Police say that Father Ignatius Kury of Holy Ghost Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church was drunk when he crashed his car Brimfield Township, Ohio.
The priest was so unhinged that officers decided to record him in his cell offering them oral sex and promising that Oprah Winfrey would rescue him. At one point, Kury even offered a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
This video is from Fox News, broadcast March 3, 2011.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a grieving father’s pain over mocking protests at his Marine son’s funeral must yield to First Amendment protections for free speech. All but one justice sided with a fundamentalist church that has stirred outrage with raucous demonstrations contending God is punishing the military for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.
The 8-1 decision in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., was the latest in a line of court rulings that, as Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opinion for the court, protects “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
The decision ended a lawsuit by Albert Snyder, who sued church members for the emotional pain they caused by showing up at his son Matthew’s funeral. As they have at hundreds of other funerals, the Westboro members held signs with provocative messages, including “Thank God for dead soldiers,” `’You’re Going to Hell,” `’God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” and one that combined the U.S. Marine Corps motto, Semper Fi, with a slur against gay men.
Justice Samuel Alito, the lone dissenter, said Snyder wanted only to “bury his son in peace.” Instead, Alito said, the protesters “brutally attacked” Matthew Snyder to attract public attention. “Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case,” he said.
The ruling, though, was in line with many earlier court decisions that said the First Amendment exists to protect robust debate on public issues and free expression, no matter how distasteful. A year ago, the justices struck down a federal ban on videos that show graphic violence against animals. In 1988, the court unanimously overturned a verdict for the Rev. Jerry Falwell in his libel lawsuit against Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt over a raunchy parody ad.
What might have made this case different was that the Snyders are not celebrities or public officials but private citizens. Both Roberts and Alito agreed that the Snyders were the innocent victims of the long-running campaign by the church’s pastor, the Rev. Fred Phelps, and his family members who make up most of the Westboro Baptist Church. Roberts said there was no doubt the protesters added to Albert Snyder’s “already incalculable grief.”
But Roberts said the frequency of the protests – and the church’s practice of demonstrating against Catholics, Jews and many other groups – is an indication that Phelps and his flock were not mounting a personal attack against Snyder but expressing deeply held views on public topics.
Indeed, Matthew Snyder was not gay. But “Westboro believes that God is killing American soldiers as punishment for the nation’s sinful policies,” Roberts said.
“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and – as it did here – inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,” Roberts said.
Snyder’s reaction, at a news conference in York, Pa.: “My first thought was, eight justices don’t have the common sense God gave a goat.” He added, “We found out today we can no longer bury our dead in this country with dignity.”
He said it was possible he would have to pay the Phelpses around $100,000, which they are seeking in legal fees, since he lost the lawsuit. The money would, in effect, finance more of the same activity he fought against, Snyder said.
Margie Phelps, a daughter of the minister and a lawyer who argued the case at the Supreme Court, said she expected the outcome. “The only surprise is that Justice Alito did not feel compelled to follow his oath,” Phelps said. “We read the law. We follow the law. The only way for a different ruling is to shred the First Amendment.”
She also offered her church’s view of the decision. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, but here’s the core point: the wrath of God is pouring onto this land. Rather than trying to shut us up, use your platforms to tell this nation to mourn for your sins.”
Veterans groups reacted to the ruling with dismay. Veterans of Foreign Wars national commander Richard L. Eubank said, “The Westboro Baptist Church may think they have won, but the VFW will continue to support community efforts to ensure no one hears their voice, because the right to free speech does not trump a family’s right to mourn in private.”
The picketers obeyed police instructions and stood about 1,000 feet from the Catholic church in Westminster, Md., where the funeral took place in March of 2006.
The protesters drew counter-demonstrators, as well as media coverage and a heavy police presence to maintain order. The result was a spectacle that led to altering the route of the funeral procession.
Several weeks later, Albert Snyder was surfing the Internet for tributes to his son from other soldiers and strangers when he came upon a poem on the church’s website that assailed Matthew’s parents for the way they brought up their son.
Soon after, Snyder filed a lawsuit accusing the Phelpses of intentionally inflicting emotional distress. He won $11 million at trial, later reduced by a judge to $5 million.
The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., threw out the verdict and said the Constitution shielded the church members from liability. The Supreme Court agreed.
Forty-eight states, 42 U.S. senators and veterans groups had sided with Snyder, asking the court to shield funerals from the Phelps family’s “psychological terrorism.”
While distancing themselves from the church’s message, media organizations, including The Associated Press, urged the court to side with the Phelps family because of concerns that a victory for Snyder could erode speech rights.
Roberts described the court’s holding as narrow, and in a separate opinion Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that in other circumstances governments would not be “powerless to provide private individuals with necessary protection.”
But in this case, Breyer said, it would be wrong to “punish Westboro for seeking to communicate its views on matters of public concern.”
Source: Huffington Post
“GOD HATE
S FAGS & LOUSY ‘HACKERS!’” they declared, apparently responding to a missive from protest group “Anonymous,” which was well known for becoming a persistent antagonist to another group of religious fanatics: the Church of Scientology.
“The only reason the Internet exists is for Westboro Baptist Church to tell this nation & this world that your destruction draws nigh.”
Phelps’s bizarre press release was issued in response to a letter published to AnonNews.org, an unofficial, uncensored channel for members to post details relevant to their forthcoming actions.
In their response, the arch-conservative church acknowledged that “Anonymous” had seen some success in attacking governments and financial institutions, but that they were no match for “servants of the Living God.”
This was all a bit much for the cyber-dissidents, who fired off another open letter to their “WBC Phriends.”
“You thought you could play with Anonymous,” they wrote. “You observed our rising notoriety and thought you would exploit our paradigm for your own gain. And then, you thought you could lure some idiots into a honeypot for more IPs to sue.
“This is not so foreign to us; as you may have heard, we trade in Lilz. You just do not have enough to offer right now.
“While Anonymous thanks you for your interest, and would certainly like to take a break and have some fun with you guys, we have more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.”
The group further warned other members to not engage in attacks on the Westboro website, for fear that it may be a trap. They added that if Phelps and crew would just stick around, “we’ll come back to play another day.”
Anonymous attacks Westboro Baptist Church during live interview
Source: RawStory
The Apostles of Infinite Love in Flatbush, Brooklyn where nun Mary Turcotte resides.
A Brooklyn nun from a fringe Christian sect has confessed to an unholy lie: telling cops she was sexually attacked and left unconscious in a snowbank, sources said Monday.
After a police search for a hulking black man was launched, the 26-year-old white woman from the Apostles of Infinite Love convent in East Flatbush recanted, the sources said.
She told cops she made up the story in an attempt to cover up a consensual sex romp with a bodega worker inside the Glenwood Ave. residence.
A woman in religious garb who answered the door at the convent said the nun, identified as Mary Turcotte, suffered an “emotional break” and made everything up – even her excuse.
“Nothing happened, none of it,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.
“It was all proven to be false. It wasn’t her fault. She is going to move out and we are going to get her some help.”
The convent appears to be linked to a Canadian-based religious order founded in the 1960s by a defrocked Catholic priest who ordained himself Pope.
Turcotte claimed she was headed there the night of Jan. 22 when a thug ambushed her, choked her until she passed out and dragged her – in her habit – eight blocks.
She said she awoke in the snow with her underwear down and her breasts exposed. She said she was treated at a hospital and sought counsel from her Mother Superior.
Police were informed of the rape last Thursday, and put out an alert asking for the public’s help in finding a suspect – described as black, 40 to 50 years old, 6-feet-4 and up to 250 pounds.
Cops released a sketch, but they were skeptical someone could have dragged or carried a woman in nun’s gear through the streets without drawing notice.
When a penitent Turcotte recanted, her excuse was that she needed a story to cover up a real sexual encounter: bedding a shop worker she sneaked into the convent through the back door, sources said.
Police have not charged her with any crime.
No one at the convent would discuss the order’s affiliation, but the Apostles of Infinite Love sect based in Quebec has been described as a cultlike group that has successfully fended off sex abuse allegations.
Source: New York Daily News
Residential and commercial real-estate owners aren’t the only ones losing their properties to foreclosure. The past few years have seen a rapid acceleration in the number of churches losing their sanctuaries because they can’t pay the mortgage.
Just as homeowners borrowed too much or built too big during boom times, many churches did the same and now are struggling as their congregations shrink and collections fall owing to rising unemployment and a weak economy.
Since 2008, nearly 200 religious facilities have been foreclosed on by banks, up from eight during the previous two years and virtually none in the decade before that, according to real-estate services firm CoStar Group, Inc. Analysts and bankers say hundreds of additional churches face financial struggles so severe they could face foreclosure or bankruptcy in the near future.
“Churches are the next wave in this economic crisis,” says Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., president and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a non-profit civil-rights group, who works with pastors around the country to help churches negotiate better terms with their bankers.
Religious denominations of all kinds have suffered in recent years as donations have declined, with many Catholic parishes closing and synagogues merging their congregations. But the property-financing problems have been concentrated among independent churches, which while seeking to expand lack a governing body to serve as a backstop to financial hardship.
“Religious organizations may be subject to the laws of God but they are also subject to the laws of economics,” said Chris Macke, senior real-estate strategist at CoStar. Many troubled churches, he said, are in states such as California, Florida, Georgia and Michigan, which also have some of the highest home-foreclosures rates in the country.
In many cases, churches ran into trouble after borrowing to build bigger houses of worship needed to accommodate growing congregations in once-booming housing markets.
Pastors Rich and Lindy Oliver decided their Family Christian Center needed more space after their congregation rose from a few hundred in the early 1990s to 650 by 2002. The church borrowed $4.2 million and began building a new 1,000-person sanctuary on 11 acres in Orangevale, Calif., including classrooms and a space for adult learning.
Across the U.S., churches are losing their sanctuaries because they can’t pay their mortgage debt. Some borrowed too much or built too big during boom times and now are struggling as congregations — and collections — shrink.
But when housing prices across California began tumbling in 2006, followed by a surge in unemployment and foreclosures, many congregants moved away, and those who were left reduced their tithing sharply. Meanwhile, the property, valued at $8.5 million in 2002 was appraised at just $2.5 million in 2008.
Stretched to the limit, the pastors stopped making payments. “I just told the bank to take it,” Mr. Oliver said. “If you’re a church with a piece of property upside down and no one will refinance the loan or lend you more money, there’s not really another choice but to walk away.”
A Pacolet Mills, South Carolina woman has been accused of hanging a dog from a tree and then setting it on fire.
According to an incident report, Miriam Smith admitted to law enforcement that she had killed her nephew’s 1-year-old pit bull on Jan. 14.
Smith told authorities that the dog had chewed her Bible that she had left on the front porch, according to the incident report. The report said that Smith said she killed the dog because it was a “devil dog.” She also said she was worried about children in the neighborhood who could be bitten by the dog.
The report said that an officer noticed a mound of dried grass covering the partially burned body of a dog at the home. The report said the dog had an orange extension cord wrapped tightly around its neck and smelled of kerosene.
Smith was charged with ill treatment of animals.
Source: FoxCarolina.com
A BNSF Railway worker claims he was demoted because he declined to join his supervisor in prayer meetings at work. James Dunkin claims his boss proselytized on the job, handed out booklets that contained “instructions for raising ‘masculine sons and feminine daughters,’” and says that when he objected to the coerced prayers, the boss told him that “he needed to attend the prayer meetings or find another position.”
To top it off, Dunkin says that the offensive boss, Jeff Kirby, once “stood in his office with his door open and pants down” staring at him suggestively.
In his federal complaint in Kansas City, Kan., Dunkin says that after BNSF transferred him unfairly, he was tormented by his new co-workers because the company had leaked personal medical information about him.
Dunkin has worked at BNSF since 1996, and in April 2008 became a general foreman in Montana, where Kirby was his immediate supervisor.
Dunkin claims that Kirby often asked him and other employees to “pray with him,” and distributed religious materials, “including a book called ‘Point Man,’ which contained detailed discussion of ‘sexual sin,’ instructions for raising ‘masculine sons and feminine daughters,’ and stated that it is sinful for a married couple not to have children.”
The complaint continues: “In June of 2009, Kirby began to hold prayer meetings with members of management, and coerced the Plaintiff into attending. Plaintiff told Kirby that he was uncomfortable with the meetings and did not wish to attend. Kirby told the Plaintiff that he needed to attend the prayer meetings or find another position.
On one occasion, Kirby stood in his office with his door open and his pants down, and stared at Plaintiff in a suggestive manner.”
When he complained to Human Resources about Kirby’s behavior, Dunkin says, BNSF “retaliated” by transferring him to the graveyard shift, “failed to take corrective action against Kirby, and told the Plaintiff that his only option was to transfer to another location. All of the transfer options presented by the human resources department involved demotions, a cut in pay, and materially different job conditions.”
Then he was transferred to Kansas City, where he says he “began to hear disparaging comments from his coworkers and subordinates about private medical information that had previously been disclosed to Defendant in connection with a request for leave.”
He filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC and received a right to sue letter.
Dunkin demands punitive damages for religious discrimination, retaliation, hostile work environment, unauthorized disclosure of medical information, invasion of privacy and emotional distress.
He is represented by Andrew Schendel from the Castle Law Office of Kansas City, Mo.
Source: Courthouse News
Fox has rejected a controversial Super Bowl ad from conservative comedy site JesusHatesObama.com, according to the site’s creator.
Richard Belfry insists the proposed 30-second-ad, which depicts bobble-head versions of President Obama and a scowling Jesus, is just a joke.
“Do I really believe that Jesus hates Obama? Absolutely not,” Belfry, a comedian based in L.A. who sells Jesus Hates Obama apparel on his site, told the Daily News.
The company admits on its site that it doesn’t really hate Obama. Belfry insisted he was merely trying poke fun of the Obama Administration and to also sell his merchandise.
The site received an e-mail from Ruth Levenson, Fox’s vice president for broadcast standards and practices earlier this month that said the commercial was “not acceptable to air on FOX.”
The group then tried to appeal the decision, and that too was rejected.
A spokesman for Fox told CNN that the network wouldn’t confirm nor deny whether the commercial had been rejected, saying it was the company’s policy to not “provide information about the materials that may or may not have been submitted.”
The commercial, set to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” shows the Obama bobblehead falling into a fish bowl, at which time Jesus appears in the frame donned in the company’s t-shirts with a smile on his face.
Belfry said the commercial, which would have aired before kickoff, sold for $2.3 million. He said the money would have come from $3 million he previously received from private investors.
The Super Bowl is no stranger to controversial commercials. Last year, an anti-abortion commercial by conservative Christian group Focus on the Family caused an uproar.
Belfry said he’s sold more than 70,000 Jesus Hates Obama T-shirts out of the back of his car and through word of mouth since the company launched in 2009.
He said he was shocked by Fox’s decision.
“They don’t realize it’s a joke,” he said.
Source: NY Daily News
On January 10, 2011, the Mount Vernon City Schools Board of Education voted 4-1 to terminate the employment of John Freshwater. A middle school science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Freshwater was accused of inappropriate religious activity in the classroom — including displaying posters with the Ten Commandments and Bible verses, branding crosses on the arms of his students with a high-voltage electrical device, and teaching creationism. After a local family sued Freshwater and the district in 2008, the board voted to begin proceedings to terminate his employment in the district. Finally, after administrative hearings that proceeded sporadically over two years, the referee presiding over the hearings issued his recommendation that the board terminate his employment with the district.
Margie Bennett, the president of the board, told the Mount Vernon News(January 11, 2011), “The decision has been made to accept the referee’s recommendation to terminate the employment of Mr. Freshwater … It was not an easy decision. We don’t believe there are any winners or losers in this situation. It is a very difficult situation for everyone. We are glad it has been resolved. Hopefully we can put this behind us, the community can begin to come together again and relationships can heal and we can move forward.” The News added, “Freshwater, by law, may file an appeal with the Knox County Court of Common Pleas.” The Associated Press (January 11, 2011) reports Freshwater as expressing disappointment in the board’s decision but not indicating whether he would appeal.
In its report on the board’s decision, the Columbus Dispatch (January 11, 2011) emphasized the remarkable length and cost of the hearings — “among the most costly and lengthy that education experts can recall.” Allowing teachers on the verge of termination to have a hearing “protects teachers,” the Dispatch explained, “and also discourages districts from keeping rogue teachers in less-sensitive positions.” With regard to the Freshwater case, however, Rick Lewis, the executive director of the Ohio School Boards Association, commented, “It’s sad that they had to spend all that money to do what they thought was right all along.” (The cost to the board of conducting the hearings was reportedly $902,765, the bulk of which — at least $813,628 — was for the board’s legal counsel.)
Source: NCSE.com
See also: Creationist Teacher is Burning Crosses Into Students Arms
Hundreds of people might have been exposed to hepatitis A while receiving communion on Christmas Day, Long Island officials said Monday.
The Nassau County Department of Health is offering vaccines to those who attended two services at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park in Long Island, New York, according to Nassau County Department of Health spokeswoman Mary Ellen Laurain.
Individuals might be at risk if they received communion during the 10:30 am and noon Masses, according to a statement from the county health department.
“We know that there’s a potential that (exposure) could have happened,” she said. “We think the risk is relatively low.”
At least one member of the clergy involved in the communion process was infected with the disease, Laurain said.
There have been no additional reports of illness.
Some 1,300 people were in attendance between the two church services, she added.
Symptoms of the disease include the onset of fever, fatigue, poor appetite, nausea, stomach pain, dark-colored urine and jaundice, according the statement. The disease is rarely fatal and most people recover within a few weeks without complications, it said.
Individuals exposed to the disease should receive vaccination within two weeks of exposure, the statement said.
Source: CNN
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