Did you get your Manhattan Declaration app?

The Manhattan Declaration iPhone/iPad app was available in Apple’s iTunes store.

Until controversy erupted, and Apple removed it.

For those who grabbed one:

The Manhattan Declaration app by CSN Media allows you to read and sign a declaration created by a group of fundamentalist Christians in 2009 and network with a community of others opposed to gay rights and abortion.

Also:

The free app included the 4,700 word document, which users were asked to electronically sign, and a four-question survey. One question asks, “Do you support same-sex relationships?” Users who answer “yes” are told that they have replied incorrectly.

Over at the Manhattan Declaration blog, they’re calling on the petition’s signers to lobby Apple to restore the app to the ranks of those available for purchase.

Southern Baptist pastor told member to “keep his mouth shut”

Failing to report child abuse is a crime for which there is no justifiable church exemption. And as Christa Brown brought to our attention, the consequences of failure to report fell on the heads of a New Hampshire Southern Baptist pastor and two elders last week.

She wrote:

In New Hampshire, [at Valley Christian Church] Southern Baptist pastor Timothy Dillmuth and two church elders, Richard Eland and Robert Gagnon, were found guilty of failing to report child sex abuse. … According to the judge’s written ruling, pastor Dillmuth “had met with the parents of a child who had been molested by a member of the church, which he later confirmed after talking to the child.

“The information was shared with other members of the board of elders in September 2009,” and was discussed at some meetings of the church board.

A month later, when another member of the church urged the child’s parents to report the matter to authorities, pastor Dillmuth talked to the concerned church member and told him to “keep his mouth shut.”

They sought a religious exception to the law, the Union leader reported:

The three men, [District Court of Northern Carroll County Judge Pamela Albee] wrote, sought to have immunity from criminal liability in failing to report the case of suspected child abuse, “arguing that they acted in good faith in persuading the parents and the perpetrator to make report of abuse.” The men were arrested in early February by Conway police and charged that they had reason to suspect a girl had been sexually abused but did not report it as required by state law.

Suppression of the sort they sought punishes the victim, is shameful and deserves legal action.