Category Archives: Global: Marriage and Family

Paul Kengor at Townhall: In short, this is an amazing turnabout. What’s going on? Why this sudden conversion by Castro and communist Cuba? Does this make sense? Yes, it does. The root of the answer, once again, is the Marxist/communist assault on marriage.

The Telegraph: A generation of youngsters may be developing a skewed view of sex from pornography, a court has heard, after a 12-year-old schoolboy raped and sexually assaulted a younger girl after copying a hardcore film he watched on the internet.

Irish Times: More children were born in 2009 than in any year since 1891, new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show.

The Christian Institute: “Dad” has been removed from a taxpayer-funded baby guide after a single complaint that same-sex couples were being excluded. The Scottish NHS guide, called Ready Steady Baby, now features the word “partner” instead of “Dad”.

LifeSiteNews: However, a representative of Google said at Google’s Big Tent event recently that the search giant doesn’t support Cameron’s idea, saying that the onus should fall on parents to monitor what their children are viewing.

C4m.org.uk (includes video): Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg will force his MPs to vote for redefining marriage, whether they like it or not. It puts him at odds with his coalition partner David Cameron, who has allowed Tory MPs – including government ministers – to vote according to their conscience.

Christian Institute: The Government plans to remove sex from the law of marriage, so that same-sex couples can get married.

Christian Institute: Some of the Conservative Party’s biggest financial backers may scale down their funding because of plans to redefine marriage.

Moscow Times: An unsanctioned gay pride parade descended into violence Sunday as religious activists arrived to break up the demonstration and police detained protesters.

Huffington Post: A measure allowing same-sex civil unions passed its first legislative step in Brazil’s Congress, where it has lingered for 16 years.

Christian Institute: David Cameron is to give Government ministers a free vote on plans to rewrite the definition of marriage following a wave of protest. The move is significant because, normally, ministers are expected to vote according to Government policy.

LifeSiteNews: The Colombian government has lost a battle in the country’s ultraliberal Constitutional Court to protect two Colombian children from adoption by an American homosexual activist.

Telegraph: Church of England bishops last night cleared the way for historic moves to allow women to become bishops – but with a last-minute olive branch to traditionalists.

LifeSiteNews: The Sixth World Congress of Families (WCF) Conference is set to take place at Madrid’s Palacio de Congresos, May 25-27, 2012, and is expected to be the largest nondenominational, international gathering of pro-family leaders, scholars, researchers, officials and activists at this venue since the inaugural conference took place in 1997.

Religion Clause Blog: The Tribune (Chandigarh, India) reports that both houses of India’s Parliament this week passed a long-pending amendment to the Anand Karaj Act 1909 that will now allow separate registration of Sikh marriages solemnized under the Anand Karaj ritual.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CASTROS_DAUGHTER_SAN_FRANCISCO_?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-05-23-07-01-50

Catholic Culture: Italian public opinion remains firmly opposed to same-sex marriage, a new survey shows.

UKPA on Google News: Legalising same-sex marriage would “legitimise and encourage” the existence of fatherless or motherless children, according to a report.

AP: The first woman to command a major Royal Navy warship is taking up her post.

Christian Institute: Activists seeking to rewrite the definition of marriage must stop trying to vilify those who oppose them, a gay writer has warned. “If they don’t snap out of it they’ll even lose the support of gay people like me,” said Max Wind-Cowie.

AP: Gay rights activists in Guyana are calling for the South American nation to repeal cross-dressing and sodomy laws.

Irish Central: Those backing the new legislation believe that the inclusion of the father’s name would help to reinforce a child’s right to know who their parents are.

Christian Institute: One of the country’s largest internet service providers is to ask all of its four million customers if they wish to block access to pornographic websites.

AP: President Joyce Banda declared Friday she wants to repeal Malawi’s laws against homosexual acts.

AP: Scores of Christian youths in the Philippines chanted “Stop the Lady Gaga concerts” at a rally Friday calling for the pop diva’s shows here to be canceled despite assurances from authorities that they won’t allow nudity and lewd acts.

J. Harrison Kinyanjui at Daily Nation: Fixated with Western aphorisms such as “democracy”, “human rights”, “tolerance”, and “openness”, an increasing number of African intellectuals under the aegis of “civil society” have gleefully joined a well-choreographed global campaign by Western governments to propagate homosexuality as part of the “human rights” rubric and population control agenda.

BBC: Hundreds of people in Burma have attended the country’s first public gay pride event.

Vancouver Sun: Christian activists led by Orthodox priests halted a rare attempt to stage a small gay pride march in ex-Soviet Georgia on Thursday, attacking participants and smashing their placards.

AFP: Albania on Thursday for the first time marked an international day against homophobia and transphobia, despite protests in the mostly Muslim country.

UN News Centre: Marking International Day against Homophobia, senior United Nations officials today drew attention to laws around the world which discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and called for equality and the repeal of such laws.

Christian Concern: A third Government Minister has now criticised the plans to introduce same-sex ‘marriage’, and has suggested that the Government should listen to what people are saying in response to the consultation on the issue.

Religion Clause Blog: It includes differential treatment based on a broad range of characteristics: race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, ideology, political opinion, religious beliefs, participation in organizations or lack thereof, sex, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, health and disabilities. In the past, opponents of the law, including Protestant churches and the Catholic Church, had been concerned that it could be used to legalize same-sex marriage.

Religion Clause Blog: According to a report on Friday by Pink News, Colombia’s Constitutional Court has ordered the country’s Institute of Social Security to award pension rights to the same-sex partner of a deceased Catholic priest.

Washington Post reports.

NY Times: Call it bad timing. On the very day President Barack Obama gave his endorsement to same-sex marriage, the British government appeared to defer a promise to legalize it.

Christian Institute: A petition against Government plans to redefine marriage set up by Coalition for Marriage (C4M) has now passed over half a million signatures.

AP: President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday that he supports gay marriage boosted the hopes of gay rights groups around the world that other leaders will follow his example.

AP: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has broken a long silence on gay marriage and left the door open for making it legal.

Washington Post: Adults who want sex-change surgery or hormone therapy in Argentina will be able to get it as part of their public or private health care plans under a gender rights law approved Wednesday.

Christian Newswire: The Holy See mission to the United Nations assembly in New York called upon UN Member States to respect the right of parents to homeschool their children in a statement before the United Nations two weeks ago.

Choudhury, Cyra Akila, Between Tradition and Progress: A Comparative Perspective on Polygamy in the United States and India (May 3, 2012). University of Colorado Law Review, Vol. 83, No. 4, 2012. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2050671

San Francisco Chronicle: As President Obama struggles with the politics of gay issues at home, his administration is drawing cheers from human rights groups for its commitment to gay rights around the globe.

Christian Concern: An Anglican Lay Reader with fifty years of experience has been suspended for backing the Coalition for Marriage campaign, of which Christian Concern is a core member. The campaign seeks to preserve the current legal definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.

Christian Institute: A poll has found 66 per cent of the public want a default block on online pornography, as Labour MPs join calls to clampdown on children being able to see explicit content.

Susan Yoshihara at C-FAM: Is family breakdown the cause or the cure for the global crisis of population decline? Two new articles in top foreign policy journals raise the question.

Christian Institute: Two thirds of his constituents want to keep marriage as it is – between one man and one woman. That number climbs to 75 per cent amongst the people who voted for him at the last general election.

In many countries around the world, government authorities and even society in general are openly hostile or pessimistic toward homeschooling.

Irish Examiner: Fine Gael TD Jerry Buttimer has said he has received a lot of positive support since he came out as a gay man at the weekend.

Christian Concern: A number of Tory MPs have admitted to withdrawing support for the Government’s plan to legalise same-sex marriage after expressing concerns that they were “haemorrhaging” votes over the controversial proposal.

Christian Institute: The Conservative Party could lose up to 30 Parliamentary seats and over 1.1 million votes if it bulldozes ahead with plans to redefine marriage, a new poll shows.

Telegraph: The Pope’s representative in Britain has urged Roman Catholic leaders to form a united front with their Muslim and Jewish counterparts to oppose gay marriage.

Christian Institute: Now is the time for “commonsense solutions” to tackle online pornography, an MP has said, as pressure mounts on internet service providers to act. Claire Perry made the comments in the wake of an inquiry into online child protection. It called for a government consultation on a default block on adult content.

Al Arabiya: Egypt’s National Council for Women (NCW) has appealed to the Islamist-dominated parliament not to approve two controversial laws on the minimum age of marriage and allowing a husband to have sex with his dead wife within six hours of her death according to a report in an Egyptian newspaper.

Religion Clause Blog: The most widely reported and inflammatory of the proposals (see reports in RT, London Mail), building on a fatwa issued last year by Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari, would allow husbands to have sex with their deceased wives up to six hours after the wife’s death.

Telegraph (4/8/2012): The age of the aspirational marriage with women looking for a man to keep them in style is over, according to a study by a left-leaning think tank.

Ruth Institute: Some of the most interesting debates on family policies are taking place in the European countries of the former Soviet bloc. In 2008, Lithuania passed legislation to define “family” as the married union of a man and a woman together with their children, adopted or biological. The point was key in terms of who gets the money the state earmarks to support families.

Daily Monitor: It is every child’s dream and wish to grow up in a family with two loving parents to care for them and to look up to. However, that has not been possible for many children, especially here in Africa where the tendency of polygamy is wide spread and many homes are composed of step mothers and fathers.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Yesterday marked day two of a week long conference on “Adolescents and Youth” held by the UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD). While the conference is supposed to address a wide range of topics related to population, development and youth, it has focused almost exclusively on promoting the sexual and reproductive rights of youth, comprehensive sexual education, and provoking fear among countries about the burgeoning youth population in underdeveloped regions like sub-Saharan Africa.

LifeSiteNews: The woman reportedly paid the ex-boyfriend $1400 for what she considered to be a sperm donation, a service that he rendered to her through sexual intercourse. The woman considered herself a single mom, but allowed the father of the child to visit his daughter occasionally.

Daily Mail: Insecure and desperate for male attention, Becky was just 15 when she began meeting strangers for sex via the internet. Sadly, her story is becoming all too common…

Christian Institute: Homosexuality is “less fixed” than many people may think, a prominent gay commentator at The Times has said. Matthew Parris also dismissed the suggestion that there are two types of men – one heterosexual and the other homosexual.

NY Times: Three years ago, Salma Khatun’s husband divorced her in a fit of rage after a quarrel, pronouncing what is known as the triple talaq in the presence of witnesses. The triple talaq is a formula of repudiation. The first two times it is pronounced, it can be revoked, but the third time it makes a divorce binding, according to some interpretations of Islamic law.

FoxNews: The Conservative Jewish seminary in Israel says it will allow gays and lesbians to become rabbis . . .

BBC: Thanet District Council has become the first local authority in Kent to officially support the government’s proposals for same-sex marriage.

Christian Today: Sweden, which in 2010 was recognised by the World Economic Forum as the most gender-equal country in the world, has stepped up its gender neutrality initiative by introducing a new word that refers to both boys and girls with the pronoun “hen”.

Christian Concern: The inquiry, formed of MPs and Peers, found that the high level of children accessing pornography was due to the lack of appropriate filters on home computers.

Christian Concern: Grassroots Conservatives have had enough of their party’s plans to rewrite the definition of marriage, the head of the oldest Tory think-tank has said. Ben Harris, Chairman of the Bow Group, said: “What we are seeing here is genuine fatigue among a party rank and file, disappointed both at the suggested policy itself, and the reasons behind it.

Interfax: Only 6% of respondents oppose the measure and most were citizens aged under 35 (9%), supporters of unregistered parties (15%) and respondents who have friends with a non-traditional sexual orientation (16%

Reuters: Saudi Arabia is edging closer to setting a minimum age for marriage, a Justice Ministry official was quoted as saying on Wednesday, following international criticism of cases of child brides.

BBC: The tradition of marrying a cousin is becoming more entrenched among British-born Pakistanis living in Bradford than it was a generation ago, writes Winifred Robinson.

Christian Institute: A petition opposing the redefinition of marriage has been presented to Scotland’s Deputy First Minister. Representatives from a Roman Catholic group handed the petition, which was signed by 1,000 people, to Nicola Sturgeon at her surgery.

Wales Online: The Archbishop of Wales has lent his support to gay marriage today, saying: “All life-long committed relationships deserved the welcome, pastoral care and support of the Church.”

UKPA on Google News: Muslim religious leaders are urging people in their community not to vote for any candidate who supports same-sex marriage in the upcoming council election.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The Venice Commission is currently reviewing the Hungarian cardinal law on the Protection of Families. This law has been strongly criticised, especially for defining family as “based on the marriage of a man and a woman,” and for protecting human life since conception. The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) submits today a Memorandum[1] to the Venice Commission demonstrating that this law respects the letter and the spirit of international treaties on family and follows the legitimate aim to set foundations for the recovery of the country through the protection of life and family.

JD Journal: A law that bans gays and ‘tom boys,’ lesbians, from attending schools and universities is being enforced by the Saudi Arabian government. The country has stated that they have to change their appearance and their behavior.