to face-lift his sagging jowls, this wretched man is threatening “terrible” punishment against his own people for challenging his rule. Two things to remember about Libya: like Yemen, it’s a tribal land; and when it turned against its Italian fascist overlords, it began a savage war of liberation whose brave leaders faced the hangman’s noose with unbelievable courage. Just because Gaddafi is a nutter does not mean his people are fools.

So it’s a sea-change in the Middle East’s political, social, cultural world. It will create many tragedies, raise many hopes and shed far too much blood. Better perhaps to ignore all the analysts and the “think tanks” whose silly “experts” dominate the satellite channels. If Czechs could have their freedom, why not the Egyptians? If dictators can be overthrown in Europe – first the fascists, then the Communists – why not in the great Arab Muslim world? And – just for a moment – keep religion out of this.

© 2011 The Independent
Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper.  He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

by The Guardian/UK

Palestinians Plan ‘Day of Rage’ after US Vetoes Resolution on Israeli Settlements

US decision to use UN security council veto sparks furious reaction in West Bank and Gaza

by Harriet Sherwood

Palestinians are planning a “day of rage” on Friday in response to the US wielding its veto against a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

Palestinians are planning a “day of rage” on Friday in response to the US wielding its veto against a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. The US decision to use its veto has sparked a furious reaction in the West Bank and Gaza.

Anti-US rallies took place in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Jenin this weekend after the 14-1 vote on the resolution, in which the US stood alone against the rest of the security council, including Britain, Germany and France. It voted in contradiction of its own policy.

This is not a good time for the United States to be antagonizing the Arab world—which is certainly what Obama’s veto did. Obama’s veto is a public embarrassment, a clear cut exposure of our hypocrisy in dealing with Israel.

We vetoed a policy that we have publicly been supportive of, and we stand absolutely alone in the entire world. The vote was 14-1. There is no credit in being number one in this instance.

The biggest mistake of the past century was the establishment of the State of Israel. There has not been a day of peace since that decision. Israel has proven to be the most intransigent partner anyone could possibly have.

In Gaza, Hamas described the US position as outrageous and said Washington was “completely biased” towards Israel.

Ibrahim Sarsour, an Israeli-Arab member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, said it was time to tell the US president, Barack Obama, to “go to hell”.

“Obama cannot be trusted,” he wrote in an open letter to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. “We knew his promises were lies. The time has come to spit in the face of the Americans.”

The Egyptian foreign ministry said the US veto would “lead to more damage of the United States’ credibility on the Arab side as a mediator in peace efforts”.

The use of the veto for the first time under Obama will strengthen perceptions in the Arab world that for the US, protection of its ally Israel overrides its desire for a just outcome for Palestinians in the decades-old conflict.

The move is likely to impede US efforts to persuade the parties to return to peace negotiations, which stalled in September over the issue of settlement expansion.

With protests raging across the Middle East against repression, corruption, food prices and dismal economic prospects, Washington is acutely aware that distrust of the US is widespread in the region.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyhu, said his country “deeply appreciated” the US use of its veto.

However, some Israeli commentators warned that the vote served to reinforce Israel’s international isolation and said Washington would expect a payback from its ally. They suggested the US would be unwilling to use its veto in similar circumstances again.

The opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, said Israel was “now in political collapse”.

“We now find that Germany, Britain and France – all friends of Israel who want to help it defend itself – voted against the positions of Israel, and the US is being pushed into a corner and finds itself with Israel against the world,” she said.

The vote, on Friday night, followed frantic diplomatic efforts to prevent the tabling of the resolution, which was carefully worded to reflect official US policy on settlements.

Obama spoke to Abbas on the phone for 50 minutes on Thursday, offering a package of inducements, including public statements, to withdraw the resolution.

According to the Palestinian press, Obama also suggested US aid to the Palestinian Authority could be halted if the resolution went ahead.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made a further telephone call to Abbas on Friday to put pressure on him to abandon the resolution.

However, the Palestinian president – aware of the volatile mood in the region and the backlash he would face if he acceded to Obama’s demands – refused to withdraw. One Palestinian official told Reuters that “people would take to the streets and topple the president” if he backed down.

After the vote, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told the security council that Washington agreed with “our fellow council members, and indeed with the wider world, about the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israel settlement activity”.

But she added: “We think it unwise for this council to attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians.”

Underlying the growing gap between the US and Europe on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement saying settlement construction was against international law.

The veto served to unite the political rivals Hamas and Fatah in condemnation. Palestinian leaders are considering whether to take a resolution on Israel’s settlement policies to the UN general assembly.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited

How 1,600 confidential Palestinian records of negotiations with Israel from 1999 to 2010 came to be leaked to al-Jazeera

Seumas Milne and Ian Black The Guardian, Monday 24 January 2011

The revelations from the heart of the Israel-Palestine peace process are the product of the biggest documentary leak in the history of the Middle East conflict, and the most comprehensive exposure of the inside story of a decade of failed negotiations.

The 1,600 confidential records of hundreds of meetings between Palestinian, Israeli and US leaders, as well as emails and secret proposals, were leaked to the Qatar-based satellite TV channel al-Jazeera and shared exclusively with the Guardian. They cover the period from the runup to the ill-fated Camp David negotiations under US president Bill Clinton in 2000, to private discussions last year involving senior officials and politicians in the Obama administration.

The earliest document in the cache is a memo from September 1999 about Palestinian negotiating strategy. It suggests heeding the advice of the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you can get what you need.” The final one, from last September, is a Palestinian Authority (PA) message to the Egyptian government about access to the Gaza Strip.

The Palestine papers have emerged at a time when a whole era of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, starting with the Madrid conference in 1991, appear to have run into the sand, opening up the prospect of a new phase of the conflict and potentially another war.

In particular, they cover the most recent negotiations, before and after George Bush’s Annapolis conference in late 2007 – when substantive offers were made by both sides until the process broke down over Israel’s refusal to freeze West Bank settlement activity.

The bulk of the documents are records, contemporaneous notes and sections of verbatim transcripts of meetings drawn up by officials of the Palestinian negotiation support unit (NSU), which has been the main technical and legal backup for the Palestinian side in the negotiations.

The unit has been heavily funded by the British government. Other documents originate from inside the PA’s extensive US- and British-sponsored security apparatus.

The Israelis, Americans and others kept their own records, which may differ in their accounts of the same meetings. But the Palestinian documents were made and held confidentially, rather than for overt or public use, and significantly reveal large gaps between the private and stated positions of Palestinian and, in fewer cases, Israeli leaders.

The documents – almost all of which are in English, which was the language used by both sides in negotiations – were leaked over a period of months from several sources to al-Jazeera. The bulk of them have been independently authenticated for the Guardian by former participants in the talks and by diplomatic and intelligence sources.

The NSU – formally part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – is based in the West Bank town of Ramallah under the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat. It has drawn heavily on the expertise of Palestinian-American and other western-trained diaspora Palestinian lawyers for technical support in negotiations.

In the case of one-to-one talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders – especially between Mahmoud Abbas and the then Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert – NSU officials were not present, but reports on the outcome of the encounters were often given later to the unit and records made.

After the breakdown of the Camp David talks, which Clinton and Israeli leaders blamed on Yasser Arafat and a lack of technical Palestinian preparation, Palestinian leaders went to great lengths to ensure that the fullest records and supporting documents were drawn up for later talks. Among NSU staff, the Arab-American lawyer Zeinah Salahi drew up many of the meeting records, while others were made by the French-Palestinian lawyer Ziyad Clot, author of a book about the negotiations, Il n’y aura pas d’Etat Palestinien (There will be no Palestinian state).

The role of the NSU in the negotiations has caused tensions among West Bank-based Palestinian leaders and officials, and widespread resentment about the salaries paid to its most senior managers, notably Adam Smith International’s Andrew Kuhn, who stepped down from running the unit last year.

But as the negotiations have increasingly been seen to have failed, and the Ramallah-based PA leadership has come to be regarded by many Palestinians as illegitimate or unrepresentative, discontent among NSU staff has grown and significant numbers have left. There has also been widespread discontent in the organisation at the scale and nature of concessions made in the talks.

Among NSU staff cited in the documents, Salahi now works for the US embassy in Cairo, Clot has returned to France and Rami Dajani works for Tony Blair in his role as the Middle East quartet’s envoy. Kuhn is working elsewhere for Adam Smith International, including on projects in Afghanistan.

In response to the leaks, PA and PLO leaders such as Saeb Erekat can be expected to point out that one of the core principles of the negotiations is that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”. As such they are not necessarily committed to provisional positions that in the event failed to secure a settlement – though Erekat made clear to US officials in January 2010 that the same offers remained on the table.

Critics are likely to argue that concessions – such as accepting the annexation of Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem – are simply pocketed by the Israeli side, and risk being treated as a starting point in any future talks.

Some Fatah leaders are likely to accuse al-Jazeera of having an anti-PA agenda by publishing the leaked documents, which they believe will benefit their Hamas rivals, backed by Iran — as shown in critical comments about the TV station in the documents themselves.

Relations between al-Jazeera, the most widely watched TV channel in the Middle East, and the PA leadership have often been strained after it has run reports regarded by the administration as hostile – as is the case with regimes throughout the region.

The documents have been redacted to remove details such as email addresses, phone numbers or other information that could identify those who leaked them.
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The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 19, 2011 10:53PM

Harris Simmons doesn’t want to express an opinion about the $8 million civil fine federal regulators recently levied against Zions Bank for serious deficiencies in its Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering controls.

But there are a few things that Simmons, chairman of parent company Zions Bancorp, wants shareholders and customers of the biggest home-grown financial institution in Utah to know.

Zions takes its obligation to comply with federal banking laws seriously, Simmons said in an interview.

He also wants to say that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network didn’t find evidence of any illegal money transfers, only that there were lapses in Zion’s compliance.

“We spend millions a year, [and] we have at last count 90 people working full time on this kind of compliance. They are monitoring about half a billion transactions year worth about $8 trillion,” he said.

Like other financial institutions, Zions is required to report suspicious money transactions to the government within 30 days. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury Department agency that fights money laundering, said Zions failed to file on time 132 reports representing $12.3 billion in suspicious activity during 2006 and 2007.

The implication of FinCEN’s claim surely annoys the banking company. It thinks the allegation unfairly implies that Zions transferred $12.3 billion in ill-gotten funds into the foreign accounts of shady characters.

“The billions of dollars reported, from our point of view, constitute the haystack, and not the needles that might be in it. If it was illegal activity, it wasn’t $12 billion. It would have been in the context of that volume of business,” Harris said.

It isn’t clear how egregious Zions lapses were. Officials from the OCC and FinCEN refused to talk in detail beyond the documents their agencies released earlier this month.

“Frankly, we are not in the business of beating people over their heads. We are here to help financial institutions identify where there is money laundering, or possible fraud,” FinCEN spokesman Bill Grassano said.

Even so, cases such as Zions’ aren’t common, he said. The largest fine FinCEN ever levied was against Wachovia Bank. In March 2010, the Wells Fargo subsidiary was ordered to pay $110 million after investigations by the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, FinCEN and the OCC.

The allegations against Zions appear to be an aberration, even though two other smaller fines were levied against units of the bank last August. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Zions Direct $225,000 for failing to disclose to customers that an affiliate, Liquid Asset Management, participated in bidding during CD auctions. FINRA found that some auctions could have yielded higher rates of interest if the affiliate hadn’t taken part.

A week earlier, the affiliate was fined $50,000 by the Utah Securities Division for conducting business without proper licenses.

Despite those improprieties, Zions has been praised by federal law enforcement officials for the bank’s role in stopping criminal financial activity.

In 2005, a federal grand jury handed up indictments against 15 people in Utah and Colombia, charging them with a money-laundering scheme to convert U.S. dollars made through drug sales in Colombia to pesos.

The defendants allegedly laundered $1.45 million through three banks in Florida and Utah. One of the banks was Zions, which was singled out for praise by Paul Warner, then U.S. attorney, who brought the charges. Zions was “extremely cooperative,” he said, adding the bank brought the alleged conduct to the attention of law enforcement.

So far, the allegations and fine announced earlier this month haven’t had any discernible effect on Zions. Gary Tenner, a securities analyst at D.A. Davidson and Co. in Portland, said the fine amounts to an $8 million slap on the wrist.

“These things happen. They aren’t the first bank to have a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act.”

“For investors, the bigger issue is, would this have an impact on their business going forward, and because it probably won’t, I don’t think investors are too concerned.”

Shareholder reactions to events such as a fine tend to unfold over time, experts say. That’s because investor options are limited. They can dump shares, sue the company and its officers, or vote for change at the company’s annual meeting.

There may be some discussion at the next Zions meeting with shareholders this spring. “It’s another wake-up call to a sleepy board of directors that needs to be kept awake, with the problems and challenges facing Zions,” said Gerald Armstrong, an activist who owns 896 Zions shares.

Armstrong wasn’t aware of the fine until told by a reporter. Although he is often dismissed as a nuisance by officers of the public companies in which he invests, Armstrong is often sought for comment by the media.

A Zions shareholder since 1971, he is no Johnny-come-lately. Armstrong regularly attends Zions meetings, and intends to bring up the fine at the next gathering.

“I recommend a ‘claw-back’ of the $8 million fine from the officers, directors and auditors,” Armstrong said, asserting that the fine is not tax-deductible, and therefore hurts shareholders who have already been hurt by nine consecutive quarterly losses.

Claw-back is a term that became popular during the financial crisis. It was used as a threat by which the government would take the bonuses paid to Wall Street executives before the meltdown.

——————————————————————————–
© 2011 The Salt Lake Tribune

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: February 18, 2011 10:49PM

The founder and charismatic Buddhist teacher at Salt Lake City’s Kanzeon Zen Center has stepped away after acknowledging a sexual affair with an advanced Zen follower.

Dennis Merzel, known by his Buddhist name and honorific title “Genpo Roshi,” is a nationally respected Zen master who leads trainings all over the world.

He first acknowledged the affair in late January to hundreds of students in Holland. Shortly after his return to Salt Lake City, Merzel addressed an open meeting at the center, took responsibility for his actions and apologized for “the pain, anger, concerns, questions and feelings of his wife, family and sangha members,” according to a statement on the center’s website.

Merzel voluntarily “disrobed” as a Zen priest and also resigned as an elder in the White Plum Asanga, a consortium of Zen centers led by students of Taizan Maezumi.

Merzel was on retreat Friday and not available for comment. But he did post an apology on his own website, http://bigmind.org/Responsibility.html.

“My behavior was not in alignment with the Buddhist precepts. I feel ‘disrobing’ is just a small part of an appropriate response,” Merzel wrote. “Experiencing all the pain and suffering I have caused has touched my heart and been the greatest teacher.”

Since then, Merzel’s actions have been discussed and dissected throughout the American Zen community.

Such sexual behavior “cuts the legs from under Zen practice in this country,” said Franz Metcalf, a Buddhist scholar in Los Angeles. “It’s a tragedy on various levels.”

Sex between teachers and followers “is simply, to use the Buddhist term, wrong action,” Metcalf said in a phone interview. “And it violates [Buddhism’s] third precept against engaging in harmful sexual activity.”

In addition to his family, those hit hardest by Merzel’s misconduct are his followers.

“My first reaction was sadness,” Mark Esterman, a senior student at the center, said Friday. “I realized there was a lot of hurt here and a lot of suffering would result from this.”

The community has staged several “healing circles,” so people could share their feelings and discuss how to move forward.

The issues are also financial.

About a decade ago, Merzel created a program he calls “Big Mind.” It combines Zen teachings with Western psychology and promises a quicker path to enlightenment. The training can be pricey: His “5-5-50 program” offers five days of training for five people for $50,000.

Rumor has it that the Zen has front row season seats at the Jazz games. He got the tickets on a trade with Jerry Sloan, Deron Williams, Greg Miller, Randy Rigby, and Kevin O’Connor. Apparently they didn’t finish the classes. Deron insisted on being the teacher after the first day and it created a major rift.

On his website, Merzel says he will continue to lead his Big Mind training, which could limit revenue for his former center.

The center has tapped one of Merzel’s students, Richard Taido Christofferson Sensei, of Seattle, to take over teaching, training and administrative functions.

Christofferson’s appointment is a “first step toward the local community’s healing,” said former Utah Supreme Court Justice Michael Zimmerman, who, along with his wife, Diane Hamilton, was among Merzel’s students.

Zimmerman and Hamilton, who plan to open their own Zen center in downtown Salt Lake City next week, are committed to working cooperatively with Christofferson to support the larger Zen community.

They have left Kanzeon but were disappointed to hear about the misconduct of Merzel, who officiated at their wedding,

“I found him to be a strong and dedicated teacher and will always be grateful for his schooling me in Zen practice,” the former judge said. “What the future holds for Genpo is difficult to predict.”

pstack@sltrib.com

—

More on the Web

O Read Dennis Merzel’s statement.

> bigmind.org/Responsibility.html

The U.S. veto in the United Nations Security Council on February 18 of a draft resolution demanding that “Israel cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” and reaffirming that settlements are “illegal,”  undermines American interests in the Middle East and prospects for a two-state peace.

We heartily agree with Philip Wilcox. Publicly we have condemned Israeli settlements as an impediment to peace, but at the United Nations we veto the very goal we supposedly are trying to achieve.

What it amounts to is that the United States has been playing games with peace for years with no intention of peace (except during the Carter years). We have been deceptive with the Palestinians. We have been pulling off a major ruse in falsely pretending to be ‘fair brokers.’

The Obama Administration, along with Hilary Clinton, are big disappointments. Our blind allegiance to Israel has caused enormous problems throughout the Middle East.

The United States of America has been a disaster for the people of the Middle East. We have propped up dictators for our own selfish purposes while they abused their people with our concurrence.

The Obama Administration has continued this tragedy and it is starting to backfire and we are going to reap what we’ve sowed.

The Obama administration has worked strenuously but unsuccessfully over eighteen months to persuade Israel to freeze settlement building which it regularly described as “illegitimate.” Yet Israel has accelerated settlement in defiance of American wishes.

In casting the U.S. veto of the resolution, the US representative explained that only direct negotiations will bring peace and that the resolution would have risked “hardening attitudes” and further resort to the UN.  This is not persuasive. The text of the resolution called on the parties “to continue with …their negotiations,” and was entirely consistent with this goal, and otherwise reflected U.S. policy.

In any case, negotiations over the past seventeen years have utterly failed to break the impasse over Israel’s occupation and settlement policies, at least in part, because of Israel’s insistence in expanding settlements unilaterally in territory that is the subject of negotiations.  The settler population has expanded from 281,000 in 1993 to 557,800 in 2010.  Notwithstanding a temporary, partial freeze, the settler populace in the West Bank alone grew by 15,000 in 2010.  While passage of a resolution condemning Israeli policy might further harden Israeli views toward compliance with international law and opinion in the short run, it would signal that Israel cannot continue to expand settlements with the impunity it has enjoyed in the past.

Other U.S. officials have said the UN should stay out of Israeli-Palestinian peace-keeping. Yet the UN has been deeply involved in this conflict from the very beginning. It recognized Israel in 1948 and passed other landmark resolutions, like 242.  In 2003, the U.S. supported the Security Council’s endorsement of the Quartet’s roadmap, which calls for a settlement freeze.

Anticipated domestic criticism appears to be the real reason for the U.S. veto.  But foreign policy leadership requires courage and strategic vision.  The U.S. veto will likely accelerate the decline of U.S influence in the Middle East, undermine the credibility of its own policy on settlements, and further erode our reputation as an impartial mediator. All this makes the prospect of progress toward a two-state peace even more distant.

At a time when U.S. efforts to make peace between Israel and Palestine have ground to a halt, the U.S. needs a new policy.  Growing protest in the Middle East over oppression and denial of freedom and human rights makes this all the more urgent.

Below is the pathetic offering provided as a supposed news story by The Deseret News regarding the charges and fines of $8 million against Zions Bank for ‘money laundering.’ The story came two days after the public announcement of the fines by two government agencies and a front page major headline and detailed story in the Salt Lake Tribune.

The close ties to Zions Bank by both the LDS Church and The Deseret News are well known, and for the sake of journalistic integrity one would think that the Deseret News would have made a better effort to cover the issue objectively. But NO, it tried to hide it and tried to downplay it, and in the process showed that the new ‘corporatized’ de-journalized Deseret News is apparently going to rely on ‘faith-based’ reporting out of the same mold the church deals with its own history.

(The extensive reporting of the case by the Salt Lake Tribune is posted elsewhere on this blog.)

The Deseret News Headline

Zions Bank fined $8M in lax wire transfers case
By Chi-chi Zhang
Associated Press

Published: Monday, Feb. 14, 2011 3:57 p.m. MST
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah-based Zions Bank has agreed to pay $8 million to settle allegations it failed to monitor billions of dollars’ worth of illegal wire transfers.

The federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Monday the violations occurred in 2006 and 2007, when the bank opened a new wire transfer business but failed to meet anti-money laundering regulations.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network cooperated in the investigation. It says Zions failed to report 132 cases of suspicious activity worth about $12.3 billion in transactions that it says may have involved drug trafficking accounts.

Zions hasn’t acknowledged or denied the allegations.

The bank has offices in 10 Western U.S. states. It closed its foreign correspondent banking business in 2008 and has agreed to pay an $8 million lump sum penalty fee.

That’s all folks. We got five paragraphs from the Deseret News downplaying the potential laundering of $12.3 billion dollars. Because of rules and regulations regarding banking and because a couple of federal agencies actually performed their public duty we now know that Zions Bank was involved in at least 132 transactions (potential money laundering) in amounts that totalled $12.3 billion dollars.

What the public still doesn’t know, and good journalism should pursue it, is who sent what to whom and for what purpose? These numbers are so big that most of us don’t take the time to do the math. We just know it’s a helluva lot of money. Also, the public may be able to put together the pieces a lot better than a few regulators who don’t understand the connections between names and entities. Names please! Who are these guys?

Let’s do the math—132 transactions totalling $12.3 billion amounts to nearly $100,000,000 each transaction. Now, this isn’t small potatoes. Who is transferring that kind of money to whom and for what purpose? Why was the Deseret News so slow to announce the story? Why did it choose to make it appear like just another two-bit fine? If all this money was legitimate church business then fine, we would at least know that it was baptized instead of laundered.

Why were these rules and regulations put in place? To help track possible drug money, and to reduce the possibility of enormous amounts of tax evasion, and possibly to get around campaign finance laws!

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published Feb 07 2011 04:16PM

Gay-rights activist Eric Ethington met with a group of BYU students at the J. Reuben Clark Law School on the Provo campus Thursday night to discuss efforts to get nondiscrimination ordinances passed in Provo.

When he left the meeting to drive back to Salt Lake City, he discovered the tires on his car had been slashed.

Ethington said his car bore Equal Rights Campaign and Equality Utah bumper stickers, making it obvious he was a gay-rights supporter. Word of his meeting also could have gotten around campus, he said, because the meeting with about 30 students had been planned after they expressed interest in pursuing the ordinance changes.

When he got to his car, he noticed the right front tire was completely flat. He changed the tire with a spare, then drove away. By the time he got on Interstate 15, the left front tire had gone flat. Upon inspection, he noticed both tires had been slashed.

He was towed to a tire shop in Lehi and picked up his car on Friday.

He filed a complaint with the BYU Police Department on Friday.

Maybe Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, can file a bill exempting vandals from prosecution if they are able to show religious conviction motivated their vandalism.

Interestingly, Apostle Dallin Oaks just gave a speech at Chapman University in which he declared that those with religion have a higher sense of morality–that religion is the source of moral understanding.

I guess, since we don’t know for sure, the tire slashing can be blamed on an atheist, or perhaps someone whose toe stuck up out of the water and he was not completely baptized. Without instant replay only God would know.

The New York Times

Published: February 3, 2011 01:01AM

Ramallah, West Bank • I’m meeting a retired Israeli general at a Tel Aviv hotel. He begins the conversation with: “Well, everything we thought for the last 30 years is no longer relevant.”

That pretty much sums up the disorienting sense of shock and awe that the popular uprising in Egypt has inflicted on the psyche of Israel’s establishment. The peace treaty with a stable Egypt was the unspoken foundation for every geopolitical and economic policy in Israel for the last 35 years, and now it’s gone. It’s as if Americans suddenly woke up and found both Mexico and Canada plunged into turmoil on the same day.

This is a perilous time for Israel, and its anxiety is understandable. But I fear Israel could make its situation even more perilous if it succumbs to the argument one hears from a number of senior Israeli officials today that the events in Egypt prove that Israel can’t make a lasting peace with the Palestinians. It’s wrong and dangerous.

To be sure, Hosni Mubarak, Israel’s longtime ally, deserves all the wrath being directed at him. The best time to make any big, hard decision is when you are at your maximum strength. You’ll always think and act more clearly. For the last 20 years, Mubarak has had all the leverage he could ever want to truly reform Egypt’s economy and build a moderate, legitimate political center to fill the void between his authoritarian state and the Muslim Brotherhood. But Mubarak deliberately maintained the political vacuum between himself and the Islamists so that he could always tell the world, “It’s either me or them.” Now he is trying to reform in a panic with no leverage. Too late.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is in danger of becoming the Mubarak of the peace process. Israel has never had more leverage vis-a-vis the Palestinians and never had more responsible Palestinian partners. But Netanyahu has found every excuse for not putting a peace plan on the table. The Americans know it.

No, I do not know if this Palestinian leadership has the fortitude to close a deal. But I do know this: Israel has an overwhelming interest in going the extra mile to test them.

With the leaders of both Egypt and Jordan scrambling to shuffle their governments in an effort to stay ahead of the street, two things can be said for sure: Whatever happens in the only two Arab states that have peace treaties with Israel, the moderate secularists who had a monopoly of power will be weaker and the previously confined Muslim Brotherhood will be stronger. How much remains to be seen.

It is virtually certain that the next Egyptian government will not have the patience or room that Mubarak did to maneuver with Israel. Same with the new Jordanian cabinet. Make no mistake, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with sparking the demonstrations in Egypt and Jordan, but Israeli-Palestinian relations will be impacted by the events in both countries.

To put it bluntly, if Israelis tell themselves that Egypt’s unrest proves why Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinian Authority, then they will be talking themselves into becoming an apartheid state, talking themselves into permanently absorbing the West Bank and thereby laying the seeds for an Arab majority ruled by a Jewish minority.

What the turmoil in Egypt also demonstrates is how much Israel is surrounded by a huge population of young Arabs and Muslims who have been living outside of history — insulated by oil and autocracy from the great global trends. But that’s over.

I had given up on Netanyahu’s cabinet and urged the U.S. to walk away. But today, I believe President Barack Obama should put his own peace plan on the table, bridging the Israeli and Palestinian positions, and demand that the two sides negotiate on it without any preconditions. It is vital for Israel’s future that it disentangle itself from the Arabs’ story as much as possible. There is a huge storm coming, Israel. Get out of the way.

Why God Did Not Create the Universe

There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world—no gods required

By STEPHEN HAWKING And LEONARD MLODINOW

According to Viking mythology, eclipses occur when two wolves, Skoll and Hati, catch the sun or moon. At the onset of an eclipse people would make lots of noise, hoping to scare the wolves away. After some time, people must have noticed that the eclipses ended regardless of whether they ran around banging on pots.

This article in the Wall Street Journal was the subject of an article in The Deseret News that is also posted on Watts Cookin’. Our comments are attached within the Deseret News commentary posted under the headline “Hawking’s New Book Dismisses God”. Hawking is widely regarded as one of the smartest men in the world, if not number one, and it is worth our time to listen and learn.

Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to postulate many myths in an effort to make sense of their world. But eventually, people turned to philosophy, that is, to the use of reason—with a good dose of intuition—to decipher their universe. Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test—in other words, modern science.

Albert Einstein said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” He meant that, unlike our homes on a bad day, the universe is not just a conglomeration of objects each going its own way. Everything in the universe follows laws, without exception.

Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not “arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature.” Instead, he maintained that the order in the universe was “created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition.” The discovery recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that this grand design is the work of some grand Designer. Yet the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.

Many improbable occurrences conspired to create Earth’s human-friendly design, and they would indeed be puzzling if ours were the only solar system in the universe. But today we know of hundreds of other solar systems, and few doubt that there exist countless more among the billions of stars in our galaxy. Planets of all sorts exist, and obviously, when the beings on a planet that supports life examine the world around them, they are bound to find that their environment satisfies the conditions they require to exist.

The Hubble Space Telescope snaps new images of the oldest galaxies ever seen. A senior scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explains to WSJ’s Robert Lee Hotz and Simon Constable how he did it-and what it means.

It is possible to turn that last statement into a scientific principle: The fact of our being restricts the characteristics of the kind of environment in which we find ourselves. For example, if we did not know the distance from the Earth to the sun, the fact that beings like us exist would allow us to put bounds on how small or great the Earth-sun separation could be. We need liquid water to exist, and if the Earth were too close, it would all boil off; if it were too far, it would freeze. That principle is called the “weak” anthropic principle.

The weak anthropic principle is not very controversial. But there is a stronger form that is regarded with disdain among some physicists. The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints, not just on our environment, but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves.

The idea arose because it is not only the peculiar characteristics of our solar system that seem oddly conducive to the development of human life, but also the characteristics of our entire universe—and its laws. They appear to have a design that is both tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is much more difficult to explain.

Stephen Youll

The tale of how the primordial universe of hydrogen, helium and a bit of lithium evolved to a universe harboring at least one world with intelligent life like us is a tale of many chapters. The forces of nature had to be such that heavier elements—especially carbon—could be produced from the primordial elements, and remain stable for at least billions of years. Those heavy elements were formed in the furnaces we call stars, so the forces first had to allow stars and galaxies to form. Those in turn grew from the seeds of tiny inhomogeneities in the early universe.

Even all that is not enough: The dynamics of the stars had to be such that some would eventually explode, precisely in a way that could disperse the heavier elements through space. In addition, the laws of nature had to dictate that those remnants could recondense into a new generation of stars, these surrounded by planets incorporating the newly formed heavy elements.

By examining the model universes we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner. Such calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5% in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4% in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Also, most of the fundamental constants appearing in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases unsuitable for the development of life. For example, if protons were 0.2% heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms.

If one assumes that a few hundred million years in stable orbit is necessary for planetary life to evolve, the number of space dimensions is also fixed by our existence. That is because, according to the laws of gravity, it is only in three dimensions that stable elliptical orbits are possible. In any but three dimensions even a small disturbance, such as that produced by the pull of the other planets, would send a planet off its circular orbit, and cause it to spiral either into or away from the sun.

The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned. What can we make of these coincidences? Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It raises the natural question of why it is that way.

Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago. In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed “in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design.”

That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning. It is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology. If it is true it reduces the strong anthropic principle to the weak one, putting the fine tunings of physical law on the same footing as the environmental factors, for it means that our cosmic habitat—now the entire observable universe—is just one of many.

Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.

—Stephen Hawking is a professor at the University of Cambridge. Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist who teaches at Caltech. Adapted from “The Grand Design” by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, to be published by Bantam Books on Sept. 7. Copyright © by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Printed by arrangement with the Random House Publishing Group.

By Michael De Groote

Deseret News

Published: Friday, Feb. 4, 2011 7:10 p.m. MST

When British physicist Stephen Hawking came into the auditorium at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., the crowd went wild. The Los Angeles Times reported that one fan, 13-year-old Evan Hetland, even dubbed him “the nerd pope.”

Hawking was somewhat the darling of some religious people for his occasional references to God, such as one time when he said that if a complete theory of physics were discovered, then “we would know the mind of God.”

But Hawking’s latest book, “The Grand Design,” written with physicist Leonard Mlodinow, leaves little room for God — or philosophy for that matter. A Wall Street Journal article they wrote based on their book is titled “Why God Did Not Create the Universe: There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world — no gods required.”

Ouch.

“Ouch,” my eye! There is no ‘ouch’ for believers. Nevertheless, a compliment to the Deseret News for publishing this story. Hawking’s views are significant and obviously puts religious folks in a defensive posture. As expected the article by Michael DeGroote couldn’t be printed in the Deseret News without a significant counter punch that deflects the issue, and it is good and credible journalism to present opposing points of view.

Believers can take a punch better than anyone. Facts seldom hit a believer square on, they are almost always deflected. Believers are resilient beyond, no pun intended, ‘belief.’  There is no penetration. Once they have talked with God there is rarely any denying. There needs to be another scientific study to explain that phenomenon.

The fact that their God said the earth was created in seven days is meaningless to them. Despite incontrovertible evidence they insist their scriptures are the ‘Word of God.’ Science hasn’t proven there is a god, but it has thoroughly disproved the scriptures of Holy Writ.

Sure, there can still be a God, and Hawking hasn’t even completely ruled it out, but it is obvious that if by a long shot there happens to be a god—it is not the God of the myths of our early recorded history. It is not the God of Christianity, or of Muslims,  or of Jews, the three religions that seem to be on a collision course with Armageddon and dragging the rest of us with them. Those gods have been thoroughly debunked and the rest of the world is plagued with them.

It would be nice to be able to discuss the problems of the world without starting the discussion on the false foundation, the shifting sands, of religious belief. Let’s put mythology aside and try to make the world a better place for everyone for the short time we are all here.

The article starts with a story from Viking mythology that explained eclipses were caused by two sky wolves. “Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to postulate many myths in an effort to make sense of their world,” Hawking and Mlodinow wrote.

Those myths (read “religions”) gave way to philosophy and now — tadah! — philosophy has given way to modern science. In the introduction,

Hawking says that “Philosophy is dead” because it hasn’t kept up with modern developments in science.

James E. Faulconer, professor of philosophy, and Richard L. Evans, Professor of Religious Understanding at BYU, disagree.

“It was a throwaway line,” Faulconer said. “Very little of philosophy is about deciphering the universe.”

But Hawking is famous for deciphering the universe. In his new book, he explains how M-theory and other physics make the need for a creator god obsolete.

“As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going,” Hawking and Mlodinow wrote.

Blue touch paper is a fuse for fireworks.

So gravity lit the fuse.

Hawking also uses the idea of a multiverse — that there are many different universes — to explain why such a precise universe exists that can create life.

Just how precisely tuned is our universe?

“By examining the model universes, we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner. Such calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Also, most of the fundamental constants appearing in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different and, in many cases, unsuitable for the development of life. For example, if protons were 0.2 percent heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms,” Hawking and Mlodinow wrote.

They acknowledge that some may ascribe this fine-tuning to God, but if there are many universes — which physics predicts in string theory and more particularly M-theory — then out of the billions of possible universes, it is likely a universe like ours would be created quantum fluctuations as well.

So it is like a lottery.

Of all the possibilities, it is likely that our one universe with all its laws would be one of those possibilities. “(O)ur cosmic habitat — now the entire observable universe — is just one of many,” Hawking and Mlodinow wrote.

Stephen Barr is a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware and published “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith” with the University of Notre Dame Press in 2003. Barr thinks the best answer to Hawking’s new book is Hawking himself. In Hawking’s 1988 bestseller “A Brief History of Time,” he wrote about what is at the base of physics: “Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”

Barr said, “Physicists can create a mathematical theory of a universe coming into being, but what makes it real? That is a question that a creator, as traditionally understood by Judaism and Christianity, answers. It gives reality to the universe. It’s what explains why there is a real universe that those equations are describing.”

Barr happens to think that M-theory is correct but recognizes that it is not yet a conclusion. “No description of anything, whether math as provided by physics or verbal descriptions, can confer reality on anything.”

Hawking, in fact, hasn’t proposed anything new in his book, Barr said. And so Hawking’s conclusions may be misleading or at least premature. “When he says physics answered the question, he knows that is nonsense,” Barr said.

Steven Faux thinks Hawking is reaching beyond his expertise when he makes pronouncements about philosophy and theology. “Generally, theologians make poor scientists,” said Faux, who is in the department of psychology at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and specializes in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. “By and large, scientists make poor theologians.”

Faux, who is a Mormon, said that the job of science is to teach how things work in nature. “Religion teaches about a higher meaning in life, something science can’t get at.”

BYU philosopher Faulconer said, “Scientists have a circular explanation of the world. There is no reference to anything beyond the empirical. So they find nothing beyond the empirical.” He said God is not an empirical concept and that religious people need to look beyond the empirical — beyond the things that can be observed and measured — to know there is a God. “We shouldn’t be surprised when science can’t find God,” Faulconer said, then added in mock valley girl speak: “Well, yeah.”

Hawking sees a mechanical scientific creation that leaves nothing for God to do. Faux thinks Hawking is missing the main point. “He makes a presumption that we know how God works. But we don’t know how God created the earth or the universe.”

Faulconer sees the other side of the equation as well. “I can’t make an argument for God’s existence based on what science accepts. Science gives a perfectly adequate explanation of the world for certain purposes.”

Science teaches how things work in nature. Religion, according to Faux, teaches about higher meaning and purpose.

Barr sees Hawking’s explanations, not as a scientific conclusion, but as a story like those told in ancient times. But even if his particular story is true, it doesn’t exclude God. “It doesn’t take away the fact that the universe being life-bearing is a remarkable thing,” Barr said.

e-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com Twitter: twitter.com/degroote

First published Jan 29 2011 01:01AM

The front-page article “Without marriage, same-sex parents unable to adopt” (Tribune, Jan. 24) was both heartwarming and heart-wrenching.

I am a lesbian in a committed relationship of two-plus years. Like the family in the article, my partner and I hope to raise our children in Utah because here we have supportive and loving friends and extended family members.

I hope that people recognize that their doctrinal belief that two people of the same sex should not have the right to marry one another prevents families like ours from adopting children who need stable, loving homes such as ours.

We are 26 and 30 years of age. We plan to be together for the entirety of our lives. We can’t adopt, yet how is it that two people of the opposite sex who only just met can casually jaunt down to Vegas, be married by Elvis and have the legal right of adoption in this great, moral state of Utah?

Elaine Ball

Salt Lake City

04 February 2011 — Salt Lake City

Transcript of Elder Dallin H. Oaks speech given at Chapman University School of Law on 4 February 2011.

Preserving Religious Freedom

I am here to speak of the state of religious freedom in the United States, why it seems to be diminishing, and what can be done about it.

Although I will refer briefly to some implications of the Proposition 8 controversy and its constitutional arguments, I am not here to participate in the debate on the desirability or effects of same-sex marriage. I am here to contend for religious freedom. I am here to describe fundamental principles that I hope will be meaningful for decades to come.

I believe you will find no unique Mormon doctrine in what I say. My sources are law and secular history. I will quote the words of Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Jewish leaders, among others. I am convinced that on this issue what all believers have in common is far more important than their differences. We must unite to strengthen our freedom to teach and exercise what we have in common, as well as our very real differences in religious doctrine.

We haven’t had a chance to carefully and thoughtfully review this speech by Elder Oaks and we will reserve comment until then. This is the transcript as made available by The Deseret News.

I begin with a truth that is increasingly challenged: Religious teachings and religious organizations are valuable and important to our free society and therefore deserving of special legal protection. I will cite a few examples.

Our nation’s inimitable private sector of charitable works originated and is still furthered most significantly by religious impulses and religious organizations. I refer to such charities as schools and higher education, hospitals, and care for the poor, where religiously motivated persons contribute personal service and financial support of great value to our citizens. Our nation’s incredible generosity in many forms of aid to other nations and their peoples are manifestations of our common religious faith that all peoples are children of God. Religious beliefs instill patterns of altruistic behavior.

Many of the great moral advances in Western society have been motivated by religious principles and moved through the public square by pulpit-preaching. The abolition of the slave trade in England and the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States are notable illustrations. These revolutionary steps were not motivated and moved by secular ethics or coalitions of persons who believed in moral relativism. They were driven primarily by individuals who had a clear vision of what was morally right and what was morally wrong. In our time, the Civil Rights movement was, of course, inspired and furthered by religious leaders.

Religion also strengthens our nation in the matter of honesty and integrity. Modern science and technology have given us remarkable devices, but we are frequently reminded that their operation in our economic system and the resulting prosperity of our nation rest on the honesty of the men and women who use them.  Americans’ honesty is also reflected in our public servants’ remarkable resistance to official corruption. These standards and practices of honesty and integrity rest, ultimately, on our ideas of right and wrong, which, for most of us, are grounded in principles of religion and the teachings of religious leaders.

Our society is not held together just by law and its enforcement, but most importantly by voluntary obedience to the unenforceable and by widespread adherence to unwritten norms of right or righteous behavior. Religious belief in right and wrong is a vital influence to advocate and persuade such voluntary compliance by a large proportion of our citizens.¹ Others, of course, have a moral compass not expressly grounded in religion. John Adams relied on all of these when he wisely observed that

“we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”²

Even the agnostic Oxford-educated British journalist Melanie Phillips admitted that

“one does not have to be a religious believer to grasp that the core values of Western Civilization are grounded in religion, and to be concerned that the erosion of religious observance therefore undermines those values and the ‘secular ideas’ they reflect.”³

My final example of the importance of religion in our country concerns the origin of the Constitution. Its formation over 200 years ago was made possible by religious principles of human worth and dignity, and only those principles in the hearts of a majority of our diverse population can sustain that Constitution today.⁴ I submit that religious values and political realities are so inter-linked in the origin and perpetuation of this nation that we cannot lose the influence of religion in our public life without seriously jeopardizing our freedoms.

Unfortunately, the extent and nature of religious devotion in this nation is changing.⁵ Belief in a personal God who defines right and wrong is challenged by many. “By some counts,” an article in The Economist declares, “there are at least 500 [million] declared non-believers in the world—enough to make atheism the fourth-biggest religion.”⁶ Others who do not consider themselves atheists also reject the idea of a supernatural power, but affirm the existence of some impersonal force and the value of compassion and love and justice.⁷

Organized religion is surely on the decline. Last year’s Pew Forum Study on Religion and Public Life found that the percentage of young adults affiliated with a particular religious faith is declining significantly.⁸ Scholars Robert Putnam and David Campbell have concluded that “the prospects for religious observance in the coming decades are substantially diminished.”⁹

Whatever the extent of formal religious affiliation, I believe that the tide of public opinion in favor of religion is receding. A writer for the Christian Science Monitor predicts that the coming century will be “very secular and religiously antagonistic,” with intolerance of Christianity “ris[ing] to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes.”¹⁰

A visible measure of the decline of religion in our public life is the diminished mention of religious faith and references to God in our public discourse. One has only to compare the current rhetoric with the major addresses of our political leaders in the 18^th, 19^th, and the first part of the 20^th centuries. Similarly, compare what Lincoln said about God and religious practices like prayer on key occasions with the edited versions of his remarks quoted in current history books.¹¹ It is easy to believe that there is an informal conspiracy of correctness to scrub out references to God and the influence of religion in the founding and preservation of our nation.

The impact of this on the rising generation is detailed in an Oxford University Press book, Souls in Transition. There we read:

“Most of the dynamics of emerging adult culture and life in the United States today seem to have a tendency to reduce the appeal and importance of religious faith and practice. . . . Religion for the most part is just something in the background.”¹²

Granted that reduced religious affiliation puts religion “in the background,” the effect of that on the religious beliefs of young adults is still in controversy. The negative view appears in the Oxford book, whose author concludes that this age group of 18 to 23

“had difficulty seeing the possible distinction between, in this case, objective moral truth and relative human invention. . . . [T]hey simply cannot, for whatever reason, believe in—or sometimes even conceive of—a given, objective truth, fact, reality, or nature of the world that is independent of their subjective self-experience.”¹³

On the positive side, the Pew Forum study reported that over three-quarters of young adults believe that there are absolute standards of right and wrong.¹⁴ For reasons explained later, I believe this finding is very positive for the future of religious freedom.

II.

Before reviewing the effects of the decline of religion in our public life, I will speak briefly of the free exercise of religion. The first provision in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution is what many believe to be its most important guarantee. It reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The prohibition against “an establishment of religion” was intended to separate churches and government, to forbid a national church of the kind found in Europe. In the interest of time I will say no more about the establishment of religion, but only concentrate on the First Amendment’s direction that the United States shall have “no law [prohibiting] the free exercise [of religion].” For almost a century this guarantee of religious freedom has been understood as a limitation on state as well as federal power.

The guarantee of religious freedom is one of the supremely important founding principles in the United States Constitution, and it is reflected in the constitutions of all 50 of our states. As noted by many, the guarantee’s “pre-eminent place” as the first expression in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution identifies freedom of religion as “a cornerstone of American democracy.”¹⁵ The American colonies were originally settled by people who, for the most part, came to this continent for the freedom to practice their religious faith without persecution, and their successors deliberately placed religious freedom first in the nation’s Bill of Rights.

So it is that our federal law formally declares: “The right to freedom of religion undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.”¹⁶ So it is, I maintain, that in our nation’s founding and in our constitutional order religious freedom and its associated First Amendment freedoms of speech and press are the motivating and dominating civil liberties and civil rights.

III.

Notwithstanding its special place in our Constitution, a number of trends are eroding both the protections the free exercise clause was intended to provide and the public esteem this fundamental value has had during most of our history. For some time we have been experiencing laws and official actions that impinge on religious freedom. In a few moments I will give illustrations, but first I offer some generalizations.

The free “exercise” of religion obviously involves both (1) the right to choose religious beliefs and affiliations and (2) the right to “exercise” or practice those beliefs without government restraint. However, in a nation with citizens of many different religious beliefs the right of some to act upon their religious beliefs must be qualified by the government’s responsibility to further compelling government interests, such as the health and safety of all. Otherwise, for example, the government could not protect its citizens’ persons or properties from neighbors whose religious principles compelled practices that threatened others’ health or personal security. Government authorities have wrestled with this tension for many years, so we have considerable experience in working out the necessary accommodations.

The inherent conflict between the precious religious freedom of the people and the legitimate regulatory responsibilities of the government is the central issue of religious freedom. The problems are not simple, and over the years the United States Supreme Court, which has the ultimate responsibility of interpreting the meaning of the lofty and general provisions of the Constitution, has struggled to identify principles that can guide its decisions when a law or regulation is claimed to violate someone’s free exercise of religion. As would be expected, many of these battles have involved government efforts to restrict the religious practices of small groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. Recent experience suggests adding the example of Muslims.

Much of the controversy in recent years has focused on the extent to which state laws that are neutral and generally applicable can override the strong protections contained in the free exercise clause of the United States Constitution. As noted hereafter, in the 1990s the Supreme Court ruled that such state laws could prevail.  Fortunately, in a stunning demonstration of the resilience of the guarantee of free exercise of religion, over half of the states have passed legislation or interpreted their state constitutions to preserve a higher standard for protecting religious freedom. Only a handful have followed the Supreme Court’s approach that the federal free exercise protection must bow to state laws that are neutral as to religion.¹⁷

Another important current debate over religious freedom concerns whether the guarantee of free exercise of religion gives one who acts on religious grounds greater protection against government prohibitions than are already guaranteed to everyone by other provisions of the constitution, like freedom of speech. I, of course, maintain that unless religious freedom has a unique position we erase the significance of this separate provision in the First Amendment. Treating actions based on religious belief the same as actions based on other systems of belief is not enough to satisfy the special guarantee of religious freedom in the United States Constitution. Religion must preserve its preferred status in our pluralistic society in order to make its unique contribution—its recognition and commitment to values that transcend the secular world.

Over a quarter century ago I reviewed the history and predicted the future of church/state law in a lecture at DePaul University in Chicago.¹⁸ I took sad notice of the fact that the United States Supreme Court had diminished the significance of free exercise by expanding the definition of religion to include what the Court called “religions” not based on belief in God. I wrote:

“The problem with a definition of religion that includes almost everything is that the practical effect of inclusion comes to mean almost nothing. Free exercise protections become diluted as their scope becomes more diffuse. When religion has no more right to free exercise than irreligion or any other secular philosophy, the whole newly expanded category of ‘religion’ is likely to diminish in significance.”¹⁹

Unfortunately, the tide of thought and precedent seems contrary to this position. While I have no concern with expanding comparable protections to non-religious belief systems, as is done in international norms that protect freedom of religion or belief,²⁰ I object to doing so by re-interpreting the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion.

It was apparent twenty-five years ago, and it is undeniable today, that the significance of religious freedom is diminishing. Five years after I gave my DePaul lecture, the United States Supreme Court issued its most important free exercise decision in many years  In Employment Division v. Smith,²¹ the Court significantly narrowed the traditional protection of religion by holding that the guarantee of free exercise did not prevent government from interfering with religious activities when it did so by neutral, generally applicable laws. This ruling removed religious activities from their sanctuary—the preferred position the First Amendment had given them.

Now, over twenty years later, some are contending that a religious message is just another message in a world full of messages, not something to be given unique or special protection. One author takes the extreme position that religious speech should have even less protection  In Freedom from Religion, published by the Oxford University Press, a law professor makes this three-step argument:

1. In many nations “society is at risk from religious extremism.”²²

2. “A follower is far more likely to act on the words of a religious authority figure than other speakers.”²³

3. Therefore, “in some cases, society and government should view religious speech as inherently less protected than secular political speech because of its extraordinary ability to influence the listener.”²⁴

The professor then offers this shocking conclusion:

“[W]e must begin to consider the possibility that religious speech can no longer hide behind the shield of freedom of expression. . . .²⁵

“Contemporary religious extremism leaves decision-makers and the public alike with no choice but to re-contour constitutionally granted rights as they pertain to religion and speech.”²⁶

I believe most thoughtful people would reject that extreme conclusion. All should realize how easy it would be to gradually manipulate the definition of “religious extremism” to suppress any unpopular religion or any unpopular preaching based on religious doctrine. In addition, I hope most would see that it is manifestly unfair and short-sighted to threaten religious freedom by focusing on some undoubted abuses without crediting religion’s many benefits. I am grateful that there are responsible voices and evidence affirming the vital importance of religious freedom, worldwide.²⁷

When Cardinal Francis George, then President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke at Brigham Young University last year, he referred to “threats to religious freedom in America that are new to our history and to our tradition.”²⁸ He gave two examples, one concerning threats to current religious-based exemptions from participating in abortions and the other “the development of gay rights and the call for same-sex ‘marriage.’” He spoke of possible government punishments for churches or religious leaders whose doctrines lead them to refuse to participate in government sponsored programs.

Along with many others, I see a serious threat to the freedom of religion in the current assertion of a “civil right” of homosexuals to be free from religious preaching against their relationships. Religious leaders of various denominations affirm and preach that sexual relations should only occur between a man and a woman joined together in marriage. One would think that the preaching of such a doctrinal belief would be protected by the constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of religion, to say nothing of the guarantee of free speech.  However, we are beginning to see worldwide indications that this may not be so.

Religious preaching of the wrongfulness of homosexual relations is beginning to be threatened with criminal prosecution or actually prosecuted or made the subject of civil penalties. Canada has been especially aggressive, charging numerous religious authorities and persons of faith with violating its human rights law by “impacting an individual’s sense of self-worth and acceptance.”²⁹ Other countries where this has occurred include Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.³⁰

I do not know enough to comment on whether these suppressions of religious speech violate the laws of other countries, but I do know something of religious freedom in the United States, and I am alarmed at what is reported to be happening here.

In New Mexico, the state’s Human Rights Commission held that a photographer who had declined on religious grounds to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony had engaged in impermissible conduct and must pay over $6,000 attorney’s fees to the same-sex couple. A state judge upheld the order to pay.³¹ In New Jersey, the United Methodist Church was investigated and penalized under state anti-discrimination law for denying same-sex couples access to a church-owned pavilion for their civil-union ceremonies.  A federal court refused to give relief from the state penalties.³² Professors at state universities in Illinois and Wisconsin were fired or disciplined for expressing personal convictions that homosexual behavior is sinful.³³ Candidates for masters’ degrees in counseling in Georgia and Michigan universities were penalized or dismissed from programs for their religious views about the wrongfulness of homosexual relations.³⁴ A Los Angeles policeman claimed he was demoted after he spoke against the wrongfulness of homosexual conduct in the church where he is a lay pastor.³⁵ The Catholic Church’s difficulties with adoption services and the Boy Scouts’ challenges in various locations are too well known to require further comment.

We must also be concerned at recent official expressions that would narrow the field of activities protected by the free exercise of religion. Thus, when President Obama used the words freedom of worship instead of free exercise of religion, a writer for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty sounded this warning:

“To anyone who closely follows prominent discussion of religious freedom in the diplomatic and political arena, this linguistic shift is troubling.

“The reason is simple. Any person of faith knows that religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of worship. It’s about the right to dress according to one’s religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to engage in the public square.“³⁶

Fortunately, more recent expressions by President Obama and his state department have used the traditional references to the right to practice religious faith.³⁷

Even more alarming are recent evidences of a narrowing definition of religious expression and an expanding definition of the so-called civil rights of “dignity,”"autonomy,” and “self-fulfillment” of persons offended by religious preaching. Thus, President Obama’s head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai Feldblum, recently framed the issue in terms of a “sexual-orientation liberty” that is such a fundamental right that it should prevail over a competing “religious-belief liberty.”³⁸ Such a radical assertion should not escape analysis. It has three elements. First, the freedom of religion—an express provision of the Bill of Rights that has been recognized as a fundamental right for over 200 years—is recast as a simple “liberty” that ranks among many other liberties. Second, Feldblum asserts that sexual orientation is now to be defined as a “sexual liberty” that has the status of a fundamental right. Finally, it is claimed that “the best framework for dealing with this conflict is to analyze religious people‘s claims as ‘belief liberty interest’ not as free exercise claims under the First Amendment.” The conclusion: Religious expressions are to be overridden by the fundamental right to “sexual liberty.”³⁹

It is well to remember James Madison’s warning:

“There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”⁴⁰

We are beginning to experience the expansion of rhetoric and remedies that seem likely to be used to chill or even to penalize religious expression. Like the professors in Illinois and Wisconsin and the lay clergyman in California, individuals of faith are experiencing real retribution merely because they seek to express their sincerely held religious beliefs.

All of this shows an alarming trajectory of events pointing toward constraining the freedom of religious speech by forcing it to give way to the “rights” of those offended by such speech. If that happens, we will have criminal prosecution of those whose religious doctrines or speech offend those whose public influence and political power establish them as an officially protected class.

Closely related to the danger of criminal prosecutions are the current arguments seeking to brand religious beliefs as an unacceptable basis for citizen action or even for argument in the public square. For an example of this we need go no further than the district court’s opinion in the Proposition 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger.⁴¹

A few generations ago the idea that religious organizations and religious persons would be unwelcome in the public square would have been unthinkable. Now, such arguments are prominent enough to cause serious concern.  It is not difficult to see a conscious strategy to neutralize the influence of religion and churches and religious motivations on any issues that could be characterized as public policy. As noted by John A. Howard of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, the proponents of banishment “have developed great skills in demonizing those who disagree with them, turning their opponents into objects of fear, hatred and scorn.”⁴² Legal commentator Hugh Hewitt described the current circumstance this way:

“There is a growing anti-religious bigotry in the United States. . . .

“For three decades people of faith have watched a systematic and very effective effort waged in the courts and the media to drive them from the public square and to delegitimize their participation in politics as somehow threatening.”⁴³

The forces that would intimidate persons with religious-based points of view from influencing or making the laws of their state or nation should answer this question: How would the great movements toward social justice cited earlier have been advocated and pressed toward adoption if their religious proponents had been banned from the public square by insistence that private religious or moral positions were not a rational basis for public discourse?

We have already seen a significant deterioration in the legal position of the family, a key institution defined by religious doctrine. In his essay “The Judicial Assault on the Family,” Allan W. Carlson examines the “formal influence of Christianity” on American family law,⁴⁴ citing many state and United States Supreme Court decisions through the 1950s affirming the fundamental nature of the family.⁴⁵ He then reviews a series of decisions beginning in the mid-1960s that gave what he calls “an alternate vision of family life and family law.”⁴⁶ For example, he quotes a 1972 decision in which the Court characterized marriage as “an association of two individuals each with a separate intellectual and emotional makeup.”⁴⁷ “Through these words,” Carlson concludes, “the U.S. Supreme Court essentially enlisted in the Sexual Revolution.”⁴⁸ Over these same years, “the federal courts also radically altered the meaning of parenthood.”⁴⁹

I quote Carlson again:

“The broad trend has been from a view of marriage as a social institution with binding claims of its own and with prescribed rules for men and women into a free association, easily entered and easily broken, with a focus on the needs of individuals. However, the ironical result of so expanding the ‘freedom to marry’ has been to enhance the authority and sway of government.”⁵⁰

“As the American founders understood, marriage and the autonomous family were the true bulwarks of liberty, for they were the principal rivals to the state. . . . And surely, as the American judiciary has deconstructed marriage and the family over the last 40 years, the result has been the growth of government.”⁵¹

All of this has culminated in attempts to redefine marriage or to urge its complete abolition. The debate continues in the press and elsewhere.⁵²

IV.

What has caused the current public and legal climate of mounting threats to religious freedom? I believe the cause is not legal but cultural and religious. I believe the diminished value being attached to religious freedom stems from the ascendency of moral relativism.

More and more of our citizens support the idea that all authority and all rules of behavior are man-made and can be accepted or rejected as one chooses. Each person is free to decide for himself or herself what is right and wrong. Our children face the challenge of living in an increasingly godless and amoral society.

I have neither the time nor the expertise to define the various aspects of moral relativism or the extent to which they have entered the culture or consciousness of our nation and its people. I can only rely on respected observers whose descriptions feel right to me.

In his book, Modern Times, the British author Paul Johnson writes:

“At the beginning of the 1920s the belief began to circulate, for the first time at a popular level, that there were no longer any absolutes: of time and space, of good and evil, of knowledge, above all of value.”⁵³

On this side of the Atlantic, Gertrude Himmelfarb describes how the virtues associated with good and evil have been degraded into relative values.⁵⁴

A variety of observers have described the consequences of moral relativism. All of them affirm the existence of God as the Ultimate Law-giver and the source of the absolute truth that distinguishes good from evil.

Rabbi Harold Kushner speaks of God-given “absolute standards of good and evil built into the human soul.”⁵⁵ He writes:

“As I see it, there are two possibilities. Either you affirm the existence of a God who stands for morality and makes moral demands of us, who built a law of truthfulness into His world even as He built in a law of gravity. . . . Or else you give everyone the right to decide what is good and what is evil by his or her own lights, balancing the voice of one’s conscience against the voice of temptation and need. . . .”⁵⁶

Rabbi Kushner also observes that a philosophy that rejects the idea of absolute right and wrong inevitably leads to a deadening of conscience.

“Without God, it would be a world where no one was outraged by crime or cruelty, and no one was inspired to put an end to them. . . . [T]here would be no more inspiring goal for our lives than self-interest. . . . Neither room nor reason for tenderness, generosity, helpfulness.”⁵⁷

Dr. Timothy Keller, a much-published pastor in New York, asks:

“What happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t!. . . .

“Though we have been taught that all moral values are relative to individuals and cultures, we can‘t live like that. In actual practice we inevitably treat some principles as absolute standards by which we judge the behavior of those who don’t share our values. . . . People who laugh at the claim that there is a transcendent moral order do not think that racial genocide is just impractical or self-defeating, but that it is wrong. . . .”⁵⁸

My esteemed fellow Apostle, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, asked:

Related

Additional Resources

• News release: Apostle Emphasizes the Importance of Religious Freedom to Society

“[H]ow can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite?”⁵⁹

He made this practical observation:

“Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being ‘society’s supervisors.’ Such ‘supervisors’ deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.”⁶⁰

Elder Maxwell also observed that we increase the power of governments when people do not believe in absolute truths and in a God who will hold them and their government leaders accountable.⁶¹

Moral relativism leads to a loss of respect for religion and even to anger against religion and the guilt that is seen to flow from it. As it diminishes religion, it encourages the proliferation of rights that claim ascendency over the free exercise of religion.

The founders who established this nation believed in God and in the existence of moral absolutes—right and wrong—established by this Ultimate Law-giver. The Constitution they established assumed and relied on morality in the actions of its citizens. Where did that morality come from and how was it to be retained? Belief in God and the consequent reality of right and wrong was taught by religious leaders in churches and synagogues, and the founders gave us the First Amendment to preserve that foundation for the Constitution.

The preservation of religious freedom in our nation depends on the value we attach to the teachings of right and wrong in our churches, synagogues and mosques. It is faith in God—however defined—that translates these religious teachings into the moral behavior that benefits the nation. As fewer and fewer citizens believe in God and in the existence of the moral absolutes taught by religious leaders, the importance of religious freedom to the totality of our citizens is diminished. We stand to lose that freedom if many believe that religious leaders, who preach right and wrong, make no unique contribution to society and therefore should have no special legal protection.

V.  Conclusion

I have made four major points:

1. Religious teachings and religious organizations are valuable and important to our free society and therefore deserving of their special legal protection.

2. Religious freedom undergirds the origin and existence of this country and is the dominating civil liberty.

3. The guarantee of free exercise of religion is weakening in its effects and in public esteem.

4. This weakening is attributable to the ascendancy of moral relativism.

We must never see the day when the public square is not open to religious ideas and religious persons. The religious community must unite to be sure we are not coerced or deterred into silence by the kinds of intimidation or threatening rhetoric that are being experienced. Whether or not such actions are anti-religious, they are surely anti-democratic and should be condemned by all who are interested in democratic government. There should be room for all good-faith views in the public square, be they secular, religious, or a mixture of the two. When expressed sincerely and without sanctimoniousness, the religious voice adds much to the text and tenor of public debate. As Elder Quentin L. Cook has said:

“In our increasingly unrighteous world, it is essential that values based on religious belief be part of the public discourse. Moral positions informed by a religious conscience must be accorded equal access to the public square.”⁶²

Religious persons should insist on their constitutional right and duty to exercise their religion, to vote their consciences on public issues, and to participate in elections and in debates in the public square and the halls of justice. These are the rights of all citizens and they are also the rights of religious leaders and religious organizations  In this circumstance, it is imperative that those of us who believe in God and in the reality of right and wrong unite more effectively to protect our religious freedom to preach and practice our faith in God and the principles of right and wrong He has established.

This proposal that we unite more effectively does not require any examination of the doctrinal differences among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, or even an identification of the many common elements of our beliefs. All that is necessary for unity and a broad coalition along the lines I am suggesting is a common belief that there is a right and wrong in human behavior that has been established by a Supreme Being. All who believe in that fundamental should unite more effectively to preserve and strengthen the freedom to advocate and practice our religious beliefs, whatever they are. We must walk together for a ways on the same path in order to secure our freedom to pursue our separate ways when that is necessary according to our own beliefs.

I am not proposing a resurrection of the so-called “moral majority,” which was identified with a particular religious group and a particular political party. Nor am I proposing an alliance or identification with any current political movement, tea party or other. I speak for a broader principle, non-partisan and, in its own focused objective, ecumenical. I speak for what Cardinal Francis George described in his address at Brigham Young University just a year ago. His title was “Catholics and Latter-day Saints: Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom.” He proposed

“that Catholics and Mormons stand with one another and with other defenders of conscience, and that we can and should stand as one in the defense of religious liberty.  In the coming years, interreligious coalitions formed to defend the rights of conscience for individuals and for religious institutions should become a vital bulwark against the tide of forces at work in our government and society to reduce religion to a purely private reality. At stake is whether or not the religious voice will maintain its right to be heard in the public square.”⁶³

We join in that call for religious coalitions to protect religious freedom. In doing so we recall the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin. At another critical time in our nation‘s history, he declared:

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”⁶⁴

In conclusion, as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ I affirm His love for all people on this earth, and I affirm the importance His followers must attach to religious freedom for all people—whatever their beliefs. I pray for the blessings of God upon our cooperative efforts to preserve that freedom.

———————

¹See Quentin L. Cook, Let There be Light, ENSIGN, Nov. 2010, at 27, 29–30.

²CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS,THE WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS,SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,228–29(Books for Libraries Press, 1969).

³MELANIE PHILLIPS,THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN:  THE GLOBAL BATTLE OVER GOD,TRUTH,AND POWER,xiii (1st Am. ed., Encounter Books, 2010); see generally ROBERT D.PUTNAM &DAVID E.CAMPBELL,AMERICAN GRACE(2010).

⁴SeeJOHN A.HOWARD,CHRISTIANITY:  LIFEBLOOD OF AMERICA‘S FREE SOCIETY (1620-1945),57(2008); see also Dinesh D‘Souza, Created Equal:  How Christianity Shaped the West, IMPRIMIS, Nov. 2008 at 5 (available at http://www.hillsdale.edu/hctools/ImprimisTool/archives/2008_11_ Imprimis.pdf).

⁵See PUTNAM &CAMPBELL, supra note 3, at Chs. 3–4.

⁶John Micklethwait, In God’s Name: A Special Report on Religion and Public Life, THE ECONOMIST, Nov. 3, 2007, at 10.

⁷See, e.g., Lisa Miller, Sam Harris Believes in God, NEWSWEEK, Oct. 25, 2010, at 42.

⁸See Religion Among the Millennials, PEW FORUM ON RELIGION &PUBLIC LIFE(Pew Research Center), Feb. 17, 2010 at 1–3 (available at http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Demographics/Age/millennials-report.pdf).

⁹Robert D. Putnam & David E. Campbell, The Tide of Public Opinion in Favor of Religion is Receding, DESERET NEWS, Nov. 20, 2010 at E1 (quoting L.A.TIMESsyndicated art.); see also PUTNAM &CAMPBELL, supra note 3.

¹⁰Michael Spencer, The Coming Evangelical Collapse, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Mar. 10, 2009 available at http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html.

¹¹See, e.g., MATTHEW S.HOLLAND, BONDS OF AFFECTION:  CIVIC CHARITY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA, 252–53 n. 22 (Geo. Univ. Press, 2007).

¹²CHRISTIAN SMITH,SOULS IN TRANSITION, 84, 145 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2009); cf. PUTNAM &CAMPBELL, supra note 3.

¹³SMITH,supranote 12at 46.

¹⁴PEW FORUM, supra note 8 at 13.

¹⁵FINAL REPORT OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ABROAD TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE AND TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, May 17, 1999, at 6.

¹⁶ International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. § 6401(a).

¹⁷See WILLIAM W.BASSETT,W.COLE DURHAM,JR.&ROBERT T.SMITH,RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LAW ”2.65-2.66(Thomson Reuters/West, 2010 ed., forthcoming).

¹⁸Dallin H. Oaks, Separation, Accommodation and the Future of Church and State, 35 DEPAUL L.REV. 1, 1–22 (1985).

¹⁹Id. at 8.  See also Michael McConnell, The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 HARV.L.REV. 1409, 1488–1500 (1990).

²⁰ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 18, Dec. 16, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 302.

²¹ 494 U.S. 872 (1990).

²²AMOS N.GUIORA,FREEDOM FROM RELIGION,27(Oxford Univ. Press, 2009).

²³Id. at 30.

²⁴Id. at 31.

²⁵Id. at 31.

²⁶Id. at 39.

²⁷See, e.g., Brian J. Grim, Religious Freedom:  Good for What Ails Us? REV.FAITH &INT‘L AFF., Summer 2008, at 3–7; BRIAN J.GRIM AND ROGER FINKE,THE PRICE OF FREEDOM DENIED:  RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011).

²⁸ Cardinal Francis George, Catholics and Latter-day Saints:  Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom, Brigham Young Univ., (Feb. 23, 2010).

²⁹Homosexuality Trumps Free Speech and Religion in Canada, NARTH(Aug. 9, 2005),  http://www.narth.com/docs/trumps.html; Pete Vere, Catholicism—A Hate Crime in Canada?, CATHOLIC EXCHANGE, (June 4, 2008) http://catholicexchange.com/2008/06/04/112780; see Stacey v. Campbell, 2002 B.C.H.R.T. 35 (B.C. Human Rights Trib. 2002); see e.g., Marshall Breger, Gay Activists vs. the First Amendment, MOMENT, (Feb. 2010) http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/currentyear/02/201002-Opinion-Breger.html.

³⁰See, e.g., The Pastor Green Case, Supreme Court of Sweden, Case no. B 1050-05 (29 Nov. 2005); The Ake Green Case:  Freedom of Religion on Trial in Sweden, AKEGREEN.ORG, http://www.akegreen.org/; Heidi Blake, Christian Preacher Arrested for Saying Homosexuality is a Sin, THE TELEGRAPH, (May 2, 2010) http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html; Albert Mohler, It’s Getting Dangerous Out There—A Preacher Is Arrested in Britain, ALBERTMOHLER.COM(May 4, 2010) http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/05/04/its-getting-dangerous-out-there-a-preacher-is-arrested-in-britain/; Sylvia Tan, Police reports lodged against Singapore pastor over offensive gay and lesbian remarks, FRIDAE.COM(Feb. 18, 2010) http://www.fridae.com/newsfeatures/2010/02/18/9670.police-reports-lodged-against-singapore-pastor-over-offensive-gay-and-lesbian-remarks.

³¹See Vere, Catholicism, supra, note 29; See also The Cost of Being a Christian, ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND, https://www.alliancedefensefund.org/Home/Detail/4333?referral=E0910B3F; David Walker, Photographer Loses Bid to Refuse Same-Sex Wedding Jobs, PDNONLINE(Jan. 4, 2010) http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/pdn-online/e3i7d41666c039b61afca226786f0011fd9.

³²Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley, 10-cv-00099, 2010 WL 3321873 (S.D. Ga. Aug. 20, 2010).

³³See Jodi Heckel, Instructor of Catholicism at UI Claims Loss of Job Violates Academic Freedom, NEWS GAZETTE(Jul. 9, 2010) http://www.news-gazette.com/news/university-illinois/2010-07-09/instructor-catholicism-ui-claims-loss-job-violates-academic-free; Julie Bolcer, Professor Sent Antigay E-mail to Student, ADVOCATE, (Oct. 14, 2010) http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/10/14/Professor_Sent_Antigay_Email_to_ Student/.

³⁴Ward v. Wilbanks, 09-CV-11237 (E.D. Mich. July 26, 2010).

³⁵Pete Vere, Gay Rights vs. Faithful, WASH.TIMES, July 31, 2008.

³⁶Ashley Samelson, Why “Freedom of Worship” is Not Enough, FIRST THINGS, (Feb. 22, 2010) http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/02why-ldquofreedom-of-worshiprdquo-is-not-enough added).

³⁷See Katelyn Sabochik, President Obama Celebrates Ramadan at White House Iftar Dinner, 14 August 2010, The White House Blog, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/08/14/president-obama-celebrates-ramadan-white-house-iftar-dinner;  Hilary Rodham Clinton, Remarks at the release of the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report, 17 November 2010, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/11/151081.htm; Clinton report on religious liberty applauded by panel, 18 November 2010, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, http://erlc.com/article/clinton-report-on-religious-liberty-applauded-by-panel.

³⁸See Deacon Fournier, First Amendment Outdated?  Obama Nominates Homosexual Equivalency Advocate to EEOC, CATHOLIC ONLINE, (Oct. 1, 2009) http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=34533.

³⁹Id.  See also Chai Feldblum, Moral Conflict and Liberty:  Gay Rights and Religion, 72 BROOKLYN L.REV. 61 (2006) (also available at http://www.becketfund.org/files/4bce5.pdf).

⁴⁰James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention on Control of the Military, (June 16, 1788), in 1 HISTORY OF THE VIRGINIA FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1788, 130 (H.B. Grigsby ed., 1890).

⁴¹704 F. Supp. 2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010).

⁴²John A. Howard, Liberty: America’s Great Creative Power, (Howard Center), June 22, 2009 at 6.

⁴³HUGH HEWITT,AMORMON IN THE WHITE HOUSE?, 242–43 (2007).

⁴⁴Allan W. Carlson, The Judicial Assault on the Family, in EDWARD B.MCLEAN,THE MOST DANGEROUS BRANCH, 56 (2008).

⁴⁵See, e.g., DeBurgh v. DeBurgh, 39 Cal. 2d 858, 250 P.2d 598 (1957) (Traynor J.), quoted in id., at 59.

⁴⁶Carlson, supra note 44, at 60.

⁴⁷Eisenstadt v. Baird, 295 U.S. 438, 453 (1972).

⁴⁸Carlson, supra note 44, at 61.

⁴⁹Id. at 64.

⁵⁰Id. at 62.

⁵¹Id. at 66–67.

⁵²Compare Hope Yen, Holey Matrimony:  Marriage a moth-eaten relic?, SALT LAKE TRIB., Nov. 18, 2010, at A8, with Marriage’s Demise Exaggerated, DESERET NEWS, Dec. 5, 2010, at G1.

⁵³PAUL JOHNSON,MODERN TIMES:  THE WORLD FROM THE TWENTIES TO THE NINETIES, (rev. ed., 1991), at 4.  Declaring that secular ideology came to replace religious belief, Johnson charges moral relativism with being one of the underlying evils that made possible the catastrophic failures and tragedies of the century.  Id. at 48, 784.

⁵⁴GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB,THE DE-MORALIZATION OF SOCIETY:  FROM VICTORIAN VIRTUES TO MODERN VALUES(1st Vintage Books ed., 1996) at 9–12.

⁵⁵HAROLD KUSHNER,WHO NEEDS GOD(Fireside ed., 2002), at 78.

⁵⁶Id. at 65–66.

⁵⁷Id. at 208–09.

⁵⁸TIMOTHY KELLER,THE REASON FOR GOD:  BELIEF IN AN AGE OF SKEPTICISM(2008), at 114, 145–47.

⁵⁹Neal A. Maxwell, The Prohibitive Costs of a Value-free Society, ENSIGN, Oct. 1978, at 52.

⁶⁰Id. at 53.

⁶¹See Maxwell, supra note 59, at 52–53.

⁶²Cook, supra note 1, at 29.

⁶³George, supra note 28.

⁶⁴At the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

By Holly Bailey

Tue Feb 1, 9:41 am ET

Barbara Bush, one of former President George W. Bush’s twin daughters, is appearing in a new video voicing her support for same sex marriage.

“I’m Barbara Bush, and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality,” she says in a 22-second video released Monday by the Human Rights Campaign, a group that lobbies for equal treatment for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.

“New York is about fairness and equality,” she says in the video. “And everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love.”

The video ends with Bush, who is 29, imploring viewers to “join us.”

You can watch the video after the jump, courtesy the Human Rights Campaign.

The Salt Lake Tribune

First published Jan 30 2011 04:23PM

A Canadian judge is now considering a landmark challenge to his country’s ban on polygamy as unconstitutional — a case being closely watched in Utah.

First, welcome to the Tribune Lindsay Whitehurst. This is the first story we’ve posted with her byline, and it is a big story. We will be following with keen interest.

Polygamy has been a legal question that has bothered Mormons since before statehood. For several generations many Mormons have been dismayed that they were forced to abandon polygamy by the government. To them, it was clearly an infringement of religious freedom and the argument isn’t without merit.

Testimony ended last week in the proceeding, sparked by the Canadian branch of a polygamous sect based in Utah. Since late November, British Columbia Chief Justice Robert Bauman has heard from nearly 20 witnesses — some of them Utahns — and taken many more affidavits and video testimonies about plural marriage.

The justice is expected to issue a ruling later this year on whether an anti-polygamy law dating to 1892 violates Canada’s guarantee of freedom of religion. The Utah Attorney General’s Office will be watching that ruling, said spokesman Paul Murphy.

“I think it will inform us,” he said. “Canada is tackling the same issues we have, in that we have this law but for the most part it hasn’t been enforced by any law enforcement agency.”

Utah’s bigamy law makes it a felony to marry or co-habitate with more than one husband or wife, though Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has focused on investigating crimes within polygamous groups rather than the practice itself.

Polygamists have also been observing the “historic” proceedings, said Marlyne Hammon, a member of the action committee for the polygamous community of Centennial Park, located just south of the Utah state line in Arizona.

“If Canada were to drop that law, it would send quite an important message out to the world,” she said. “They can see [polygamy] is not what everyone says. It’s about people.”

The case began in 2009 when the attorney general of British Columbia filed charges against James Oler and Winston Blackmore, two leaders of separate factions in a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints settlement known as Bountiful. Authorities had been investigating polygamy at Bountiful since at least 1990, but had feared running afoul of the country’s religious freedom laws. Fundamentalist Mormons believe in polygamy as a religious principle.

In 2007, then-Attorney General Wally Oppal appointed the first of three different special prosecutors to review the case; two years later, charges were filed. When a court threw them out on religious freedom grounds, the new attorney general asked the Supreme Court to investigate whether the polygamy law is constitutional.

On Nov. 22, the chief justice started a proceeding called a constitutional reference question. The first part of the inquiry focused primarily on expert testimony.

One professor said that plural marriage violates international human rights laws and another linked it to increases in social ills, such as crime and discrimination against women, according to the Globe and Mail of Toronto and The Province of Vancouver. But lawyers arguing against the law pointed to a Cornell legal study concluding that, even though polygamy laws are seldom enforced, they keep people in those communities from reporting abuse to authorities, the Vancouver Sun reported.

One of Utah’s most high-profile former polygamists espoused a similar point of view. Carolyn Jessop wrote a best-selling book chronicling the intimidation and abuse she and her children suffered in the FLDS culture, but nevertheless testified in Canada that polygamy should be decriminalized.

“What’s happening is children are being born into this, but we don’t have the same rights, we don’t have any protections,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation quoted Jessop as saying. “It’s not being prosecuted, but it’s not being regulated, either. My theory is decriminalizing the crime would be giving people some rights, so we have claim to property, we have claim to help.”

Other Utah voices included Mary Batchelor, of the pro-polygamy advocacy group Principal Voices, and her co-founder Anne Wilde, whose podcast was played during the proceedings.

Several women from the FLDS and other polygamous groups have testified, many anonymously, to their personal experiences. While one told stories of loving her large, close plural family, another reported feeling isolated and helpless, Canadian newspapers reported.

After testimony ends, lawyers on both sides will prepare their closing arguments, which will begin in late March. Though Bauman’s eventual ruling will likely be appealed, the outcome is poised to influence decisions about whether to prosecute polygamists in both British Columbia and the rest of the country, a law officer with the British Columbia Supreme Court said.

Even if the law is struck down, Hammon said she doesn’t foresee a rush of plural families from the U.S. moving to Canada. A total of about 38,000 polygamists live in Utah, many as part of about four major groups.

“The people here in this state, we’ve established ourselves in our homes,” Hammon said. “We want to continue on fighting for our civil rights.”

The decision will not likely have much direct effect on U.S. policy toward plural marriage, said University of Utah law professor Wayne McCormack.

“The U.S. has its own particular history with polygamy,” he said.

A pair of Supreme Court rulings that found religious freedom does not empower breaking the law have cooled interest in the polygamy question going before the justices, he said. Unless, that is, the Supreme Court takes up the issue of same-sex marriage.

“That would resuscitate the interest in polygamy,” McCormack said. “The U.S. courts are not going to be interested in polygamy until they have first dealt with same-sex marriage.”

lwhitehurst@sltrib.com

By Philip C. Wilcox, Jr. | President, Foundation for Middle East Peace

Today, few disagree that without massive withdrawals from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where over 500,000 settlers now live, there is no hope for a two-state peace. A majority of Israelis also agree that an end to the conflict, preservation of a democratic, Jewish Israel, and freedom and statehood for Palestinians, are impossible without a radical reversal of Israel’s misbegotten settlement adventure.

Philip Wilcox is one of the most respected Middle East experts and his suggestions and observations are always sought after by both sides of the question. Whenever you see his name you will know that there is serious constructive conversation taking place. So read on….

Most governments today believe that international law, including UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and the Fourth Geneva Convention outlawing settlements, should inform an agreement on a two-state border. The roadmap, which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 1515, Quartet positions, and statements by the Obama administration concur that the starting point for creating a two-state peace should focus on the 1967 border.

Israel’s 43-year national project of settling the territory occupied in 1967 was designed to create “facts on the ground” that would maintain Israeli control and thwart Palestinian self-determination. Today, even Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says he accepts the need for a two-state peace. But continuing aggressive settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in defiance of the United States and the international community, are clear evidence that Netanyahu and his government oppose a genuine two-state agreement, and still adamantly reject a shared Jerusalem.

In the end, the Israeli and Palestinian people themselves must accept a border that addresses their basic needs. For Palestinians, this means freedom, sovereignty, and security in a viable, contiguous state, the end of settlements, and a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. For Israel, it means peace within “secure and recognized borders”, as set forth in Resolution 242, reconciliation with the Arab states and an increasingly estranged international community, and, for most Israelis, preserving a Jewish, democratic state.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to invent a solution, given the exhaustive work by Israeli and Palestinian experts on the elements of a comprehensive peace and a territorial solution. The first effort to address the contradiction between the 1967 borders and settlements came late in the Oslo talks when negotiators began discussing a compromise between total withdrawal to the 1967 border and a redefined border through land swaps.

The swap concept was also adopted in the late 2000 “Clinton parameters” and the Geneva accord of 2003. The latter was drafted by leading Israeli and Palestinian experts, and elaborated in 2009. It proposes Israeli annexation of two percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem adjacent to the 1967 line containing about 350,000 setters in big bloc settlements. In return, Israel would evacuate about 150,000 other settlers and transfer to Palestine two percent of its land, of equal quality, next to the southern West Bank and Gaza. (The latter would especially appeal to land-starved Gazans, and could support reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, essential to an ultimate peace agreement.) Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has endorsed land swaps on a 1:1 basis, and the Obama administration has concurred, in general.

Israeli withdrawal of many settlements near the 1967 line and dozens of others deeper in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, and annexations limited to large, dense settlements, such as Modiin Illit adjacent to central Israel, and in East Jerusalem, would restore a more contiguous and economically viable border interrupted only with a few enclaves attached to Israel with access roads. It would also allow a contiguous Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem that is a bottom line requirement. Another benefit would be restoration of critical farmland and water resources now controlled by settlements.

But even such a compromise, following the Geneva accord or some other plan, would demand a radical transformation of the status quo. Israeli and Palestinian leaders have long since proved that they cannot negotiate such a deal by themselves, given their crippling internal ideological and religious divisions and the unequal balance of power. Just as leadership by the US and the international community was necessary to create and sustain the new state of Israel in 1948, similar intervention and a US-led peace plan will be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state and rescue Israel from its self-destructive policies.

Israel’s current leadership (which is dominated by the settler, religious and ideological right) as well as extreme Hamas elements would fiercely resist this, and detailed negotiations would still be necessary. But there is a chance that, with broad international, including Arab and UN support, and tough, determined, but empathetic US diplomacy, such a transformative US plan could galvanize majorities in Israel and Palestine to agree and oblige their leaders to make peace. This would require an unprecedented and politically-challenging change in US policy, restoring balance to the current lopsided American-Israeli alliance. But the alternative is tragic defeat for the national hopes of both Israelis and Palestinians, more instability in the region, and continued erosion of US national security.

Lower the Deficit! End $3B in Aid to Israel

The next federal government budget is scheduled to include a record-breaking appropriation of $3.075 billion in military aid to Israel, part of a ten-year agreement to provide $30 billion of weapons to Israel.

From moral, financial, and legal perspectives, the United States cannot afford to continue providing military aid to Israel to commit human rights abuses against and oppress Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and to deny them their rights to freedom and self-determination.

I strongly urge you to end military aid to Israel as a sanction for its obstinate refusal to abide by UN resolutions, human rights standards, and international law in its apartheid policies toward the Palestinian people.

We cannot afford to be complicit any longer in providing Israel high-velocity tear gas canisters to injure and kill Palestinians civilians nonviolently protesting the theft of their land. We cannot afford to be complicit any longer in providing Israel armored bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes and raze Palestinian agriculture to clear land for illegal Israeli settlements.  We cannot afford to be complicit any longer in providing Israel the guns, ammunition, tanks, missiles, naval vessels, helicopters, and fighter jets used to impose an inhumane and illegal blockade on the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians of the Gaza Strip.

We cannot afford to be so munificent in providing Israel with the weapons of war it needs to destroy Palestinian infrastructure, especially while our schools, roads, and other basic infrastructure are crumbling. We cannot afford to pay for Israel to make Palestinians homeless especially while millions of our own citizens lack access to affordable housing. We cannot afford to provide Israel with the weapons of war it needs to injure and kill so many innocent Palestinian civilians especially while millions of our own citizens still lack access to quality health care.  We cannot afford to employ Israeli soldiers to impose apartheid on Palestinians especially while millions of our own citizens cannot find a job.

Instead of providing Israel with $3.075 billion in military aid in FY2012, we could much more wisely spend this money to provide 373,376 low-income families with affordable housing vouchers; or retrain 495,640 unemployed workers for green jobs; or educate 909,204 at-risk youth through early reading programs; or supply basic health care services to 24,902,818 people lacking insurance. [1]

We cannot afford to continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s blatant violations of U.S. laws that are supposed to prevent U.S. military aid from being used to commit human rights abuses.  The Arms Export Control Act limits the use of U.S. weapons to “internal security” or “legitimate self-defense.”  Israel’s illegal military occupation and apartheid policies toward Palestinians are neither.  The Foreign Assistance Act states that no U.S. aid may be provided to any country “which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”  During the past ten years, the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem has documented Israel’s killing of more than 3,000 Palestinians civilians.  Is this not enough evidence to enforce the law?

During last December’s Human Rights Day, the State Department affirmed that “there is a single universal standard [of human rights] that applies to every country, including our own. We apply it to the Israelis, and we also view…Palestinians as being human beings under the Universal Declaration [of Human Rights] and entitled to those rights.”

It is long past due for the United States to make good on its words.  It can and must do so by ending military aid to Israel.