Tag: religion

Christian bookstore in Colorado Springs sues Colorado over new anti-discrimination act

The owners of a Christian bookstore in Colorado Springs are suing the state over a new anti-discrimination law they claim violates First Amendment rights by forcing them to use pronouns that conflict with their religious beliefs.

Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of Born Again Used Books, a family-owned bookstore operated by Eric and Sara Smith, with the aim of “seeking to uphold religious and commonsense beliefs about biological sex.”

The lawsuit challenges the Kelly Loving Act, a new state law named after a woman who was killed during the 2022 Club Q shooting.

The act, signed into state law in May, amends the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) to expand protections for transgender individuals, recognizing misgendering and deadnaming as forms of discrimination and prohibiting such acts in public spaces.

Under the revised CADA, businesses classified as “public accommodations” – including bookstores – are prohibited from denying services, advertising in a discriminatory way, or making customers feel unwelcome based on gender expression.

In the lawsuit, the bookstore owners argue that this amended policy infringes on their First Amendment rights to free speech and religious freedom by forcing them to express beliefs they don’t hold.

The lawsuit states that the bookstore’s owners believe that “God created everyone in His image, male or female,” and that “sex is immutable.” Born Again Used Books says it welcomes all customers, but cannot affirm “gender choices” that contradict its religious views.

“Although Born Again Used Books happily sells its products to everyone, Colorado now compels the bookstore to speak using pronouns and titles based on a person’s preferred gender expression—thereby requiring the store to prioritize a person’s professed identity over biological reality,” Alliance Defending Freedom said in a release. “That violates the Christian bookstore’s beliefs and the First Amendment.”

In the lawsuit, the store says it wants to be transparent with customers by formalizing this policy into a written pronoun policy and publishing blog posts explaining its reasoning – but the owners believe these actions would now be illegal under the amended Colorado law.

“Because CADA now makes all this illegal, Born Again Used Books must instead profess an ideological view it opposes … and avoid explaining its Christian beliefs about human sexuality in store and online,” the lawsuit reads in part. “In effect, the law requires this Christian bookstore to abandon its core religious beliefs.”

The bookstore is now asking a federal court to block Colorado from enforcing parts of the anti-discrimination law. Specifically, the lawsuit seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction to stop the enforcement of provisions related to gender expression and pronouns.

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Saudi AI Firm Launches Halal Chatbot

Companies with AI chatbots love to highlight their capability as translators, but they still default to English, both in function and in the information they are trained on. With that in mind, Humain, an AI company in Saudi Arabia, has now launched an Arabic-native chatbot.

The bot, called Humain Chat, runs on the Allam large language model, according to Bloomberg, which the company claims was trained on “one of the largest Arabic datasets ever assembled” and is the “world’s most advanced Arabic-first AI model.” The company says that it is not only fluent in the Arabic language, but also in “Islamic culture, values and heritage.” (If you have religious concerns about using Humain Chat, consult your local Imam.) The chatbot, which will be made available as an app, will first be available only in Saudi Arabia and currently supports bilingual conversations in Arabic and English, supporting dialects including Egyptian and Lebanese. The plan is for the app to roll out across the Middle East and eventually go global, with the goal of serving the nearly 500 million Arabic-speaking people across the world.

Humain took on Allam and the chatbot project after it was started by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority, a government agency and tech regulator. For that reason, Bloomberg raises the possibility that Humain Chat may comply with censorship requests of the Saudi government and restrict the kind of information made available to users.

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Federal Judge Orders Oakland Schools to Allow After-School Christian ‘Good News Clubs’ Equal Access

A federal judge has ordered the Oakland Unified School District to grant Good News Clubs equal access to school facilities as other after-school programs.

U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. issued a preliminary injunction, prompted by a lawsuit from Liberty Counsel representing Child Evangelism Fellowship’s (CEF) NorCal East Bay, requiring the district to allow Good News Clubs to meet on the same terms as nonreligious groups.

The suit, filed in December 2024, followed the district’s rejection of club applications at four campuses. Judge Gilliam ruled that the district’s actions violated free speech protections, rejecting claims that allowing the clubs would breach the Establishment Clause.

Decision Magazine reports:

Liberty Counsel, a religious liberty law firm, had filed a brief on behalf of CEF against the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell. Liberty Counsel says it will now seek a permanent injunction to guarantee Good News Clubs continue to receive the same access afforded other similar clubs.

According to the lawsuit, CEF applied for access on four different campuses over a two-year period but was denied on “religious grounds, pretextual schemes, and even by silence,” according to a Liberty Counsel news release. The district judge’s written opinion noted that one elementary school principal defended his opposition to CEF by stating, “[As] a public school, we are not in support of evangelism on our campus.”

In his ruling, Judge Gilliam cited a 2001 Supreme Court decision Good News Club v. Milford Central School affirming that schools cannot exclude religious clubs if secular groups have access. The ruling ensures Good News Clubs can hold weekly meetings like other programs.

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‘Right This Wrong’: GRACE Act Would Strip Federal Funding From Schools That Ban Religious Exemptions

A member of the U.S. Congress has drafted legislation that would strip federal funding from schools that don’t allow parents to apply for religious exemptions from vaccination requirements for their children.

The GRACE Act, or Guaranteeing Religious Accommodation in Childhood Education Act, drafted by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), would target elementary and secondary schools, as well as local and state educational agencies.

The legislation would not require state authorities or educational institutions to offer religious exemptions, but it would deny federal funds to those entities if they maintain vaccine mandates that don’t include provisions for religious exemptions.

“The denial of religious exemptions to families and children is un-American and unconstitutional,” said Michael Kane, CHD’s director of advocacy and founder of Teachers for Choice. “CHD and I thank Rep. Steube for putting forth this important legislation to right this wrong that is a clear violation of the First Amendment.”

The GRACE Act is a response to the “alarming erosion of civil rights” that occurred under the Biden administration, said Cait Corrigan, a former congressional candidate from New York and an advocate for medical freedom and religious liberty.

“This issue is one of religious freedom, individual liberty and parental rights, which I often describe as part of a broader response to years of increasing concern,” Corrigan said.

Steube’s office did not respond by deadline to The Defender’s request for comment on the legislation.

‘A matter of conscience, faith and the fundamental dignity of every family’

Corrigan said the proposed legislation is “not just an issue of policy” but “a matter of conscience, faith and the fundamental dignity of every family in this country.”

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Las Vegas church outrages neighbors as congregation parks SIX HUNDRED cars on lawns and driveways

Las Vegas residents were left outraged as congregants at an Ethiopian orthodox church continue to illegally park their vehicles on lawns and driveways.

Neighbors of the Hamere Noah Kidane Mihret and Saint Michael Ethiopian Church told KLAS they have repeatedly reached out to Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft and used the Fixit app as they were instructed, but nothing has changed in years.

‘We document that and we provide that proof and we have found that there’s no follow up,’ said Daria Wu, who gathered her fellow neighbors to discuss the issues they have faced during the services at the church.

These include a spike in speeding cars, vehicles running the stop signs and illegally parked cars.

‘It’s not great to sometimes have your driveway blocked by someone else’s car,’ Wu noted, as a recent morning ceremony brought more than 600 vehicles, most of which were parked illegally in front of county ‘no parking’ signs.

The swath of illegally-parked vehicles extended more than a mile, completely blocking some off some roads. 

Church members have claimed the hundreds of illegally parked vehicles only come once a year, though residents say it is much more frequently that they are dealing with the issue.

A congregant also reportedly admitted that the parking jobs were illegal according to the signs, but was not an issue because the county has not enforced ‘no parking’ rules.

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Attempt By Antifa Thugs to Start a Major Riot Between Black and Jewish Brooklyn Neighbors Completely Blows Up In Their Faces

A heartwarming scene unfolded in Brooklyn last week as a sinister plan cracked up by a group of Antifa thugs backfired spectacularly.

As Townhall reported, a group of these communists invaded a Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights to needle Black residents into assaulting Jewish residents last Wednesday.

The incident occurred at an annual vigil commemorating the 1991 death of Gavin Catto, a seven-year-old Black child killed by a Hasidic Jewish driver in a car accident.

It also followed a mass shooting that resulted in three deaths.

Sensing an opportunity, Antifa thugs went through with a plan they hoped would end in bloodshed. They shouted vulgar anti-Semitic rhetoric, thinking the Black residents would be dumb enough to attack their Jewish neighbors upon hearing such language.

Townhall noted that Antifa wanted to take advantage of the historical racial and ethnic tensions between Black and Hasidic Jewish communities to incite an all-out brawl.

But as the video footage below shows, they received a nasty surprise instead.

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Man who alleged hundreds were raped and buried in Indian temple town arrested

Police in India have arrested a man who recently alleged that he had been coerced into burying hundred of bodies of women who were raped before being murdered.

His startling claims had thrown the tiny religious town of Dharmasthala in the southern state of Karnataka into turmoil.

Home to the centuries-old temple to Manjunatha Swamy – an incarnation of Shiva from the Hindu holy trinity – the town attracts thousands of pilgrims daily and is central to the fabric of local people’s lives.

A political row in the state resulted in the government setting up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to verify the man’s allegations.

A SIT official who did not want to be named told the BBC on Saturday morning that the man “has been arrested for perjury”.

In early July, the middle-aged man had lodged a police complaint and appeared before a magistrate to record his statement. His identity has been withheld and, so far, he has appeared in public dressed fully in black, including a hood and a face mask.

In the police complaint which the BBC has seen, the man said he worked as a cleaner at the temple from 1995 to 2014 – and alleged that he had been forced to bury the bodies of hundreds of girls and young women who were brutally raped and murdered.

He narrated five alleged incidents where he gave specifics, and said there were many others. Some of the victims, the man alleged, were minors.

He said he had been in hiding since 2014 and had returned and spoken up to silence his nagging conscience.

The cleaner did not name anyone but blamed the “temple administration and its staff” – allegations the temple chief rejected as “false and baseless”.

When he was taken to the magistrate, the man went on to produce a human skull from his bag as evidence. He said it belonged to a body he had buried and that he had retrieved it recently from the spot.

“The skull and skeletal remains he produced are not brought from any spot in which he claimed to have buried the bodies,” the SIT official said.

Saturday’s arrest comes as a major turn in a saga that has set off a firestorm within the state and outside.

The allegations received intense media coverage. After concerns were raised by the state’s women’s commission, the government launched a major criminal investigation and set up the SIT.

For the past several weeks, the team conducted excavations at locations in and around Dharmasthala to verify the man’s claims. He had initially identified 13 spots – some of them in hard-to-reach areas covered by dense foliage and reportedly infested with venomous snakes.

Sources in the SIT confirmed to the BBC that human remains, including a skull and nearly 100 bone fragments, have been found at two of the spots and had been sent for forensic testing. It is not clear who they belong to.

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REPORT: Muslim Student Was Exempted From Suspension in Loudoun County Locker Room Case Where Boys Objected to Presence of Female

A group of boys at a grade school in Loudoun County in Virginia were recently suspended from school because they objected to a female student in their locker room who identifies as male.

The female student even took pictures in the locker room but the boys were suspended for objecting. The case is outrageous.

The Gateway Pundit reported on this story:

The radical madness in Loudoun County, Virginia, just hit a new low. Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) has decided to SUSPEND two boys at Stone Bridge High School, not because they misbehaved, not because they broke the law, but because they dared to ask why a girl was in the boys’ locker room.

7News reported earlier this year that LCPS launched a Title IX investigation against the boys after they were caught on video asking the obvious question: Why is there a girl in the boys’ locker room?

That video, however, wasn’t recorded by the boys; it was recorded by the female student who identifies as male. A direct violation of LCPS policy, according to the news outlet.

Yet instead of disciplining the rule-breaker, the school launched a full-blown investigation against the boys themselves.

The school’s Title IX Office determined the boys were guilty of “sexual harassment” and “sex-based discrimination.”

Their punishment? A 10-day suspension, a no-contact order with the female student, forced meetings with administrators, and a permanent smear on their academic records that could destroy their college prospects.

Now it is being reported that one of the boys was exempted from the suspension. He happens to be a Muslim.

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Islamic Sharia Law Legally Valid in Austrian Civil Disputes, Vienna Court Rules

A court in Vienna ruled this week that Islamic Sharia law can be legally upheld in Austria in civil disputes, sparking accusations that the nation’s Christian values are being undermined by multiculturalism.

The Vienna Regional Court for Civil Law Matters has upheld the findings of a Sharia arbitration tribunal concerning a civil dispute between two men in Austria, with the group of informal Islamic mediators ruling that one owed the other €320,000 ($372,000).

The man appealed to the Vienna court, arguing that Sharia diktats have no standing in Austria and that the Islamic code violated the constitutional rights of the European country.

Yet, according to Kronen Zeitung, Vienna judges found that it was permissible for private individuals to settle civil disputes through the manner they saw fit, and that Sharia arbitration did not violate the basic law of Austria.

However, the court noted that this would only apply to civil matters and that Sharia is not applicable in criminal cases. Nevertheless, critics warned that the ruling demonstrated an erosion of the Western liberties and Christian ethics upon which Austria was founded.

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Islamic Extremist Terrorist Attacks Are Not a Conspiracy Theory: Here’s the Real Data

Liberals and Democrats would have you believe that diversity is our strength and that Islamic extremist terrorism is merely a right-wing conspiracy theory. They also claim that other groups commit as many, or even more, terrorist attacks. The numbers tell a very different story.

According to Fondapol, a French think tank, between 1979 and May 2021, at least 48,035 Islamist terrorist attacks took place worldwide, causing more than 210,000 deaths. The overwhelming majority of this violence has occurred in Muslim-majority countries: 86.3% of attacks happened there, accounting for 88.9% of all deaths, over 222,000 lives lost.

ISIS alone has been responsible for enormous casualties. Between 2002 and 2015, groups affiliated with the Islamic State carried out more than 4,900 attacks, killing over 33,000 people and injuring 41,000. Using machine learning analysis, researchers attributed another 15,000 deaths to ISIS since 2007, bringing the total death toll to about 40,000.

Since 2014, Europe has endured more than 20 fatal Islamist terrorist attacks. France was hit hardest between January 2015 and July 2016, suffering eight major incidents, including the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks, the November 2015 Paris attacks that left 130 dead, and the July 2016 Nice truck attack that killed 86. In 2017, the United Kingdom saw three major attacks within four months: the Westminster attack, the Manchester Arena bombing, and the London Bridge attack. According to Europol, 62 people were killed in ten completed jihadist attacks across the European Union that year.

Outside Europe, some of the deadliest incidents were even more devastating. In 2018, the Taliban attack on Ghazni, Afghanistan, killed 466 people after assailants armed with mortars, explosives, and firearms stormed the city. That same year, ISIL was responsible for 1,328 deaths worldwide.

In 2019, the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka killed 270 people, including at least 45 foreign nationals and five Americans, in coordinated ISIS-related suicide bombings targeting churches and luxury hotels.

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