Do Houses of Worship Have a Right to Enforce Their Own Rules of Modesty?

While attending Sunday services at a Virginia church, Annie Peguero began nursing her daughter and, in keeping with the church’s policy, was promptly asked to do so in a private room. She now plans to take the church to court. Walter Olson explains:

In 2015, following the lead of many other states, Virginia passed a “law that says women have a right to breastfeed anywhere they have a legal right to be,” as the Washington Post reports. The law provides . . . no quarter, it would seem, for owners’ ordinary rights to set terms and conditions when they invite visits from the general public. . . .

Should [the mother] press a claim in court, she might have to contend with Virginia’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). . . . But since not all states have a version of the RFRA—and particularly since . . . a large sector of polite opinion is taking Ms. Peguero’s side and appears to see nothing wrong with applying such laws to churches—it seems likely that this will not be the last such claim.

Personally, I’m fine with public breastfeeding no longer being classed as an automatically shocking thing. But why is government dictation of how a church may arrange its worship services no longer classed as an automatically shocking thing?

Read more at Cato

More about: American law, Freedom of Religion, Politics & Current Affairs, Religious Freedom Restoration Act

The Meaning of Hizballah’s Exploding Pagers

Sept. 18 2024

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Hizballah, Israeli Security