Massachusetts

A Massachusetts pro-life group that insists taxpayers should have the right to opt out of paying for publicly-funded abortion has proposed a new legislation that would allow this to happen.

Massachusetts Citizens for Life proposed a legislation Tuesday that would allow taxpayers to choose to have state taxes which pays for family planning services for low-income women directed instead to a public information campaign for the Baby Safe Haven law. The Baby Safe Haven law allows parents to drop off unwanted newborns at police or fire stations and hospitals.

MCFL President Anne Fox praises the bill, stating that it would permit more state citizens to exercise their moral conscience. more >>

Two lesbian Episcopal priests kicked off the New Year by marrying in Massachusetts.

The Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, dean and president of Episcopal Divinity School, and Mally Lloyd, canon to the Ordinary, married on Saturday at St. Paul's Cathedral in Boston in front of nearly 400 guests. The Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, solemnized the marriage.

For orthodox Anglicans, the lesbian union was another act of defiance. more >>

A Massachusetts federal judge made an “erroneous decision” when he struck down the federal definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, said a conservative, pro-family group.

Judge Joseph Tauro ruled Thursday that the federal ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional because it interferes with a state’s right to define marriage.

But Liberty Counsel founder Mathew Staver, who is also dean of Liberty University School of Law, argues that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) does not prohibit states from defining marriage. DOMA states that for federal purposes, marriage is between one man and one woman. Therefore, federal benefits for spouses apply only to heterosexual marriages. more >>

School officials in Provincetown, Mass., recently adopted a policy to make condoms available to elementary and high school students beginning this fall.

The new policy requires school nurses to supply the contraceptive if a student asks for it.

With each free condom, students will receive counseling, including information on abstinence. But parents will not be informed and cannot ask the school not to provide condoms to their child. more >>

Scott Brown of Massachusetts may have taken away the Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate majority, but the Republican senator-elect isn’t your typical conservative.

“I am a fiscal conservative. And when it comes to issues affecting people's pockets, and pocketbooks, and wallets, I'll be with the Republicans if they are in fact pushing those initiatives," Brown said in an interview set to air Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

But there are issues on which he might break with his party – most notably, abortion. more >>

Episcopal clergy in eastern Massachusetts are now allowed to solemnize marriages for "all eligible couples," including gay and lesbian couples.

“It’s time for us to offer to gay and lesbian people the same sacrament of fidelity that we offer to the heterosexual world," Bishop M. Thomas Shaw told The Boston Globe.

Shaw's decision to permit priests to officiate at same-sex weddings went into effect on Sunday. It comes five years after Massachusetts became the first state to legalize marriage for same-sex couples. more >>