In the News...

Compiled by James Capo

Court to Decide on "Under God"
It sounds impossible. How can pledging allegiance to your country be considered unconstitutional? Yet that's the contention of a California atheist, who objected to his nine-year-old daughter's daily pledge of allegiance in school to "the United States of America ... one nation, under God ..." He sued her school, saying the reference to God violated the principle of separation of church and state supposedly derived from the First Amendment to the Constitution. He won.

The California court's decision was appealed and now the case is before the U.S. Supreme Court. An Associated Press poll (March 24, 2004) found that almost 9 in 10 people said the reference to God belongs in the pledge, but now it is up to the Supreme Court to determine if the phrase "under God" stays or goes.

History and prophecy show that God has blessed the United States, a fact that has been recognized and publicly acknowledged by the people and leaders of the country since its founding. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and many others called on all Americans to acknowledge their dependence on Him. What does it say about America now, if the country's highest court makes it illegal to do that in the country's pledge?

(For more information about God's involvement in the United States' past and future, read our free booklet The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy. You can download it or order it on the Web at www.ucg.org/booklets.)

Kids Need Dads!
"Children growing up without fathers are five times more likely to be in poverty, are two to three times more likely to suffer from emotional and behavior problems and to drop out of school. They are more likely to commit crime, engage in early promiscuous behavior and commit suicide," according to Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Livenews.com adds: "[We] need to increase the number of children who are growing up in healthy, married households. They do far better on every measure of child welfare when compared to children growing up in unmarried households" ( April 1, 2004).

What can those without fathers do? The best thing is to develop a close relationship with God. He promises in 2 Corinthians 6:18, "I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."

The Bible as Hate Literature?
The Canadian Senate passed a bill on April 28 that officially includes "sexual orientation" among those groups that are protected from "hate crimes." So what's the problem? The bill does not clearly define hate or sexual orientation and a statement to protect religious views was not included in the bill.

Lorna Dueck, a Christian broadcaster, wrote in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail: "[This bill] says that moral views, motivated by religious text, can be equated with hatred. Thus, if church teaching refers to homosexuality as ... sin, it could be charged as being hate propaganda."

The Bible as hate literature? It could be seen that way in Canada. God condemned ancient Israel for calling "evil good, and good evil" (Isaiah 5:20). Sadly, many today are making the same mistake.

Do Condoms Make Sex Safe?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering requiring warning labels on condom packages, noting that they do not protect users from all sexually transmitted diseases, an FDA official said March 10.

Studies show that condoms do not prevent human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common viral STD today, which affects more than one third of all sexually active unmarried people and for which there is no cure. HPV can cause genital warts and cervical cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than two million American women are infected with HPV each year, and 10,000 are diagnosed annually with cervical cancer.

Abstinence until marriage—following God's timeless law of saving sex for marriage and staying faithful within marriage—is the only certain way to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Students Take a Stand
Eight students from a Christian high school in Rapid City, South Dakota, withdrew from a performance of the All-State Chorus and Orchestra, saying the words in a piece commissioned for the chorus clashed with their Christian beliefs.

Titled "These Things Shall Be," the piece, adapted from a poem by 19th-century poet John Addington Symonds, promotes the belief that humanity will perfect itself and usher in a utopia on earth and that "all the heavens [will] praise the earth."

In contrast, the Bible teaches that it is Jesus Christ, not humanity, who will usher in a peaceful, millennial time on earth, and that before then humanity will have succeeded only in bringing civilization to the edge of extinction. Request our free booklet, The Gospel of the Kingdom, to learn more about the utopia that does lie ahead for mankind.

Another reason given by the students for withdrawing from the performance was that they did not want to appear to endorse the social viewpoints of the poet, who was a pioneering advocate of "gay liberation" (source: The Rapid City Journal, Nov. 8, 2003).

Move in, Move out
What happens to couples who "move in" together without getting married? Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have found that these relationships are less stable than marriages, and that instability is increasing.

Within 18 months, most couples either wed or break up. Today, more than half of all first marriages involve living together first, but these couples are at higher risk for divorce—up to 48 percent higher than those who didn't live together first. Only one tenth of cohabiting couples last five years or more, whether they marry or not (sources: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; University of Maryland in College Park).