Some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:
- The House has rejected a Democratic proposal to allow nonreligious organizations to appoint people to the military’s chaplain corps
- Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has mounted a campaign to renegotiate the Falkland Islands’ sovereignty, and has asked Pope Francis to intervene. The British have dismissed any thought of inviting the Pope to help mediate.
- Quebec’s ban on turbans on soccer fields ended this past weekend after FIFA, the game’s world governing body, ruled that Sikh headgear permissible
- An atheist, whose application for U.S. citizenship was put in question because of her non-religious opposition to war, will become a naturalized citizen next week.
- The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the NYPD over police surveillance of Muslim communities
- Islamists press blasphemy cases in a new, post-Mubarak Egypt. Most blasphemy cases have been directed against Egypt’s Christian minority and filed by Salafis.
- Russia’s lower house of parliament voted to prohibit adoption by foreign gay couples whose homeland recognizes their union as marriage, as well as by single people or unmarried couples from those countries
- Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a “Merry Christmas” bill into law on Thursday. The law removes the legal risks of saying “Merry Christmas” in Texas public schools, and protects traditional holiday symbols such as menorahs and nativity scenes, as long as more than one religion and a secular symbol are also reflected
- A Methodist pastor is suing the state of Oklahoma claiming that its license plate image of a Native American shooting an arrow into the sky violates his religious liberty. The appeals court has ruled that the suit may proceed.
- Kenya’s Christians and Muslims unite to combat drug addiction
- Courts in China’s far western region of Xinjiang have sentenced 11 ethnic Uighurs to up to six years in jail for promoting racial hatred and religious extremism online
- A Vatican official has confirmed that a committee of theologians has approved a second miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II, which is required for canonization in the Roman Catholic Church
- There is no full translation of the Bible into sign language, but the Japan Deaf Evangel Mission aims to change that by creating the world’s only full-text sign language bible using video-recorded Scriptures