As attorneys for Colorado baker Jack Phillips prepare to defend his religious and free speech rights before the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 5, the Australian Parliament is drafting same-sex marriage legislation that some fear could criminalize similar dissent Down Under.

Australians overwhelmingly showed their approval of same-sex marriage in a recent postal poll. The results, published Nov. 15, showed 61.1 percent approve of state-recognized same-sex marriage. Legislators are taking the results as a mandate to move ahead on marriage legislation that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull pledged to push through Parliament by Christmas.

Those who championed a “No” vote on the survey warned that a same-sex marriage law would threaten Australians’ religious and free speech liberties. Although mocked as fearmongers, their predictions now are playing out in Parliament.

“No sooner had the plebiscite result been announced, the Yes [campaign] side immediately ridiculed the idea of protecting business owners from being coerced to violate their consciences,” Lyle Shelton, managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby and WORLD’s 2016 Daniel of the Year, told me. “This was seen akin to racism, rather than what it is—freedom not to participate in an activity that goes against one’s sincerely held beliefs.”

In the wake of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision…

Wikipedia has deleted a paleontologist’s page because he weighed Darwinism in the balances and found it wanting.

In 2006, Günter Bechly, a highly respected and well-known paleontologist, devised a clever plan to show the public that scientific evidence clearly weighs heavily in Charles Darwin’s favor. In preparation for a worldwide celebration commemorating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Bechly carefully designed an exhibit in which he placed a balance scale piled high on one side with books advocating creationism and intelligent design. The other side held only a lone copy of Darwin’s book. Of course he rigged the scale so Darwin’s manual weighed its side down while the books on the other side appeared featherlight. The message was clear: Darwin’s scientific evidence far outweighed any arguments skeptics could pose.

But then, a funny thing happened on Bechly’s way to the celebration. He read some of the books he had placed on the light side of the scale, and they opened his eyes to the incongruencies and impossibilities of Darwinian theory.

Nine years later, Bechly committed an unforgivable sin in the world of secular academia: He publicly criticized neo-Darwinism and proclaimed his support for intelligent design. Soon after, the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, pushed him out of his job as curator….

Fear of Islamist attacks was again cited as the cause of stopping worship in Egypt this month, even though parishioners said local Muslims supported the opening of the shuttered church outside Cairo, sources said.

 

Anba Morcos, Coptic Orthodox bishop of Shobra El-Kheima, decided to close the Pope Kerlis VI and Archdeacon Habib Gerges church before Nov. 17 services after consulting with the governor of Qalyubia, who had warned of possible Islamist attacks, according to Egyptian newspaper Almasry Alyoum.

 

After Friday mosque attendance on Nov. 17, Muslim families gathered outside the closed Coptic Orthodox church building in Shobra El-Kheima, about 30 miles outside of Cairo, to show their support for it, an area Christian told Morning Star News.

 

“We were not used to praying in this church regularly, but after we submitted all the legal papers and notified the authorities, we started opening the church and holding daily masses on Nov. 3,” Amir Aiad, a 42-year-old pharmacist, told Morning Star News. “There were no objections, nothing happened. On the contrary, local Muslims stood on our side, supporting our right to build a church. I can’t find a justification for what happened.”

 

The church building had been rarely used since construction was completed in 2015 as it took two years to meet all legal obligations for opening, Aiad said. When it opened this month, it served…