Christ Not Welcome in Connecticut Library

THE RECORD-JOURNAL (Meriden, Conn.), Dec. 11 — The Meriden, Conn., Public Library has banned the display of certain paintings by an invited artist — simply because they include images of Jesus, according to the local paper.

Public Library Director Marcia Trotta admits she had invited local artist Mary Morley to exhibit paintings in the library and said she had no problem with many of Morley's works — even images of Blessed Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.

“Those are historical figures,” Trotta said. She also would accept the image of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments.

But she rejected the images of the Nativity, of Christ carrying the cross and of the Crucifixion, saying, “Those were the ones that portrayed a particular message.”

Trotta suggested she was protecting library patrons from hurt feelings.

“This is just nonsense,” said Louis Giovino of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights. “You’re specifically censoring Christianity here.”

Targeting Abortion Clinics ‘In Utero’

THE WASHINGTON POST, Nov. 30 — The Washington daily took a look at a boycott of contractors against a planned abortion clinic and suggested the tactic could spread to other cities around the country.

Jim Sedlak, executive director of STOPP International — a group devoted to exposing the racist origins of Planned Parenthood — promised it would.

“I want to learn exactly what [the boycott organizer] did … and try to export that around the country,” he said.

Chris Danze, a Catholic construction contractor who discovered a Planned Parenthood abortion site was going up in his town of Austin, Texas, responded by asking his fellow contractors to boycott the project. He said he would inform local churches — a major source of contracting work — as to which of them had signed on to the boycott.

“They said it was like the equivalent of the stone masons and plumbers in Germany building the gas chambers,” one contractor said.

Within a few weeks, the contractor set to build the clinic backed out.

Federal Judge Supports Freedom for Christians

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 8 — Ann Arbor Pioneer High School in Michigan holds an annual “Diversity Week” whose stated purpose is promoting “tolerance,” primarily toward ethnic minorities — but also toward homosexuals.

During the 2002 festivities, the school's Gay-Straight Alliance sponsored a forum with six religious leaders who accept homosexuality and specifically excluded any cleric who espoused the biblical position.

A Catholic student, Elizabeth Hansen, asked the school to allow her to represent Catholic teaching, but her request was refused. She sued and was allowed to give a speech at a separate assembly. She claims the speech was censored.

The school district's attorney argued that the school wanted to promote “student tolerance and acceptance of minority points of view.”

But that wasn’t good enough for U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen. He ruled Dec. 5 that Ann Arbor Public Schools violated Hansen's constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection and ordered the district to pay damages, attorney fees and costs to the Thomas More Law Center, the firm representing Hansen.