A New York woman has announced that she is going to marry her biological father after two years of dating according to New York Magazine.
The 18 year old woman says that her father, who had left her life when she was a toddler, reconnected with her when she was 17 and still in high school.
“We didn’t know what was going on, but admitted that we had strong feelings for each other,” the woman told New York Magazine. “We discussed whether it was wrong and then we kissed. And then we made out, and then we made love for the first time. That was when I lost my virginity.”
“I didn’t regret it at all. I was happy for once in my life,” she stated. “We fell deeply in love.”
The couple plans to move from New York to New Jersey where adult incest is not illegal. They say that while the father’s side of the family knows about the incestuous relationship, the girl’s mother and her side of the family do not know about it. They plan to tell them after they move to New Jersey.
New Jersey enacted a new criminal code in 1979 that left the section planned for incest blank. Before that passage, incest was a crime with a maximum of 15 years in prison. Legal marriage between adult relatives is still illegal, so the “wedding” will have no legal standing.
“I just don’t understand why I’m judged for being happy. We are two adults who brought each other out of dark places. People need to research incest and GSA because they don’t get it and I don’t think they understand how often it happens,” the woman said to the magazine.
Several media watchdogs say the story could be a hoax because the woman is not identified by name.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says a public school district in New Jersey broke the law when it fired a substitute teacher who gave a middle school student a Bible.
The federal agency said that Walt Tutka was illegally fired in 2013 after he gave a Bible to a student who approached him privately and asked where “the first will be last and the last will be first” was written.
Tutke told Fox News the situation began in October 2012 when he held the door open for students rushing to be first for lunch. He told the last student in line “just remember, the first will be last and the last will be first.”
The student then approached Tutke several times asking where that phrase was written. Tutke looked it up and told the student where in the Bible it was located but the student wanted to find it for themselves.
“I thought that was going to be the end of it, but it wasn’t,” Tutka said. “He continued to speak with me until one day I happened to have my Bible with me right during lunch. It hit me when he stopped me and I said, ‘Look, here it is right here. Here you go.
“It was a gift,” Tutka added. “[He] said [he] didn’t have one; [he] wanted one.”
The EEOC said “there is reasonable cause to believe that respondent has discriminated against [the] charging party on the basis of religion and retaliation.”
A fireball was seen in the eastern sky by residents of Atlantic Coast states.
The American Meteor Society says that more than 330 reports have been recorded from people who saw a “huge, bright ball” streaking through the sky Monday night.
The fireball was seen from Maryland and Delaware through Montreal, Canada.
Some witnesses were able to capture video of the fireball through dashboard camera while they traveled on interstates. One report from New Jersey said the driver thought at first they were looking at fireworks because of the intensity of the flame.
One New Hampshire resident reported seeing flames as if the object landed near them but no object was found.
Christmas Eve became a little more joyful for over 12,000 residents and workers in the area of Liquid Church in New Jersey.
The pastors arranged for what they called a “Spiritual Flash Mob” after services on Christmas eve where members gave bags of cookies and vouchers for meals at local restaurants as a way to show love to their community.
“It’s exciting to see the enthusiasm to go out and share God’s love after each service,” said Liquid Church Pastor Tim Lucas. “And we just heard from some police officers in Times Square sharing that they just received a bag from a Liquid Church family. It made their day to know that they matter, especially on a day like today. Now that’s what we call putting our faith into action.”
“People who work on Christmas Eve, they’re the shepherds keeping us safe – police, firefighters, EMS, nurses and doctors. And there are plenty others who have no choice but to work today,” Lucas told the Christian Post. “So we are commissioning our families to go and spread good news before they do anything else today. We need to let the people they will meet today that they matter to God and to us.”
The church said it was a way for the members of the church to reflect in a way the herald of good news that brought the good news of Christ on Christmas eve.
A New Jersey town will spend $2.75 million dollars to purchase land for a mosque.
The money is a settlement in a lawsuit filed by Muslims who were prohibited from opening a mosque in another part of the community.
The settlement between Bridgewater, New Jersey and the Al Falah Center will total $7.75 million because in addition to the city buying the land, they will pay $5 million in damages and attorney’s costs.
In 2011, a planning board rejected a proposal for a former inn to be turned into a mosque citing a new ordinance that only allowed houses of worship to be located along major roadways because of traffic concerns.
The Muslim group filed a suit in front of an Obama appointed federal judge, Michael Shipp, who barred the city from enforcing their ordinance and ordered them to reconsider the application. The judge said that the community had “anti-Muslim prejudice.”
The city said they made the agreement to avoid using tax dollars to pay for legal costs.
“The preservation of our residential areas and the ability to zone uses appropriate for their locations is a critical right that the township fought to preserve,” Mayor Dan Hayes told reporters. “This settlement leaves our ordinance intact, ends our exposure to the almost unlimited costs of further litigation and allows all parties to move forward.”
A truck driver involved in a horrific crash in New Jersey is crediting God for saving his life.
“I don’t know that to think,” Mario Quiroz, 53, told CBS News. “I just think that God gave me another chance to live.”
Quiroz was driving a truck full of mulch on a highway in Union, New Jersey. James Pinaire, 24, drove his car into the path of a fuel tanker carrying over 9,000 gallons of gasoline. The tanker than slammed into Quiroz’s truck.
Pinaire was pronounced dead at the scene. The tanker driver is in critical condition at Robert Wood Johnson Community Hosptal.
Quiroz’s truck was engulfed in flames. His driver’s side window would only go halfway down but somehow he could squeeze through it.
And his only wound was a small cut.
“When I look at the video, I think, … my dad had an angel over him,” Quiroz’ daughter stated. “God gave him another chance to live. … He feels blessed.”
A New Jersey court heard arguments on Wednesday on a motion to dismiss a lawsuit by anti-Christianists to have “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.
The motion to dismiss was filed by the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty on behalf of a New Jersey high school student who is standing up to the anti-Christianists and their attempts to remove any reference to God from public schools.
“I’ve been reciting the pledge since preschool, and to me the phrase ‘one nation under God’ sums up the history and values that have made our country great,” Samantha Jones said. “I think it’s empowering to know that, no matter what happens, I have some rights the government can never take away. No student should be silenced just because some people disagree with timeless American values.”
The legal counsel from the Beckett Fund praised the judge for being ready for the case and said it would be hard to tell which way he would be ruling on the motion.
“The judge seemed focused on the case, he had prepared well, and he was familiar with the arguments of each of the parties,” Diana Verm, legal counsel with the Becket Fund, told The Christian Post. “He asked tough questions of each side, and it is difficult to predict the outcome, but we are optimistic that he will agree with every other court to decide this issue and uphold the pledge.”
The United States will force all flights from countries that have Ebola outbreaks to five airports to allow more through screening for the virus.
Anyone flying into the U.S. from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea will now have to travel through JFK in New York, Newark in New Jersey, Dulles in Washington, D.C., Atlanta or Chicago. The move goes into effect immediately according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“We are working closely with the airlines to implement these restrictions with minimal travel disruption,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement. “If not already handled by the airlines, the few impacted travelers should contact the airlines for rebooking, as needed.”
Johnson said that 94% of passengers from those areas reportedly already come through those airports, so it should have minimal impact on the worldwide airline flight schedules.
“We currently have in place measures to identify and screen anyone at all land, sea and air ports of entry into the United States who we have reason to believe has been present in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea in the preceding 21 days,” Johnson said.
A Washington-based travel group told Reuters that an average of 150 per day come into the U.S. from those countries.
A New Jersey teenager is standing up to a vehement anti-Christian organization that wants to strip “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.
Samantha Jones, a senior at Highland Regional High School in Blackwood, New Jersey, has filed an official response to the anti-Christian American Humanist Association and their attempts to remove the words from the pledge.
“If anyone wants to remain silent, that is their right. But it is not their right to silence me,” said Jones. “When I stand up, put my hand over my heart and say the Pledge of Allegiance, I am recognizing that my rights come from God, not from the government.”
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing the teen in the case.
The anti-Christianists are claiming that the existence of “under God” tells “atheist and humanist children” they are “second-class citizens.”
“the pledge is not a religious creed or a prayer. It is a statement of our nation’s political philosophy that rights come not from the state but from something higher — as our Declaration of Independence puts it, ‘Nature’s God,’” Kristina Arriaga of the Becket Fund said.
The parents of New Jersey college student who was gunned down by a man who claims to be a homegrown jihadist spoke out to Fox News about the death of their son and the conditions under which he died.
Alison and Michael Tevlin’s son Brendan was shot eight times while sitting in his Jeep at a red light in West Orange, New Jersey on June 25th. The gunman, Ali Muhammed Brown, causally walked up to the vehicle and just started shooting.
Brown claims that he shot and killed Tevlin because of the U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that he was a “jihadist” and that has led many to call it a case of domestic terror.
“I don’t think it makes that much of a difference at this time,” Allison Tevlin said on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” “I think he murdered Brendan and he murdered several others and he is an American. He did what he did. And like I said, he didn’t act alone, so I don’t know if I — we have all the information or enough information to make that kind of judgment; it’s not really for us to make that judgment.”
Brown reportedly killed three other men in the Seattle area earlier in the summer before the murder of Tevlin. He’s currently held in the Essex County Jail on $5 million bail. If extradited to Washington