URGENT PRAYERS/PETITIONS:
PLEASE PRAY EVERY DAY through this Wed. 3/27 that the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold Prop. 8 (the CA law which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman) and the Defense of Marriage Act (signed into federal law in 1996) that does the same. PRAY that the Court will resist any pressure to MAKE new law based on "cultural trends." PRAY as though the very future of the institution of the family is at stake because it is.
CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR PASTOR SAEED (Iranian-born AMERICAN pastor who just started an 8 year sentence for helping the underground churches in Iran) - "As Iran continues to abuse imprisoned American Pastor Saeed Abedini, its goal is now clear -- force Pastor Saeed to deny Christ.We've obtained a new letter from Pastor Saeed detailing his continued mistreatment in the deadly Evin Prison, including Iran's efforts to force him to convert from Christianity back to Islam. Pastor Saeed writes: "[A]fter all of these pressures, after all of the nails they have pressed against my hands and 'feet, they are only waiting for one thing…for me to deny Christ.' Yet he is standing strong, declaring '"they will never get this from me.' (Read of the inspiring letter he has written from prison at http://aclj.org/iran/pastor-saeed-writes-psychological-warfare-physical-violence-death-threats-iranian-prison) UPDATE of 3/11 - 1) Those in support of Pastor Saeed have been at the UN meetings in Geneva the past week testifying to the Human Rights Commission; 2) The American Center for Law and Justice testified before a committee of the House of Rep. on Friday about Pastor Saeed and other persecuted Christians in the Middle East Shockingly, our State department failed to even send a reprsentative to the hearing (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/15/state-dept-ducks-hearing-us-pastor-detained-iran/) If you have not already, please join nearly 500,000 (was recently250,000) who have signed the petition for Pastor Saeed's release and tell your friends about it. http://aclj.org/iran/save-american-pastor-from-iranian-prison-sentence
As the Lord leads, please pray:
- For Pastor Abedini as he endures one of Iran’s most deadly prisons, potentially beaten and abused regularly, simply because of his Christian faith.
- For the pastor’s wife and family and the Holy Spirit’s comfort upon them.
- For the continuing meetings at the UN meetings in Geneva about Pastor Saeed.
- For the U.S. State Department to get involved in a significant way to obtain the pastor’s release.
PLEASE Continue to PRAY: "Libya Arrests Suspected Christian Missionaries ," February 16, 2013; "Four foreigners were arrested in Libya on suspicion of distributing books about Christianity and proselytizing, a Libyan police spokesman said on Saturday. Spreading Christianity is a crime in the predominantly Muslim North African county. The four were arrested in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday and are under investigation for printing and distributing books that proselytize Christianity. Police said they found 45,000 books in their possession and that another 25,000 have already been distributed. The suspects are from South Africa, Egypt, South Korea, and one holds both Swedish and U.S. Nationality. The U.S. Embassy in Libya has declined comment. "(Sources: CBS News, USA Today, Associated Press) [So much for the so-called "Arab Spring." - Stan]As the Lord leads, PLEASE PRAY: · For the timely release of the arrested missionaries. · For all who share God’s loving salvation in Muslim countries.
REMINDER: "Truth That Transforms" broadcast - (Cen. FL - Mon. 7 pm. ch. 52.2; www.truthinaction.org) This week's message is on "The Atonement of Christ" with a feature entitled "Is There Justice? Is There A Hell?"
"International Jurists: Marriage Is Between a Man and Woman," Sophie Giberga and Ryan T. Anderson, March 20, 2013 http://blog.heritage.org/2013/03/20/international-jurists-marriage-is-between-a-man-and-woman/
While the justices should resist the activist use of “transnational law” in interpreting the original meaning of our Constitution, some still do. If the Supreme Court justices—wrongly—look to foreign law to resolve the question of whether marriage may be defined as the union of one man and one woman, they will discover that the traditional definition of marriage is almost universally followed.
An
amicus brief filed with the Court by a group of international jurists and academics makes just that case.
These scholars point out that
not until the year 2000 did any political body recognize same-sex unions as marriages, and even today only 12 jurisdictions outside of the United States do so. They argue that “same-sex marriage is not required by international human rights norms”:
"The European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the French Constitutional Court, the Italian Constitutional Court, the German Federal Constitutional Court, and the New Zealand Court of Appeal have all rejected the notion that same-sex marriage is a constitutional or human right." [Emphasis added.]
As the debate over the redefinition of marriage reaches the Supreme Court this month, the near universality of
marriage as the union between a man and a woman reinforces the argument for marriage. The international scholars’ brief focuses on the views held by the majority of international authorities and the necessity of considering the procreative purpose of marriage when considering redefining it.
Besides the 12 jurisdictions outside of the United States that recognize same-sex relationships as marriages, the scholars write:
All of the rest retain the understanding of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. That is, taking the number of member states of the United Nations as the reference point, fifteen times more countries disallow same-sex marriage than allow it. Additionally, many nations have adopted constitutional provisions defining marriage, explicitly or implicitly, as the union of a husband and wife—more nations than have recognized any form of same-sex union.
Furthermore, several countries uphold marriage as the union of a husband and wife while also extending legal benefits to those in same-sex relationships, similar to the state constitutional provision passed by the people of California. The scholars produce evidence in their brief of “the importance of maintaining a link between marriage and procreation.” The fundamental purpose of marriage is to bring together a man and woman as husband and wife to be a mother and father to a child.
The importance of marriage and of both a mother and father as the ideal for the upbringing of a child is widely recognized in America as well as internationally:
"In numerous countries—including those whose constitutions implicitly or explicitly define marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman—family, children, and parenting are all linked in the constitutional sense."
Understanding marriage as the union of a man and a woman is not isolated to the United States—it is a view supported and affirmed by the majority of the international community. The justices should resist the temptation to rely on international norms in interpreting our Constitution to determine the definition of marriage, but if they do, they will find a clear consensus in favor of the traditional definition of marriage.
[bold and italics emphasis mine; go to weblink for this article to get link to underlined portions]
"The Constitutionality of Traditional Marriage," By John C. Eastman, January 25, 2013 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/the-constitutionality-of-traditional-marriage
The United States Constitution should be interpreted without appeal to foreign law or international norms. In his dissenting opinion in Atkins v. Virginia, Justice Antonin Scalia famously noted that our Constitution and laws should not be interpreted in light of “the practices of the ‘world community,’ whose notions of justice are (thankfully) not always those of our people.” Jeremy Rabkin wrote in a Heritage Legal Memorandum that appealing to foreign laws and practices is a “freewheeling” approach that supports the view that the Constitution is “open-ended, evolving, subject to new trends—so almost anything, anywhere might be relevant to reinterpreting it.”