Tag Archives: Country: Australia

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.

LifeNews.com: The 3-genetic parent embryo is back in the news. This time it is Australia that wants to attempt to genetically engineer a human embryo to have 3 genetic parents.

Fox News: An Australian couple are seeking $10.6 million in damages from their IVF doctor because their son was born with a rare, genetic defect and will suffer a lifelong handicap.

News from The Associated Press: An Australian man who received 75 lashes in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of blasphemy has returned home.

Religion Clause: In 2007, the Australian government began offering schools up to $20,000 per year to fund chaplaincy services.

SMH.com.au: Backbencher Stephen Jones’s pledge, on Melbourne gay radio station Joy FM, follows accusations from gay marriage advocates that Labor was setting the bill up to fail.

TheAge.com.au: A 42-YEAR-OLD woman died days after attending a controversial abortion clinic in Croydon last week.

WSJ.com: A top Chinese law firm intends to join forces with one of Australia’s oldest to create what would be among the biggest legal practices in Asia. King & Wood, an 18-year-old firm with headquarters in Beijing, and Mallesons Stephen Jaques of Australia said Thursday that the planned firm would have more than 380 partners and 1,800 lawyers in five countries.

The Australian: Liberals agitating for a free vote on same-sex marriage have stepped up their campaign, with a key moderate arguing the party has never denied its MPs a conscience vote granted to their Labor rivals.

Catholic Culture: The apostolic administrator of an Australian diocese says that he is “absolutely appalled” that Sacred Heart Primary School in Broken Hill denied admission to a child of a lesbian couple.

Sydney Morning Herald: Access Ministries, a Victorian provider of chaplains and religious instructors, which has been accused of proselytising, plans to provide Christian workers to schools across the nation from next year under an enlarged chaplaincy program.

Australian: Labor MPs have warned that their party’s embrace of gay marriage in its platform will damage their re-election chances in suburban and regional Bible belts.

The Australian: THE head of the nation’s powerful Christian lobby has warned of social upheaval as a result of Labor’s approval of same-sex marriage.

The Australian: THE Labor Party’s national conference will today reject Julia Gillard’s position on marriage equality by amending its platform to support same-sex marriage.

News.com.au: FEDERAL Labor looks set to back gay marriage as the party’s national conference gets under way in Sydney.

News from The Associated Press: America’s strengthened military pact with Australia is a figment of “Cold War thinking” that will destabilize the Asia-Pacific region, China’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday, in Beijing’s strongest criticism yet of a move widely seen as intended to counter China’s rising assertiveness.

SMH.com.au: THE ALP’s Left faction is claiming the numbers to remove from the party’s policy platform a reference to the Marriage Act which defines the union as that between a man and a woman.

The Herald Sun carries this report: Preaching tolerance bayside. “ABOUT three years ago, Rob Buckingham, senior pastor of Melbourne’s vibrant Bayside Church, delivered a ground-breaking sermon that was to echo around the world.” In response to the report Bill Muehlenberg at Culture Watch has written this response, Are we selling out Christ.

The Christian Institute: Australian MPs in the governing party will be free to vote according to their “values and beliefs” on the issue of redefining marriage, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has confirmed.

The Australian (includes video): JULIA Gillard’s support for a conscience vote on same-sex marriage and the certainty of a Greens motion on the issue have put the Prime Minister on a collision course with religious groups over her promise to “absolutely” leave the Marriage Act unchanged in this term of parliament.

Sydney Morning Herald: The Left will push at conference not for a conscience vote but for a change of policy to endorse same-sex marriage. Its senior operatives said yesterday that Ms Gillard’s attempt to frame the outcome in advance would not stop this push.

News from The Associated Press: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she favors allowing a parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage – although she personally opposes changing the law.

Sydney Morning Herald: JULIA Gillard will back a conscience vote for Labor MPs on gay marriage, as the Age/Nielsen poll shows a growing majority of Australians favour legalising marriage equality

Herald Sun: Legislation to allow civil unions for same-sex couples will be introduced into parliament today by Deputy Premier Andrew Fraser.

LifeSiteNews.com: The leader of Australia’s opposition party, often referred to in the media as a social conservative, has said this week that should he be elected, his government would not consider changing the country’s abortion laws.

SMH.com.au: Serious and fatal diseases such as pancreatic cancer, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes may eventually be treated using stem cells from breast milk following a remarkable discovery at the University of Western Australia.

The Australian: SOUTH Australian Premier Mike Rann has demanded that same-sex marriage be made legal, challenging the Gillard government to change the commonwealth Marriage Act and describing anything less as a “halfway house”.

The Australian: THE push to recognise sharia law in Australia has entered an ambitious new phase that draws on the tactics that have handed success to Islamists in Britain.

Catholic Culture: The Catholic Church will cease witnessing legal marriages if the government insists on equal treatment for same-sex couples, an Australian archbishop has warned.

LifeSiteNews: “Self-control is one of the strongest predictors of differences between people in terms of their involvement in crime,” said Dr. Walter Forrest, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Australia’s Monash University, in a press release from Monash University.

SMH.com.au: More than 100 protesters are targeting a Melbourne function attended by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, condemning the government’s stance on same-sex marriage and asylum seekers.

News from The Associated Press: Federal Court Justice Mordy Bromberg ruled that fair-skinned Aborigines were likely to have been “offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations” included in columnist Andrew Bolt’s two articles published by the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne in 2009.

Telegraph: Australian women will be able to serve in any front line combat role within five years after a historic change in policy by the Government in Canberra on Tuesday.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Lawyers for an elderly man who has been ordered to stand trial for raping his then-wife almost 50 years ago have argued in the High Court that he cannot be tried for something that was not illegal then.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The Mildura and District Branch of the Australian Labor Party has thrown its support behind the push for same-sex marriage in Australia, saying they intend to push this agenda at the party’s National Conference in November. Secretary Ali Cupper said that despite the region being the safest federal conservative seat in the country, there was no reason to assume there would not be support for the idea.

SMH.com.au: In an unprecedented move, the Tasmanian House of Assembly, passed a motion (13-9) to give in-principle support to marriage equality. In doing so, the last state to decriminalise homosexuality, became the first, at least in part, to endorse full relationship equality for same-sex couples.

The West Australian: Religious non-believers have welcomed a WA State primary school’s decision to ban the Lord’s Prayer from its fortnightly assemblies because they say schools should reflect the nature of Australia’s secular society.

Herald Sun: THE Tasmanian Parliament is set to become the first in Australia to vote in favour of same-sex marriage after Premier Lara Giddings indicated she would support a Greens motion on the issue.

The Christian Institute: The terms BC and AD are being dropped from textbooks as part of Australia’s new politically correct national history curriculum.

News from The Associated Press: Australian passports will now have three gender options – male, female and indeterminate – under new guidelines to remove discrimination against transgender and intersex people, the government said Thursday.

Sky News: A six-year-old boy in the care of a Lesbian foster couple was dressed in girl’s clothing and had the pictures posted on Facebook.

Education News: Supposedly, while impartial and objective, the report displays an underlying distrust and hostility towards independent and Catholic schools and a return to the old class battles and sectarian divide of the past.

Patrick Parkinson at SMH.com.au: But we need to do more than this. We need to look afresh at the overwhelming evidence that children do best in families with two married parents. It is not the wedding ring that does it. What seems to make the difference is that process of clear decision and public commitment. The promise to commit for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health really matters when the ”worse” happens, when money is tight, and when sickness strikes. Of course it is not a guarantee, but the likelihood that a non-marital relationship with children will break down is many times higher than for marriages.

SMH.com.au: Spiralling rates of child abuse and neglect, of children being placed in foster care and of teenage mental health problems – including a dramatic rise in hospitalisation for self-harm – are rooted in the rise of one-parent families and de facto couples, violent or unstable relationships and divorce, the report says. Its author, Patrick Parkinson, a Sydney University law professor . . . | More information at Australian Christian Lobby | The Report is titled For Kids’ Sake

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Public polls have become so open to manipulation that they are virtually useless as an indicator of public opinion. The one that matters is the federal election where you can only vote once and Greg from Tallahassee won’t be there.

LifeNews.com: Australia may soon have the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug available nationwide after having it only in a very limited supply for the last few years. That’s despite the fact that the abortion drug has killed dozens of women and injured thousands more.

LifeSiteNews.com: A 23-week-gestation unborn baby is dead and a 40-year-old mother is in critical condition in a Melbourne hospital, following complications during a late-term abortion.

Perth Now: The homework given to 14 and 15-year-olds at Armadale Christian College, also also points them to bible quotes describing homosexuality as an “abomination”, and describes “coming out of the closet” as “open sinning”.

LifeNews.com: An Australian woman is in a hospital intensive care united following a failed abortion at a clinic run by the British-based Marie Stopes International abortion business.

ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): A survey of residents in Bundaberg and the Fraser Coast in southern Queensland has revealed almost 98 per cent of people are against same-sex marriage.

Star Online: Only 31 out of the 150 Members of the House of representatives have reported back to the Parliament on their consultations with constituents on same-sex marriage.

The Border Mail: To this point just over 80 per cent are indicating they are against legalising same-sex marriage.

North West Star: QUEENSLAND federal MPs have overwhelmingly voiced their opposition to same-sex marriage, buoying conservative Christian lobbyists ahead of today’s discussion of the issue in the House of Representatives.

ABC: Some Federal MPs spent today reporting back to Parliament about their constituents’ views on same sex marriage. Of the 30 MPs who took part in the debate, only five said that they would like same sex couples to be allowed to marry, and one other reported community support for a change to the Marriage Act . . .

The Australian: LABOR’S factional leaders are poised to strike a deal to declare the vexed issue of same-sex marriage a conscience vote in order to defuse a potential brawl on the floor of December’s national conference.

The Australian: MORE than 50 church leaders have directly appealed to all 226 federal MPs not to change the Marriage Act, kicking off a campaign to defeat moves by Labor and the Greens to allow same-sex marriage.

Brisbane Times: Katter’s Australian Party has signalled it will not accept candidates who support gay marriage or who shun “Christian values”.

The Canberra Times: Gay and lesbian teenagers could be called upon to star in an anti-homophobia video for ACT schools. Education Minister Andrew Barr has flagged the idea after the Victorian Safe Schools Coalition released a similar clip this year.

Brisbane Times: Queensland federal MPs have overwhelmingly voiced their opposition to same-sex marriage, buoying conservative Christian lobbyists ahead of tomorrow’s discussion of the issue in the House of Representatives.

The Australian has this report on marriage politics and polls down under.

AP: Muslim women would have to remove their veils and show their faces to police on request or risk going to prison under proposed new laws in Australia’s most populous state to be introduced to parliament next week

Catholic Culture: An Australian Catholic bishop has decried the decision of national census officials to count some homosexual couples as “married,” despite the fact that same-sex marriages are not legally recognized in Australia.

S.F. Chronicle: Citing the Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama administration denied immigration benefits to a married gay couple from San Francisco and ordered the expulsion of a man who is the primary caregiver to his AIDS-afflicted spouse.

AP: A senior government minister in Australia has announced that her lesbian partner is pregnant.

The West Australian: “I see no reason why State schools should ban it,” Archbishop Hickey said. “I think that if the majority of the children affirm some sort of Christian affiliation, then it’s perfectly legitimate to have that prayer said in government schools.”

The West Australian on Yahoo: Perth public primary school, which encourages children to recite the Lord’s Prayer at assemblies, has suspended the practice after some parents objected.

The Christian Institute: Sharia law has become a shadow legal system within Australia, endorsing polygamous and underage marriages, according to new research.

ABC (includes video): The debate about whether to legally support same sex marriage has divided the Labor Party, but are they really focusing on what matters most to Australian people?

Catholic Culture: An Australian lawmaker—picking up a suggestion that has been advanced by the Irish government—has suggested the priests should be required to report sexual abuse even if they learn about it in the confessional.

Religion Clause: In the Australian state of New South Wales, the cabinet of Premier Barry O’Farrell has approved for introduction into Parliament later this year a law that will allow police to require motorists or others to remove face coverings, such as a burqa or niqab, if police have reasonable ground to believe that a violation of law or breach of security may have occurred.

LifeSiteNews.com: In the bluntest possible terms, Cardinal Pell said in an open letter, “We might shoot a dying dog, but no human, no matter how old or sick, is just an animal. It is wrong to kill innocent human life.”

Star Online: South Australia has become the final state in Australia to recognise non-biological same-sex parents on birth certificates of children born to same-sex couples.

LifeSiteNews.com: n abortion facility in Melbourne is calling on the government to crack down on filming by pro-life advocates outside their facilities as part of a campaign to silence the pro-lifers’ highly-effective vigils.

Religion Clause: One of the changes the bill makes is to eliminate the requriement that in order for religious bodies and religious schools to hire based on religious belief or activity, sex, sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity, marital status, parental status or gender identity, they must show that conforming with the doctrines of the religion is an inherent requirement of the job.

Religion Clause Blog: The amendment would have permitted faith-based groups to refuse to hire workers on the basis of religion, sexuality, marital status or gender.