By Liz Goodwin

The 9th Circuit Court in California struck down as unconstitutional the state’s voter-passed ban on gay marriage Tuesday, ruling 2-1 that it violates the rights of gay Californians.

With this ruling, the bullying of Komen by Planned Parenthood, the decision by the administration to take away the religious freedom of Catholic institutions, and the Supreme Court’s ruling that New York may discriminate against churches, does it seem like the First Amendment is in real danger from Obama and Co.? Are we still a government of the people, by the people, and for the people?

By David Morgan
Reuters

A senior executive of the breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure has resigned after a public outcry over the group’s decision to cut funding to women’s health organization Planned Parenthood.

I think pro-lifers will find other ways to support the battle against breast cancer, don’t you?

By Stan Guthrie

Those who have been paying attention to the president since last summer have noted a renewed emphasis on the need for the rich to pay their “fair share” to lift the economy out of its doldrums and begin closing our trillion-dollar budget deficits.

By Chuck Colson

Komen is the kind of respectable and mainstream partner that Planned Parenthood desperately needs to continue its charade that it is all about “women’s health.” And it and its friends will bully and shout down anybody who dares to disagree with them.

Robert Harris will keep you awake into the wee hours. John Wilson and I discuss The Fear Index.

By Mark Steyn

Komen couldn’t be permitted to get away with disrespecting Big Abortion.

Books that have caught my eye.

Sex, Dating, and Relationships: A Fresh Approach

By Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas

Considering the pervasive immorality and high divorce rate of our contemporary Christian culture, we evidently need a biblically based, theologically compelling, practical understanding of sex, dating, and relationships. Pastors Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas counteract this problem with their paradigm-shifting view of purity and relationships—a view that challenges even the basic assumptions of evangelical subculture.

Unlike most books on dating, this one cuts straight to the heart of dating relationships, asserting with confidence that the line must be drawn at “no sexual activity” whatever. Few have dared to define and apply the Bible’s understanding of purity in premarital relationships to this degree, but Heistand and Thomas have done it. Furthermore, both authors are vocational pastors who communicate regularly with the target audience and have a proven ability to express biblical truth in a winsome and compelling manner. Sex, Dating, and Relationships adds a new, almost provocative voice to the conversation that, with straightforward theological insight, pleads with Christians to get serious about honoring Christ with their sexuality.

While sometimes it seems as if there is nothing left for Christians to say about sex, I’m looking forward to this book. When Jay Thomas was the college pastor at College Church, I found his teaching to be biblical and powerful. Jay is wise beyond his years.

By Mollie Ziegler Hemingway

Small comforts (and other sizes) emerge from Planned Parenthood’s bullying tactics.

Nicely said! Other organizations will now think twice before supporting Planned Parenthood, whose veneer of respectability has been torn away.

Review by Amy Julia Becker

People with disabilities are central to the mission of the church.

By Stan Guthrie

Secular stereotypes about religion die hard. On February 1, 1993, Washington Post reporter Michael Weisskopf wrote that politically conservative Christians are “poor, uneducated, and easy to command.” Reinforcing the stereotype, during the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama said that working-class voters “cling to guns or religion.”