Several Items of Interest

Virginia Passes Ban on Campus "All-Comers" Policies
The Virginia state legislature passed a measure giving college student groups the right to grant membership only to those who share their beliefs and mission, CBN News reports.  The bill is meant to ban universities from instituting an "all-comers" policy that forces religious groups to admit members who don't share their faith.  Last year, Tennessee's Vanderbilt University created an uproar with a nondiscrimination policy that forbade student ministries from restricting their leadership to Christians only; Virginia legislators said they wanted to keep that from happening in their state.  The bill now awaits the signature of Gov. Bob McDonnell.

C. Evertt Koop, Surgeon General Who Taught Evangelicals to Hate Abortion, Dies at 96
C. Everett Koop, the Christian physician and former U.S. Surgeon General who brought abortion to the forefront of evangelical social action, died Feb. 25 at age 90, Christianity Today reports.  Together with theologian Francis Schaeffer, Koop  -  a pioneering pediatric surgeon  -  exposed the issues of abortion and euthanasia in a series of films and books in the early 1980s.  Their arguments began the movement against abortion that continues within American evangelicalism today.  A graduate of Dartmouth College, Cornell Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania, Koop established the first neonatal surgical intensive care unit  and was the first surgeon to separate twins conjoined at the heart.  "Operating on newborns with life-threatening birth defects, spending nights at the bedside of a sick or dying child, and consoling bereaved parents gained Koop acclaim as a pioneering surgeon and empathetic healer, and led him to reexamine his Christian faith and the ethical implications of medical procedures, above all abortion and euthanasia," according to the National Institutes of Health.  Koop continued to speak out on abortion as recently as 2009, when he wrote and hand-delivered a letter to Congress to voice his opposition to proposed federal funding for the procedure.

Massachusetts Schools to Allow Boys in Girls' Restrooms
Under a sweeping directive issued by the Massachusetts Department of Education, boys and girls who identify as the opposite sex are now allowed to use whichever school bathroom and locker room they feel most comfortable in, and schools are discouraged from using gender-based clothes and from conducting gender-based practices such as lining up children based on their sex, Baptist Press reports.  The 11-page directive to the state's public schools was issued Feb. 15, supposedly in light of a new Massachusetts law that adds "gender identity" to the state's nondiscrimination code.  Traditional groups argue the new law did not require such a wide-sweeping directive from the education department, but say it demonstrates the repercussions of passing any law that adds gender identity to state non-discrimination policies. "Transgenderism is only part of what same-sex marriage is plowing the way for," said Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family.  Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Insitutute, says the new policy puts students  -  particularly girls  -  in harm's way: "The School Commissioner's first duty is to protect all students....not endanger them.  The overriding issue with this new policy is that opening girls' bathrooms to boys is an invasion of privacy and a threat to all students' safety."

Obama to Urge Supreme Court to Allow California Gay Marriage
President Barack Obama's administration will urge the U.S. Supreme Court to allow same-sex marriages to resume in California, the furthest step Obama has taken in favor of gay rights, an administration official said Thursday, Reuters reports.  Thursday was the deadline for the administration to file a friend-of-the-court 
brief in a case that is due to be argued on March 26 regarding whether Proposition 8  -  California's 2008 voter-approved measure that defined marriage in the state as between one man and one woman  -  is constitutional.  In a brief submitted last Friday, the Obama administration also urged the Supreme Court to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman.  The court will hear oral arguments on DOMA on March 27.

Hundreds of Corporations Sign Supreme Court Briefs in Support of Gay Marriage
Hundreds of major corporations from across the country have collectively signed on two supreme Court briefs supporting gay marriage, the Christian News Network reports.  Approximately 250 high-profile corporations and general business entities lent their name to an amicus, or "friend of the court," brief that challenges the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  Among those included were Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks,Citigroup, Marriott International, Johnson and Johnson, Walt Disney, The Jim Henson Company, Twitter and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.  The document filed on behalf of the corporations asserts that DOMA "requires that employers treat one employee differently from another, when each is married, and each marriage is equally lawful."  A second brief, signed by approximately 45 corporations, seeks to overturn California's Proposition 8, which sought to define marriage in the state constitution as between one man and one woman.  The brief argues that the states that have banned same-sex marriage are harming workplace morale.  Companies that signed their name to the brief include Apple, Morgan Stanley, Nike, eBay, Panasonic, Office Depot, Barnes and Noble, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Facebook.
   (Religion Today Daily Headlines, www.religiontoday@crosswalkmail.com)