The House bill would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the current categories–such as race, religion and national origin–protected from hate crimes. “Sexual orientation” includes homosexuality, while “gender identity,” or transgendered status, takes in transsexuals and cross-dressers.

If adopted by Congress and signed by the president, the “hate” crimes legislation would establish a terrible precedent, making sexual preference in any way, shape or form a protected right.

It is not unthinkable, under the scenario presented by the “hate” crimes bill, that if a person commits a violent act based on a victim’s “sexual orientation” after hearing the Bible’s teaching, for instance, that homosexual behavior is a sin, the teacher or preacher might be charged with inducing that person to commit the crime.

This is a major issue for the cause of religious freedom and freedom of speech. In the face of a vote in the U.S. Senate, it is imperative that evangelicals contact their senators and urge them to resist the pressure of political correctness and to stand up for the constitutional principles of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

People should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law when they commit crimes against persons or property. Yet it is a dangerous mistake to try to elevate some crimes of violence as being more heinous than other crimes of violence because of the purported motives of the perpetrator or the identity of the victim. Murder is murder and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of the possible motives of the murderer or the racial, ethnic or sexual identity of the victim.

I encourage you to read this letter from U.S. Senator Jim DeMint on this most critical issue. Senator DeMint rightly warns that this legislation may well impact your “freedom to speak and preach biblical truth.”

This is no time to be silent. As people of God, we must let our voices be heard. Justice should be meted out based on actions, not upon the particular identities or lifestyles of perpetrators or victims.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to preserve religious liberty in America and across the world. If you would like to help us continue our fight to protect this freedom, please click here.

In a Rose Garden ceremony, President Barack Obama signed into law the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which recently received approval in Congress. Barrett Duke, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s (ERLC) vice president for public policy and research, was one of several religious leaders who attended the White House signing ceremony. The ERLC, alongside numerous health, education, and religious organizations, had been a leading proponent of the legislation for years.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act is expected to help curb tobacco use, especially among children, and further restrict the marketing and makeup of tobacco products. The law will restrict tobacco advertising and require more prominent health warnings on tobacco products and advertisements. It also will eliminate candy-flavored cigarettes and mandate that tobacco companies reveal the contents of their products to consumers.

Southern Baptists have supported FDA regulation of tobacco products for decades. In the 1930s, the Southern Baptist Convention passed its first resolution calling for the regulation of tobacco. In recent years, the FDA regulation has been a legislative priority for the ERLC, particularly in its work with the group, Faith United Against Tobacco.

The ERLC is appreciative of those who encouraged their congressmen to support this landmark legislation. The impact will be a lasting and far-reaching one. As ERLC President Richard Land has said, the passage of the bill will literally save hundreds of thousands of American lives over time.

The new law — supported for years by health, education and religious organizations while being opposed by many groups affiliated with the tobacco industry -– enables the Food and Drug Administration to control the manufacture, promotion and sale of such products as cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and other advocates for the new law applauded the bill’s enactment.

ERLC Vice President Barrett Duke described the signing of the bill as “an historic event that we’ve been working toward for years.”

“We’re delighted that we’ve finally been able to come to this point where the FDA is going to be regulating tobacco and tobacco products in the same way that they regulate what is in macaroni and cheese and just about everything else people consume today…. [W]e’re very encouraged by this development,” said Duke, who attended the Rose Garden signing ceremony.

In remarks before he signed the bill, Obama cited the devastating effects of tobacco use in the United States: 400,00 deaths a year from related illnesses; at least one serious, smoking-caused illness for more than 8 million people; an annual health-care cost of about $100 billion; 1,000 new, regular smokers under the age of 18 each day.

The president spoke of his own struggle to stop smoking.

“I was one of those teenagers, and so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it’s been with you for a long time,” Obama said.

Smoking is “something that he continues to struggle with,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said of Obama at a press briefing the same day. Gibbs did not say whether the president still smokes.

Obama called the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act “a law that will save American lives and make Americans healthier.”

“[T]he decades-long effort to protect our children from the harmful effects of tobacco has emerged victorious,” he said. “Today, change has come to Washington.”

Among its provisions, the new law will:

• limit the advertising and promotion of tobacco products, especially to children.

• crack down on tobacco sales to minors.

• prohibit candy-, fruit- and spice-flavored cigarettes.

• ban the use of such terms as “light” and “low tar” with tobacco products.

• require larger health warnings on tobacco packaging and in advertising.

• mandate tobacco companies reveal the contents of their products.

• empower the FDA to require such changes as the reduction of nicotine and the removal or reduction of other harmful products.

Congress gave final approval to the legislation June 12. The House approved the bill in a 307-97 vote, a day after the Senate voted 79-17 for it.

The new law’s advocates contended there would continue to be a lack of regulation of tobacco unless the FDA received such authority. Opponents of the measure argued it would give the FDA responsibility outside its normal purview and would overly burden the agency.

Duke told Baptist Press the FDA is “eager to receive this charge, and so we feel confident that they will resist the efforts of some … of the tobacco industry to weaken the regulations. We’ll continue, however, to work with the administration to do all that we can to see to it that the law that was passed protects young people especially from an aggressive marketing campaign by the tobacco industry and we begin to take the next step in reducing the death and harm caused by tobacco in the United States.”

ERLC President Richard Land served as one of the leaders of the religious coalition that backed the legislation for several years. Other organizations in the 25-member Faith United Against Tobacco included the United Methodist Church, American Baptist Churches USA, National Council of Churches, Seventh-day Adventists, Presbyterian Church (USA), Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Islamic Society of North America.

The Southern Baptist Convention has passed tobacco-related resolutions dating to 1932. A 1984 resolution urged churches and other SBC entities to encourage Southern Baptists not to use tobacco. It also called on Southern Baptist farmers not to raise tobacco but to grow another crop when feasible. In 2005, the SBC adopted a resolution urging an increased effort to reduce smoking by teenagers.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to fight substance abuse across the country. If you would like to learn more about this important issue, additional resources are available here. If your church is interested in purchasing materials on substance abuse, please visit our online bookstore and erlc.com.

A bioethics specialist warned the new panel would be a “political hammer.”

The New York Times reported June 18 that members of the Bush panel were asked the previous week to cancel a meeting and were told they would no longer meet as a body, a council staff member said.

Also in this edition: New York first state to OK egg-donation payments and Woman aborts other mother’s wrongly implanted embryo.

A White House spokesman, Reid Cherlin, said the Bush council was dissolved because it was intended to be “a philosophically leaning advisory group,” according to The Times. Obama’s new panel will have a new mandate and will provide “practical policy options,” Cherlin said.

That is code for “the fix is in,” said bioethics commentator Wesley Smith on his weblog.

While the council appointed by Bush sought a “true discourse” and was equally divided on its report on the ethics of cloning for research purposes, Obama’s new commission “will not be collegial or about true discourse,” Smith said.

“The ‘recommendations’ we will see are entirely predictable – yes to federal funding of therapeutic cloning; yes to health care rationing; yes to everything radical in bioethics,” Smith wrote. “And then the President, Congress and the press can say – unlike they did during Bush’s term – ‘They’re the experts! We should listen to them.’”

Bush named his bioethics council in 2001 after he issued an order barring federal funding of stem cell research that destroys human embryos. Leon Kass of the University of Chicago was chairman until 2005, when Edmund Pellegrino of Georgetown University replaced him.

The Bush-era council issued reports on such bioethics issues as cloning, regulating biotechnology, sex selection and stem cells.

Among pro-life members of Bush’s council were Robert George of Princeton University and Gilbert Meilaender of Valparaiso University.

New York first state to OK egg-donation payments

New York is the first state to approve payments for women who donate eggs for embryonic stem cell research.

The Empire State Stem Cell Board (ESSCB) made the decision June 11, saying in a statement its members “agreed it is ethical and appropriate for women donating oocytes for research purposes to be compensated in the same manner as women who donate oocytes” for reproduction.

Pro-life bioethcists decried the decision, however.

New York has a $600 million stem cell research program, and the ESSCB said other states that have government-backed stem cell programs but do not pay for egg donation have experienced difficulty in recruiting donors. This has been the experience in California and Massachusetts, The Scientist reported.

Health problems, most typically from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, have resulted in a small percentage of women who have gone through the egg donation process, which involves repeated injections of hormones. Infertility and death have even occurred in some cases, and there has been concern expressed about the potential development of cancer.

“It is a twisted sort of logic that seeks cures for some [through embryonic stem cell research] while ignoring the risks to healthy young women,” said Jennifer Lahl, national director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, in a written release. “The egg donation process ahs well documented risks associated with the dangerous drugs taken to produce abnormally large numbers of eggs along with the risks of anesthesia and surgery to remove the eggs.”

The ESSCB’s Ethics Committee voted 10-1 in support of the recommendation. The sole dissenter was Thomas Berg, a Roman Catholic priest who is executive director of the Westchester Institute.

“I can assure you, it won’t be the upper-class set who responds to state inducement and risks potentially life-threatening side-effects of human egg harvesting,” Berg said in a written statement. “It will be the vulnerable classes of cash-strapped and college-aged women who will be exploited by the state in this scheme.”

Woman aborts other mother’s wrongly implanted embryo

A British couple has experienced one of the nightmares of in vitro fertilization – a woman aborted their last embryo when she discovered it had been implanted in her womb by mistake.

The tragically lethal mix-up, which occurred in 2007, was reported June 15 in The Guardian, a British newspaper.

Deborah, 40, and Paul, 38, whose last name was not reported, received undisclosed damages, though the amount was believed to be in six figures, from the National Health Service trust, The Guardian reported.

“That embryo was my baby and it was taken away from me,” Deborah said, according to The Guardian.

“I was in total shock when the hospital said it had been transplanted into another woman – not only that, she had made the decision to terminate it. It was killing my baby and possibly our last chance of becoming parents again. . . . to lose our baby this way is unbearable and unforgivable.”

The couple already had a 6-year-old son, Jamie, by means of in vitro fertilization (IVF), according to the newspaper.

The mix-up occurred in the IVF clinic at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. The couple said they may try IVF again but would not return to the Cardiff clinic, The Guardian reported.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to protect the sanctity of human life. If you would like to learn more about this issue, additional resources are available here. If your church is interested in purchasing bulletin inserts or other materials on the sanctity of human life, please visit our online bookstore and erlc.com.

The fourth-term congressman from Tennessee is leading the effort in the House of Representatives to enact legislation with the goal of reducing the number of abortions in America by 95 percent in 10 years. His Pregnant Women Support Act takes a multifaceted approach to the challenge by seeking to provide those in crisis pregnancies with information on their unborn child and their options, as well as to offer various forms of assistance.

A Southern Baptist, Davis does this while legislating under an abortion-on-demand regime instituted by the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and within a Democratic Party dominated by advocates for abortion rights.

“[I] am going to do all I can to reduce the numbers [of abortions] that we can,” Davis told Baptist Press in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. “If we can repeal Roe v. Wade, I’m fine with that.

“I think Roe v. Wade was a bad decision, but it is the law of the land. And we see people take both sides, on the left and the right, the choice and the pro-life folks. And they get embittered and embattled with it.”

The Pregnant Women Support Act (PWSA) is an attempt to overcome that divisiveness. In order to reduce abortions, Davis hopes to gain the support of ardent pro-lifers in both parties and of those who have less of a commitment to legal protection for the unborn. Of the 34 cosponsors of his bill, which is H.R. 2035 in the House of Representatives, 22 are Democrats. Among the dozen Republican cosponsors is New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, likely the leading advocate for the unborn in the House.

“I don’t think advocates of an unborn child … should follow a political agenda, Democrat or Republican,” Davis said.

He has some hope President Obama will endorse his legislation. The president has talked about reducing the need for abortion and has made that a responsibility of the restructured White House faith-based office, though he also has reversed some significant pro-life policies and indicated he would like to repeal some others since taking office.

The president “is aware that some of us are serious about reducing abortion,” Davis said.

The strongly pro-life Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) urged Obama immediately after his election to endorse PWSA. On Nov 5, ERLC President Richard Land asked the newly elected president to place his “full and vigorous support behind” the bill.

Among its proposals, PWSA would:

• Require abortion providers to obtain informed consent from women before performing abortions.

• Approve the issuance of grants to health centers for the purchase and use of ultrasound equipment.

• Establish a toll-free phone number to direct women to organizations that will provide support during and after their pregnancies.

• Create programs to assist pregnant and parenting high school and college students so they can complete their schooling.

• Eliminate pregnancy as a pre-existing condition in the health insurance industry, thereby providing prenatal and postnatal care for women.

• Codify a rule providing coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program for low-income pregnant women and unborn children.

“Our churches need to become involved. … [W]e talk about that more from the standpoint of the wrongness of [abortion] than from trying to prevent it,” Davis said. “At least give hope to a young lady who may think that she’s in a distressed situation.”

Davis said he has believed life begins at conception since reading Jeremiah 1:5, which says in part, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.”

Davis’ pro-life mindset is reflected in how he talks about his family. “I have five children. I have three girls that are living,” he said.

Lynda, his wife of 45 years, had two miscarriages, losing a child about three months into pregnancy and another at about two months. He knows he will meet those children someday, Davis said. “[I] really believe that each of those two children [has] a soul that God has taken care of,” the grandfather of five said.

Since taking office in 2003, Davis has gained recognition as a pro-life leader among Democrats. His voting record in the 2003-04 and 2005-06 congressional sessions was 100 percent, according to the National Right to Life Committee’s evaluation. His pro-life record in the 2007-08 Congress was 83 percent, but Smith’s was only 85 percent — the result in both cases of their support of a Medicare prescription bill the committee opposed because it determined the measure would prevent the elderly from spending their own money on drugs.

In March, Democrats for Life of America (DFLA) named Davis as its inaugural Pro-life Democrat of the Week.

Davis says he becomes “a little uneasy when I hear folks say the Democrat Party is an abortion party.”

The reason? Republican nominees were in the majority on the Supreme Court when Roe v. Wade was decided and have been ever since. Yet, Roe continues in force.

“I have hopes that both Republicans will quit being hypocrites and Democrats will become more pro-life,” Davis said.

“[W]hen I meet people who tell me, ‘You can’t be a Christian if you’re a Democrat,’ I’ve got to start reading and quoting Scripture and explain to them, ‘You need to seek forgiveness. You need to understand the plan of salvation. You need to understand how you become a Christian,’” the Democratic congressman from Tennessee said.

“Now if abortion and the gay movement was the only thing that mattered in America today, I’d be a Republican. Well, guns, I’ve got to count guns,” he said. “I feel compelled to let my life speak for itself, rather than my political positions.”

Davis, 65, is in his fourth term as the U.S. representative of Tennessee’s massive Fourth District, which curves like the letter “j” around the central part of the state. He is a Southern Baptist, a member with his wife Lynda of the First Baptist Church in Byrdstown, Tenn., since 1971.

He is one of the more conservative congressmen in a political party marked by a platform that endorses abortion rights and homosexual rights. He is a pro-life leader, sponsor of the Pregnant Women Support Act, a major piece of legislation seeking to reduce abortions by 95 percent in 10 years. He is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, which describes itself as a group that gives “moderate and conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives a common sense, bridge-building voice within the institution.”

Elected first in 2002, Davis said in an interview with Baptist Press at his office in the Cannon House Office Building, “I started in this job with a certain set of principles and values that I believe I’ve kept. … [A]s long as I’m here as a congressman, as long as I am serving in Washington, there are certain principles that will guide me.”

While that means he will cast what are considered conservative votes on such issues as abortion, it also means for him that he will support social programs championed by Democrats. His advocacy of such programs is based on his understanding of the Bible, Davis said.

Of the “many different scriptures in the Bible that test me from time to time, and they all do, … the part that really burdens me probably as much as any is Matthew 25, 31 through 46, when Christ is saying there will come a time when we’ll be judged based upon how you addressed the needs of the lesser amongst us, and He mentions the sick and the hungry, the naked and thirsty, the imprisoned unjustly, and the homeless, the stranger,” Davis said.

Unlike some evangelical Christians in the Republican Party, Davis applies such passages to the government providing for the needy through Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other programs.

Before his election to Congress, Davis was mayor of Byrdstown, then a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, followed by service in the state Senate.

Davis’ walk of faith did not begin with a “bolt-of-lightning experience,” he said. His family attended church, as well as brush arbor and tent revival meetings, when he was a boy in Fentress County, the home of World War I hero Alvin York.

“[T]here were so many times, as a young fellow growing up, whether it was 12, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18, I continued to ask for salvation,” Davis said. “And I got to thinking: ‘You only have to ask for that once. You don’t have to ask for that over and over and over again.’ And so … I started realizing that salvation is a one-time thing.”

Since becoming an adult, “as a person who looks to Christ and makes faith-based decisions, I think I grow more and more throughout my life …, he said.

Davis attends the Sunday morning worship of First Baptist Church in Byrdstown when he is home, while there are ongoing group sessions in Washington that help his development as a Christian, he said. He participates in a weekly, early morning Bible study with three other U.S. representatives, followed by a prayer breakfast for members of Congress.

“I found that that gives me … a renewing,” Davis said. “It’s like letting a vehicle sit around. If you don’t watch it, the battery will run down. So if you start it, it generates it back up again. So it gives me kind of a renewing of my faith.”

Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia retained language in a spending bill that prevents grant recipients of the Legal Services Corp. from litigating in support of abortion, according to LifeNews.com. Obama recommended repealing the restriction when he submitted his budget in May.

Also in this edition: Surrogacy for British couples growing in India, PPFA hire to promote abortion overseas and New social networking site aids pro-life teens.

Mollohan, however, refused to include the president’s proposal in the bill he drafted as chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies of the House Appropriations Committee. Abortion rights advocates may challenge the language during likely debate the week of June 15-19, LifeNews reported.

The federally funded Legal Services Corp. describes itself as the country’s “largest provider of civil legal aid for the poor.”

Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, told LifeNews the effort by Obama to rescind the restriction on abortion-litigation funding is another example of his administration’s “relentless, step-by-step, week-by-week advancing of the pro-abortion agenda, even as it distracts the gullible with chatter about how they are seeking ‘common ground’ and ‘abortion reduction.’ We say, ‘Watch what they are doing, not what they are saying.’”

Mollohan, a pro-life leader among congressional Democrats, also maintained in the bill a prohibition on funding of abortions for federal prisoners.

Surrogacy for British couples growing in India

An Indian surrogate is giving birth to a baby for a British couple every two days in one Mumbai doctor’s practice.

The report by the London Evening Standard demonstrates the growing popularity of surrogate motherhood in India. Indian women increasingly are carrying babies conceived by in vitro fertilization performed with the sperm and eggs of British couples. The women deliver the babies and surrender them to the genetic parents, who take them home to rear them.

Anita Soni, an obstetrician at a Mumbai hospital, says she delivers more than 15 babies a month from Indian women for British couples, according to the Evening Standard. Recently, she delivered twins carried by a Gujarati woman for Chris and Susan Morrison, a childless London couple. The Morrisons paid the surrogate mother about $13,000.

Soni said such an amount “is life-changing” for the Indian surrogates. “It helps them set up a home, get their daughters married or something like that. There is absolutely no exploitation of these women. It is really big money. It is a jackpot.

“They go through a little bit of emotional trauma, but then they go back home and they [realize] they have done it for a good cause,” Soni said.

It’s not that harmless, says American bioethics specialist Wesley Smith.

“It is very disturbing to see well off Westerners with such a sense of entitlement that they think it is perfectly fine to use poor women as so many brood mares,” Smith wrote on his weblog June 13.

“And what about the well being of the birth mothers: What psychic cost do they pay to gestate children and then have them taken away, never to be seen again – perhaps never to be ever known about by the children they bore? And what if something went wrong and the surrogate lost her health, her fecundity or her life? Or what if the baby was born with a disability and the parents ‘change their minds?’ There is a lot more involved here than the joy of the parents.”

PPFA hire to promote abortion overseas

Planned Parenthood has hired a State Department official to advocate for abortion overseas in the wake of a restoration of federal funding for organizations that promote or perform the procedure internationally.

Jeff Meer, who has served as a career foreign service officer at the State Department and participated in three international population conferences, is the new director of international advocacy for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). The announcement was made in a June 15 email to PPFA supporters by Veena Siddharth, vice president of international programs, LifeNews.com reported.

In January, President Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, which prohibited international family planning organizations from receiving federal funds unless they agree not to perform or counsel for abortion, or lobby in order to liberalize the pro-life policies of foreign governments.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation was one of two organizations that refused to abide by the Mexico City Policy in recent years and consequently was refused the funds, according to Democrats for Life of America (DFLA). There were 650 organizations that accepted federal money under the restrictions, DLFA reported.

PPFA is the United States’ No. 1 abortion provider. Its affiliates performed more than 305,000 abortions in 2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The organization’s total revenue reached $1.04 billion in the most recent financial year, which extended from July 2007 to June 2008. More than $349 million of that figure came in government grants and contracts.

New social networking site aids pro-life teens

A new social networking, online site is seeking to produce a generation of pro-life teenagers.

Teens for Life (www.teensforlife.com) provides a variety of features to help teens learn about abortion, as well as other sanctity of life issues, and to take a stand for the pro-life cause.

“This is the first time that the pro-life movement has actively embraced the power of social networking for the purpose of raising up a new generation of leaders,” said Mike Fichter, the site’s editor. “The future of the pro-life movement is here, and we’re giving it a voice of its own.”

Teens for Life is a national outreach of the Indiana Right to Life Education Fund.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to protect the sanctity of human life. If you would like to learn more about this issue, additional resources are available here. If your church is interested in purchasing bulletin inserts or other materials on the sanctity of human life, please visit our online bookstore and erlc.com.

The House of Representatives voted 307-97 for the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act a day after the Senate passed the same bill in a 79-17 roll call. The measure now will go to President Obama, who commended Congress about an hour after the House vote and said he would sign it into law.

The bill — supported for years by health, education and religious organizations while being opposed by many groups affiliated with the tobacco industry — will empower the FDA to control the manufacture, promotion and sale of such products as cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

“Over the passage of time, hundreds of thousands of American lives will be saved because of the approval of this legislation,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

“The passage of this legislation is the culmination of a long-term effort by the ERLC and many other groups to bring greater regulation to the tobacco industry,” Land said. “It’s a scandal that the industry has been virtually unregulated until now.”

Tobacco use not only causes about 400,000 deaths a year in the United States, but its annual health-care cost is $96 billion, it has been estimated. Each day, more than 3,500 under-age children try their first cigarette, the bill’s supporters said.

Among its provisions, the measure, H.R. 1256, would:

• Limit the advertising and promotion of tobacco products, especially to children.

• Crack down on tobacco sales to minors.

• Ban candy-, fruit- and spice-flavored cigarettes.

• Prohibit the use of such terms as “light” and “low tar” with tobacco products.

• Require larger health warnings on tobacco packaging and in advertising.

• Mandate tobacco companies reveal the contents of their products.

• Authorize the FDA to require such changes as the reduction of nicotine and the removal or reduction of other harmful elements.

The Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids, a leader in lobbying for the bill, called it “the strongest action Congress has ever taken to reduce tobacco use, the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.”

“Forty-five years after the first U.S. Surgeon General’s report linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer, the most deadly product sold in America will no longer be the least regulated product sold in America,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids.

Advocates for the legislation contended there would continue to be a lack of regulation of tobacco unless the FDA receives such authority. Foes of the bill said it would give the FDA responsibility outside its normal purview and would overburden the agency.

Sen. Richard Burr, R.-N.C., led opposition to the bill in the Senate. Senators defeated in a 60-36 roll call an amendment by Burr that would have given an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services sole responsibility for tobacco regulation.

The Southern Baptist Convention has passed tobacco-related resolutions dating to 1932. A 1984 resolution urged churches and other SBC entities to encourage Southern Baptists not to use tobacco. It also called on Southern Baptist farmers not to raise tobacco but to grow another crop when feasible. In 2005, the SBC adopted a resolution urging an increased effort to reduce smoking by teenagers.

The ERLC’s Land was one of the leaders of a religious coalition that supported the legislation the last several years. Other organizations in the 25-member Faith United Against Tobacco included the United Methodist Church, American Baptist Churches USA, National Council of Churches, Seventh-day Adventists, Presbyterian Church (USA), Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Islamic Society of North America.

In the House, 237 Democrats and 70 Republicans voted for final passage of the bill, while seven Democrats joined 90 GOP members in opposing it. In the Senate, Kay Hagan of North Carolina was the only Democrat to join 16 Republicans in voting against the measure. Supporting the bill in the Senate were 54 Democrats, 23 Republicans and two independents.

In early April, the House voted 298-112 for similar legislation. The Senate passed a slightly different version June 11, requiring another vote by the House.

Members of the House passed a similar bill in July 2008, but the Senate failed to approve such legislation.

Senate passage of the bill marked the first time that chamber had approved such tobacco legislation without additions supporters saw as a compromise. Senators approved a 2004 bill that gave the FDA oversight of tobacco, but that bill also included money for tobacco farmers. The final version approved by Congress dropped the FDA language but included a $10 billion buyout of tobacco farmers.

The bill, which gives the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products, was approved yesterday by the Senate in a 79-17 roll call and is now headed to President Barack Obama’s desk.

“The passage of this legislation is the culmination of a long-term effort by the ERLC and many other groups to bring greater regulation to the tobacco industry,” said Dr Land.

“Approximately 400,000 Americans a year die directly from the usage of tobacco products. It’s a scandal that the industry has been virtually unregulated until now. The Southern Baptist Convention passed its first resolution calling for government regulation of tobacco in the 1930s. Over the passage of time, hundreds of thousands of American lives will be saved because of the approval of this legislation.”

The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.2 million members in over 44,000 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBC’s ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C.

The high court announced June 8 it would not review a 2008 decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston that rejected a challenge of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” by service members discharged under the policy.

Congress passed in 1993 the ban on open homosexuals in the military that is known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and President Clinton signed it into law. Under the policy, the military doesn’t ask service members up front if they are homosexual, although the military can dismiss any service member who participates in homosexual acts or acknowledges being homosexual or bisexual.

While defenders of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law applauded the justices’ action, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and other homosexual activist organizations said it demonstrated the need for action from Congress and the White House.

The high court’s denial of the case “now places greater pressure on the executive and legislative branches to get repeal of this discriminatory law done,” SLDA said in a written statement. “Right now, the best place to make our core argument — that openly gay and lesbian services members do NOT negatively impact unit cohesion, morale or good order — is in the political arena, i.e., in Congress and the White House.”

Obama advocated for overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” during the 2008 election campaign but has not called for Congress to send him legislation to repeal the ban since taking office. Obama’s Justice Department, in fact, filed a brief with the Supreme Court saying the policy was “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion.”

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) described the Supreme Court’s order in the case as “the triumph of solid evidence and simple common sense over politically-driven extremism.” He is a former U.S. Marine.

“Military service is a privilege, not a right, and anything that detracts from the ability of our service personnel to fulfill their mission should be prohibited,” said Perkins, FRC’s president, in a written statement.

“We urge President Obama and Congress to also reject any administrative or legislative efforts that would overturn the existing law,” he said. “The military should not be used as a testing vehicle with which to implement liberal social policies.”

Perkins cited a 2008 survey by Military Times that found 58 percent of respondents on active duty opposed reversing the ban. The poll also showed 10 percent said they would not re-enlist and 14 percent said they would consider not re-enlisting if the ban were repealed. He previously told Baptist Press the policy makes common sense.

“Sometimes you’ll have 100, 500 or 1,000 soldiers, sailors or Marines together in a barracks or in a ship bay, all using the same showers and bathroom facilities,” he said. “When you introduce sexuality into that kind of environment, it begins to break down discipline and unit cohesion.”

In rejecting a challenge of the policy last June, the First Circuit said the law “is justified on a content-neutral, nonspeech basis; specifically, maintaining the military’s effectiveness as a fighting force.”

Opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” have contended the case of former Air Force Maj. Margaret Witt before the Ninth Circuit has a better chance with the Supreme Court, according to The Washington Post.

The case denied June 8 was Pietrangelo v. Gates.