Category Archives: Global: Marriage and Family

Christian Concern: A new poll has found that 70 per cent of the public oppose the Government’s plan to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, agreeing that marriage should remain a “life-long exclusive commitment between a man and a woman”.

Al Arabaya News: African and Arab states walked out in protest Wednesday during a U.N. Human Rights Council debate on gay rights, saying that they could not legitimize homosexuality.

Christian Institute: Archbishop Vincent Nichols – the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales – has written a letter to be read out in 2,500 churches this weekend.

USA Today reports: Marriage for Enrique Iglesias, Anna Kournikova?

Washington Post: Afghanistan’s president on Tuesday endorsed a “code of conduct” issued by an influential council of clerics that activists say represents a giant step backward for women’s rights in the country.

LifeSiteNews: Jill Recknell is mourning the loss of her grandson, despite the fact that he is alive and well. It’s just that, according to five-year-old Zach Avery and his parents, he’s not her grandson anymore. He’s her granddaughter

Telegraph: Britain’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has condemned gay marriage as an “aberration”, likening it to slavery and abortion.

AP: The European Union is moving closer to introducing mandatory quotas for the number of women on company boards after businesses failed to make sufficient progress in gender equality over the past year.

AP: Now, his transgender former nanny has given up her tight, flowery dresses, her brocade vest and her bras, and is living in fear on Indonesia’s streets.

Interfax: Over the past 16 years, the number of Russians who go to church, mosque, or synagogue increased from 57% to 71%.

One News Now: Michael Donnelly of America’s Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is asking home schoolers in the homeland to contact Swedish officials and urge them to stop persecuting parents who are attempting to home school their children.

Christian Institute: The former MP said if the Prime Minister “insists on pushing ahead” with the change then there should be a referendum on the issue.

LifeSiteNews: The New Brunswick Health Department has issued a warning that syphilis is spreading at an increasing rate among the province’s homosexuals and that strategies to prevent infection and reduce risk of transmission by infected individuals seem to be ineffective.

LifeSiteNews: A newly-minted Portuguese cardinal has sparked controversy at home and abroad by repeating the Catholic Church’s longstanding teaching encouraging women to be at home with their children.

Telegraph: Dr Rowan Williams said the issue of gay couples becoming married should be addressed through “culture rather than law”.

AP: The Indian government Tuesday clarified to the Supreme Court that it accepts a recent ruling legalizing gay sex in the country.

The Australian: THE Greens have accused Labor of “squibbing” on same-sex marriage reform and urged MP Stephen Jones to slow down the progress of his private member’s bill to amend the Marriage Act.

Jerusalem Post: Statistics bureau: Some 4,900 single Jewish women in Israel gave birth in 2010, nearly double the number who gave birth in 2000.

Boston.com: Meanwhile, Liberia’s former first lady, Senator Jewel Taylor, submitted a bill last week that would prohibit same-sex marriage and make homosexuality a first-degree felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Ed News: One in six 16 to 24-year-olds is now part of the unenviable NEET tribe – short for not in education, employment or training – according to data published by the Department for Education today.

LifeSiteNews: Homeschooling groups are sounding the alarm this week as the Alberta government prepares to pass a bill that they say threatens to mandate “diversity” education in the home.

Catholic Culture: Euthanasia has become a leading issue in the French presidential election: President Nicolas Sarkozy opposes its legalization, while François Hollande, a Socialist, supports it.

Sydney Morning Herald: PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has told three same-sex couples she believes laws allowing them to marry in Australia are inevitable.

AP: Prime Minister Julia Gillard, an opponent of same-sex marriage, hosted a dinner for two lesbian couples and a pair of gay men Tuesday after an Australian activist group won a charity auction.

Telegraph: David Cameron was accused of planning an “Orwellian” act of “cultural vandalism” by an alliance of bishops, Tory MPs and legal figures yesterday over his plans to allow homosexual couples to marry.

The Press Association: David Cameron is to face a mass petition opposing plans to launch a “hostile strike” on the traditional view of marriage, campaigners have said.

LifeSiteNews.com: After Friday morning’s unanimous Supreme Court ruling denying a Quebec family’s request to exempt their child from the province’s controversial ethics and religious culture program, the mother says she feels that her parental rights have been thwarted.

LifeSiteNews.com: Last week, the UK’s most powerful homosexualist lobby group, Stonewall, presented legislation to Parliament that proposes five steps to resolve the legal complexities involved in introducing same-sex “marriage.”

Telegraph: A little boy who decided he was a girl trapped in a boy’s body has become one of the youngest-ever children to have his decision backed by the NHS – aged just four.

Monreal Gazette: The federal government has tabled legislation to close a loophole that has called into question the legitimacy of thousands of gay marriages among foreigners who’ve come to Canada to wed.

Turtle Bay and Beyond – International Law, Policy, and Institutions: In a recent series of posts, we have shed some light on the strange fact that the European Commission is maintaining, at the expense of taxpayers, a fake “non-governmental organization” called ILGA-Europe, which, pretending to be a voice of civil society, seeks to promote the opinion that homosexual behaviour should be rewarded through legal privilege.

The Christian Institute: Married couples will not benefit from a tax break in next month’s budget, Treasury sources have revealed. Critics have expressed frustration at the revelation, with one Conservative MP calling on the Chancellor George Osborne to re-think.

LifeSiteNews.com: On Friday at 9:45, the high court will render its judgment in the case of S.L. et al. v. Commission scolare des Chênes et al., which involves a Catholic family who took the Quebec government to court after it refused to grant their child an exemption from the province’s controversial ethics and religious culture course (ERC).

LifeSiteNews.com: Families are a witness to “faith, courage and optimism” when they welcome many children even amid today’s social environment, said Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday.

Christian Concern: Chancellor George Osborne has decided to postpone the introduction of tax breaks for married couples, attracting criticism from Conservative backbenchers that he was “kowtowing” to the Liberal Democrats.

Daily Mail Online: Lesbian lovers Kirsty Cox and Anna Jones have both become mothers after DIY artificial insemination from the same sperm donor.

Christian Concern: A Government ‘tsar’ for children and young people has claimed that boys should be free to wear skirts in school because the application of a traditional school uniform code was a “discriminatory practice” which could cause “serious distress” to pupils who were “gender variant”.

The Christian Institute: Roughly £100 billion is spent each year dealing with problems relating to sexual promiscuity and relationship breakdown, according to research by the Jubilee Centre.

News from The Associated Press: A gay activist in Uganda says that the country’s ethics minister, accompanied by police, broke up a meeting of gay participants.

The Christian Institute: Tory MP, David Burrowes, is facing an ‘intolerant’ campaign to oust him from his seat because of his opposition to homosexual marriage.

News from The Associated Press: Two bills to allow gay marriages in Australia were introduced in Parliament on Monday but may fail because of political conflicts.

The Moscow Times: St. Petersburg lawmakers on Wednesday approved at the crucial second reading a bill introducing fines for advocating gay and lesbian relationships in front of children and promoting pedophilia.

Education News: The often-charged debate about the origin of life pitting the science community against doctrinal conservatives is not just a U.S. phenomenon but one the Muslim world is increasingly engaged in, a visiting professor said Thursday evening at Trinity University.

TheAge.com.au: An Australian gay couple have had their six-year-old son taken from them by child protection authorities in Los Angeles while the FBI and Queensland police investigate allegations that they are members of an international paedophile ring.

The Courier-Mail: THE national legislature will on Monday become the Pink Parliament with a total of four gay marriage bills being up for consideration.

CNN.com: Spain’s best-known judge will be suspended for 11 years from the bench after his conviction Thursday for improperly ordering wiretaps while investigating a financial corruption case, the nation’s Supreme Court ruled.

Friday Fax: C-Fam: Last week UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told African nations to repeal criminal laws that sanction homosexual conduct and to stop discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity.

JURIST: The Parliament of Uganda [official website] on Tuesday reintroduced legislation that would criminalize certain homosexual activities.

Catholic Culture: The nation’s constitutional court has not yet ruled on an appeal that claims the 2005 law is unconstitutional.

The Guardian: General Synod puts off split over ordination of female prelates by delaying legislation for fine tuning until final approval in July.

The Christian Institute: Nearly two thirds, 60 per cent, of the public think that the curbs should be scrapped.

Christian Concern: Andrea Minichiello Williams spoke to the General Synod today (6 Feb), challenging the Church of England to take a stand for traditional marriage before it is too late.

Asia Times Online: Now we know that computers don’t help children learn and that drugs don’t help them concentrate, because the establishment mandarins who sold us the computers and drugs have conceded failure. In the January 29 New York Times, [1] a prominent professor of child development shows that attention-deficit-disorder drugs only harm the three million children who take them. One out of 10 American children have been diagnosed with so-called Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and most of them have been medicated. [2] Some months ago, the Times reported that test scores lagged in school districts that invested massively in digital education.

Christian Concern: A culture of sexual license and promiscuity in the UK is costing the taxpayer approximately £100 billion per year, according to findings by the Jubilee Centre. In a paper entitled “Free sex: Who pays? Moral hazard and sexual ethics” . . .

BBC News: Labour’s Johann Lamont, the Tories’ Ruth Davidson, the Lib Dems’ Willie Rennie and Scottish Green Patrick Harvie are united on the issue.

Christian Concern: Girls as young as nine are being forced to marry in mosques in Islington, according to the findings of a leading women’s rights group.

News from The Associated Press: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says African nations should stop treating gays as “second-class citizens, or even criminals”.

CBC News (includes video): A Montreal couple and their son were convicted Sunday of first-degree murder in the deaths of four family members in a case the judge called “despicable,” “heinous” and stemming from “a completely twisted concept of honour.”

The Guaridan The Observer: Viola Caon left her Italian home to find work. Now she returns to see how her former classmates are faring… and in the week that shocking figures showed how badly Europe’s youth is being hit by the unemployment crisis, we also talk to hard-hit twentysomethings in Athens and Madrid . . .

Turtle Bay and Beyond: A recent oped advocating for US ratification prompted ParentalRights.org president Michael Farris to warn of renewed calls for President Obama to move to ratify before November.

The Christian Institute: The Government is set to stop men who are married to multiple women from claiming extra benefits payments. Last year it emerged that the number of polygamous relationships among British Muslims is increasing.

LifeSiteNews.com: The petition was begun in response to a new initiative by French socialists, who are promising voters to institute homosexual “marriage” if they are chosen in the upcoming presidential elections.

The Christian Institute: David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham in London, backed the right of parents to smack their children and criticised those who claim it is abuse, commenting: “There’s a big difference between abuse and parenting.”

The Christian Institute: A pagan woman who lives with her lover and his wife, but denies it is a polygamous arrangement, has won a ‘right to family life’ immigration case.

CBC News: The HPV vaccine for young males has been endorsed by a federal panel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean provinces and territories will pick up the tab.

Turtle Bay and Beyond – International Law, Policy, and Institutions: For years and years, the European Commission has been funding the activities of ILGA-Europe, a homosexualist lobby that, under the pretext of “fighting discrimination”, actually promotes a radical agenda and notoriously maintains close links to groups promoting pedophilia. Although this wasn’t exactly kept as a state secret, it somehow has escaped the attention of the wider public.

Education News: One in five children from broken homes lose one parent from their lives for good, official figures reveal.

Telegraph: Ministers are to bring to an end an “absurd” benefits regime which has seen husbands with multiple wives able to claim extra welfare payments.

The Christian Institute: The number of weddings taking place in the Church of England has seen its biggest annual increase for a decade.

The Christian Institute: Parliament’s biggest bar is “virtually a gay bar now”, a homosexual Labour MP has said.

Religion Clause Blog: Now according to yesterday’s Globe and Mail, Vancouver lawyer Peter Wilson has been named new special prosecutor by the British Columbia Criminal Justice Branch to look into sexual offenses against minors in the FLDS town of Bountiful. However his mandate does not include looking into polygamy charges.

LifeSiteNews.com: As France moves towards the next presidential election a little more than three months away, a new poll indicates that a strong majority of French citizens now support a key element in the anti-family agenda of the French left: the creation of homosexual “marriage.”

BellinghamHerald.com: From U.N. chambers to the halls of the State Department, global pressure on countries to protect the rights of homosexuals and transgender people is rising.

Boston.com: Cuba’s first daughter says island lawmakers will consider legalizing same-sex civil unions this year.

Radio Prague (includes audio): A woman’s right to give birth at home is back in the spotlight in the Czech Republic, as a group of pregnant women intend to file a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The Czech state makes planned home births virtually impossible; there are midwives qualified to deliver babies at home, but they lack official registration and insurance companies won’t cover them.