Associated Baptist Press - 12/12/2008

Associated Baptist Press
December 12, 2008 · (08-123)

David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Acting Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer

In this issue
Controversy over NPR comments forces NAE lobbyist Cizik out (672 words)
Judge halts Christian-themed South Carolina license plates (651 words)
Guest Opinion: Change needed in U.S.-Cuba policy (652 words)

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Controversy over NPR comments forces NAE lobbyist Cizik out
By Robert Marus

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Backlash over comments about gay rights on a public-radio broadcast has apparently cost a prominent National Association of Evangelicals lobbyist his job.

Richard Cizik resigned Dec. 10 as NAE's vice president for governmental affairs, according to a statement posted Dec. 11 on the website of the umbrella group for evangelical churches, denominations and parachurch ministries. Christianity Today first reported the resignation in a story posted on the evangelical magazine's website.

The resignation came after consultation with NAE president Leith Anderson and followed a week of criticism from some prominent conservative evangelical leaders over comments Cizik had made in an interview broadcast Dec. 2 on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air.

While most of the interview dealt with Cizik's strong stance in encouraging evangelicals to fight global warming -- also controversial among the most conservative of Christians -- host Terry Gross also asked him about same-sex marriage.

"A couple of years ago when you were on our show, I asked you if you were changing your mind on that. And two years ago, you said you were still opposed to gay marriage," Gross said. "But now as you identify more with younger voters, would you say you have changed on gay marriage?"

Cizik responded: "I'm shifting, I have to admit. In other words, I would willingly say that I believe in civil unions. I don't officially support redefining marriage from its traditional definition, I don't think."

Anderson said that response "did not appropriately represent the values and convictions of NAE and our constituents. Although he has subsequently expressed regret, apologized and affirmed our values there is a loss of trust in his credibility as a spokesperson among leaders and constituents."

The resignation came after an attempted clarification by Cizik and more than a week of mounting protests from Religious Right leaders. For example, the Washington-based Institute on Religion & Democracy issued a Dec. 10 press release calling for Cizik to be replaced as the chief public-policy spokesman for NAE, which claims tens of millions of members in more than 40,000 evangelical congregations nationwide.

Cizik "has moved NAE away from its traditional social conservatism towards issues of the left, especially global warming," the IRD statement said.

Cizik has received criticism from those on the far evangelical right before. A group of prominent conservative religious leaders, including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, tried unsuccessfully last year to get Cizik disciplined for his activism on global warming. More recently he was criticized -- along with other centrist evangelical and Catholic leaders -- for his involvement with an attempt at Muslim-Christian dialogue.

Cizik's resignation ends a 28-year career as NAE's chief public-policy representative. His activism on global warming and other issues have earned him -- and the NAE -- an increasingly high profile among politicians and journalists seeking to understand evangelicals.

Anderson praised Cizik's tenure in the NAE statement. "Over the past three decades he has been a tireless advocate for a broad variety of issues important to the evangelical community including passage of anti-persecution legislation, laws against human trafficking, nurture of family life, protection of children, justice and compassion for the poor and vulnerable, sanctity of human life, opposition to abortion on demand, peace and the restraint of violence in our world, creation care and others," he said.

Ironically, the resignation comes just days after Cizik was criticized by many gay-rights activists for signing on to an open letter, published in the Dec. 5 edition of the New York Times. The ad, titled "No Mob Rule," decried protests that have been held nationwide in the wake of their support for Proposition 8, the successful ballot initiative that revoked marriage rights for same-sex couples in California.

The ad, gay-rights activists said, unfairly implied that vandalism, violence and intimidation by gay-rights supporters against Mormons and other Proposition 8 supporters had been widespread at the protests. They also said the ad unfairly equated criticism of religious groups that gave millions of dollars to the campaign to revoke gays' marriage rights with "religious bigotry."

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Judge halts Christian-themed South Carolina license plates
By Robert Marus

COLUMBIA, S.C. (ABP) -- South Carolinians who want to advertise their Christian faith on their car tags won't get to anytime soon, according to a Dec. 11 ruling by a federal judge.

In a preliminary injunction, United States District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ordered state officials to halt production, sales, advertising and distribution of the new license plates. The tags feature a cross superimposed on a stylized stained-glass window and the inscription "I Believe" above the tag number and the name of the state.

In a five-page order, Currie said she issued the injunction because federal courts would likely find the law that created the plates a gross violation of the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion.

Currie noted that federal courts under 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, by which South Carolina is covered, use a three-pronged test established by the Supreme Court to determine if something violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. The so-called "Lemon Test" requires that any state law have a secular purpose, neither advance nor inhibit religion as its primary effect and not lead to "excessive entanglement" between religion and government.

"Based on the record now before the court, the court finds it unlikely that the I Believe Act satisfies even one of these three requirements. As the act must satisfy all three requirements to survive constitutional scrutiny, the court concludes that plaintiffs have made a strong showing of likelihood of success," Currie wrote.

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, in a press statement, said he was "extremely disappointed in the court's ruling" and believes that the plate "is completely constitutional." He said he would urge the state motor-vehicles and corrections departments -- named as defendants in the lawsuit challenging the plates -- to appeal the injunction immediately to the 4th Circuit.

But opponents of the plate said the court did exactly what it was supposed to do. "The 'I Believe' license plate sends the message that South Carolina has a favored religion. That's one message the state is not permitted to transmit," said Ayesha Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Khan and other attorneys argued the case before Currie on behalf of four South Carolina Christian and Jewish clergymen and Hindu and Arab organizations. They sued to prevent implementation of the law that created the plates, arguing that it was a clear endorsement of Christianity by the South Carolina Legislature. Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of creating the "I Believe" tags.

The plaintiffs noted that, at the time of its passage, some legislators who had voted for the "I Believe" law said that they would oppose efforts to create similar plates for Muslim South Carolinians.

Supporters of the plate -- most prominently Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who displays a mock-up of the plate on his state website -- noted that the state already allows people from a number of identity groups to purchase specialized plates that advertise their favorite institution or cause. One, Bauer notes on his website, is sponsored by the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry and sports an American flag and the inscription, "In Reason We Trust."

But those plates are different from the "I Believe" plate, plaintiffs argue, because they were not specifically established by legislative act. Instead, they are provided for under a state law that allows non-profit groups to create specialized tags as revenue-generating instruments as long as they can get at least 400 motorists to purchase them.

The case, Summers v. Adams, is the second time in as many years that the Palmetto State has had to defend a license tag created by legislative fiat. In 2006, the 4th Circuit -- considered the most conservative of the nation's appeals courts -- ruled unconstitutional a license plate with an anti-abortion message because it violated the First Amendment's free-speech provision.

That plate is now available, but is sponsored privately like other South Carolina specialty plates.

Robert Marus is acting managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.

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Guest opinion: Change needed in U.S.-Cuba policy
By Stan Hastey

(ABP) -- The Alliance of Baptists' partner organization on Capitol Hill, the Latin America Working Group, has sent a carefully drafted letter to President-elect Barack Obama on changes it wishes to see implemented by the incoming administration throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean.

The letter was circulated among members of the Alliance board of directors, and I have signed it in my official capacity.

In the section urging new policies with Cuba, the letter reads, "We ask you to support the lifting -- for ALL Americans -- of the travel ban that divides the U.S. and Cuban people -- because it is the right policy and as a demonstration to our Latin American neighbors that a new day has dawned in our relationship with the region."

In addition, the letter urges Mr. Obama "to explore diplomacy and dialogue with Cuba," noting that the relationship between our countries "is at a potentially transformational moment." This new moment has to do both "with new visions for change in this country" and the fact that "change is also occurring in Cuba."

Throughout the past eight years and especially during the Bush administration's second term, the essential cruelty of our policies toward Cuba has been exposed for the whole world to see. These include the strengthening of a trade embargo dating to 1962 and the imposition of stricter rules on travel to and from Cuba, by U.S. and Cuban citizens.

Of the latter, by far the cruelest are those that severely limit the ability of Cuban Americans to travel to their homeland, even in cases of medical emergencies or for the funerals of family members on the island.

Whereas in better times Cuban Americans were allowed to travel annually and stay for unspecified periods of time with immediate or extended families, the new Bush policies imposed in 2004 limit such visits to once every three years, for no more than 14 days, to be spent with immediate family members only. Visits to uncles and aunts and cousins, among many other extended family members, no longer were allowed.

Also in 2004 nearly all Cuba travel licenses previously issued to colleges and universities were nullified, again by regulatory decree and without benefit of congressional hearings or even a period for public comment -- usual practices before such sweeping measures are implemented administratively.

This meant that schools such as Furman University and the Divinity School of Wake Forest University, both of whom had used the Alliance's license to send students, faculty and administrators to Cuba, no longer were permitted to do so. Only those schools with graduate-level courses on Cuba requiring a minimum of 10 weeks of study on the island were to be licensed.

Finally, less than a year later licenses to national and regional religious bodies were discontinued, with the exception of bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention, whose leaders have been Bush administration sycophants.

Among those previously licensed to travel to Cuba adversely affected by the new policy was the Alliance, and for a time we were doing legal battle with the Treasury Department over false allegations some of our travelers had abused the license we previously had.

As a consequence, you can understand my eagerness to sign the Latin America Working Group letter to President-elect Obama at the point it declares, "We should move beyond the past eight years, which have brought a reduction in citizen contacts, increased enforcement of cruel U.S. sanctions, and accelerated curtailment of Americans' fundamental right to travel."

My longstanding passion for improved U.S.-Cuba relations is rooted in deep friendships developed over 15 years and 26 trips to the island nation scarcely 90 miles from the Florida coast.

Our self-imposed isolation from the people of Cuba is a national disgrace and a despicable abandonment of a long history of diplomatic engagement as over against the practice of unilateral bullying of those nations that refuse to be our lackeys.

We must do everything within our power as citizens to encourage President Obama to reverse course on Cuba.

Stan Hastey is minister for missions and ecumenism for the Alliance of Baptists. This column is adapted from the December 2008 edition of the Alliance newsletter connections and is used with permission.