RELIGION HEADLINES MON 5-5-25

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(SRN NEWS)  California Democratic lawmakers have rejected a Republican bill that would have increased penalties for sex-trafficking 16 and 17-year-olds.  The legislation was supported by a few moderate Democrats who said soliciting older teens should be a felony.  Democratic leaders killed the bill, however, claiming that it could be misused by parents upset about interracial or LGBT relationships to target older teens.  Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome actually supported the legislation saying “The law should treat all sex predators who solicit minors the same.”

(  )  Chief Justice John Roberts appears to hold the key vote on whether the Supreme Court will allow the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school, in Oklahoma.  Roberts was the only justice whose vote seemed in doubt after the court heard more than two hours of arguments last month in a major church-state case.  Four conservative justices seemed firmly on the side of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School and the state charter school board that approved it.  The liberal justices seemed just as likely to vote to affirm an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that held that the taxpayer-funded school would violate the First Amendment.

(  )  Harvard University’s president has apologized to Jewish students for the campus climate over the last year and a half.  Alan Garber’s letter accompanies a long-awaited report from a university task force on anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias.  The task force found that Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard experienced pervasive “shunning” and were relentlessly targeted for their identities by both peers and faculty.  All this began in the days after the Muslim terrorist group Hamas’ launched its devastating attack on Israel in October of 2023.

(  )  The Trump administration is calling for more reliance on psychotherapy for transgender youth instead of hormone shots and sex-change operations.  A report from the Department of Health and Human Services questions the current practices and medical groups that endorse them.  The administration’s position springs from President Trump’s executive order calling for the federal government not to support so-called “gender transition” for people under the age of 19.  A court has put some parts of the president’s order on hold.