| U.S. | | 22 states back trans-identified student suing Florida school over bathroom policy | | The attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia have signed onto a brief demanding that a Florida school district allow a transgender student to use the bathroom of their gender identity rather than their biological sex. The states and the District filed an amicus brief on Friday in the case of Drew Adams v. the School Board of St. John’s County, Fla., arguing that the school district's rules on separate bathrooms for male and female students were discriminatory in nature. |
|
|
| U.S. | | Lawsuit claims Mennonite teens suffered mental and physical abuse | | The Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite Church and associated entities have been accused in a federal lawsuit of exploiting Mennonite boys and young men through a fictitious program they claimed would reform “troubled boys” but caused them physical and mental harm instead. The lawsuit alleges that through their actions, the church, its mission, the Liberty Ridge Farm and farm owner Nelson Martin violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the Racketeering in Corrupt Organizations Act and a Pennsylvania human trafficking law. |
|
|
| Politics | | Collins: It will take weeks to know if vaccines, natural immunity protect against omicron | | National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins has warned it may take weeks before scientists ascertain the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines against the new Omicron variant. “We do know that this is a variant that has a lot of mutations — like 50 of them, and more than 30 of those in the spike protein, which is the part of the virus that attaches to your human cells if you get infected,” Collins said during an interview with “Fox News Sunday.” |
|
|
| Politics | | Miss. Gov. Reeves talks 'individual liberty' for vaccines but not abortion | | Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves shared Sunday why he believes the principle of "individual liberty" and bodily autonomy should apply to COVID-19 vaccine mandates but not to abortion. In an interview with MSNBC's "Meet the Press," he stated that those comparing vaccine mandates and abortion laws like Mississippi’s “absolutely ignore the fact that in getting an abortion, there is an actual killing of an innocent, unborn child that is in that womb.” |
|
|
| Church & Ministries | | Pastor, marriage counselor resigns after rape remarks | | Burnett L. Robinson, a New York pastor and marriage counselor who has spent more than 35 years in ministry, apologized and resigned from his post at the Grand Concourse Seventh-day Adventist Church last Wednesday after he declared in a sermon that “the best person to rape is your wife.” In the Nov. 13 sermon, Robinson appears to contend that rape is legal in marriage because Christian wives are expected to submit to their husbands, saying, "I want you to know upfront, ladies, that once you get married, you are no longer your own. You are your husband’s." The Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists said in a statement that Robinson's views "are wrong and not accepted by our church.” |
|
|
|
