Tag Archives: Category: Global

AP: Australia’s highest court on Wednesday narrowly rejected the case of two Muslim activists who argued they had a constitutional free-speech right to send offensive letters to families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Religion Clause Blog: The court dismissed a petition filed on behalf of a 17-year old Muslim girl who claimed that the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act is not applicable to Muslims because Muslim Personal Law permits marriage of a girl after she has attained puberty.

Radio Free Europe: The Belarusian Justice Ministry has refused to legally register a homosexual rights organization in Minsk.

Gay Star News: ‘Most churches and sociologists agree that adult behaviour in all areas is shaped and influenced by what has happened in the family. ‘Spousal abuse, incest and rape, all these have irreversible negative effects on children and unfortunately and regrettably these are on the rise. ‘And I believe the root cause of some persons embracing the homosexual lifestyle’.

Jurist: The Constitutional Court of Hungary [official website, in Hungarian] on Tuesdaystruck down [judgment, PDF, in Hungarian, press release, in Hungarian] a law that outlines how churches are given official designation, finding that it was too political. Under the law, only Parliament could give churches official status.

Christianity Today: Escalating violence in northern Syria is forcing Christians to flee their homeland and take refuge in nearby regions of Armenia and Turkey.

Christian Institute: Politicians are too frightened to admit family breakdown is causing major damage, a senior family lawyer has said.

Middle East Forum: It is a truism that the de-Baathification process in Iraq was turned into virtual “de-Sunnification” in many respects and thus helped to fuel the Sunni Arab insurgency in the period 2003-2005. However, one area that stands out as a notable exception is the judiciary.

Front Page Magazine: A Christian pastor was recently slaughtered in the Muslim-majority African nation of Tanzania. While butchering Christian minorities is becoming increasingly common in that part of the Muslim world, the context for this latest slaughter is somewhat different than the usual forms of Christian persecution under Islam—such as allegations of “blaspheming” the name of Muslim prophet Muhammad.

LifeSiteNews: “Pick up the phone right now and ask a Conservative MP to stand up for our women and girls by voting against the Gender/Bathroom Bill C-279,” an organization to promote Christian principles in Canadian society is urgently asking concerned citizens.

National Post: Canada’s controversial 20-year-old legal definition of hatred is set to be updated or even overturned on Wednesday, as the Supreme Court of Canada rules in the case of William Whatcott, a born-again anti-gay pamphleteer who ran afoul of Saskatchewan’s Human Rights Code.

UK Supreme Court: Lord Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court, today welcomes the announcement of three appointments to the Court.

AP: A Dutch appeals court has upheld a (EURO)60 ($90) fine against an Orthodox Jew who refused to show police an identity card, citing religious reasons.

AP: Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that Nigeria must do more to alleviate the extreme poverty across the nation’s predominantly Muslim north in order to halt the wave of bombings, shootings and kidnappings by Islamic extremists there.

Scott Yenor at Public Discourse: Jonathan Last’s new book attributes population decline and the birth dearth to two trends that started in the Enlightenment era–first, an effort to limit death; second, an effort to control birth. Both trends are guided by a desire to control nature.

LifeSiteNews: News giant Thomson Reuters has waded into the arena of culture wars with an announcement on February 20 that it is throwing its support behind the same-sex “marriage” bill currently before the British Parliament.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Grégor Puppinck, a frequent author on this blog, has published a legal analysis on the website of the renowned European Journal of International Law, in which he concludes that laws allowing abortion on demand are in clear contradiction to the European Human Rights Convention, which in its Article 2 protects the Right to Life.

Christian Institute: A Tory chairman in David Cameron’s constituency has resigned because of the Prime Minister’s support for redefining marriage.

Christian Concern: The Conservative Party’s biggest single donor has decided to withdraw funding for its next general election campaign over the Government’s push for the introduction of same-sex ‘marriage’.

CNSNews: Imprisoned American pastor Saeed Abedini wrote of what he called “horrific” and “unbearable” conditions in the Iranian prison where he is held after being convicted in January for being a Christian.

Pakistan Today: Muslim students are set to take a British university to court after its decision to shut down their weekly on campus Friday prayer meeting over their refusal to allow staff members to view and pre-authorise the sermons before delivery.

Religion Clause Blog: Applying Germany’s new law enacted in December to confirm the legality of religious circumcisions performed with parental consent by specially trained members of the religious community, a court in the German city of Hof has dismissed charges that had been filed last year against a rabbi.

Religion Clause Blog: The Australian reported last week on the controversy over the scope of exemptions for religious organizations in proposed Australian civil rights legislation.

AP: In the age of instant information, globe-spanning viral videos and the World Wide Web, can a thoroughly wired country become a porn-free zone? Authorities in Iceland want to find out.

Catholic Culture: Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has staked out his opposition to convert the Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

Catholic Culture: Sudanese authorities have detained over 55 Christians in the past two weeks, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a group that monitors the persecution of Christians.

APS: Members of Edinburgh Life Society contributed to the defeat of a motion to renew their union’s existing policy to ‘Support a Woman’s Right to Choose and Affiliate to Abortion Rights’. This is a victory that will inspire pro-life student activists nationwide, a wonderful mark of the first-year anniversary for the Alliance of Pro-Life Students.

Business Week: “A man cannot enter into the state of marriage as defined with another man just as a woman cannot enter into the state of marriage with another woman,” the judge wrote. “The redress for these circumstances lies in the political and not the legal arena.” . . . Sex discrimination depends on a comparison between the treatment of the person of one sex with the treatment of the opposite sex, Jagot wrote in her ruling. “There cannot be discrimination by reason of the sex of a person because in all cases the treatment of the person of the opposite sex is the same,” she wrote.| Margan v President, Australian Human Rights Commission [2013] FCA 109

LifeSiteNews: A group of Quebec physicians have formed an alliance to convey their outrage over the pending legalization of euthanasia by the government.

Spiegel Online: The murder of opposition politician Chokri Belaïd was also an assault on Tunisia’s emerging democracy. It has exposed the chasm between Islamists and secularists, and threatens to plunge the nation at the forefront of the Arab Revolution into chaos.

AP: The Czech government signed deals with representatives of 16 religious groups on Friday to pay them billions of dollars in compensation for property that the country’s former Communist regime seized from them.

C-FAM: A new Guttmacher Institute report on Uganda recommends increased access to contraception and abortion as a way to improve women’s health and reduce unintended pregnancies. Yet the abortion advocacy group uses questionable data to push its priorities onto people who, it acknowledges, want children and reject abortion.

Catholic Culture: La Repubblica claimed that in a lengthy report on the leaks, the cardinals had alerted the Pontiff to the existence of factions within the Roman Curia, including a powerful faction “united by sexual orientation.” Some members of that bloc, the cardinals reportedly said, may be vulnerable to “external influence” because of their activities. The Italian newspaper said that the report shocked Pope Benedict and contributed to his decision to resign.

AFP on Google: Russia expressed “serious worry” Wednesday over the fate of a Russian boy adopted by an American woman who did not reveal that she is a lesbian, Moscow’s latest broadside in a growing war of words over adoption.

The Australian: RELIGIOUS organisations running schools, health and aged-care services face losing key exemptions to Labor’s new anti-discrimination laws under recommendations that could see them sued by people who disagree with church ethos.

The Christian Institute: A French branch of Subway has been forced to shut after it advertised a Valentine’s Day deal that did not include gay couples.

Christian Institute: A Conservative councillor in Henley has left the Party because of its push to redefine marriage, saying there is no mandate for the move.

LifeSiteNews: While pressure continues at the international level to prohibit psychotherapists from offering help to those wanting to overcome same-sex attraction, a Canadian therapist has told a British audience that such bans are “unethical.”

The Star Phoenix: A Saskatoon man, who filed a complaint with the Saskatchewan Human Rights (SHR) Commission over a Christian prayer by a city councillor at a City-sponsored dinner last April, says he’s been told his complaint will proceed.

Buzz Feed: Denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutionally discriminatory, Mexico’s Supreme Court announced in a sweeping ruling made public Monday. The ruling not only makes a strong statement about Mexican law’s treatment of equal protection guarantees, it also relies heavily on civil rights rulings handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Religion Clause Blog reports.

Gatestone Institute: Spain has acceded to the demands of the Islamist government in Morocco by agreeing that Moroccan children adopted by Spanish families must remain culturally and religiously Muslim.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: In December, the EU tried to qualify the word “family” with “various forms of the family exist” in a GA resolution on observing the international year of the family (2014). The proposal was shot down by the G77 (who sponsored the resolution), and the EU whined vociferously during the adoption of the resolution in the General Assembly.

Herald Sun: PROTESTERS clashed violently with police and guests tonight before a speech by controversial anti-Muslim Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

AP: Police questioned 30 people on Tuesday and searched the homes of six employees of a private fertility clinic who are suspected of illegally trafficking human eggs and selling them to Israeli couples with fertility problems.

The Guardian: Senior legal figures believe promotion of three male judges to highest court delayed because ministers want a woman to fill one of the vacancies

Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian: This belief in the unfettered legal and moral right of the US to use force anywhere in the world for any reason it wants is sustained only by this belief in objective US superiority, this myth of American exceptionalism. And the results are exactly what one would expect from an approach grounded in a belief system so patently irrational.

Vatican Today: More than one year after the Arab Spring, Christians in Egypt continue to suffer persecution. The latest attack happened Friday, when a mob of a few hundred people threw stones and set fire to St. Georgas Coptic Church in Sarsena. The village is located about 100 km southwest of Cairo.

Telegraph: Iceland could become the first Western democracy to attempt censorship of the internet under radical proposals to block online pornography.

The Supreme Court has issued a ruling in Chafin v. Chafin. SCOTUS Blog links to the opinion and provides more information here. Issue: Whether an appeal of a district court’s ruling on a Petition for Return of Children pursuant to the International Child Abduction Remedies Act and the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction becomes moot after the child at issue returns to his or her country of habitual residence . . .

Guardian: Officials reportedly seizing statues from shops in Tehran to stop the promotion of Buddhism

Religion Clause Blog: Britain’s Equality and Human Right Commission this month issued two publications designed to give guidance on accommodating religion and belief in the workplace, in light of last month’s judgments on the issue handed down by the European Court of Human Rights.

Religion Clause Blog: Both The Guardian and RT report that In Libya last week, four foreign nationals were arrested in Benghazi and charged with distributing Christian literature

The Christian Institute: An Aberdeen congregation and its minister have become the latest to leave the Church of Scotland over its ordination of homosexual clergy.

Telegraph: An historic majority of MPs voted to press forward with a bill legalising gay marriage on Wednesday, but more than half of Conservative MPs and a significant minority of Labour MPs voted against it.

Christian Concern: The Church of England’s most senior figure has warned that teachers and “people of faith” could face legal challenges if the government’s same-sex ‘marriage’ Bill is pushed through.

The Telegraph: Gay marriage proposals in Britain and France have shined a spotlight on the countries’ contrasting family law systems, says Monique Fauchon

LifeSiteNews: Canada’s Official Opposition leader is under fire Tuesday after saying traditional Christian beliefs on sexuality go “completely against” Canadian values, and even Canadian law.

LifeNews: This highlights the little known fact that abortion is still effectively illegal in Northern Ireland but there is a situation tantamount to abortion on demand in the rest of the UK where there were over 200,000 abortions last year, 98% on mental health grounds.

Washington Post: A Canadian Medical Association survey found that 16% of 2125 doctors who completed a survey would be willing to euthanize a patient, if legal, while 44% said that they would refuse requests for euthanasia. 26% of the doctors were unsure how they would respond to requests for euthanasia and 15% of the physicians did not respond.

Christian Institute: The words “mother” and “father” will be dropped from Scottish matrimonial law under First Minister Alex Salmond’s plans to redefine marriage.

Christian Concern: Over half of Conservative peers are expected to vote against the government’s same-sex ‘marriage’ Bill when it reaches the House of Lords, the Telegraph has reported.

Religion Clause Blog: In Israel, the ongoing struggle over Jewish women’s rights to egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem continues.  The New York Times and the Jerusalem Post report that earlier today ten women were detained by police after the women prayed there wearing the type of prayer shawls (tallitot) traditionally worn by men.

AP: A Ugandan government official says the country has deported a British producer who staged a gay-themed play because he “defied the directives” of Ugandan authorities.

AP: France’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved a sweeping bill to legalize gay marriage and allow same-sex couples to adopt children, handing a major legislative victory to President Francois Hollande’s Socialists on a divisive social issue.

Reuters: Pope Benedict said on Monday he will resign on Feb 28 because he no longer has the strength to fulfill the duties of his office, becoming the first pontiff since the Middle Ages to take such a step.

Christian Institute: The Government has refused to put measures in place that could catch illegal gender abortions – because it would cost too much and might upset mothers.

Christian Institute: Former Government minister Tim Loughton was sacked because of his opposition to redefining marriage, according to reports.

Middle East Forum: Categorized by theme, the rest of December’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity . . .

Polski Radio: Rev. Guy Liagre, Secretary-General of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences, said in Warsaw on Wednesday that Islam in Europe is becoming more fundamentalist and radical.

LifeSiteNews: A drama has been unfolding in Germany over the last month that has seen the leading conservative prelate in the country, Cologne’s Cardinal Joachim Meisner, seem to suggest that it is permissible in Catholic hospitals to administer the morning-after pill (MAP) to rape victims. The Bishops of Germany will be discussing the matter further at their next plenary meeting later this month.

Religion Clause Blog: According to yesterday’s London Daily Telegraph, in China, Christian “house church” activist Cao Nan has filed a lawsuit against the police in the city of Shenzhen to challenge the police decision to detain him for 12 days for meeting with other Christians to preach and sing hymns in Shenzhen’s Lizhi Park.

Independent: Conservative MPs have warned David Cameron that he had won a battle but not the war on gay marriage as they vowed to seek big changes to the Bill that will legalise it. Ministers are privately nervous the House of Lords will water down the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill and that a majority of Tory MPs might back key changes sought by peers, which Mr Cameron would then seek to overturn in the Commons

Turtle Bay and Beyond: As John Kerry replaces Hillary Clinton as US Secretary of State, the White House made clear that Hillary’s priority of women’s rights will carry on. What, some wonder, will happen with another top priority – a totalitarian insistence on LGBT rights, to the point of threatening aid to developing countries?

Christian Concern: Over half of Conservative MPs voted against the Government’s Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, causing embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who had to rely on the votes of Labour and the Liberal Democrats to see it pass.