Washington Watch
4460 Orchard Lake road
MI 48323
248.683.1010
Rhone:
West Bloomfield,
II •ant (Sired ofq0esi 'Bloomfield
P
in
Studios and suites with private baths
Three well planned daily meals
Assisted living ,
Emergency call systems
.
Housekeeping and linen services
Round the clock staffing
W .1111 catered services
Licensed Nurses 24 Hours Daily
Personal care assistance
Medical supervision
s
g
beautiful surroundin
Spa with pool and exercise room
Scheduled activities
Game room
created especiall y
Library
Hair salon
for older adults.
Sundries shop
Transportation
Regent Plus--For The Memory Impaired
Religious Liberty
Coalition Collapses
JAMES D. BESSER
Washington Correspondent
Washington
arly in the year, backers of a
new religious liberty bill
drafted to replace one over-
turned by the Supreme Court
were boasting about the unusually
broad coalition of religious and civil
rights groups backing the legislation.
This week, support for the mea-
sure, once termed the top domestic
priority for a number of Jewish
groups, crumpled after months of
conflict over claims that the Religious
Liberty Protection Act (RLPA) could
trump" civil rights laws.
RLPA, designed to prevent state
and local governments from using
public money to interfere with reli-
gious practices, could allow landlords
to justify discrimina-
tion against gay or
unmarried couples
or African Americans
on religious liberty
grounds, according
to groups such as the
American Civil
Liberties Union.
In recent days,
pro-choice, anti-
child abuse and
women's groups
added their voices to those worried
that RLPA could undercut other civil
rights protections.
Some Jewish leaders, while dis-
agreeing with that argument, worried
that pushing RLPA now — with a
fractured, quarreling coalition —
could do more harm than good.
"It's becoming increasingly clear this
bill will not happen in this Congress
because of opposition from all quar-
ters," said Mark Pelavin, associate
director of the Religious Action Center
of Reform Judaism, an early supporter
of the measure. "We are increasingly
concerned about what this debate will
mean for religious liberty in general."
Efforts at compromise were thwart-
ed by inflexible positions on both
sides — civil rights leaders who insist-
ed that the new measure carve out
exemptions for all existing civil rights
laws, and religious leaders who wanted
no exemptions.
"
TOURS AVAILABLE DAILY
call 248.683.1010
Since
1986
STEVEN TARNOW, C.R.
(248)
626-5603
PREFERRED
BUILDING CO.
Fax 248-932-0950
Residential & Commercial Remodeling
Building Quality Into Every Project With Unmatched Personal Service.
Featuring Andersen Windows
NARK`
,N110 , A1 AN ,IH . 1,110 , 01
1111 K1 N100111 , 1. 001,110
Licensed & Insured
11•111111111•1111=M1
American Heart
Associationt
Tobacco?
oir
Fighting Haan Disease
and Stroke
ii
Don't
get me started...
01997, American Heart Association
9/17
1999
\ eat
I-
■ 1
"Some differences just can't be
blinked away," Pelavin said.
At an emotional, two-hour meeting,
a number of key supporters — includ-
ing the RAC, the Anti-Defamation
League, the National Council of Jewish
Women, the Baptist Joint Committee,
the United Church of Christ, and the
National Council of Churches —
agreed to stop supporting the bill.
They held out the possibility that they
might press for a narrower bill before the
end of the congressional session.
But the Orthodox Union and the
American Jewish Congress — whose
legal director, Marc Stern, drafted RLPA
— will continue to support the measure.
"The charges that have been leveled
against RLPA are often exaggerated and
distorted," said Stern. "Some of the
claims are bizarre. But the political reality
is that we may have to rethink strategy"
Stopping
Cyber Hate
Hate groups contin-
ue to spread their
poisonous ideology
over the World Wide
Web, but crafting
policies to shut them
down without steam-
rollering basic consti-
tutional protections .
will be extraordinarily difficult.
That was the core message offered
by several Jewish leaders at Tuesday's
Senate Judiciary Committee hearings
on online hate.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center described
an assortment of hate sites, from Web
pages offering step-by-step instruc-
tions for backyard bomb builders to a
site designed to be found by school
children doing research on Martin
Luther King — in reality, the product
of one of the most notorious hate
groups on the Net.
He added that more hate sites are
targeting the very young — often,
children as young as 8 or 9, using slick
and deceptive packaging to give their
sites a veneer of legitimacy.
The Wiesenthal Center has identi-
fied some 2,200 "problematic" sites
featuring over-the-edge hate ideology
or outright incitements to terrorism.