From the Belfast Telegraph:
Unionists voted down a motion at Stormont's Assembly which called on the power-sharing ministerial Executive to legislate.
[...] DUP Finance Minister Sammy Wilson defended his party's veto and said colleagues would use it again to defeat "reckless" legislation.
Congrats to the brave DUP for standing up for families and the rights of children.
Even in some northern Europe countries, efforts to redefine marriage can't get out of committee:
The Finnish parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee on Wednesday voted narrowly to reject a bill to legalise equal marriage.
The bill, proposed by the National Coalition Party (NCP) minister Alexander Stubb proposed the bill, which would have made marriage gender-neutral, therefore allowing same-sex couples to marry.
It was rejected 9 votes to 8, and so it will not go before the full legislature for consideration.
The bill would have made regulations relating to marriage equal for all, irrespective of the gender of the partners. In Finland, gay and lesbian couples can currently register their partnerships, but do not automatically take each others’ surnames, or adopt children, reports YLE. (PinkNews)
An Italian archbishop has revealed that he was confined to his home, forced to remain inside his “besieged” residence, when homosexual activists staged a protest there earlier this month, and warned that gay-rights campaigners aim to prosecute all who oppose their agenda.
... Archbishop Crepaldi said that the protest was organized against him because of “the false and very grave accusation of being intolerant and racist.” He said that gay-rights activists are determined to gain approval for same-sex marriage, and toward that end will accuse all opponents of “homophobia.”
The archbishop warned that the goal of the demonstrators was to define “homophobia” as a crime, in order for “those who say publicly--as the Catholic Church has always done--that the real family is only that founded on marriage between a man and a woman, to be declared homophobic, intolerant, racist, and therefore, subject to criminal prosecution.”
The BBC reviews the decisions made in the cases of four Christians, three of whom lost their bids to defend their conscience rights:
Andrea Williams of the Christian Legal Centre says at one point: "... in the case of Lillian Ladele, [there was never] any refusal of a service to any homosexual couple. So I think here we have to really get a sense of perspective on what is happening, what have the English courts said? They've said this: your freedom to manifest your faith is your freedom to resign. Well of course that's no freedom at all."
Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti, who is running for re-election in February, has rejected same-sex marriage.
Interviewed by SkyTg 24, Monti explained: ‘I think that a family is only made of a man and a woman. Children should grow with a father and a mother.’
But he indicated he was in favor of giving same-sex partners some of the rights and responsibilities of married heterosexuals.
‘A parliament could find good solutions for civil partnerships or civil unions. But we can not call them “families”,’ he said.
Actually, event organizers peg the attendance at over 1,000,000:
World Congress of Families (WCF) hailed Sunday's march for traditional, natural marriage in Paris. WCF Managing Director Larry Jacobs commented: "Hundreds of thousands marched in Paris yesterday, in bitterly cold temperatures, to oppose plans by President Francois Hollande to force a bill legalizing so-called same-sex marriage through the parliament. Yesterday's march, supported by the French Catholic hierarchy, was an impassioned outpouring in defense of marriage, children, and the natural family. It demonstrates, once again, that the push for 'same-sex marriage' is driven by elites and rejected by the overwhelming majority of families worldwide."
...Jacobs concluded: "We congratulate the organizers of the Paris march and declare our solidarity with efforts to defend natural marriage in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and wherever such efforts are underway. Just as the campaign to undermine marriage . . . is international in scope, the defense of natural marriage must stretch across national boundaries to embrace families everywhere." (Breaking Christian News)
A defeat for the rights of a Christian, Lillian Ladele, who lives in Britain, and her case now sets a precedent for other European countries:
"...cases [heard by the European Court of Human Rights] involved nurse Shirley Chaplin, 57, whose employer also stopped her wearing necklaces with a cross, Gary McFarlane, 51, a marriage counsellor sacked after saying he might object to giving sex therapy advice to gay couples, and registrar Lillian Ladele who was disciplined after she refused to conduct same-sex civil partnership ceremonies."
... Ms Ladele was disciplined by Islington Council, in north London, after saying she did not want to conduct same-sex civil partnership ceremonies. Her lawyers said the service could have been performed by other employees who were prepared to carry them out.
ECHR judges said the council's action was legitimate as it was obliged to consider the rights of same-sex couples.
Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, which backed Ms Ladele's case, said: "What this case shows is that Christians with traditional beliefs about marriage are at risk of being left out in the cold." (BBC)
A socialist government official in Andalusia, Spain, called for a local Catholic bishop to be “muzzled” for arguing that men and women are both different and complementary.
Bishop Demetrio Fernandez of Cordoba should be silenced for leveling attacks against “real and effective equality between men and women,” charged Miguel Angel Vazquez, a member of the Socialist Party and spokesman for the Andalusian provincial government.
In a Jan. 4 post on his personal blog, Vazquez labeled Bishop Fernandez “a true representative of religious fanaticism” and said that the prelate provokes “controversies that are at odds with the individual and collective rights embodied in the constitution.”
Calling the bishop’s defense of marriage and the family “backwards,” Vazquez said that he would “rather burn in hell (if it exists) than renounce equality.”
In a recent pastoral letter, Bishop Fernandez critiqued sexual philosophies that hold the differences between men and women to be a social construct rather than a biological reality.
Spain's Catholic bishops urged political parties to unite against same-sex marriage, after it was confirmed as legal by the Constitutional Court.
"Spanish legislation on marriage is gravely unjust — it does not protect the parties' right to be recognized in law as husband and wife, nor the right of children and young people to be brought up as future husbands and wives, and to enjoy a father and mother in a stable family," the bishops' conference said after its Nov. 19-23 plenary in Madrid.
"We call again on politicians to take responsibility. Right reason demands everyone act according to conscience and beyond party discipline in this key area and that no one votes to endorse a law which so badly damages society's basic structures."
The statement follows the Nov. 6 court judgment rejecting legal challenges to the 2005 law.
The bishops said the country was "witnessing the destruction of marriage by legal means," adding that all politicians should uphold the common good by changing the law.
Matthew Schmitz writes at First Things about the French pro-marriage flash mobs:
"...Rather than assembling outside a church with rosaries and images of the Sacred Heart, these protestors met beneath the Grande Arche de la Défense with some Abba LP’s and a mime. They went, to borrow George Weigel’s phrasing, with the cube rather than the cathedral, and that is significant. The assertion made by such a choice is that marriage is not just a particular religious inheritance but rather something indispensable in every kind of society: Modernity has not outmoded marriage.
We can cheer this canniness while lamenting that faith has become less central to France’s national life. It also reflects a real truth, for opposition to the prime minister’s plans is coming not just from the traditional quarters of society. Another protest, scheduled for November 7, has been signed on to by several left-wing and LGBT organizations. American nightmares of French socialism and liberalism sometimes forget that it’s a country where there are organized socialists for lifeand gay men and women against gay marriage.
We've seen this happen time and time again -- gay marriage is introduced as inevitable, same-sex advocates are shocked to discover strong resistance to their plans, and traditional marriage ultimately wins:
France is delaying debate on a draft law authorizing gay marriage, as the government grapples with increasingly vocal opposition to the idea.
The legalization of same-sex marriages and adoption was one of the most contentious points in Socialist President Francois Hollande's election manifesto earlier this year.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault first named Oct. 31 as the date when government ministers would present the law, insisting there would be no backtracking.
But his office said Friday that this date has been pushed back to Nov. 7. And the debate in parliament is now expected to last until January.
On Thursday, France's Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim joined other religious leaders in opposing the plans, while more than 1,200 French mayors and their deputies have signed a petition protesting them. -- AP
Kalley Yanta of the Minnesota Marriage Minute explains:
"In 2004 Swedish pentecostal pastor Ake Green was sentenced to one month in jail for showing disrespect for homosexuals in a sermon he delivered in the pulpit from 2003 ... shifting to the Netherlands, ever since the Dutch passed registered partnerships in 1997 followed by formal same-sex marriage in 2000, their out-of-wedlock birth rate has been moving up at a striking clip."
This week Pope Benedict initiated a year of faith for Catholics around the world and linked the challenges facing marriage and faith:
"...The 85-year-old head of the Roman Catholic Church, who was an expert at the Council known as "Vatican II" and one of its most reformist voices, has made the new evangelism a centrepiece of his papacy since being elected in 2005.
...Benedict stressed that marriage and family must be at the centre of the new evangelism, as there was "an obvious link between the crisis of the faith and the crisis of marriage". -- AFP
Dan Rafter at the HRC blog takes issue with Maggie Gallagher quoting a study in the October issue of Journal of Marriage and Family which found that married opposite-sex couples in Britain are five times more stable than same-sex couples (cohabiting opposite-sex couples are twice as stable). The study also found:
"Compared to married couples, the dissolution rates for male and female same-sex cohabiters were seven and five times higher, respectively. Among cohabiters, the differences were smaller: The dissolution rate for male and female same-sex cohabiters was approximately double the rate for different-sex cohabiters."
Moreover, the author found no increase in stability between the 1958 and 1970 birth cohort.
These findings agree with the other literature I've seen about the relative stability and instability of same-sex vs. opposite-sex couples.
Rafter responds by calling Maggie's citation of the study an "insult to same-sex couples" which is aimed to "demonize" and "harm" them and implies a "insidious mission."
Rafter concludes this way (to make it easier to respond, I'm numbering his sentences):
[1] This is an insulting and flawed argument. [2] I am one of the many, many LGBT people in a stable, committed same-sex relationship, and my heterosexual parents are currently going through a divorce. [3] People put a great deal of time, commitment, and energy into forming meaningful relationships – regardless of whether they are same-sex or opposite-sex unions. [4] To sweepingly imply that one demographic is more prone to breakups – and to use that claim as a reason to deny an entire community of people basic rights such as marriage and the ability to start a family – is as offensive as it is inaccurate.
Let's take these in turn:
Sentence 1: Rafter's statement is not an argument, just an accusation.
Sentence 2: Rafter provides in evidence of his counter-position exactly 2 couples - him and his parents. This is anecdotal. I could just as easily say all the heterosexuals I know are stable and all the gay people I know are not, but this would not be an argument either.
Sentence 3: We can grant that many people put time and energy into forming relationships. But the question which the author of the Journal of Marriage and Family actually looked at is whether they are successful in doing so. The author argued that we one can observe significant differences between the various groups he studied. Rafter chooses to ignore this legitimate discussion.
Sentence 4: Gallagher (and the author of the journal article) didn't "sweepingly imply" anything. The author of the journal article conducted scientific research and provided evidence for his conclusions. If anyone is "sweepingly implying" it's clearly Rafter! Finally, Gallagher was very modest about what she actually concluded from the evidence. She explicitly said: "This of course cannot tell us how children fare on average when they are raised by stable same-sex couples, or whether gay marriage will significantly increase stability in same-sex couples." Does that sound like a "sweepingly implying" sentence? Hardly.
If Rafter wants to look at the evidence we do have of same-sex marital stability, we can look at it:
"Stockholm University’s study seems to confirm the American trend. In Norway, male same-sex marriages are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce than heterosexual marriages, and female same-sex marriages are an astonishing 167 percent more likely to be dissolved. In Sweden, the divorce risk for male-male partnerships is 50 percent higher than for heterosexual marriages, and the divorce risk for female partnerships is nearly double that for men."
If Rafter actually had conclusive proof for his positions he would state it. Instead he chose to attack Gallagher and the Journal of Marriage and Family. This does a disservice to reasonable debate, and it's notable considering how much time HRC spends accusing pro-marriage advocates of engaging in heated and empty rhetoric. Pot, meet kettle.
Rafter's posturing may please his readers at HRC, but fair-minded outside observers should take note of how both sides of this debate are actually conducting it.
Christians in Britain should leave their faith at home or accept that they might have to get another job, a Government lawyer has told the European Court of Human Rights.
The comment came as the Court heard the cases of four Christians, including that of registrar Lillian Ladele who was disciplined for her stance on civil partnerships. All four say the UK Government failed to protect their religious liberty.
Dinah Rose QC, representing Miss Ladele, told the Court that her client had been used as “an instrument” of social change by her former employer Islington Borough Council.
She warned the judges that the submission from the United Kingdom’s Government entails “permitting Islington to treat Miss Ladele as an instrument for the propagation of its public message.
“And we submit that to treat a person, an individual, as a means and not an aim in themselves, is fundamentally incompatible with individual human dignity and incompatible with convention rights.”
James Eadie QC, acting on behalf of the Government, argued that the rights of the four Christians were only protected in private, and that they could not “insist on being able to manifest their beliefs in any way they choose”.
He argued that a Christian “under difficulty” is not discriminated against if they have the choice of “resigning and moving to a different job”.
