September 22, 2011 | 9:17 am

Islamic center near Ground Zero opens

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Remember all the controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque,” which turned out to be the Near Ground Zero Mosque? It’s been about a year, but the Park51 Islamic center is back in the news because Wednesday part of it opened.

September 21, 2011 | 7:11 pm

OC couple fined for holding Bible studies in home

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I feel like I’ve read this story before. Never stops seeming ridiculous. CBS reports on an Orange County couple that has been told to stop holding Bible studies in their home, lest they get slapped with another fine:

Homeowners Chuck and Stephanie Fromm, of San Juan Capistrano, were fined $300 earlier this month for holding what city officials called “a regular gathering of more than three people”.

That type of meeting would require a conditional use permit as defined by the city, according to Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), the couple’s legal representation.

The Fromms also reportedly face subsequent fines of $500 per meeting for any further “religious gatherings” in their home, according to PJI.

“We’re just gathering and enjoying each other’s company and fellowship. And we enjoy studying God’s word.” Stephanie Fromm told CBS2.

The zoning consideration is a fair one, if the Fromms actually were operating their home as a church. But Bible studies are like book clubs, BBQs and college study groups: They are social gatherings that happen to be religious. Unless we are talking about a house church, they are not operating a 501c3.

(Thanks for the tip, Taylor.)

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September 21, 2011 | 3:07 pm

Should Ahmadinejad be on a no-fly list?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be sanctioned from international flights. But he notes that even if Ahmadinejad was banned, it still likely wouldn’t keep him from traveling to international meetings. Dubowitz writes:

This week, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is making his annual visit to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. This time, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s foreign minister and former head of its Atomic Energy Organization, will accompany him, despite being under U.S. and European Union travel bans for his role in Iran’s human rights violations and its illegal nuclear weapons program.

Their presence in the United States makes a mockery of the international sanctions regime that the Obama administration has so skillfully constructed.

(skip)

Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the current head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, is also subject to international sanctions, but also travels regularly to meetings in Vienna. The U.S. and EU pass travel bans to great fanfare, yet ignore them completely when sanctioned officials travel to meetings of international organizations. As Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL), a congressional leader on Iran issues, wrote in an Aug. 11 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, these measures are meaningless if loopholes allow sanctioned Iranian officials to travel freely.

Sprinkled in between, Dubowitz notes the Iranian government’s ongoing role in oppressing its own citizens and in supporting global terrorism.

Thoughts?

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September 21, 2011 | 12:58 pm

How does a large cross hurt property values?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

One thing I remember from most of the stories I wrote at the LA Daily News about community disputes was that they often came down to property values. Or at least they were framed in terms of concern over property values.

Maybe the most vivid was the role that property values supposedly played in the Conejo Valley eruv fight. I wrote:

“Is it me or am I the only one that finds this strange?’’ Carlos Bernal of Oak Park wrote in an e-mail to local officials. ``Why don’t we install a crucifix at every stoplight? Or the picture of Muhammad at every pedestrian crossing?

“I’m not a religious guy and certainly don’t have anything against the Jewish faith ... but this rubs me the wrong way.’‘

Jews were equally critical of the glistening wires that zigzagged across residential streets—a threat to property values and unsuspecting birds.

“It is not some biblical thing that says, ‘Hang some fishing line.’ It’s an arbitrary man-made work-a-round,’’ said Susan Flores, a Reform Jew who, like most, does not keep Sabbath.

“While you are making stuff up, why don’t you make up something that is a little less obtrusive.’‘

So less than a month after the Conejo Eruv was erected in Agoura Hills, Oak Park and Westlake Village, its supporters tore down the Oak Park section.

With that in mind, check out this story from my old colleague Connie Llanos. It’s about Laly Dobenar, who erected a 24-foot cross on her lawn in the western San Fernando Valley:

the monument has infuriated some of the neighbors, who complain the symbol is an eyesore that is attracting lookie-loos to their quiet cul-de-sac and hurting their property values.

While residents have complained to city officials and the Department of Building and Safety in an effort to get the cross removed, Dobener said she hopes her religious freedom will be protected.

“I don’t understand what my neighbors are so upset about,” Dobener said in an interview. “This cross isn’t hurting anyone.

“It is my way of expressing my love to God and to the world ... to bring God’s love to everyone.”

Dobener’s neighbors on Hyannis Drive, however, are not feeling the love.

“When you turn down our cul-de-sac it looks like there is a church on our street,” said neighbor Laurie Biener.

“It’s bad enough how property values are these days. Then you have something like this affecting them even more ... It’s like she’s making a statement for the whole neighborhood, and that is just not right.”

How will this effect property values? Dobener parked a cross, not a car, on her lawn. Connie quotes an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty stating that religious discrimination often hides behind the land-use context.

I definitely saw that when I reported on opposition in Apple Valley to a Hindu temple. But you don’t hear a lot about discrimination directed at Christians. Seems like there may be some other community dynamics going on here.

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September 19, 2011 | 2:57 pm

Financial planning and religious belief

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In an article about why financial planners talk with their clients about religious beliefs, which they see as central to how their clients are going to be motivated to spend and plan for the future—duh—the Wall Street Journal includes this anecdote:

Once when a client asked about his plans for the weekend, Jim Heitman, an Alta Loma, Calif., certified financial planner, says he didn’t hesitate to mention that he would be attending Sunday church services. The client then talked about his own Jewish faith.

Mr. Heitman says he remembered that conversation several years later at a time when his client was in “turmoil” over whether to sell a “large, complex and profitable” real-estate portfolio that caused him constant worries. No matter what Mr. Heitman proposed, the client could neither bring himself to sell nor stop worrying.

Finally, based on their earlier conversations, Mr. Heitman says he tried a quote from his New American Standard Bible, Proverbs 15:16: “Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and turmoil with it.”

A few days later, he says, the client decided to sell.

Obviously, I wouldn’t expect a Jewish client to be motivated to sell by a passage from Christian scripture. But the Book of Proverbs is a shared scripture of Christians and Jews.

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September 19, 2011 | 10:23 am

Abbas in US to ask UN for Palestinian state

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has arrived in New York, where he plans to ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state. Via JTA:

“The Palestinian people and their leadership will have very difficult times after the Palestinians approach to the United Nations through the Security Council to seek full membership for the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital,” Abbas told reporters.

The United States has already made clear it will veto a resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood, though U.S. diplomats are working to avoid that situation.

The irony, of course, is that it was the U.N. who in 1947 offered the Palestinians statehood with the Partition Plan for Palestine. Rather than share this hallowed portion of the Levant, the Palestinian Arabs chose to go to war with the Palestinian Jews.

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September 17, 2011 | 8:40 pm

FBI criticized for Islam training program referring to Muhammad as ‘cult leader’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Disturbing news from Wired:

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

Read the rest of Wired’s story here. As you’d imagine, Muslim leaders have responded sharply to the news. Politicians have too.

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September 17, 2011 | 4:27 pm

HBBREWN

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

At first glance, I thought this license place must belong to a Jew, maybe even one who likes beer. It can be read as Hebrewin’—aka brewing He’Brew beer. More likely, based on the license plate frame and the fact that this car was seen in Hermosa Beach, is that the license plate belongs to a Hermosa local who attended UCLA.

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September 17, 2011 | 12:19 pm

Israeli man seven months pregnant

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Every now and then, I read a story that makes me wonder whether the news outlet got fooled by The Onion. It’s happened before, but then there also are times that stories seem odd or sarcastically headlined but are actually straight news from mainstream media outlets.

The following story may fit into the latter category. Yedioth Ahronoth, aka YNet, is reporting that a 24-year-old man, who kept his female reproductive organs when he underwent a sex change, is about seven months pregnant.

The man, who was born as a woman, is the first Israeli transgender to ever be pregnant. He is married to a man and is in the seventh month of pregnancy.

“Everyone was in shock,” said a patient at the hospital who was in the emergency room when the man walked in. “He looked like a man in every way and insisted that medical staff address him as a male.”

The man was reportedly sporting a goatee.

I’ve yet to see anyone confirm the story. And YNet has been fooled before.

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September 16, 2011 | 1:35 pm

Rick Perry talks faith at Liberty University

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

While Pat Robertson was causing more trouble for himself, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was speaking at the Christian university founded by one of Robertson’s old allies in Religious Right, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died in 2007.

Avoiding a lot of talk about social issues at Liberty University, Perry gave his Christian testimony. The AP reports:

“My faith journey is not as someone who turned to God because I wanted to,” Perry said. “It was because I had nowhere else to turn.”

He also brought a spiritual element to his recollections of the Sept. 11 attacks, noting that many of the students were just children on that day. “You’ve grown up fast and you know the presence of evil is real in this fallen world,” he said.

This is not the first effort Perry has made to connect with evangelical voters. It remains to be seen whether Perry’s story and candidacy will resonate with evangelicals specifically and Republicans generally. So far, it’s looking good.

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September 15, 2011 | 3:01 pm

Pat Robertson on divorce: OK if spouse gets Alzheimer’s

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

We all know that Pat Robertson is prone to saying stupid things. (See here and here and here.) He’s become incredibly irrelevant to most Christians, but the loony old televangelist still knows how to stir a lot of trouble.

From Christianity Today’s LiveBlog:

Pat Robertson advised a viewer of yesterday’s 700 Club to avoid putting a “guilt trip” on those who want to divorce a spouse with Alzheimer’s. During the show’s advice segment, a viewer asked Robertson how she should address a friend who was dating another woman “because his wife as he knows her is gone.” Robertson said he would not fault anyone for doing this. He then went further by saying it would be understandable to divorce a spouse with the disease.

“That is a terribly hard thing,” Robertson said. “I hate Alzheimer’s. It is one of the most awful things because here is a loved one—this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years. And suddenly that person is gone. They’re gone. They are gone. So, what he says basically is correct. But I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something he should divorce her and start all over again. But to make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her.”

Co-host Terry Meeuwsen asked Pat, “But isn’t that the vow that we take when we marry someone? That it’s For better or for worse. For richer or poorer?”

Robertson said that the viewer’s friend could obey this vow of “death till you part” because the disease was a “kind of death.” Robertson said he would understand if someone started another relationship out of a need for companionship.

The response has been harsh. Robertson’s rationale is certainly a stretch. And Russell D. Moore, the dean of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says that Robertson’s statement “repudiates the Gospel.”

Four years ago, the director of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns, Rabbi Richard Address, made a related remark when he argued that Judaism needs “to reinterpret the concept of adultery.” He wrote:

Take, for example, the dilemma of a healthy spouse — let’s call her Sarah — caring for her husband, who is restricted to an Alzheimer’s facility. Sarah must deal with the extended institutionalization of her spouse. She cares for him with love and dignity, but also feels that he is not really her spouse.

How does Sarah handle the reality that, while on a brief respite from the demands of care giving, she met someone with whom she became friendly and intimate? She cannot discuss this with her children, or even with her circle of friends.

So Sarah asks her rabbi, “Tell me, rabbi, am I doing something wrong? I love and care for my husband. But I am a healthy 70-year-old woman, who goes to work, enjoys life and has needs. Is it wrong? Am I supposed to just put my needs on hold?

The reaction was quite different than what Robertson is seeing. And I have to wonder how much of that has to do with how tired everyone is of Pat Robertson—especially to many other evangelical Christians.

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September 13, 2011 | 3:31 pm

Levi Johnston claims Bristol Palin got pregnant as retaliation

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Somehow members of the Palin family not named Sarah are still making news. Here we have the barnburner that Levi Johnston, father of Bristol Palin’s child, claims in his book being released next week that Bristol got pregnant in retaliation for her mother getting pregnant with Trig.

I feel cheap for even passing this along. But here it is, from the HuffPo:

Johnston says when Bristol found out her mother, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was expecting a baby she responded she should be having a baby, not her mother. He says she told him in March 2008, “let’s get pregnant.”

His book, “Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs,” comes out Sept. 20. The Associated Press bought a copy on Monday.

In Bristol Palin’s own book, “Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far,” released last June, she says she lost her virginity to Johnston on a camping trip when she got drunk on wine coolers.

If there is truth to what Johnston claims, it definitely undercuts the Bristol’s-brave-for-keeping-the-baby bump that Sarah Palin got in evangelical support.

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