Many Florida school districts are, so far, listening to warnings from civil rights groups that adopting policies allowing for prayer at any school event will land them in court.
Catholic Bishops, one of the biggest opponents of the federal government’s decision to require health insurance companies to cover birth control as a preventive service, released a proclamation this week “calling for every priest, parish and layperson to participate in ‘great national campaign’ to defend religious liberty, which they said is ‘under attack, both at home and abroad,’” The New York Times reports.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel reports today that the Florida Family Policy Council, a Florida-based anti-gay, anti-abortion group, has begun ramping up its effort to get Christians to the polls for the upcoming presidential election, hoping a large Christian voter turnout could help flip Florida away from President Obama.
A new report released this week by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that American Muslims could be a key swing vote in the upcoming presidential election — especially in Florida, where community groups have been able to increase voter turnout among Muslims.
A handful of protestors showed up to protest the appearance of Terry Jones — the controversial religious leader who sparked worldwide protests by planning to burn Qurans at his Gainesville church in 2010 — at a Jacksonville hotel last night.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, told Florida students Friday she is “very proud to be associated with Invisible Children,” the organization that earlier this year launched the widely disseminated social media campaign to capture Uganda’s Joseph Kony, wanted for war crimes.
In an op-ed defending Florida’s new school prayer bill, which was signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott a week ago, state Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Palatka, blamed the absence of prayer in schools for numerous social ills, after insisting his bill was not actually about school prayer.
The Republican Liberty Caucus of North East Florida will host Terry Jones in Jacksonville on Tues., April 3, for a speech titled: “Freedom of Speech, Religious Liberty, Christianity and Islam.” In 2010, Jones created a media firestorm when he threatened to burn Qurans at his Gainesville church, and has come under fire posting signs that read “Islam Is of the Devil.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, along with other groups, sent letters to school boards this week, warning them not to adopt policies recently allowed by the state that the civil liberties groups says will surely land them in court.
This past Friday, a judge ruled in favor of the Obama administration in a legal challenge filed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops over the religious group’s loss of federal funding.
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