There are two interesting First Amendment developments worth brief comment. One involves the ongoing dispute in New York City about implementation of an Education Department ruling that would end the practice of allowing churches to hold religious worship services in public school buildings, rent-free, on Sundays, in which a new restraining order has been issued against the City. The other involves a preliminary injunction issued by a federal district court against a public school district's … <Read More>
Typically Provocate Concert by Sir Roger Norrington and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall
Sir Roger Norrington served as music director of the Orchestra of St. Luke's for a few years in the early 1990s, and makes regular return visits. Last night at Carnegie Hall, he led them in a concert of the "Holy Trinity" of the first Viennese School of composers: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Despite the relative familiarity of the concert, it was, as usual with Sir Roger, an occasion for surprise and discovery.
They began with … <Read More>
Religious Belief, Sexual Orientation Discrimination, and the First Amendment
By interesting coincidence, there were two new court decisions reported last week in which employees lost their jobs due to statements that they made concerning their religious beliefs about homosexuality, and lost subsequent claims for damages based on First Amendment claims. In Dixon v. University of Toledo, 2012 Westlaw 370577 (N.D. Ohio, Feb. 6, 2012), the district court rejected a university administrator's claim that she had been unconstitutionally discharged after she published an op-ed … <Read More>
A Culture Weekend in NYC – “Merrily We Roll Along” at City Center Encores, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, New York Polyphony at American Academy of Arts & Letters
Herewith a brief report on my very busy cultural weekend in New York City on February 11 & 12, 2012.
On Saturday afternoon, I attended New York City Center Encores' production of "Merrily We Roll Along," with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and original book by George Furth. As with every revival of this musical, which was unsuccessfully first produced in New York in 1981, tinkering has gone on. Since then Sondheim has written new … <Read More>
ASO at Carnegie Hall – “Orientalism in France”
Last night I attended a typically intriguing American Symphony Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall. Leon Botstein led the orchestra in a program of "French" music (counting Cesar Franck, Belgium-born, as French since he spent much of his career in Paris) inspired by oriental themes. There was music by Saint-Saens, Ravel, Delage, Franck and Bizet – the last a rare concert performance of the one-act opera, Djamileh, about the "love triangle" of an Egyptian lord, his … <Read More>
A Near Miss? Domestic Partnership Benefits in the Age of Marriage Equality
Prior to the passage of the Marriage Equality Act in New York State last June, many employers in the state had adopted policies of providing certain benefits to the same-sex partners of their LGBT employees. They generally did not provide such benefits to unmarried different-sex partners of employees, the logic being that if they wanted the benefits, they could get married, so they were not "similarly situated" to the LGBT employees. This logic started to … <Read More>
Will the Prop 8 Case (Perry v. Brown) Go Any Further?
A reader of my blog posting on Tuesday's 9th Circuit decision in Perry v. Brown, the California Proposition 8 case, asked me to clarify what I meant when I said there is no appeal "as of right" from this decision, so I've decided to post my ruminations about whether this case is going further.
This case is over unless either a majority of the judges on the full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals votes … <Read More>
9th Circuit Rules Proposition 8 Unconstitutional on Narrow Grounds
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, ruled by a vote of 2-1 on February 7, 2012, that the enactment of Proposition 8 by California voters on November 5, 2008, violated the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Perry v. Brown, 2012 Westlaw 372713. The panel majority adopted the narrowest available constitutional argument, thus avoiding having to address the question whether same-sex couples have … <Read More>
CQ/CX by Gabe McKinley at Atlantic Theater Company
Remember the Jason Blair scandal at the New York Times? About ten years ago, a young Times reporter was found to have been phoning in stories from his Brooklyn apartment which he devised by watching and reading the news and cribbing from articles in other newspapers. The scandal reverberated through the newspaper, leading to heads rolling at the top editorial levels and major restructuring of the editorial process. Now it's a play, by Gabe McKinley.… <Read More>
ECCO at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts
Tonight the Peoples' Symphony Concert series presented a program by the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO) at Washington Irving High School. It was a superb concert. This conductorless group of 18 young string virtuosi produces a rich, focused, well-balanced sound that proved ideal in that space, especially for the Beethoven Grosse fugue and Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings. I don't think either performance could possibly be improved upon.
They also played Arnold Schoenberg's Suite in G … <Read More>