Today on Kresta - March 31, 2009

3:00 – The Bad Decision That Started It All
Forty-four years ago, in Griswold v Connecticut, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down state laws forbidding the sale, distribution, and use of contraceptives on the basis of a novel constitutional doctrine known as the “right to marital privacy.” At the time, the decision appeared to be harmless. After all, Griswold simply allowed married couples to decide whether to use contraceptives. But the Supreme Court soon transformed the “right to privacy” into a powerful tool for making public policy. No one doubts that there are true privacy rights in the Constitution, but the justices in Griswold produced a non-text-based and generalized right. “Privacy” functioned as a euphemism for immunity from those public-morals laws deemed by the justices to reflect benighted moral views. The case was argued before the Supremes 44 years ago this week. Robert George is here to discuss what he calls “The Bad Decision That Started It All.”

3:40 – Jesus' Journey to the Cross: A Love Unto Death
As we move toward Holy Week, today we accompany Jesus through the events of his passion, death, and resurrection. Jeanne Kun helps us follow Jesus on his jubilant entry into Jerusalem, sit with him during his last supper with his apostles, pray with him during his agony in Gethsemane, and stand at the foot of the cross on Golgotha where-with a love unto death-he offered his life for our salvation. She joins us in studio.

4:00 – Speechless: Silencing the Christians
What drives the Christian bashers? Why has a coalition of liberal secularists, homosexual activists, and Fortune 500 companies united to wage war on Christianity? Rev. Don Wildmon says the answer is simple. They have some very real goals that they can achieve only by driving Christians out of public life: The Founder and President of the American Family Association is here to make his case that there is a war on Christianity in America.

4:20 – Gay “Marriage” Around the Corner in CT?
A bill updating Connecticut law to conform with a court ruling allowing gay “marriages” is heading to the state Senate. The legislature’s Judiciary Committee voted 30-10 yesterday to endorse the measure, which was spurred by last year’s state Supreme Court decision giving same-sex couples the right to wed in Connecticut. The bill removes gender references in state marriage laws and transforms existing same-sex civil unions into legally recognized marriages as of October 2010. It also strips language from a 1991 state anti-discrimination law that says Connecticut does not condone gay marriage and will not set quotas for hiring gay workers or encourage teaching in school about same-sex lifestyles. Peter Wolfgang of the Family Institute of Connecticut is with us.

5:00 – Barack Obama and Notre Dame: Juris Doctor Honoris Causa?
In case you have been in a cloister of have been kidnapped by aliens for the last two week and have not heard yet, President Barack Obama has accepted an invitation from the University of Notre Dame—not only to address its graduates but also to have bestowed upon him an honorary doctorate of laws. Notre Dame is a Catholic university, which means that it affirms the truth of Catholic moral theology and all that it entails about liberty, community, and the dignity of the human person. According to Catholic moral theology, a regime whose laws sequester a group of human beings from its protections for reasons that are capricious and gravely immoral is a regime whose laws on this matter are not really laws at all. Dr. Francis Beckwith is a Visiting Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture and says that unless the university does not believe that the Church’s understanding of the moral law is true and knowable, it can no more in good conscience award an honorary doctorate of laws to a lawyer who rejects the humanity of the proper subjects of law than it could in good conscience award an honorary doctorate in science to a geocentric astronomer who rejects the deliverances of the discipline he claims to practice. He is with us.

5:30 – Notre Dame, Barak Obama, Bishop D’Arcy: The Canon Law Perspective
When addressing the scandal being caused at Notre Dame by the honoring of Barak Obama, the inevitable question is always asked – Why doesn’t the bishop do more? We talk to canon lawyer Michael Dunnigan about Notre Dame, Barak Obama, Bishop D’Arcy and Canon Law.