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TORONTO, Ontario, June 1, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The chief commissioner of the controversial Ontario Human Rights Commission opened the door to the possibility last month that the McGuinty government’s ‘gay rights’ bill could be applied to the province’s private schools.

In her May 15th submission in support of Bill 13, Barbara Hall claimed that Ontario’s human rights code is the province’s “highest law,” and argued that “all schools-including public, Catholic and private-have a legal duty to provide students with an educational environment free from harassment and other forms of discrimination.”

The government’s “anti-bullying bill”, which could be voted on any day now, has faced intense opposition from parents and pro-family advocates who believe its hyper-focus on homosexual-related bullying represents a threat to parental rights and religious freedom.

The bill mandates homosexual clubs - and now “gay-straight alliances” - for all publicly-funded schools, including Catholic schools, though Hall’s comments have raised concerns that the OHRC may apply it to private schools as well.

According to Brian Lilley, the host of Sun News Network’s Byline, Hall’s remark “means that even if Catholic schools stop taking money over the imposition of gay-straight alliances they will still have to allow them in Barbara Hall’s world.”

The McGuinty government fanned the flames of controversy over the bill last week when they announced that they were amending it to require schools to allow “gay-straight alliances,” which have been used by homosexual activists in Canada and the U.S. to infiltrate schools.

The issue has become a flash point for Ontario’s Catholic bishops, who had said they would allow clubs focusing on homosexuality, but in accord with Catholic teaching and without the GSA name.

In a statement Monday after the government announced the GSA amendment, Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto suggested the amendment “overrides the deeply held beliefs” of the Church and “intrudes on its freedom to act in a way that is in accord with its principles of conscience.”

Lilley argues that Hall’s openness to targeting private schools under the human rights code is more evidence for the elimination Canada’s human rights commissions, which have in many cases been used to target conservatives and Christians.

“Barbara Hall does not make the laws in Ontario despite what she may think,” he writes. “She is a mere public servant, there to do the bidding of the legislature, not direct. This is another reason that Hall has to go and her Commission be scrapped.”

See related stories:
* Ontario party: Human rights commission moving to ‘take over’ education, could threaten homeschooling
* Ontario Human Rights Commission Proudly Promoting the Gay Agenda

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND, June 1, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - The national board of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which includes the leadership of approximately 80 percent of the Catholic nuns in the United States, has issued a statement criticizing the Vatican for its recent doctrinal assessment of the organization, which denounces the dissenting, anti-family orientations expressed at LCWR meetings.

The statement, which was published on the organization’s website following a special meeting of the board, notes that “board members raised concerns about both the content of the doctrinal assessment and the process by which it was prepared.”

“Board members concluded that the assessment was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency,” the press release continues. “Moreover, the sanctions imposed were disproportionate to the concerns raised and could compromise their ability to fulfill their mission.”

“The report has furthermore caused scandal and pain throughout the church community, and created greater polarization,” the sisters write.

The nuns say that they will meet with Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), on June 12 to “raise and discuss the board’s concerns.” They will then “determine a response to the CDF report” at LCWR’s August assembly meeting.

The sisters claim to have received “thousands of messages of support,” and state that the “matters of faith and justice that capture the hearts of Catholic sisters are clearly shared by many people around the world.” They add that they wish the controversy will be addressed “by the entire Church community in an atmosphere of openness, honesty, and integrity.”

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The statement comes in response to a report issued in April by the CDF that acknowledges certain charitable works undertaken by American nuns, but notes that many are affected by a crisis of faith that has led to a loss of a “sense of the Church,” and to ignore or even contradict certain Catholic teachings on human life and family.

The report states that “leadership teams” from various congregations, including officers of the LCWR, have sent letters to Rome to protest Vatican approaches to ministering to homosexuals and addressing the issue of “women’s ordination,” a concept that is contrary to Catholic doctrine. 

“The terms of the letters suggest that these sisters collectively take a position not in agreement with the Church’s teaching on human sexuality,” the CDF writes. “It is a serious matter when these Leadership Teams are not providing effective leadership and example to their communities, but place themselves outside the Church’s teaching.”

The CDF notes that the LCWR is “is silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States.”

“Further, issues of crucial importance to the life of Church and society, such as the Church’s Biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes Church teaching,” the CDF finds.

The report also states that LCWR’s meetings have featured speakers, often nuns themselves, who dissent from Catholic doctrine, even claiming that they have gone “beyond” Jesus Christ and the Church. The document characterizes such statements as “a cry for help,” and suggests they are a “snapshot of religious life today.” It decrees the appointment of an Archbishop Delegate and two assistant bishops to review the statutes and activities of the LCWR, and to ensure the re-education of the membership in accordance with Catholic doctrine.

TORONTO, ONTARIO, June 1, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The father of homosexual suicide victim Jamie Hubley, whose death last fall spurred the McGuinty government’s push for Bill 13, testified to Ontario’s Legislative Assembly that Dalton McGuinty’s proposed anti-bullying legislation would not only have failed to protect his son, but by giving him a label it would have made him more of a target for discrimination.

“From what I read of studies of bullies, they look for what makes you separate from others. They look for something that—you’re different. It could be the clothes you wear; it could be anything,” said Jamie’s father Allan Hubley before the Standing Committee on Social Policy on May 22.

He argued that legislating that each club be given a specific name such as Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) would be to deal with “the issue of bullying in a way that is sure to fail.”

“Jamie was the only openly gay person in his school of over 1,000 students,” the surviving father said. “A GSA with one member, or even a few, would only have made him more of a target.”

“I have to ask you,” he continued, “How many people publicly announce their sexuality before they are out of school and established in their lives? Why, then, would we be considering forcing them to do so at an age when they already have so many pressures to manage?”

Hubley, who is also a city councilor representing Kanata South, would like to see a bill that protects every child from bullying, not just a select group.

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“I respectfully request that no groups be given special status by being named. To do so will only suggest certain children are more important than others, and I do not support that notion,” he said. “I am here today to ask you to protect every child equally.”

One example of how the legislative approach to bullying has seemingly failed comes from the United States. Between 2000 and 2006, 48 pieces of legislation on bullying were passed, with an additional 78 pieces of legislation passed in the next four years, according to Peter Jon Mitchell, senior researcher at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada.

In his research, Mitchell pointed out how the “proliferation of legislation” against bullies has fueled a growing debate in the U.S. about the effectiveness of “outlawing bullying.”

“Over one hundred state level laws have been enacted in the United States in recent years, however, it appears that bullying remains a serious and unresolved problem,” he said.

Mitchell said that the law may have a role in curbing bullying by “providing clear definitions of bullying behavior, mandating the need for policies, assigning responsibility and empowering educators with disciplinary tools,” but he added that it is “community-level involvement that will best stop bullying.” Since bullying is a “relational problem,” it “requires frontline intervention from parents, students, and educators.”

Hubley, who would be in agreement with Mitchell’s assessment, told the committee that “it’s with the whole community coming together that we can have hope for a better day, and only with our youth being part of the solution.”

Hubley suggested that an effective strategy for combating bullying would consist in combining two anti-bullying bills that are currently being proposed, the government’s Bill 13 and the Conservative’s Bill 14 (recently renamed Bill 80). He said anti-bullying legislation would be stronger if the contentious elements of Bill 13 that gave special status to one group over another were excluded, while including the reporting and accountability mechanisms outlined in Bill 14.

“By modifying and combining the two bills, we gain a much stronger piece of legislation, and by all parties supporting the joint effort, you have the opportunity to send a clear message to all kids that adults can learn to play nice too,” he said.

However, Ontario’s Liberal government has thus far blocked the Progressive Conservative party’s attempt to make substantive changes on the proposed piece of legislation, saying it is “watered-down, weak and ineffective.”

“Sadly, the Liberal government prefers a Liberal bill over a bill that is best for students,” said PC Education Critic, MPP Lisa MacLeod, adding that the Liberals are putting “partisanship ahead of students – and they should be ashamed.”

More than 500 parents and pro-family activists protested the controversial Bill 13 yesterday in Toronto’s Dundas Square, saying that the bill would force homosexual activist groups on the province’s schools, including its Catholic schools.

A vote on Bill 13 is expected at any time.

BEED, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA, June 1, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - Officials in the Indian state with the most “missing” girls compared to boys, have arrested an abortionist who dodged restrictions on sex-selection abortions by feeding the evidence - aborted baby girls - to dogs.

Abortionist Sudam Munde and his wife were arrested last Friday for the abortion-related death of a woman who was six months pregnant with an unwanted daughter, according to India Today.

Reports this week indicated that officials were in the process of revoking the medical licenses of both Munde and his wife in connection with the abortion death.

A member of the anti-gender bias charity Lek Ladki Abhiyan revealed to media last week how one abortionist in the town of Beed in Maharashtra kept his own dogs as a means of disposing the unwanted girls.

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Munde was arrested two years ago after Varsha Deshpande conducted a sting operation in which the abortionist openly discussed his abortion of baby girls and how he fed them to his five dogs. Deshpande said that someone “even saw a fetus being fed to the animals.”

Munde was arrested in light of the evidence, she said, but soon released because the abortionist had political clout in the town due in part to his wealth.

Suresh Shetty, the public health minister for Maharashtra, said last week that Munde has previously gotten away with bullying and threatening public officials attempting to crack down on his illegal practice. “Our civil surgeon who had gone to investigate Munde’s hospital was locked up in a room by some goons. They even abused her and asked her to go away,” he said.

Meanwhile, the same surgeon has been facing threats for more than a year, he said, and his department has “asked the home department to provide security for our staff.”

In the state of Maharashtra, there are 801 girls born for every 1,000 boys, the worst sex imbalance in all of India.

Sex-selective abortion became an issue in the United States this week, as undercover sting operations in Texas and New York exposed that Planned Parenthood officials were willing to perform the procedure, and a bill to ban the practice failed to pass a Congress by the necessary two-thirds margin on Thursday.

OTTAWA, ONTARIO, June 1, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – New data released from the 2011 Canadian census this week reveals that while more Canadians are greying than being born, the county at large is experiencing a small baby boom.

“The main factors behind the aging of Canada’s population are the nation’s below-replacement-level fertility rate over the last 40 years and an increasing life expectancy,” Statistics Canada reported in an analysis on age and sex that was release Tuesday.

The population of children aged four-and-under increased 11 percent between 2006 and 2011, the highest increase in the number of young children since the end of the Baby Boom in the 1960s. But this rate of growth does not compete with the ever-climbing number of seniors aged 65-and-over.

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Statistics Canada’s most recent population projections indicate that the number of Canadian seniors could exceed the number of children in as little as four years.

“The population is getting older, on average, in Canada,” said Statistics Canada senior demographer Laurent Martel to The Globe and Mail. “But obviously we’re showing today, at the same time we have population aging we can have an increase in the number of young kids.”

Despite the uptick in new births, Statistics Canada demographers are warning that without a “substantial increase in fertility,” Canada’s population growth in 20 years will be “close to zero.”

“According to all scenarios used in Statistics Canada’s most recent population projections, natural increase is expected to continue to decline in the future decades, due to a projected increase in the number of deaths,” the demographers pointed out.

Natural increase, the difference between the number of births and deaths during a given period, is how a population is replenished in the absence of mass immigration.

Although Canada’s total fertility rate seeing an upward trend since 2003, rising from 1.53 to the current rate of about 1.7, it nonetheless falls well below the 2.1 children-per-woman replacement level that demographers say is necessary for a stable population and economy.

“Anyway you slice it, a healthy society that has enough people to support its elders needs to have the replacement rate of 2.1,” said Andrea Mrozek, manager of research and communications at the Institute for Marriage and Family Canada, in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com in February.

Researchers have found the long-term fortunes of the modern economy rise and fall with the family. Experts have consequently suggested that governments could lessen the devastating effects of the impending demographic winter Western societies will soon face by encouraging and strengthening the family as a social unity and enacting family-friendly polices and initiatives.

RESTON, VIRGINIA, June 1, 2012, (Operation Rescue) — Abortionist Joel Match’s medical license was summarily suspended last month by the Virginia Board of Medicine amid findings that he was operating a “pill mill” that dispensed dangerous narcotics to at least ten patients without prior treatment or proper medical work-ups—some of whom were known drug addicts.

Calls to his Chantilly “pain treatment center” were unanswered.

“There is no doubt that Match presented a serious danger to the public. We are thankful he is out of commission for now and are praying that Virginia will eventually revoke his medical license. Match’s troubles are far from unique. Our research shows that drug abuse and the illegal distribution of drugs is fairly common among abortionists,” said Cheryl Sullenger, Senior Policy Advisor for Operation Rescue and Pro-Life Nation.

Kermit Gosnell of Pennsylvania, who faces murder charges for killing babies born alive during late-term abortions, was discovered after police raided it his clinic thinking he operated a “pill mill.” Florida abortionist Harry Perper was arrested last year and charged with the illegal distribution of drugs. Other abortionists in Pennsylvania and Maryland have been arrested and/or disciplined within the last year on similar charges.

Match has a long history of problem behavior. He formerly worked for Nova Women’s Healthcare in Fairfax, Virginia, where he was employed by Mi Yong Kim, an abortionist who lost her own medical license in 2007 after killing a woman during an abortion. Kim is again under investigation for a botched abortion at Nova that was documented and reported by pro-life activists working with Operation Rescue in April 2012.

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Match was sued in 2009, along with Kim, after he gave patient Regina Tetteh a negligently performed abortion. He had informed her that her pregnancy was in her uterus when in reality, she suffered from an ectopic pregnancy. Match noted in Teeteh’s medical record that he had successfully completed the abortion of an eight-week pregnancy even though a 12-week-old fetus remained dangerously lodged in her fallopian tube. Teetah began to experience increasingly worse pain and bleeding after the abortion. Instead of sending her to an emergency room, Kim rescheduled her for a second abortion several days later. Before she could make that appointment, Teetah collapsed in pain after her fallopian tube exploded, threatening her life. She unsuccessfully attempted to crawl to a phone to call for help. Her fiancé discovered her later on the floor of their home and called 911. Teeteh survived her ordeal but continued to experience pain and other issues for years.

Court records also state that Match has a history of spousal abuse. In his 1992 divorce, the court found that Match has subjected his wife to physical abuse, including “choking her, body-slamming her, kicking her, throwing her down the stairs, beating her face, pulling her hair and screaming at her.” Records also show that Match underwent psychiatric treatment and counseling “with respect to his violence and cruelty to a woman (his wife).”

“The documents on Match paint an ugly picture of hatred of women, sloppy abortions, and involvement with illegal drugs. That is a recipe for disaster for the women and their babies that this criminal preyed upon,” said Sullenger. “What is frightening is that we know there are many other abortionists like Match – and worse – still out there that just haven’t been caught yet. Women have no idea what they will get when they walk into an abortion clinic in America.”

Read Match’s Suspension Order.

June 1, 2012 (AlbertMohler.com) - The Christian worldview must direct all consideration of sexuality to the institution of marriage. Marriage is not merely the arena for sexual activity, it is presented in Scripture as the divinely-designed arena for the display of God’s glory on earth as a man and a wife come together in a one-flesh relationship within the marriage covenant. Rightly understood and rightly ordered, marriage is a picture of God’s own covenantal faithfulness. Marriage is to display God’s glory, reveal God’s good gifts to His creatures, and protect human beings from the inevitable disaster that follows when sexual passions are divorced from their rightful place.

The marginalization of marriage, and the open antipathy with which many in the culture elite approach the question of marriage, produces a context in which Christians committed to a marriage ethic appear hopelessly out of step with the larger culture. Whereas marriage is seen as a privatized contract to be made and unmade at will in the larger society, Christians must see marriage as an inviolable covenant made before God and man, that establishes both temporal and eternal realities.

Christians have no right to be embarrassed when it comes to talking about sex and sexuality. An unhealthy reticence or embarrassment in dealing with these issues is a form of disrespect to God’s creation. Whatever God made is good, and every good thing God made has an intended purpose that ultimately reveals His own glory. When conservative Christians respond to sex with ambivalence or embarrassment, we slander the goodness of God and hide God’s glory which is intended to be revealed in the right use of creation’s gifts.

Therefore, our first responsibility is to point all persons toward the right use of God’s good gifts and the legitimacy of sex in marriage as one vital aspect of God’s intention in marriage from the beginning.

Many individuals–especially young men–hold a false expectation of what sex represents within the marriage relationship. Since the male sex drive is largely directed towards genital pleasure, men often assume that women are just the same. While physical pleasure is certainly an essential part of the female experience of sex, it is not as focused on the solitary goal of genital fulfillment as is the case with many men.

A biblical worldview understands that God has demonstrated His glory in both the sameness and the differences that mark men and women, male and female. Alike made in the image of God, men and women are literally made for each other. The physicality of the male and female bodies cries out for fulfillment in the other. The sex drive calls both men and women out of themselves and toward a covenantal relationship which is consummated in a one-flesh union.

By definition, sex within marriage is not merely the accomplishment of sexual fulfillment on the part of two individuals who happen to share the same bed. Rather, it is the mutual self-giving that reaches pleasures both physical and spiritual. The emotional aspect of sex cannot be divorced from the physical dimension of the sex act. Though men are often tempted to forget this, women possess more and less gentle means of making that need clear.

Consider the fact that a woman has every right to expect that her husband will earn access to the marriage bed. As the Apostle Paul states, the husband and wife no longer own their own bodies, but each now belongs to the other. At the same time, Paul instructed men to love their wives even as Christ has loved the church. Even as wives are commanded to submit to the authority of their husbands, the husband is called to a far higher standard of Christ-like love and devotion toward the wife.

Therefore, when I say that a husband must regularly “earn” privileged access to the marital bed, I mean that a husband owes his wife the confidence, affection, and emotional support that would lead her to freely give herself to her husband in the act of sex.

God’s gift of sexuality is inherently designed to pull us out of ourselves and toward our spouse. For men, this means that marriage calls us out of our self-focused concern for genital pleasure and toward the totality of the sex act within the marital relationship.

Put most bluntly, I believe that God means for a man to be civilized, directed, and stimulated toward marital faithfulness by the fact that his wife will freely give herself to him sexually only when he presents himself as worthy of her attention and desire.

Perhaps specificity will help to illustrate this point. I am confident that God’s glory is seen in the fact that a married man, faithful to his wife, who loves her genuinely, will wake up in the morning driven by ambition and passion in order to make his wife proud, confident, and assured in her devotion to her husband. A husband who looks forward to sex with his wife will aim his life toward those things that will bring rightful pride to her heart, will direct himself to her with love as the foundation of their relationship, and will present himself to her as a man in whom she can take both pride and satisfaction.

Consider these two pictures. The first picture is of a man who has set himself toward a commitment to sexual purity, and is living in sexual integrity with his wife. In order to fulfill his wife’s rightful expectations and to maximize their mutual pleasure in the marriage bed, he is careful to live, to talk, to lead, and to love in such a way that his wife finds her fulfillment in giving herself to him in love. The sex act then becomes a fulfillment of their entire relationship, not an isolated physical act that is merely incidental to their love for each other. Neither uses sex as means of manipulation, neither is inordinately focused merely on self-centered personal pleasure, and both give themselves to each other in unapologetic and unhindered sexual passion. In this picture, there is no shame. Before God, this man can be confident that he is fulfilling his responsibilities both as a male and as a man. He is directing his sexuality, his sex drive, and his physical embodiment toward the one-flesh relationship that is the perfect paradigm of God’s intention in creation.

By contrast, consider another man. This man lives alone, or at least in a context other than holy marriage. Directed inwardly rather than outwardly, his sex drive has become an engine for lust and self-gratification. Pornography is the essence of his sexual interest and arousal. Rather than taking satisfaction in his wife, he looks at dirty pictures in order to be rewarded with sexual arousal that comes without responsibility, expectation, or demand. Arrayed before him are a seemingly endless variety of naked women, sexual images of explicit carnality, and a cornucopia of perversions intended to seduce the imagination and corrupt the soul.

This man need not be concerned with his physical appearance, his personal hygiene, or his moral character in the eyes of a wife. Without this structure and accountability, he is free to take his sexual pleasure without regard for his unshaved face, his slothfulness, his halitosis, his body odor, and his physical appearance. He faces no requirement of personal respect, and no eyes gaze upon him in order to evaluate the seriousness and worthiness of his sexual desire. Instead, his eyes roam across the images of unblinking faces, leering at women who make no demands upon him, who never speak back, and who can never say no. There is no exchange of respect, no exchange of love, and nothing more than the using of women as sex objects for his individual and inverted sexual pleasure.

These two pictures of male sexuality are deliberately intended to drive home the point that every man must decide who he will be, whom he will serve, and how he will love. In the end, a man’s decision about pornography is a decision about his soul, a decision about his marriage, a decision about his wife, and a decision about God.

Pornography is a slander against the goodness of God’s creation and a corruption of this good gift God has given his creatures out of his own self-giving love. To abuse this gift is to weaken, not only the institution of marriage, but the fabric of civilization itself. To choose lust over love is to debase humanity and to worship the false god Priapus in the most brazen form of modern idolatry.

The deliberate use of pornography is nothing less than the willful invitation of illicit lovers and objectified sex objects and forbidden knowledge into a man’s heart, mind, and soul. The damage to the man’s heart is beyond measure, and the cost in human misery will only be made clear on the Day of Judgment. From the moment a boy reaches puberty until the day he is lowered into the ground, every man will struggle with lust. Let us follow the biblical example and scriptural command that we make a covenant with our eyes lest we sin. In this society, we are called to be nothing less than a corps of the mutually accountable amidst a world that lives as if it will never be called to account.

Click here for part one.

Reprinted with permission from AlbertMohler.com.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, June 1, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s social engineering.

After much anticipation, DC Comics has revealed the Green Lantern will be reinvented as a homosexual in the second issue of Earth 2, which hits newsstands next Wednesday.

The New York Post reported the superhero announces his sexuality by abruptly kissing his boyfriend, Sam.

The Lantern’s change of sexual orientation comes the same month that Marvel Comics’ X-Men superhero Northstar will “marry” his boyfriend in this month’s issue of Astonishing X-Men. June is LGBT month. 

The family advocacy group One Million Moms stated DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio promised he would introduce a new character rather than change the sexual orientation of an existing superhero, but Senior VP Sales Bob Wayne later said DiDio’s view “had evolved.”

Comic enthusiasts greeted the announcement with rage. “As a fan of The Green Lantern going back to ‘65, I’m OUTRAGED that DC would destroy him this way, just to score PC points,” one collector tweeted.

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The alteration will not necessarily affect the Ryan Reynolds film franchise. DC has changed the sexual preference of Alan Scott, the first Green Lantern, who debuted in 1940. Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, the second Green Lantern, who replaced Scott as the holder of the green ring in the 1950s.

Series author James Robinson said he first suggested the change eight months ago, because the new storyline is set in the distant past, before the birth of Alan Scott’s son, Obsidian, who is a homosexual.

“Why do adult gay men need comic superheroes as role models?” One Million Moms asked in a press release. Homosexual activists “want to indoctrinate impressionable young minds by placing these gay characters on pedestals.”

In the new parallel universe, Green Lantern is “the strongest, most important super-powered character,” Robinson said. “He’s a media mogul, a hero, a dynamic type-A personality and he’s gay.” 

“He’s fearless and he’s honest to the point where he realized he was gay and he said ‘I’m gay.’”   

The new GL will be part of an alternate timeline Justice League, Robinson said.

Robinson was mindful of the impact his character will have on children’s views of sexuality. “I hope he’s a positive figure,” Robinson stated. “If there’s some kind of kid out there who’s reading the comic and who’s worried about the person he is, maybe it will give him a positive sense of who he is…We should be preaching love and tolerance.”

Homosexual characters, though a departure from the all-American moral messages of the 1940s, are not new to comic books nor to Robinson. The author, who lives in San Francisco with his wife, wrote DC’s Starman comic, whose title character is homosexual. DC featured one of the first homosexual kisses in its pages in 1988.

However, the pace of homosexual characters being introduced to young readers seems to be quickening.

Kevin Keller “married” his male partner in “Life With Archie” No. 16 in January.

The long-running comic strip “Funky Winkerbean,” penned by Tom Batiuck, had a same-sex couple attend the prom in April.

One Million Moms, a project of the American Family Association, has led boycotts against Archie Comics, Marvel, and now DC.

Robinson said he does not fear a boycott, because “that kind of negativity is stupid and outmoded.”

DC Comics is owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment Company. Marvel Comics is now owned by Disney.

Contact:
Contact DC and Marvel Comics here or at this link.

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, June 1, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an op-ed published yesterday in the National Post, Father Raymond J. De Souza points out that the Ontario government’s “bureaucratic crusade” to force Catholic schools to establish “gay-straight alliance” clubs is “a violation of the constitution and an egregious assault on religious liberty.”

Last Friday the McGuinty government’s education minister, Laurel Broten, told reporters at a news conference that she will introduce an amendment to the controversial homosexual anti-bullying bill (Bill 13) that “neither the [school] board nor the principal shall refuse to allow a pupil to use the name gay-straight alliance or a similar name.”

The move was criticized as a direct rebuke to Ontario’s Catholic bishops. Although they allow homosexual clubs, the Ontario Catholic schools framework for anti-bullying clubs, “Respecting Differences,” specifies that gay-straight alliances are “not acceptable in Catholic schools.”

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Fr. De Souza, renowned as a speaker on both religious and secular subjects, observed that the trustees of Catholic school boards have objected “[n]ot to the anti-bullying effort, but to setting one form of bullying — sexual identity — above all others, and mandating clubs which at least implicitly will advocate that traditional Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) teaching regarding homosexual acts is wrong.”

Fr. De Souza also pointed out “The absurdity of the government’s intransigence has made it clear that the anti-bullying measures are being used to effect a theological change in Catholic teaching in the schools. That is beyond the competence of the state, a violation of the constitution and an egregious assault on religious liberty.”

“The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that bullying on the grounds of sexual orientation is immoral,” he noted.

The Ontario government had become “unhinged on homosexuality,” he wrote, noting that most bullying involves body image and academic achievement.” So where is the mandate for the ‘Acne-clear skin alliance’? How about the ‘scholars-dullards’ club?” he asked.

The anti-bullying bill’s intent is to “force Catholic schools to countenance as morally good sexual relations outside of marriage in direct defiance of millennia of settled moral teaching,” Fr. De Souza concluded.

Fr. Raymond De Souza is a Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, where he serves as chaplain for the Catholic chaplaincy at Queen’s University.

MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL, June 1, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - Two homeschooled boys, whose parents have been repeatedly fined and criminally convicted by Brazilian government officials for refusing to participate in the public school system, are impressing observers in Brazil and around the world by winning a number of academic contests.

Jonatas and Davi Nunes first made headlines five years ago when, at the ages of 13 and 14 respectively, they passed a law school entrance test. Now 18 and 19, they have won the equivalent of $15,000 in contest prize money during the first four months of this year for their achievements in computer science.

Their recent victories include the Mário Covas Award, a prize given by the state of São Paulo for innovative ideas related to government administration. Working together, the two won first place in one category and placed second in another, for a new design for the state’s web portal and and online educational service.

Davi has also recently won first place in the Open Innovation contest held by the Brazilian online retailer Submarino, the author of the most creative and innovative ideas submitted, which includes $5,000 worth of items sold by the company. Both Davi and Jonatas have been awarded an all-expense-paid trip to California in August to the U.S. Campus Party, a brainstorming meeting for computer science enthusiasts.

The two brothers are now preparing the commercial launch of two products they have designed using their skills in programming and multimedia.

The Nunes family gained international notoriety in 2008, when Cleber Nunes and his wife Bernadeth began to be prosecuted by government officials for having removed their two sons from the public school system to educate them at home.

During two sets of civil and criminal trials, the Nunes strove to prove that their children were not only educated adequately at home, but excelled well beyond their peers. In addition to passing law school exams at a very young age, in 2008 Brazilian courts subjected the two to rigorous tests that public school teachers admitted to being unable to pass. Yet both Davi and Jonatas passed the exams.

Despite these victories, the Nunes lost both the civil and criminal trials. They were ordered to pay fines totaling more than $3,200, and risked imprisonment and losing custody of their children. They have refused to pay the fines, but have never been incarcerated.  At the time of their convictions, their children had already reached their 16th birthday, and truancy laws no longer applied. However, their daughter Ana, who is now five years old, will soon be subject to the same laws. Ana, who is already being homeschooled by her parents, is able to read and write. She is also fluent in English.

The Nunes and others who have been persecuted under Brazil’s educational laws may find hope in the recent creation of the Mixed Parliamentary Front for Home Education, a coalition of legislators in the National Congress who support the legalization of homeschooling in Brazil. 

The organization, which is lead by Deputy Lincoln Portela, has 200 supporters in the Congress.

PLANO, TEXAS, May 31, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - After commemorating Mother’s Day with an ad featuring two lesbians, JCPenney is releasing a Father’s Day ad depicting two gay men and their children.

The recent ad, published in their June catalog, states that a father is a “swim coach, tent maker, best friend, bike fixer and hug giver – all rolled into one. Or two.”

Below the picture of a smiling homosexual couple playing with a little boy and girl, the ad reads: “Real-life dads, Todd Koch and Cooper Smith with their children Claire and Mason.”

Last month’s Mother’s Day ad, published online and in the company’s May catalog depicted lesbians Wendi and Maggie alongside Wendi’s mother and two daughters.

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The LGBT lobby, overjoyed at the most recent positive portrayal, is calling for supporters to open their pocket books to thank the company.

“You’d have to be crazy not to see the people in this JCP ad as the proverbial (and in this case, real) family next door,” enthused Jenny Block, a blogger at The Huffington Post. 

Monica Cole, director of the conservative watchdog group One Million Moms, told LifeSiteNews.com that her organization is calling for a boycott of the company until they stop promoting homosexuality.

She asks supporters of traditional marriage to return their JCPenney catalogs marked “REFUSED…RETURN TO SENDER.” Cole also urges customers to unsubscribe from its mailing list and close store credit card accounts with a note politely explaining the reasons for your action.

OMM, a project of the American Family Association that combats immoral messages in the entertainment media, criticized JCPenney earlier this year when the company hired comedian Ellen DeGeneres as a spokeswoman.

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson defended the decision, calling DeGeneres—who is openly homosexual and a vocal supporter of Planned Parenthood—a person with “extraordinary values.”

“JCP’s homosexual ads are desensitizing our children by normalizing this sinful lifestyle choice,” Cole told LifeSiteNews. “The Bible clearly states that marriage is between a man and a woman. No one, including JCP, can redefine it.”

Contact:

You may e-mail the company at: jcpcorpcomm@jcpenney.com.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 1, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As anti-abortion activists launched their cross-country tour of bloody abortion trucks on Tuesday from the Vancouver Art Gallery, they faced violence, verbal assault, and public indecency from pro-abortion protesters.

At the beginning of the launch, abortion advocates attempted to shout down the national anthem as it was sung by Vancouver celebrity Mark Donnelly. One protester stripped naked while another used a bike lock to smash a side mirror from the group’s truck.

Abortion advocates also launched a campaign to have Simon Fraser University’s Dr. Alexander Moens, who spoke alongside Donnelly at the launch of the New Abortion Caravan disciplined by the university. According to the Facebook group “Counter-Protesting the New Abortion Caravan,” SFU student Ginger Bic posted, “So much f**king rage. I want to go leave a bloody tampon on his desk or something. Something really gross because he deserves to feel the nausea and disgust that I feel when I realise people like him represent my school.”

Stephanie Gray, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, the anti-abortion group doing the caravan, expressed dismay over the reaction of abortion advocates. “It is appalling they would attempt to censor our national anthem and resort to such violent and un-Canadian behaviour,” she said.

The Vancouver Police Department is investigating the mirror-smashing incident and are in pursuit of the vandal.

The abortion trucks of Gray’s group have 7-foot tall and 22-foot long billboards with graphic abortion imagery and are driving around Vancouver today, making their way into the Fraser Valley and Okanagan in the coming days. (Footage of the caravan launch at the Art Gallery can be viewed here.)

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, May 31, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A federal court ruled part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional today in a decision critics called illogical and extreme, setting up another battle over the definition of marriage at the U.S. Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston struck down the law’s definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman for the federal government. That provision kept homosexual couples from receiving tax breaks and certain federal benefits such as Social Security survivor payments reserved for married couples. The court ruled the national government must grant such federal benefits to same-sex partners in the eight states that recognize such unions.

The decision upheld the right of each state to define marriage as it sees fit and denied DOMA was inspired by lawmakers’ “hostility to homosexuality.” Yet the judges ruled by refusing benefits, the federal government violated the principles of federalism and imposed its definition of marriage on the states.

Harry Mihet, senior counsel for Liberty Counsel, told LifeSiteNews.com the panel “said the right to marry a person of the same sex is not necessarily a fundamental right and that states remain free to decide the meaning of marriage for themselves and to ban homosexual ‘marriage,’ as 31 states have already done. but somehow the federal government does not have that same freedom to decide for itself…what marriage means.”

The decision is “absolutely illogical” and “another example of a results-driven, outcome-oriented decision wherein a court decides the result it wants to arrive at and simply makes whatever illogical leaps are necessary to get there,” he said.

President Barack Obama sent word through his spokesman, Jay Carney, that the decision was “in concert with the president’s views.”

“It’s obvious that the federal courts on both coasts are intent on imposing their liberal, elitist views of marriage on the American people,” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). 

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Supporters of marriage say the court’s federalism concern is backwards. “A state cannot dictate the kind of benefits the federal government must provide,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com.. “This decision is the proverbial tail wagging the dog.”

Alliance Defense Fund Legal Counsel Dale Schowengerdt said the “federal government had the authority to step in against polygamy at one time in our nation’s history, and it has the authority to step in against this attempt at marriage redefinition, as well.”

Judge Michael Boudin wrote in the unanimous decision, “Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress’ denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest.”

Mihet said the government encouraged traditional marriage in “recognition of the fact that it is the best possible environment in which to rear children and have a healthy and happy society.”

“That interest would be sufficient to surpass any type of scrutiny that the courts might apply,” Mihet said, “but this court doesn’t see it that way.”

Conservative legal experts also objected to the court’s decision-making process. The judges acknowledged if they had used the typical level of judicial scrutiny in formulating their opinion, the “plaintiffs cannot prevail.”

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for CitizenLink, the policy arm of Focus on the Family, said, “The Court began by recognizing that this case would fail under the usual tests that courts apply to these cases, and then proceeded to invent a new test by which the federal DOMA failed.” That jurisprudence is “an unfortunate exercise of judicial tampering with the rules by which constitutional cases are decided.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which filed an amicus brief in the case, said in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews, “FRC has always argued that DOMA should be reviewed under a level of scrutiny lawyers refer to as the ‘rational basis test’...We believe the Supreme Court will agree with us in applying the rational basis test and uphold DOMA.”

The Defense of Marriage Act passed Congress by lopsided margins in 1996, when it appeared the state of Hawaii would legalize same-sex “marriage,” forcing other states to recognize such unions. The law passed the House of Representatives (342-67) and the U.S. Senate (85-14) before being signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Judge Boudin, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, said the lawmakers intended “to preserve the heritage of marriage as traditionally defined over centuries of Western civilization.” (The other two judges, Juan Torruella and Sandra Lynch, were appointed by Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, respectively.)

The legal case took a circuitous route to the circuit court. The case ended in limbo for a time when the Obama Justice Department abruptly dropped its defense of DOMA. Republican House Speaker John Boehner formed the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to defend the law. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, led 130 other Congressional Democrats in filing an amicus curiae brief against DOMA.

The panel stayed its decision on the grounds that “Supreme Court review of DOMA is highly likely.”

The defendants can now appeal to the full, six-judge First Circuit Appeals Court or go directly to the Supreme Court.

The First Circuit is “one of the most liberal courts in the country, next to the Ninth Circuit in terms of how often they are wrong and reversed by the Supreme Court,” Mihet told LifeSiteNews. “That is why we have the Supreme Court in place, to reconcile these errant courts and bring them back into the American mainstream, both politically and judicially.”