Tag Archives: Global: Marriage and Family

TVNZ.co.nz: A petition opposing the legalisation of same sex marriage has drawn more than 70,000 signatures, says lobby group Family First.

Christian Institute: Rumours of a plot to oust David Cameron as Tory leader have emerged in the press, with gay marriage being seen as a key factor. According to The Sunday Times, backbench Tories say gay marriage may be “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

AP: The legislation being pushed by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church would make it illegal nationwide to provide minors with information that is defined as “propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism.”

C-FAM: Perhaps as many as a million people marched in Paris last Sunday and at French embassies around the world against proposed legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in France. One of the surprises in the French campaign for traditional marriage is that homosexuals have joined pro-family leaders and activists in the effort.

Telegraph: One of Britain’s most prominent evangelical Christian leaders has broken ranks on the issue of homosexuality describing the traditional Church teaching on he issue as dangerous and unchristian.

AP: Russia’s ombudsman for children’s rights sought on Thursday to reassure American would-be adoptive parents that they will be allowed to take their children back to the United States. But some Americans with court rulings in their favor say they’re still in legal limbo.

Telegraph: The archbishop wrote: “While it is true, certainly within Catholic social teaching, that governments are not required to make all immoral actions illegal, to many it is unhelpful, unnecessary and indeed profoundly unwise for political action to do quite the opposite, namely to attempt through the law, by equating homosexual unions with heterosexual marriage, to render moral what is in itself morally defective.”

LifeSiteNews: The Conference of the Bishops of France (CEF) is making a mistake in endorsing an improved “Pact of Civil Solidarity” for homosexuals as an alternative to instituting homosexual ‘marriage’, in contradiction to Catholic teaching, warns the French pro-family association Avenir de la Future (Future of the Culture).

Christian Institute: The Daily Mail has said rulings against two Christians in Europe yesterday add to warnings that Churches could be sued for refusing to conduct same-sex marriages if they’re made legal. The paper says in its editorial, “how depressingly predictable that the court found the rights of a sexual minority trumped those of Christians.

AP: Britain’s media watchdog has fined Playboy 100,000 pounds ($160,000) for failing to protect children from accessing two of its U.K.-based pornographic websites.

LifeSiteNews: A prominent Toronto psychiatrist has severely criticized the assumptions underlying what has been dubbed by critics as the Canadian federal government’s “bathroom bill,” that is, Bill C-279, a private member’s bill that would afford special protection to so-called “transgender” men and women.

AP: Elton John and David Furnish say they have become parents for a second time. The couple say they are “overwhelmed with happiness” at the birth of Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John.

Catholic Culture: In “Queering Schools, GSAs and the Law: Taking on God”–an excerpt from the book The Gay Agenda: Claiming Space, Identity & Justice–a law professor at the University of Manitoba calls for changes in “state-issued law and policy approaches” to ensure that Canadian schools, including Catholic schools, become “queered.”

Catholic Culture: More than 1,000 Catholic priests have signed an open letter warning that legal acceptance of same-sex marriage could prompt a revival of persecution against Catholics in Britain.

Reuters: The government now plans to include this issue in a family law bill due to be approved by the cabinet in March. Tugdual Derville, a co-leader of Sunday’s protest, said that could be another occasion for opposition pressure and maybe a protest.

Christian Institute: The shadow public health minister and feminist Diane Abbott admits feminism is partly to blame for family breakdown. The senior Labour figure told the Guardian that the women’s rights movement in the 1980s caused many to see the family as the place where women were kept down.

Bloomberg: Protests against French President Francois Hollande’s proposal to allow same-sex marriage drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in Paris. “There are many people who are worried about this law,” Laurent Wauquiez, a minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy, said today on Europe 1 radio. “Do we have to destroy the family and the place of children in it? We must pay attention to the place of children.” Wauquiez joined the demonstration.

Ryan T. Anderson at Public Discourse: Unlikely characters, including gay men, are leading the French people in protest against redefining marriage. A repeating refrain is “the rights of children trump the right to children.” Americans should follow their example of mobilizing across party lines.

Christian Concern: Girlguiding UK are consulting the public on whether the Girlguiding Promise should be changed to “make it more meaningful to girls and women.”

Washington Post: Italian Premier Mario Monti, who is being backed by the Vatican in his bid for re-election, says gay rights issues — including gay marriage —should be decided by Parliament, not his government if he wins.

Reuters: French Muslims have begun joining a mostly Catholic-led movement against same-sex marriage, widening opposition to the reform that the Socialist-led government is set to write into the law by June.

Alan Sears at Townhall: When a society’s laws recognizing marriage as the union of one man and one woman are changed to honor the unions of same-sex couples, it’s not just the law that changes—it’s also the society itself that changes. A top-down metamorphosis begins in which every aspect of public law changes to match the new definition of marriage.

William M. Briggs: The story informs us the birth mother is named Maude, while her live-in companion is called Delphine. The ex-fetus, miraculously made a human being at birth, is christened Sacha.

CBC.ca: French President François Hollande says he backs a controversial letter from the education minister to the Catholic Church that asks that same-sex marriage not be discussed in classrooms.

Guardian: Gay clergy in civil partnerships will be allowed to become bishops if they are sexually abstinent, according to new policy.

LifeSiteNews: A Catholic archbishop in Cameroon preached, “Marriage of persons of the same sex is a serious crime against humanity” in his homily at Christmas Day Mass.

Religion Clause Blog: YNet News and JTA have both reported recently on an unusual Dec. 21 ruling by a court in Antwerp, Belgium ordering an Orthodox Jewish school for girls affiliated with the Belz Hasidic movement to admit two boys to study there.

AP: Like a handful of other countries, including Germany and Denmark, Iceland has official rules about what a baby can be named.

Baptist Press: Russia’s ban on adoptions by American parents, considered a retaliatory response to U.S. sanctions against Russia for human rights abuses, will instead punish vulnerable orphans languishing in the foreign country, Christians at the forefront of the issue fear.

Peter Saunders at LifeSiteNews: The Coalition for Marriage has just released a new leaflet outlining ten case histories of people who have already been punished in various ways for standing for traditional marriage.

OnIslam.net: An Indian court has ruled that polygamy is not encouraged by the Noble Qur’an, but only allowed under certain circumstances, saying the practice does not fit modern democracies, The Indian Express reported Tuesday, January 1.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: Should American courts refuse to send the child back to the country of origin, because the judicial system in that country is biased against women and non-Muslims?

Independent: Visit your parents. That’s an order. China’s national legislature amended its law on the elderly yesterday to require that adult children visit their aged parents “often” – or risk being sued by them.

Catholic Culture: Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the chief foreign-affairs spokesman for the Moscow patriarchate, said that it would be unjust to send orphans abroad because “they won’t get a truly Christian upbringing.”

Religion Clause Blog: On Dec. 12, the government of Scotland announced a Consultation, i.e. published for public comment, a bill that would substantially amend Scotland’s law on marriage.  The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill would introduce same-sex marriage and the religious registration of civil partnerships.

AP: The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales has urged followers to write to their representatives in Parliament to oppose the government’s plans to allow gay marriage.

Washington Post: For Patrick Laplace, the mayor of this trim little town, the Socialist government’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage in France is a colossal mistake.

LGBT Weekly: Monday, a Brazilian state judge approved what the court described as the nation’s first gay marriage. Sao Paulo state Judge Fernando Henrique Pinto ruled two men could convert their civil union into a full marriage.

When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.

WorldNetDaily: An appeals court panel in Sweden has imposed the “death penalty” on a homeschooling family, granting the state full custody of their son, who famously was “state-napped” from a jetliner in 2009 as the family prepared to move to India. The appeals panel reversed a lower court ruling that granted Annie and Christer Johansson custody of their son, Domenic. But if the decision is not reversed again by the nation’ Supreme Court, the Johansson’s will lose their son, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has been working on the case with the Alliance Defending Freedom . . .

Telegraph: Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on a heated debate over gay marriage, criticising new concepts of the traditional family and warning that mankind itself was at stake.

The Independent: Louisa Hodkin, 24, had wanted to wed fellow Scientologist fiance Alessandro Calcioli at a chapel in the London base of the movement in central London

Christian Institute: A male teacher at a Church of England primary school in Lancashire is to return next year as a female because he is “transitioning to live as a woman”.

LifeSiteNews: A new study of Canadian women finds that pregnant women who are married suffer less partner abuse, substance abuse, and post-partum depression than women who are cohabitating or single. Dr. Marcelo Urquia, an epidemiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto . . .

Christian Concern: A report commissioned by the BBC has suggested that its children’s programmes should include more lesbian, homosexual and bisexual people.

AP: Russia’s parliament on Wednesday gave overwhelming preliminary approval to a measure banning Americans from adopting Russian children, a harsh retaliatory move against U.S. human rights legislation.

Ed News: Parents who home educate their children face wildly different levels of official support around the country, a committee of MPs has said, with some councils being helpful and co-operative while others treat home educators as likely problem families or borderline truants.

Telegraph: Muslim leaders have demanded the same legal exemptions as the Church of England in legislation to introduce gay marriages. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), with more than 500 affiliated mosques, charities and schools, said it was “appalled” by “utterly discriminatory” legislation on gay marriage set out by the Government.

Telegraph: David Cameron’s stance on same-sex marriage calls into question whether he can personally be trusted, the former leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has suggested.

The Christian Institute: Conservative backbencher Stewart Jackson said MPs are “puzzled” about why the Government is ploughing ahead with redefining marriage at this time.

Reuters: Britain’s anti-European Union party has scooped up support from voters traditionally loyal to Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives after the government announced plans to allow gay couples to marry, three polls showed on Sunday.

WorldNetDaily: A new Army manual that warns American soldiers in Afghanistan to avoid talking about certain topics has unwittingly acknowledged that Western taboos such as pedophilia are an inherent part of Islamic culture.

LifeSiteNews: Organizers of the first nationwide demonstration against same-sex “marriage” in Paris on January 13th say they hope to bring together over 350,000 people. If they succeed, it would make the event one of the most important rallies in the French capital since a giant march in favor of freedom of education in 1984 mobilized over a million people.

AP: Russia’s foreign minister on Tuesday strongly criticized a proposal in the country’s parliament that would ban Americans from adopting Russian children.

BBC: A public consultation found 35% of parents wanted an automatic bar while 15% wanted some content filtered, and an option to block other material.

Christian Institute: Almost 60 MPs and Peers have written to a national newspaper saying the Government has no mandate to redefine marriage. The parliamentarians point out that the plans were not included in any of the three main parties’ manifestos, or the coalition Government’s official Programme for Government.

Pink News: Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow plan to mount a legal challenge over the government’s decision to ban gay couples from marrying in the Church of England.

Vancouver Sun: Whatever the causes, the loss of church men and boys has caused a dramatic rise in the proportion of female members – and female clergy – in Canada’s liberal-to-moderate denominations. And it’s causing mixed feelings.

AP: Tens of thousands of people supporting the Socialist government’s plan to legalize same-sex marriage and adoptions in France have marched in a Paris demonstration.

Ed News: This year religious schools accounted for six out of 10 primaries where every pupil reached the expected standard for English and maths at the age of 11.

C-FAM: A UN committee of legal experts reprimanded the Russian Federation last month for allowing the Ryazan province of Russia to enforce a law that bans the promotion of homosexuality among minors as part of a national effort to protect children from early sexualization, and related adverse health consequences.

Christian Concern: She then laid out concerns about protecting religious freedom, and what “consideration has been given to the teaching of equal marriage in schools”.

Christian Concern: Homosexual rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has questioned the legality of the government’s plans to make it illegal for the Church of England and Church in Wales to perform same-sex ‘marriages’.

W. Bradford Wilcox at Family Scholars: So, even in Sweden, with one of the world’s strongest welfare states, children “seem to suffer” when marriage disappears.

AP: Bigamy is a criminal offense in China, while rules restrict most couples to just one child.

Reuters on Yahoo News: The number of Christians in England and Wales declined by 13 percent over the past decade, while the non-religious population grew from 15 to 25 percent, the most recent national census has revealed.

Christian Concern: A petition of over half a million signatures against Government plans to redefine marriage has been ignored – as Ministers plough ahead with the controversial measure. Coalition for Marriage (C4M) handed in the 500,000-strong petition to the Government in June amid guarantees from civil servants that all submissions would be treated equally.

Washington Post: Taboo-breaking Uruguay is poised to legalize gay marriage, with lawmakers debating Tuesday whether to create a single law governing marriage for heterosexuals and homosexuals. It also would let couples, gay or straight, decide whose surname goes first when they name their children.

LifeSiteNews: It is “inevitable that gay couples will seek the right to marry in Church and that Churches will refuse to permit them to do so,” said UKIP. Despite the government’s assurances, “there will, very soon after the introduction of gay civil marriage, be a challenge in first the domestic courts of England and Wales and then in the European Court of Human Rights alleging that the exclusion of gay people from the right to have a religious ceremony of marriage is unlawful discrimination against them on the grounds of their sexual orientation.”

LifeSiteNews: The Nigerian government has put the Western world on notice that if the cost of accepting aid is to allow same-sex couples to “marry,” that’s a price the country is unwilling to pay.

RT.com: “A certain control over homosexual behavior is necessary in a democratic society,” says a senior Russian MP as the State Duma prepares a bill on the nationwide ban of gay ‘propaganda’. The first parliamentary reading on the draft federal law prohibiting “homosexual propaganda” is scheduled for December 19.

Reuters: Britain outlined plans on Tuesday to allow gay marriage that have split Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives and raised fears among religious groups they will be forced to hold same-sex weddings.

BBC: The government is to publish on Tuesday details of how it intends to introduce same-sex marriage.

allAfrica.com: There are two things in the proposed marriage bill that have given me pause. The first is the legalisation of polygamous marriages and the second is the designation of cohabiting for more than six months as marriage.