Get Married or Lose Your Job

A MAJOR Iranian state-owned company has told its single employees to get married by September or face losing their jobs, the press reported today.

"One of the economic entities in the south of the country has asked its single employees to start creating a family," the hardline Kayhan daily reported.

The paper did not mention the name of the company but the reformist Etemad newspaper said the firm was the Pars Special Economic Energy Zone Company - which covers Iran's giant gas and petrochemical facilities on the shores of the Gulf.

"Unfortunately some of our colleagues did not fulfil their commitments and are still single," Etemad quoted the company's directive as saying. "As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all the female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this important and moral religious duty."

Full story HERE.

Questions Surround Govt Funded Abstinence Program

An organization that promotes sexual abstinence for teens received a federal grant of over a million dollars, twice what it had requested, despite the skepticism Department of Justice staffers had about the group and the fact that it refused to participate in a congressionally mandated study.

So why did the Best Friends Foundation receive the grant from the Justice Department's juvenile justice office even though dozens of competing organizations were rated higher by the office's own reviewers? Current and former staffers say it was because of Best Friends' powerful president and founder, Elayne Bennett.

Not only is Bennett the wife of Bill Bennett, a former Reagan and Bush administration official and conservative political commentator, but she is also personally close to the chief administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), J. Robert Flores.

Full story HERE.

They had sex WHERE?

Wed Jun 11, 2008 11:01am EDT
ROME (Reuters) - An Italian couple who were caught having sex in a church confessional box while morning Mass was being said have repented and made peace with the local bishop.

The couple, in their early 30s, were detained by police earlier this month after they had made love in the confessional box in the cathedral in northern Cesena. They were cautioned for obscene acts in public and disturbing a religious function.

Their lawyer said they had been drinking all night and realized they had gone too far.

The lawyer told the area's local newspaper on Wednesday the couple met with the local bishop on Tuesday night, asked for his forgiveness and that he had given it.

Last week the bishop celebrated a "Mass of reparation" in the cathedral where the confessional box incident took place to make up for the sacrilege.

'I Believe' license plates

South Carolina's lieutenant governor announced Thursday that he is willing to put up $4,000 of his own money so his state can become the first in the nation to issue "I Believe" license plates with the image of a cross and a stained glass window.

The legislation allowing the plates was one of several religious-themed bills to became laws in the closing days of the state's legislative session. The bills mean South Carolinians attending local government meetings could soon see the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer posted on walls, pray without fear of being sued and drive home in cars with the "I Believe" plates.

Civil rights groups are considering lawsuits. An attorney for the New York-based American Jewish Congress, Mark Stern, said the bills are an obvious endorsement of religion by legislators in an election year. His group is looking to sue over the plates.

Full story HERE.

Storm Clouds Over The Sunshine State

Some are well-established and fully accredited with a qualified teaching staff and a tradition of educational excellence. Others are small, poorly equipped and devoted to religious indoctrination, not academic accomplishment.

If former Gov. Jeb Bush and his allies have their way, however, all of these schools – and private academies like them around the state – will soon be eligible for massive new streams of public funding, courtesy of the state’s taxpayers.

Bush has engineered onto the November ballot two initiatives that would eliminate the state constitution’s strict church-state separation provisions, mandate funding of religion and water down language requiring a quality public school system.

For advocates of church-state separation and strong public schools, it’s a political showdown with breath-taking possible consequences.

Full story HERE.

Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy

DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Full story HERE.

Scientific Information Largely Ignored When Forming Opinions About Stem Cell Research

ScienceDaily (Jun. 9, 2008) — When forming attitudes about embryonic stem cell research, people are influenced by a number of things. But understanding science plays a negligible role for many people.

That's the surprising finding from a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison communications researchers who have spent the past two years studying public attitudes toward embryonic stem cell research. Reporting in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Public Opinion, the researchers say that scientific knowledge - for many citizens - has an almost negligible effect on how favorably people regard the field.

"More knowledge is good - everybody is on the same page about that. But will that knowledge necessarily help build support for the science?" says Dietram Scheufele, a UW-Madison professor of life sciences communication and one of the paper's three authors. "The data show that no, it doesn't. It does for some groups, but definitely not for others."

Full story HERE.

E3 Keynote Speaker Backed Hagee

When the Entertainment Software Association announced on May 19th that Texas Governor Rick Perry would deliver the keynote address at E3 2008, GamePolitics was one of the few news outlets to publicly question the ESA's decision.

We expect more raised eyebrows over Perry's selection given yesterday's reports on Wired and The Escapist that in November, 2006 Perry affirmed the comments of controversial minister John Hagee that non-Christians are condemned to Hell.

In the photo at left, Perry is seen covering his face while Hagee preaches.

Full story HERE.

Court annuls Turkish scarf reform

Turkey's highest court has blocked government moves to allow college students to wear Muslim headscarves. The Constitutional Court said that a vote by parliament to ease a ban on scarves being worn on campuses violated the constitution's secular principles.

The government argues that a headscarf ban stops many girls being educated. But much of the secular establishment resisted the move, seeing it as a step towards allowing Islam to figure more largely in Turkish public life.

The ruling, by a panel of 11 judges, could foreshadow the outcome of a separate court case in which the ruling AK Party (AKP) could be banned for anti-secular activities. Some 71 members of the party, including the prime minister and the president, could also be banned from belonging to a political party for five years.

Full story HERE.

U.S. Soldiers Launch Campaign to Convert Iraqis to Christianity

Some U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq appear to have launched a major initiative to convert thousands of Iraqi citizens to Christianity by distributing Bibles and other fundamentalist Christian literature to Iraqi Muslims.

A recent article published on the website of Mission Network News reported that Bible Pathway Ministries, a fundamentalist Christian organization, has provided thousands of a special military edition of its Daily Devotional Bible study book to members of the 101st Airborne Division of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, currently stationed in Iraq, the project "came into being when a chaplain in Iraq (who has since finished his tour) requested some books from Bible Pathway Ministries (BPM).”

“The resulting product is a 6"x9" 496-page illustrated book with embossed cover containing 366 daily devotional commentaries, maps, charts, and additional helpful information," the Mission Network News report says. Chief Warrant Officer Rene Llanos of the 101st Airborne told Mission Network News, “the soldiers who are patrolling and walking the streets are taking along this copy, and they're using it to minister to the local residents.”

Full story HERE.