New York Daily News: "Magnificat!, a nationally touring Christian ballet company, has a thriving teenage training program with 400 students. Christian pop music is 7% of the pop-music market, and Christian video games are in the works. ...[A]spiring Christian catwalkers can at-tend monthly meetings of Models for Christ, a New York -based organization created to protect fashion industry Christians from the wages of sin city. And fashionistas —religious or not—can sport the newly introduced Wait Wear undies, with slogans like 'I'm Saving It,' 'No Over Nite Parking,' 'Virginity Lane: Exit When Mar-ried'....And next month you will be able to head to a swimsuit fash-ion show at Macy's Herald Square sponsored by year-old Justine magazine, a girls' bimonthly that encourages 12-to-14-year-olds to walk the straight-and-narrow...."

Jeff M. Sellers: "As for a livable wage, it's hard to show that markets, governments, or Christian ethics obligate businesses to pay shelf stockers enough to support a family of four. If this be evil, then it is the free market that is evil. Wal-Mart is merely the touchstone for the unwelcome macro-trend of low-paying service jobs re-placing manufacturing work. As the ranks of the working poor swell, though, we do well to contemplate our com-plicity in the global drive toward offering—and getting— the lowest prices. In the matter of unpaid overtime...the number of lawsuits in process suggests that Wal-Mart is struggling to follow its own policies against off-the-clock work. Finally, the company shares responsibility with the foreign factories that supply it with dirt-cheap goods...."

Daily Breeze, Los Angeles: Wilfred McClay, senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Wash-ington, D.C. "lists the energizing discontents of Pres-ident Bush. 'His "compassionate conservatism," his re-latively favorable view of many federal social and educa-tional programs, his sensitivity to issues of racial injus-tice and reconciliation, his softness on immigration is-sues, his promotion of the faith-based initiative, his con-cern with issues of international religious liberty, his African AIDS initiative, and above all, his enormously ambitious, even seemingly utopian, foreign-policy ob-jectives—(these) are positions that are best explained by the effects of his evangelical Christian convictions, and by his willingness to allow those convictions to trump more conventional conservative positions.'"

AP via San Diego Union-Tribune: U.S. District Judge Alexander "Williams agreed with two groups that filed a lawsuit claiming the curriculum's discussion of homo-sexuality amounted to preferential treatment for relig-ions that preach tolerance of homosexuality over those that reject it. For example, the curriculum juxtaposes faiths such as Quakers and Unitarians that support full rights for homosexuals with groups such as Baptists, who are painted as 'intolerant and biblically misguided,' the judge wrote in his opinion. 'The court is extremely troubled by the willingness of the defendants to venture, or perhaps more correctly, bound, into the crossroads of controversy where religion, morality and homosex-uality converge," Williams wrote.'"

Syndicated columnist Terry Mattingly: "Truth is, Klinghoffer believes Judaism is 'true,' in every sense of that unpopular word. But he has discovered that many modern Jews get mad when someone has the chutzpah to openly proclaim that Judaism is rational and built on a binding covenant with God that is linked to eternal salvation. 'The Sinai covenant and its commandments, you see, are not compatible with every lifestyle,' he said. 'So if you try to tell many Jews that the covenant is still in effect they're going to bristle. They see those com-mandments as a judgment on their lives....'If you say that one way of living is right, then that implies that another way of living must be wrong. ... If our beliefs clash, then we can't both be right. People don't like to talk about things alike that.'"  

Mark Hall: "If you believe the critics, evangelicals like me are against liberty, equality and the pursuit of fun. Gar-rison Keillor, of 'A Prairie Home Companion' fame, says religious Republicans, mostly evangelicals, are interested in 'dividing and conquering the sweet land I grew up in.'... Evangelicals are not a monolith, nor are the American people. We differ on many things, yet there is broad con-sensus on basic values including: a commitment to religi-ous liberty, helping the poor, the importance of families and the value of life. Moving America's public discourse away from the politics of destruction to a serious conver-sation about the common good won't be easy. It's critical that leaders of both the right and the left resist labels and find areas of common ground. That might not satisfy ex-tremists...but it could lead to public dialogue."  

World magazine: "One of the fundamental lies Chris-tians have absorbed from our surrounding individualistic society is that 'what I do with my body is none of your concern.' Paul instructs the Galatians to hold one anoth-er accountable for sin: 'Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. ...Carry each other's burdens.' That verse, if we construe it uncharitably, can lead us to envision a community that functions primarily as a police force [but] the more im-portant task of the community is to make sense of the ethical codes that are being enforced. Here the com-munity is not so much cop as storyteller, sustaining the stories that make sense of the community's norms. This storytelling is part of the working out of God's grace in the Church."

"Spanish Roman Catholic Bishops on Saturday urged Spaniards to disobey a new law legalizing same-sex marriage and to be conscientious objectors. Benedict said on Saturday that the pope 'must not proclaim his own ideas, but ever link himself and the Church to obedience to the word of God, when faced with all at-tempts of adaptation or of watering down.....' Jesuit officials in Rome and the United States...said some American bishops had contacted the Vatican's Congre-gation for the Doctrine of the Faith about articles in America over the years that had presented both sides of controversies over sensitive church issues. The Vatican has had a sometimes tense relationship with the Jesuits, some of whose members in the past have questioned papal pronouncements....”

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., in Crosswalk: "Secularism rests on three myths. The first is the myth of the secu-lar state. Secularism is not a positive construct. By its very nature, something is secular only when it denies the existence of God. Here is where Professor Audi's definition begins to break down. One cannot be genu-inely secular and be indifferent to the existence of God, because if God did exist, that would bring immediate demands upon society—obligations and prohibitions which society would not be able simply to ignore with-out admitting that it is only tacitly or operationally secu-lar. A truly secular state must altogether deny the exis-tence of God. In other words, this is a call for an abso-lutely secular state—the existence of which is a myth."  

Seattle Times: "These noble principles have broad appeal in America—after all, who doesn't support the ideas of freedom and liberty?—while at the same time occupying a sacrosanct position in the worldview of many Christian conservatives. In the eyes of evangel-icals and fundamentalists, the desire to live out the 'Great Commission' of Christ, in the book of Matthew, to 'go therefore and make disciples of all the nations' has become intertwined with support for the principles of political freedom and liberty. In particular, the indiv-idualized religious liberty present in the United States (particularly available historically for European-Amer-ican Protestants) is something that religious conserva-tives long to extend to other cultures and nations."

AP via YahooNews: "The 25 students in jeans and T-shirts could have been in any career that requires hus-tle. The classes, covering topics such as effective mar-keting, stress reduction and legal issues, could have been part of any professional development seminar. But this was 'Whore College,' and any illusion it was just another corporate how-to for young go-getters abruptly ended at the sex toy display and was stripped away for good during a graphic demonstration that put a whole new twist on the concept of hands-on training. 'We are still illegal,' instructor Kimberlee Cline said before her 20-minute demonstration. 'If we want to be treated as business professionals, we need to act ethically within the industry.' [It was] Presented in conjunction with the San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival..."

Ithaca Times: Sen. Ken "Salazar issued a statement Wednesday backing down from a remark he made Tues-day during an audio interview aired on KKTV of Colorado Springs. In that interview, Salazar said of Focus on the Family: "From my point of view, they are the Antichrist of the world." The remark and Salazar's retraction repre-sent the latest development in a bitter fight over Presi-dent Bush's judicial nominees.... 'After being relentless-ly attacked in telephone calls, e-mails, newspapers and radio stations all across Colorado, having my faith ques-tioned...I spoke about Jim Dobson and his efforts and used the term "the Antichrist,"' Salazar said in a written statement. 'I regret having used that term. I meant to say this approach was unchristian, meaning self-serving and selfish.'"

phillyBurbs.com: "why, in the eye-blink of 44 years, did the left become so hostile to religion and people of faith? How did it arc from championing the first Catholic president...to tearing out displays of the Ten Com-mandments, declaring unconstitutional the Pledge of Allegiance because it mentions God and making war on the Boy Scouts of America because the Scout oath states that members are honor-bound 'to do my duty to God and my country?' Tony Campolo, ex-Penn profes-sor, answers: 'Liberals all went to the universities and they became pseudo-sophisticates. 'Somewhere in the university, they heard professors who made fun of the Bible, made fun of religious faith and they thought that was cool and thought they would come across as erudite and intelligent members of academia."

WorldNetDaily: "Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, or PFOX, complain the pilot program for 8th through 10th grade in six Montgomery County Public Schools, sche-duled to begin Thursday, presents sexual variations and behaviors, including homosexuality, as morally equiva-lent to traditionally accepted norms. The curriculum never refers to husband and wife, but, instead, redefines family as 'two or more people who are joined together by emotional feelings or who are related to one another.' Mathew D. Staver [who] represents PFOX and Citizens, said the school board 'has been captured by radical homosexual advocacy groups whose only agenda is to promote their political goals without respect to the consequences.'"

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