Common Sense Chattanooga

09/27/2012

Delaware passed a law yesterday. It is the first state to make it illegal for parents to s***k their children. If a parent is seen s***king a child, they could go to prison for two years. This sets a legal precedent. This January, your state may be trying to pass a similar law. This isn't about whether or not s***king is appropriate, this begs a much broader reaching question. Does the state have a right to dictate how you discipline your own children? It does if you are in Delaware, and if parents don't become proactive in standing up for their rights, other states will follow.

Here is a link to read a short article about the law. Included is a link that will allow you to read the law itself.

http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/de/201209210.asp

With the passage of Senate Bill 234, Delaware became the first state in the nation to effectively outlaw corporal discipline of children by their parents.

05/12/2012

The following is an update from David Fowler concerning s*x education in TN.

"Late yesterday the Governor signed into law Senate Bill 3310/House Bill 3621 regarding s*x education in Tennessee's public schools.

The law in Tennessee is now clear that our schools are to teach students the value of abstinence, provide them medically accurate information about disease and pregnancy prevention, and equip them with the tools and life-skills they need to choose abstinence. And for the first time, parents will have meaningful avenues of recourse if teachers or outside organizations teach their child a have-s*x-but-just-use-a-condom type of s*x education.

We extend our thanks to the two sponsors of the legislation who worked so hard to shepherd it through the legislative process, Senator Jack Johnson and Representative Jim Gotto, the members of their staff, members of the Department of Education who provided valuable input on the bill, the legislators who voted for it, and the Governor who signed it into law.

Section 2 of the bill provides an excellent summation of the Family Life Education curriculum that is now required:

'"Family life education' means an abstinence-centered s*x education program that builds a foundation of knowledge and skills relating to character development, human development, decision-making, abstinence, contraception and disease prevention."

05/11/2012

Next Thursday, May 17th, the Chattanooga Tea Party will be hosting David Crockett, Director of Chattanooga's Sustainability Department. Agenda 21 is a hot topic, and Mr. Crockett works closely with it's advocates. If you are interested in hearing both sides of the issue, you may be interested in attending. Details are at the following link. http://www.facebook.com/events/233589870082748/

05/09/2012

The Congress of the US has sent Vandy a letter signed by 36 representatives outlining how Vandy's nondescrimination policy is obstructing the religious freedom of its' students. Here is the letter. Thank you FACT for posting it.

http://factn.org/congressional-letter-to-vanderbilt-university/

Our Mission: To equip Tennesseans and their public officials to effectively promote and defend a culture that values the traditional family, for the sake of the common good.

05/04/2012

Update on Religious Liberties for College Students. David Fowler, President of FACT (www.FACTN.org) sent this out today...

Explanation of "Vandy Bill" and Status of Veto

Many have asked in the last two days whether SB 3597/HB 3576 regarding the religious liberty rights of college student organizations has been vetoed and have asked for more information than I was able to get out quickly on Wednesday. Lastly, at the end I've also shared my thoughts.

Procedural Posture:

The bill has not been vetoed yet. In fact, it has not even reached the Governor's desk yet so that he could veto it. The Governor issued a statement that he planned to veto the bill and some in the press have inaccurately reported that the veto has already occured. The Governor may well follow through sometime next week, but until then, who knows. With the number of calls he's getting, he could change his mind. And, at the very least, he might pick up the phone and let Vanderbilt know it needs to fix the mess it has now created for him.

Background:

By a vote of 20 to 13 in the State Senate and 61 to 23 in the State House, the Tennessee legislature passed Senate Bill 3597/House Bill 3576 that protects campus ministries like F.C.A., Navigators, Christian Legal Society, and Campus Crusade from being kicked off the campus of any of our public universities. But the bill also tries to protect those ministries at Vanderbilt University.

Vanderbilt University has adopted an "all-comers" policy that requires all student groups to accept as a member any student who wishes to join or to allow any member to run for a student office. For example, Vanderbilt recently told a Christian student organization that it would not be recognized as long as its selection criteria continued to include that its officers have a "personal commitment to Jesus Christ." However, because Greek fraternities and sororities did not want to have to accept any student that wants to join, Vanderbilt exempted them.

State legislators and even members of Congress have tried to work with Vanderbilt in recent weeks. But, with the legislature about to adjourn till next January, this legislation tried to protect the status quo at Vanderbilt just until June of next year by giving Vanderbilt the option over the next year of (i) continuing to recognize the Christian organizations or (ii) of applying its all-comers policy to all student organizations, including fraternities and sororities.

The Governor has now expressed concern over the legislature's effort to maintain the status quo at Vanderbilt for a year to give all interested parties more time to try to work this situation out. BUT NOTE: a veto would also wipe out the permanent, on-going protections in the bill for campus ministries on public college campuses that!

My thoughts:

This is not an easy issue. That's why the bill started out applying only to public colleges. But over time, the considerations in my mind that weighed in favor of the bill were as follows:



(i) Vanderbilt, according to most legal scholars, was clearly misapplying a federal law (and exemption in Title IX for Greek organizations) to circumvent the very Supreme Court ruling Vandy has pointed to as justification for its all-comers policy,

(ii) almost 50 members of Congress will be announcing today their disagreement with Vandy's use of this law and its circumvention of federal policy,

(iii) Vanderbilt does get millions of dollars from taxpayers (state and federal) many of whom would not want their money being used to support an entity that is destroying these campus ministries,

(iv) other private and public colleges across the nation were looking at Vandy to see if they could get way with this misuse of federal law so that they could follow suit,

(v) our civil rights laws already interfere with private institutions/businesses, most notably in this instance for the purpose of protecting a person’s religion, and Vanderbilt is simply a private business in the business of education, and finally and perhaps most importantly,


(vi) the government regulation in this case was for a fixed, definite time of 13 months so that Congress and all other interested parities could try to find a way out of this mess without these Christian ministries being soon disbanded at Vandy.


I'm apologize in advance that my schedule the next few days will not allow me to respond to futher email inquiries. I'm totally covered over. Thank you for your understanding.

David Fowler, Esq.
President
Family Action of Tennessee, Inc.

Watching politicians argue policy can sometimes be amusing, particularly when liberals use conservatives’ arguments against them and vice versa. There are times when you think the liberal speaking on the House or Senate floor is the conservative. The bill dealing with the religious discrimination ta...

05/04/2012

http://timesfreepress.com/news/2012/may/02/fowler-urges-religious-conservatives-oppose-haslam/?breakingnews

NASHVILLE — A politically influential conservative group is urging supporters to flood Gov. Bill Haslam’s phone lines in opposition to Haslam’s planned veto of a bill aimed at pressuring Vanderbilt University to drop an anti-discrimination policy affecting campus groups.

05/03/2012

This is a message from David Fowler, President of FACT:

URGENT: Just minutes ago I was informed that, as of right now, the Governor is planning to veto the bill protecting the religious liberty of college campus ministries such as the F.C.A, Navigators, Cru (f/k/a Campus Crusade) and the Christian Legal Society.

Publicly, the Governor had indicated the other day that he might veto the bill because the bills protections extend to those on Vanderbilt University's campus for the next year. But now it looks like he plans to veto it if you don't act now.

Please call the Governor's office now at 615-741-2001 and tell the person to answers the phone, "Please let the governor know that I am against vetoing the bill protecting campus ministries."

Please let your friends know about this and urge them to call, too.

The Governor will act very soon. So please call now.

Sincerely,

David Fowler, Esq.
President
Family Action of Tennessee, Inc.

If you are unaware of the issue, google Vanderbilt University and Dr. Carol Swain. Check out FACT's website at factn.org/

03/29/2012

SCOTUS Process from now to June:

1. By the end of the day today or tomorrow, the Justices will take a preliminary vote to understand where each justice stands on the Constitutionality of Obamacare. There will be a majority and a minority group.

2. In both groups, each Justice will write their own opinions and arguments down and give their argument and opinion to the most senior Justice in their group.

3. In both groups the senior Justice will designate one Justice to represent the voice of the group.

4. The opinion and the argument of that Justice will be passed around that Justice's group, and it will be tweaked and edited before becoming either the majority group statement or the minority group statement.

5. Once the two groups have their statements completed, the majority will first present their view with the intent of convincing Justices in the minority group to change their stance.

6. The minority group will then have a rebuttal added to their original opinion they believe counters the points and the perspectives of the majority group. Once that is finalized, they will present their rebuttal with the intent of persuading Justices in the majority group to change their stance.

7. The majority group then will craft an edited version of their original position, this time providing counter points to the minority rebuttal and adding any additional points to their argument with the intent of persuading Justices in the minority group to change their stance.

8. Once the final appeal by the majority group is made, a second vote is taken and it is on the result of that second vote the final ruling of the court will be made.

There will be a lot of experts cautioning anyone from predicting how the Supreme Court will rule based on the questions or points made during the hearing by certain Justices. As you can see, there is ample opportunity for minds to change and for stances to switch. No one will really know until June what is going to happen.

03/28/2012

First a summary, then the details. A federal court has ordered a private health insurance company to break federal law by treating a same s*x couple in an unlawful way, and now the President of the United States, sworn to uphold the Constitution is using this unlawful act as leverage to attempt to change the Constitutional definition of marriage.

Currently a review of the Constitutionality of DOMA (signed into federal law after being passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Clinton on September 21, 1996) by a three panel court in Boston is scheduled to take place April 4th. On Monday, Obama's administration requested the Ninth Circuit Court to bypass the three panel review of the constitutionality of DOMA and go directly into a full eleven panel review of DOMA in light of Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management. The eleventh panel review is the last step before an issue goes before the Supreme Court. So the question is, "Why now?"

Earlier this month, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (which includes the city of San Francisco) ordered Blue Cross Blue Shield to provide health insurance coverage to a same s*x couple in Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management. Golinski is a Federal Attorney in San Francsico, home of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. This is the first time health benefits have been made available to a same s*x couple by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). The reason is because Section 3 of the DOMA Law codifies the non-recognition of same-s*x marriage for all federal purposes, including insurance benefits for government employees. Therefore, the federal court is demanding an illegal and unconstitutional act by Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Last month, the 9th Circuit, located in San Francisco, struck down Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage in California in 2008. Now those arguing Proposition 8 should be upheld are requesting another hearing by an eleven panel court.

If the eleven panel court challenges the definition of marriage in DOMA before hearing the Proposition 8 appeal, they must wait for the Supreme Court to decide the constitutionality of DOMA before being able to rule on the Proposition 8 appeal, which will take some time.

03/26/2012

Interesting article with interesting findings regarding the state of marriage in the US after a ten year study.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/wedding-bells-still-chime/

Despite the perception that marriage is in decline, a new report finds that 8 in 10 women still marry by age 40.

03/20/2012

Yesterday the Tennessee State Senate approved Senate Bill 893 by a strong vote of 25 to 8. If this bill is passed into law, teachers will be able to teach students to think critically about scientific evidence in support of or against a variety of scientific theories including evolution.

This version of the bill includes an ammendment which clarified some of the language, so it is going to go back to the House. However, the House has already approved the original version with 70 votes (only 50 are needed for the bill to get to the desk of the Governor) so this bill will most likely be presented for the Governor's approval.

03/15/2012

Buzz Word: "Sustainable Development" - see what the TN House of Representatives and TN Senate believe about "Sustainable Development" under UN Agenda 21.

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE, THE SENATE CONCURRING, that the General Assembly recognizes the destructive and insidious nature of United Nations Agenda 21 and hereby exposes to the public and public policymakers the dangerous intent of the plan. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that neither the U.S. government nor any state or local government is legally bound by the United Nations Agenda 21 treaty in that it has never been endorsed by the U.S. Senate. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the federal government and state and local governments across the country be well informed of the underlying harmful implications of implementation of United Nations Agenda 21 destructive strategies for “sustainable development,” and we hereby endorse rejection of its radical policies and rejection of any grant monies attached to it.