Following an intense campaign by the pro-family Parents Television Council (PTC) to derail it, the controversial teen drama Skins has been canceled by the MTV network after only one season on the air. The program, based on a popular British TV show by the same name, never gained the ongoing popularity enjoyed by its counterpart in the UK, averaging only around one million viewers per week— down from the 3.26 Americans who had watched its premier episode. While MTV said in a statement that Skins “is a global television phenomenon that, unfortunately, didn’t connect with a U.S. audience as much as we had hoped,” other MTV shows with worse ratings continue to air, making it likely that Skins succumbed in large part because of PTC’s campaign aimed at parents, program sponsors, and even the U.S. Congress and Justice Department.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is currently testing the waters for a potential presidential run, has called on fellow Governors, as well as the American people, to join him on August 6 for a time of prayer and fasting for the nation. Among the Governors who have said they will attend the bipartisan event at Reliant Stadium in Houston, called The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis, are Sam Brownback of Kansas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. Additionally, Rick Scott of Florida, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, and Christine Gregoire of Washington are expected to declare August 6 a day of prayer in their own states.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has shot back a pointed response to an article by an evangelical Christian columnist who declared that evangelicals should not vote for Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon. In an open letter to Warren Cole Smith, associate publisher for WORLD magazine, the LDS church’s public affairs head Michael Otterson told Smith that he was “struggling just a tad with your logic that the very fact of being a Mormon disqualifies a person from high public office.” Such a revelation, Otterson said, “would be news to Senator Orrin Hatch, who has served his country and constituents for 34 years,” as well as to Senator Harry Reid, “the Senate Majority Leader — one of the most powerful positions in government.”

Ninety-two percent of Americans would answer “yes” to the question, “Do you believe in God?” according to a recent Gallup poll. That number is down just four points from the 96 percent of Americans who answered in the affirmative back in 1944, when Gallup first queried the nation on the issue.

High school students who self-identify as homosexual are more likely than non-homosexual students to smoke, drink alcohol, and participate in other “risky” behavior, according to a recent study from the federal Centers for Disease Control. As reported by the Associated Press, the CDC’s anonymous survey of some 156,000 U.S. teens found that youth who identified themselves as “gay” or “bisexual” were more prone to dozens of behaviors the CDC labeled risky, such as smoking, drinking and driving, attempting suicide, carrying guns, and using laxatives or throwing up to control their weight.

By a 98-0 vote the Tennessee House of Representatives has passed a resolution urging “all Tennessee counties to allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in their respective courthouses.” Sponsored by State Representative Todd Watson, H.R. 107 “marks a defiant stand against attempts in recent years to exclude references to Christianity from courthouses across the U.S.,” reported the Christian Post.

In response to a question from a Marine frustrated over the Congress’ decision to drop the 17-year “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Marines in Afghanistan on June 5 that they won’t be able to opt out of their enlistment to avoid serving with homosexuals military personnel.

NBC was forced to issue an apology during its coverage of the U.S. Open golf tournament on June 19th after the phrase “under God” was conspicuously omitted from the Pledge of Allegiance during an opening patriotic video segment.

The one-minute segment showed school children reciting the pledge interspersed with video of soldiers in a flag-raising ceremony. While the children could be heard repeating the words “one nation” in the pledge, before they continued the scene cut to soldiers saluting the flag. But when the children continued, the words “under God” and “indivisible” were omitted, with the kids going straight to “with liberty and justice for all.”

Seventy clergy with the United Methodist Church (UMC) in Minnesota have signed a statement saying that they would “offer the grace of the Church’s blessing” to same-sex couples, reported the United Methodist News Service.

Speaking during the UMC’s annual state denominational conference, the Rev. Bruce Robbins (left), pastor of the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis, said that clergy groups had been meeting “who want to challenge parts of the United Methodist polity with which we disagree — that which relates to the lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual community and Christian marriage.” Robbins said the issue had gained importance with the “possibility of a constitutional amendment in the state of Minnesota” that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman.

Research from Australia has found that use of the abortion drug RU-486 by women is far riskier than surgical abortion. According to the online Australian, a study of nearly 7,000 abortions performed in South Australia between 2009 and 2010 “found that 3.3 per cent of women who used mifepristone [RU-486] in the first trimester of pregnancy — when most elective terminations occur — later turned up at hospital emergency departments, against 2.2 per cent who had undergone surgery.”