c. 1997 Religion News Service
Supreme Court overturns Communications Decency Act
(RNS) The Communications Decency Act, a legislative effort by the Congress to control pornography on the Internet, was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday (June 26).
In a 7-2 decision _ the court’s first in the realm of cyberspace _ the justices ruled that portions of the act violated the free-speech rights of Americans. The two dissenting justices, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, agreed that parts of the law unconstitutionally limited adult communication.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, said the law is too vague and destroys adults’ rights while trying to protect children.”It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials,”he wrote.”But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults.” The decision was lamented by religious organizations that have opposed pornography and cheered by media companies who argued the law violated their First Amendment rights.
Jerry Kirk, co-chairman of the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, said leaders in his coalition will now work harder to help parents learn of devices to block Internet pornography from their children’s view and to encourage libraries and schools to use such mechanisms on computers used by children.
He said the CDA’s provisions were aimed at reducing the exposure of children to indecency, which he called”the marijuana that leads to the crack and cocaine of pornography.””Right now the Internet is the only place in America where you can knowingly send patently offensive material to someone you know is a minor,”he said.
President Clinton, who signed the act into law in 1996, announced Thursday that he plans a meeting of Internet industry leaders and groups representing parents, teachers and librarians.”With the right technology and rating systems, we can help ensure that our children don’t end up in the red-light districts of cyberspace,”the president said.
Opponents of the law applauded the decision.”The 7-2 decision sends a clear message that the CDA was what we had argued it was: a clear attack on the First Amendment rights of an emerging medium,”said James Kinsella, general manager of MSNBC.com and co-founder of the Internet Content Coalition, a group formed to oppose the CDA.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chief sponsor of a bill opposing the act, agreed.”It (CDA) reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Internet,”Leahy said,”and it would have unwisely offered the world a model of on-line censorship instead of a model of on-line freedom.”
Disney pulls rap group’s album from stores
(RNS) The Walt Disney Co. has pulled from store shelves a rap group’s album that is riddled with obscenities less than a week after Southern Baptists voted to boycott the entertainment giant for what they consider its anti-family policies and products.
In a rare move in the record industry, the company pulled Insane Clown Posse’s”The Great Malenko”from stores Tuesday (June 24), just six hours after it went on sale.
The record, on Disney’s Hollywood Records label, included lyrics that are”inappropriate for a product released under any label of our company,”Disney said in a statement.
The recall is expected to cost the multibillion-dollar company more than $1 million, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The manager of Insane Clown Posse, a hip-hop band from Detroit, believes Disney bowed to the threat of pressure from Southern Baptists.”All of a sudden they had a change in taking the moral high ground,”said Alex Abbiss, whose group signed with Disney last June.”They pulled the record. They canceled our 25-city tour. They haven’t told us what the bottom line is, but it’s pretty clear that they’re dropping the band.” A Disney spokesman denied the recall was related to the Baptists’ action.”Disney has acted in self-restraint in many other matters before and we will continue to do so in the future, making our own best judgments,”the spokesman said.”Unfortunately our internal review process did not initially flag the lyrics on this album and somehow it was allowed to proceed.” In a separate, but boycott-related matter, the Human Rights Campaign, a gay political organization, started a national effort Thursday (June 26) to counter the Southern Baptist Convention’s boycott of Disney. Members of the group are encouraging people to purchase Disney gift certificates for Disney theme parks, movies and retail stores and donate them to children in hospitals.”This is an effort to turn something negative into something positive by countering the Disney boycott with the spirit of family, caring, compassion and community,”said David M. Smith, HRC’s senior strategist.
HRC employees kicked off the campaign by donating $5,000 worth of Disney stuffed animals to children in hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area.
The Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Dallas on June 18, passed a resolution saying that entertainment companies, including Disney,”are increasingly promoting immoral ideologies”and urged members of the denomination to refrain from patronizing any such company. Baptists have objected to Disney’s airing of programs featuring homosexuals, such as ABC TV’s”Ellen,”and providing insurance benefits to partners of gay employees.
Religious liberty advocates express concern over new Russian law
(RNS) A deputy to the Russian State Duma has told an international religious liberty forum that restrictive legislation passed by the Duma on Monday (June 23) was unwise and a setback to religious freedom in his country.
Valerie Borschev, regarded as a strong defender of religious freedom in Russia, made the comments in voicing support for a Wednesday (June 25) statement adopted by the Fourth World Congress on Religious Liberty, meeting in Rio de Janeiro, that expressed concern about the Duma action.
The Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, approved the bill 300 to 8.
The bill strengthens the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russian life and pledges respect for Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and other unspecified”traditional”religions.
But other religious groups would be required to register with the government before the end of 1999 and to have been in the country at least 15 years before gaining the right to hold property.
Before becoming law, the bill must be approved by the upper house, which is expected, and by President Boris Yeltsin, who earlier vetoed a similar measure.
The 400 delegates at the South American congress, sponsored by the International Religious Liberty Association, worried that provisions in the Duma bill could”open up possibilities for bureaucratic discretion that could lead to abuse.” The Russian Orthodox Church has long viewed with concern the growth of minority religions and what it sees as proselytizing by such groups.
The bill was also denounced by Gleb Yakunin, a former Orthodox priest who was defrocked by the Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod after he criticized the church’s collaboration with the former communist regime.
Yakunin said the proposed law would reinstate Soviet-era controls over religious activities.
In a separate statement, the Baptist World Alliance urged Yeltsin to veto the bill. General Secretary Denton Lotz called it”an intrusion into soul liberty and freedom of conscience,”which violates religious-liberty guarantees in Russia’s new constitution.
Recording featuring”Butterfly Kisses”No. 1 top-selling album
(RNS) Bob Carlisle’s”Butterfly Kisses (Shades of Grace)”has become the first contemporary Christian recording to rank No. 1 in the Billboard 200, a listing of the top-selling albums nationwide.
The album sold more then 233,000 units in one week.
Carlisle’s single,”Butterfly Kisses,”has been in the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart for six weeks, according to Billboard magazine’s June 28 issue. It topped the Billboard 200 in the same issue.
The composition was named”Song of the Year”at the Gospel Music Association’s 1997 Dove Awards.
The song was originally released on an album called”Shades of Grace”in the Christian retail market. The album was later released to mainstream retail stores under the title”Butterfly Kisses (Shades of Grace).””I’m 40 years old and this is nothing less than a miracle in my life,”Carlisle told the CCM Update, a publication that covers the contemporary Christian music industry.”It’s one thing to have a song that’s popular. It’s another to have a song that’s been the No. 1 album in the country and is reaching this phenomenon thing. That’s God.”
Archbishop Thomas Murphy of Seattle dies at 64
(RNS) Archbishop Thomas J. Murphy, who brought peace to the Seattle archdiocese after the stormy reign of Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen, died Thursday (June 26). He was 64.
Murphy suffered a brain hemorrhage June 25 while hospitalized for treatment of leukemia. He had been diagnosed with the blood cancer in late 1996, the Associated Press reported.
Murphy had served Washington’s Catholic population along the Interstate 5 corridor since 1991. He also held leadership positions at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The Vatican stripped Hunthausen of authority in 1986, upset with his liberal policies on annulments, homosexuality and other topics. The Vatican then sent Bishop Donald Wuerl to handle the day-to-day operations of the diocese.
Thousands of angry priests, nuns and lay Catholics petitioned the Vatican to overturn the virtually unprecedented action. In a compromise in 1987, the Vatican replaced Wuerl with Murphy but without the split-authority arrangement. Murphy became archbishop after four years.
Murphy, born to Irish immigrants in Chicago, was known for his efforts to encourage men to enter the priesthood.
Quote of the day: Dennis Frado, Lutheran World Federation representative at the United Nations
(RNS) The United Nations this week held a session attended by a number of world leaders to assess the progress made by the international community in the five years since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Among those attending the sessions were delegations from international religious organizations who had been active at the Earth Summit. Dennis Frado, the Lutheran World Federation representative at the United Nations in New York, expressed the dismay of many religious groups over the lack of progress in creating an international system in which the needs of the poor are met without doing environmental damage:”When will we realize that our security is related to whether our sisters and brothers live in a dignified way rather than in hunger and squalor, which sometimes leads them to desperate or destructive acts.”
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