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A year after a member of the Canadian Parliament proposed a bill that Christians say could censor Scripture, the mainstream media are finally catching up.

New Democratic Party MP Svend Robinson, sponsor of the hate crime bill, says there's no way a pastor would be prosecuted for preaching against homosexuality on the basis of the Bible.

"There's not an attorney general in the country anywhere at any level who would consent to the prosecution of an individual for quoting from the Bible," he told a House of Commons committee, according to Reuters. "An attorney general who tried something like that would be run out of town on a rail."

But just because the attorneys general wouldn't prosecute doesn't mean it wouldn't be illegal. Five months ago, a Saskatchewan court ruled under a different human rights law, that a pastor's quoting of Leviticus "exposes homosexuals to hatred."

For more on this story, check out ChristianWeek's archives. The Canadian newspaper's stories are a bit older than the Reuters piece, but no less current.

Chimpanzees are human, say Wayne State University scientists
After finding 99.4 percent correlation between "key genes" in humans and chimpanzees, scientists from the Wayne State University School of Medicine say it's time to start monkeying with taxonomy. Chimpanzees, they say, should be considered humans and placed in the Homo genus under the Hominid family. They're currently part of the Pongidae family, which include other apes.

But the researchers' argument seems to suggest that it's humans who should be moved, not chimps. "We humans appear as only slightly remodeled chimpanzee-like apes," says the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Anatomy professor Morris Goodman, one of the study's authors, admits that part of his motivation for the change is political advocacy. "The loss of the [wild] chimp and gorilla seems imminent," he says. "Moving chimps into the human genus might help us to realize our very great likeness, and therefore treasure more and treat humanely our closest relative."

Well, now that we've decided that fetuses aren't really human, there's some extra room in our definition anyway. Come on in!

1. Police: Poisoner did not act alone | Authorities say two or more people were involved in a plot to poison members of a New Sweden church last month, and they have narrowed their focus to six to 10 parishioners as possible suspects (Portland Press Herald)
   
   
2. Police eye suspects in church poisonings (Associated Press)
   
   
3. Amesbury woman is queried in arsenic case (The Boston Globe)
   
   
4. At least two people poisoned Maine church, say police (Reuters)
   
   
5. Ongoing investigation weighs heavily in New Sweden | Almost three weeks after the nation's worst case of mass arsenic poisoning, the stoic residents of tiny New Sweden remain mystified, anxious for answers about who committed the crime and why (Portland Press Herald)
   
   
6. Antidote from WWI aids New Sweden victims | Eighty-five years later, a drug created to counter gas attacks is being used to treat arsenic poisoning. (Portland Press Herald)

1. Finding grace on death row | My mother hated my father for giving her AIDS. I blamed them both, until a visit with a brutal murderer taught me to forgive (Diana Keough, Beliefnet)
   
   
2. Evangelism's place in Christianity | If Christianity is to thrive into the new millennium, it seems clear that it will do so only if it responds in the same way it has in previous periods of history, and that is by a deep and searching commitment to evangelism (Gregory Elder, Redlands Daily Facts, California)
   
   

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May (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47