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Friday February 17, 2006
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Print- New York Appeals Court Rules Against Gay “Marriage”
- Australian Leading Democrat on RU-486 – Some May Die But It’s Worth the Risk
- Spanish Bishop Compares Prime Minister Zapatero to Roman Tyrant Caligula
- France Bishop Wants Pope Benedict to Allow Contraception
- Russia’s Chief Rabbi: Perverse Gay Pride as Bad as Anti-Religious Cartoons
- Czech President Vetoes Gay Partnership Bill
- Adultery Agency gets Regular Coverage from CBC on St. Valentine’s Day
- Questions Answered on Organ Donation: Interview with Dr. John B. Shea M.D.
- First Canadian Gay Library at University of Western Ontario
- LifeSiteNews.com NewsBytes
New York Appeals Court Rules Against Gay “Marriage”
TODAY'S HEADLINES
By Gudrun Schultz
ALBANY, New York, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – New York’s marriage law is constitutional, a five-judge panel decided at a mid-level appeals court yesterday.
The ruling addressed three separate cases involving gay couples that were refused marriage licenses. The couples argue the state’s definition of marriage as being only between a man and a woman violates the state Constitution’s equality, privacy and legal access provisions.
The court ruled that under the constitution, marriage between homosexuals was not legal. Changing the legality of same-sex marriage would require re-writing the constitution, which the panel of judges said was not the role of the courts.
“In our opinion, the Legislature is where the changes to marriage [should take place]” wrote justice John Lahtinen in the decision, according to the Associated Press.
Trial-level courts had also ruled against the gay couples, and in December, the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division in New Yolk City ruled against a lower court decision that would have allowed same-sex couples to marry in New York City.
It is expected the cases will eventually come before the state’s highest Court of Appeals, which will make the final decision on the legal status of gay “marriage” in the State of New York.
See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
New York’s Ban on Same-Sex “Marriage” Struck Down by Activist State Judge
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/feb/05020709.html
Back to TopAustralian Leading Democrat on RU-486 – Some May Die But It’s Worth the Risk
by Hilary White
SYDNEY, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Hailing the decision to make the abortion drug RU-486 approved for wider distribution, Australian Democrat leader Lyn Allison said, “Pregnancy is not safe. A whole lot of things about women's reproductive health are very dangerous, in fact.”
Allison said, “The protocols doctors will adopt here will ensure the safety of women. But I can't say that it's going to be 100 per cent certain to be safe.”
Liberal senator Judith Troeth was in tears as she said, without apparent irony, that the wide distribution of RU-486 is a victory for future generations of Australian women. Troeth called it “a victory for common sense ... for the nation's daughters and granddaughters.”
Troeth dismissed the deaths associated in other countries with RU-486 saying that it is bacterial infection, not the drug that caused them. “The death rate from this particular drug is much less, for example, than (from) Viagra,” she said.
Research has shown clearly, however, that it is the drug that is the agent that lowers the body’s immune system leaving it open to septic shock.
Professor Ralph P. Miech, a professor emeritus in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biotechnology at Brown University, published his findings in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy. He found that the drug causes changes in the cervix that allow C. sordellii, a common vaginal bacteria, to enter the cervical canal. C. sordellii thrives feeding on the rotting tissue of the dead child.
RU-486, also called Mifepristone, disrupts the immune system, which Miech said, “impairs the body's ability to fight off C. sordellii and may help spread the bacteria's toxic by-products, a combination that sometimes results in widespread septic shock.”
The US Food and Drug Administration is reviewing its approval of the drug while other countries have banned it outright.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Australia Votes to Allow Chemical Abortion Drug RU-486
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06021604.html
Leading Researcher Proves RU-486 Causes Septic Shock Deaths
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05072802.html
Spanish Bishop Compares Prime Minister Zapatero to Roman Tyrant Caligula
By Gudrun Schultz
CIUDAD REAL, Spain, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bishop Antonio Algora, of the Spanish diocese of Ciudad Real, has likened Spain’s prime minister to Gaius Caligula, a megalomaniac first-century Roman emperor who was convinced of his own divinity and set himself up as a god.
“If Zapatero wants to become Caligula, it’s up to him, but without doubt people will have to learn who Caligula was and what customs he imposed on Rome, it’s as simple as that,” Bishop Algora told Spanish newspapers.
His comments on the prime minister were triggered by the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain. Caligula is notorious for having committed acts of wild depravity during his short and disastrous rule.
Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has been at the forefront of a push to liberalize Spain’s social structures. Gay “marriage” was made legal in Spain in June of last year, despite a public outcry of opposition to the move.
Zapatero also legalized embryonic stem cell research and the use of abortifacient birth control, and has moved to increase access to abortion. As well, he has worked to eliminate mandatory religious education in the schools in what is seen by Catholic leadership as an open attempt to break with Spain’s history as a Catholic nation.
Read previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
Spain Continues Cultural Tailspin—Abortion Rates Soar 72%
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jan/06010308.html
France Bishop Wants Pope Benedict to Allow Contraception
By Gudrun Schultz
PARIS, France, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Bishop Francis Deniau of Nevers, in eastern France, wants the Vatican to lift the Church’s ban on artificial birth control methods.
The bishop has joined his voice to a group of Christian intellectuals in France who are campaigning for Church acceptance of birth control.
Pope Benedict XVI’s new encyclical on love, “Deus Caritas Est” (God is Love) appears to be fueling activists who are pushing for radical change in the Church. Bishop Deniau said the encyclical was “a hopeful sign for possible change“ in an interview with Le Pelerin magazine earlier this week.
In his encyclical Pope Benedict offered clarity on the Church’s understanding of erotic love, saying it is not an objection to the body that leads the Church to set boundaries on sexual expression, but rather a sign of the depth of respect and reverence held by the Church for the gift of sexuality.
Despite the unambiguous wording of the document, which leaves little room for liberal interpretation, the text has been seen by some as an indication that the restrictions against contraception may be loosened.
In November of last year Pope Benedict stated firmly that he would not make any change to the Church’s stand against artificial contraception. Natural family planning methods that call for abstinence during fertile periods in a woman’s cycle are acceptable to the Church’s teaching on the necessity of respect for life and natural law.
For related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Pope to Bishops: Don't Water Down Church Teachings
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/05110803.html
To contact the Apostolic Nuncio to France with concerns:
Fortunato Baldelli,
75116 Paris, Avenue du President Wilson, 10
Telephone: (33)1.53.23.01.50
Russia’s Chief Rabbi: Perverse Gay Pride as Bad as Anti-Religious Cartoons
By Terry Vanderheyden
MOSCOW, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar has come out against a proposed “Gay Pride” parade in the capital, saying such an event “would be a blow for morality,” according to an InterFax report.
Rabbi Lazar said Thursday that any organization that forwards “sexual perversions” does not have a right to exist. He compared the offence that the proposed parade would have to observant Jews and all religious people in the country as akin to that felt by Muslims over the Prophet Mohammed caricatures depicted in European newspapers. “I would like to assure you, that the parade of homosexuals is not less offensive to the feelings of believers than any caricatures in newspapers,” he said.
Russian Mufti Talgat Tajuddin earlier this week called on Muslims to protest violently any attempt by homosexuals to proceed with the parade. “Muslims’ protests can be even worse than these notorious rallies abroad over the scandalous cartoons,” he warned.
Moscow city officials meanwhile have said that a permit for the event has been denied. “Moscow authorities will not allow the conduct of gay pride in any form,” said Sergei Tsoi Thursday. “The Mayor of Moscow said firmly that Moscow government will not allow the conduct of gay parade in any form – neither open, nor indirect, and all attempts to organize non sanctioned action will be severely suppressed.”
Czech President Vetoes Gay Partnership Bill
By Terry Vanderheyden
PRAGUE, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Czech President Vaclav Klaus has vetoed same-sex partnership legislation approved by the country’s parliament. The president deliberated over the issue for several weeks, after both the upper and lower houses of parliament approved the measure – the first of the former Soviet bloc countries to do so. The measure carried by a margin of 147 to 86 in the lower house.
The proposed law would allow same-sex partners to officially register their unions and grant them access to each other’s medical information as well as the right to raise but not adopt children. The bill also proposes inheritance rights and spousal support in the case of divorce.
“Even if I as president did not have a clear opinion, I would insist that such marked intervention in the legal arrangement of human and especially partner and intimate relations must be supported by a majority of deputies, or that at least 101 of them must vote in support of the law,” President Klaus said, according to a CTK report.
With a veto, the bill is now to go back to the Chamber of Deputies where it will require 101 votes out of its 200 members to override the veto. The ruling Social Democrats under Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek say they can muster all 70 member’s votes, but will depend on support from both the Communist Party and the Freedom Union coalition.
Adultery Agency gets Regular Coverage from CBC on St. Valentine’s Day
by Hilary White
TORONTO, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The CBC has re-run a programme segment covering a Toronto-based dating agency specializing in “hooking up” people who are already married or in “committed relationships,” for extra-marital sex.
The CBC has covered the agency several times in the last few years in print, radio and television segments usually on St. Valentine’s Day, the Christian feast day celebrating marital fidelity.
Rick Okada, Ashley Madison’s marketing director and media buyer told LifeSiteNews.com that the agency gets regular media coverage from the government-funded CBC. The segment that ran this year was a repeat of the longer 2005 piece that, Okada said, aired on the National on February 11, 2005. The Ashley Madison website lists several separate instances of CBC coverage, dating to 2003, but Okada said the agency rotates the media coverage on the website and, though he did not know exactly how many times the CBC has covered them, he said it was more than seven.
“They normally pop up around Valentine’s Day, not necessarily every year but around then,” Okada said. “It’s topical around that time of year. We hear from them any time there’s some sort of point in the year that is appropriate in their eyes.”
The agency adheres to the theory that human beings are not meant for life-long fidelity. Ashley Madison’s director, Darren Morgenstern told the CBC, “In today’s day and age, maybe infidelity isn’t the taboo that we feel it is or ought to be.”
The agency’s website says that studies have shown that 50 - 60% of men and 40 - 50% of women will engage in some kind of extramarital affair. It says, “Extra-marital affairs and open spousal relationships offer an opportunity to re-experience the excitement and stimulation associated with dating and courtship.”
The Ashley Madison agency claims to have nearly a quarter million Canadian clients on its lists. Mr. Okada said the agency is doing well and expanding. “We’ve got members all over North America and are just going into the UK.
The CBC’s 2004 TV spot reported that a Los Angeles TV studio planned to use the agency as the basis of a reality show about infidelity.
Dr. Donald Carveth, a professor of sociology and social and political thought at York University said, “TV shows of that sort appeal to the voyeurism in all of us. I think they appeal to the sadism in all of us. Here we are watching these people humiliate themselves. We’ll be watching marriages fall apart. We’ll be watching people in pain and making stupid mistakes and facing the consequences.”
Dr. Carveth is a psychoanalyst who serves as a Training and Supervising Analyst in the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis. He told the CBC, “Monogamy requires work, but it pays off…It offers the greatest degree of fulfillment.”
Carveth compared TV coverage of Ashley Madison with the bread and circuses of Rome. “It’s the end of the Roman Empire, things are falling apart,” he said. “(The Roman empire) provided the masses with bread and circuses and the circuses often involved terrible cruelty.”
CBC media relations spokesman, Ruth Ellen Soles, told LifeSiteNews.com she was not familiar with the specific segment and could not immediately comment.
The CBC is massively funded with taxpayer dollars and has long positioned itself as the arbiter of Canadian values. Those values – from its eager coverage of the adultery dating service to its regular slams of Christianity and its openly biased coverage in favour of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage and just about every sexual aberration – are increasingly out of touch with those of the majority of Canadians.
Some CBC viewers commented that the programme was in poor taste since the agency was really “exploiting” people with low self-esteem. One Torontonian, Fiona Carver, commented on the CBC website, “Is this the end of monogamy? Absolutely not, but it does look like the end of television.”
Contact Members of Parliament
http://www.lifesite.net/getinvolved/politics/canada/findyourmp.html
Contact the Minister of Canadian Heritage with concerns:
The Honourable Beverley J Oda
Canadian Heritage
25 Eddy Street
Gatineau, Quebec
K1A 0M5
Tel.: (819) 997-0055
Toll-free: 1-866-811-0055
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Defenders of Family Boycott CBC News Sunday Homosexual 'Marriage' Love Fest
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/feb/04021302.html
Jesus is Dead Says the CBC on Good Friday
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/apr/04041308.html
National Broadcaster CBC Compares New Prime Minister Harper to Hitler
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jan/06012610.html
CBC Radio Guest Disses New and Former Pope during Announcement of Benedict XVI
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05041903.html
Canadian National Public Radio Broadcasts Call for State Control of Religion, Especially Catholicism
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05071906.html
Canada Public Broadcaster Caught Airing Perverse Teen Sex Episodes
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06020605.html
Questions Answered on Organ Donation: Interview with Dr. John B. Shea M.D.
Says ethical heart transplant not yet possible because of difficulty of determining certain death
By John-Henry Westen
TORONTO, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - With the Ontario Legislature entertaining a private members bill to institute presumed consent on organ donation, many questions are being asked on the matter. LifeSiteNews.com asked Dr. John B. Shea, an M.D. who has written extensively on the ethics of organ donation, questions submitted by LifeSiteNews.com readers.
Q. Is all organ donation morally questionable? Which organs can be donated ethically?
A. No, non-vital organs may be donated. The most common living organ donation are kidneys. The body has two kidneys and when one is donated the remaining kidney grows in size and capacity to compensate for the missing organ.
Furthermore a living donor may donate a part of a liver since the organ re-grows. Also a living donor may donate part of a lung, or part of a pancreas. While these organs do not re-grow, people are able to function with reduced capacity.
Q. What is the problem with some organ donations?
A. Following real death corneas and bone marrow can still be used. However, organs such as the heart, lungs, pancreas and kidneys rapidly deteriorate after death and are not usable within a few hours.
The fundamental question is - is the person dead? It is not ethical to harvest organs from living persons if it will result in their deaths. That is true even if we don't know for sure that the person is living or dead, as in the case of some people in coma and on life support.
Thus the answer to the question - is the person dead - is resoundingly that we don't know in the case of 'brain death'.
The debate centers on moral uncertainty. If there is a doubt about the fact that a patient is dead, if it is not factually certain that the patient is not biologically dead. You can't do anything that would hasten their death. Analogously, a hunter must not shoot after seeing a bush rustling without being sure that there isn't a person in the bush.
Q. What is brain death?
'Brain Death', is the most common determination of death prior to organ harvesting and involves the cessation of brain activity. There is no general agreement that 'brain death' is in fact death. The criteria for establishing 'brain death' varies from England to the US and through the other countries of Europe. Moreover, the compliance with those criteria are not consistently applied.
The other criterion that has been applied to pronounce death for the purposes of organ harvesting is the case of non-heart beating organ donors. Those donors are known not to be brain dead but are usually first in a coma and the doctor decides treatment is futile.
The typical scenario for such organ harvesting is a young person between the age of 5-55 who is in good health, is in intensive care due to an automobile accident and is on a ventilator. The doctor makes an arbitrary decision that treatment is futile. They take the patient off the ventilator and if the heart stops beating they sometimes wait a couple of minutes and then remove the organs. They do not know how long a heart will stop beating and might recover again.
Q. Can there then be a legitimate heart transplant?
A. The answer is no, since we have no agreement on determination of death soon enough to harvest the heart before its deterioration.
First Canadian Gay Library at University of Western Ontario
By Terry Vanderheyden
LONDON, Ontario, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The University of Western Ontario (UWO) officially opened Canada’s only homosexual library Tuesday, called the Pride Library, at an event attended by approximately 200 people.
“Valentine’s Day at Western is never going to be the same again,” quipped the library’s founder, university professor James Miller, according to a London Free Press report. Miller founded a Gender, Sexuality, and Culture program at UWO. “It’s got to be the queerest Valentine’s Day we’ve had.”
The new library is situated on the main floor of the University’s D.B. Weldon Library, and houses over 5,500 books on a range of homosexual subjects. The help desk in the library has a sign reading “Queeries,” and boasts of a unique search engine that understands “queer” lingo.
“At Western, we embrace diversity as a defining principle of our university, and this facility represents our commitment to providing a social and academic dimension for these individuals and groups,” said UWO President Paul Davenport, according to Western News.
Mathieu Chantelois, host of PrideVision TV’s Read Out, commended the University for creating a place that is great for homosexual persons to meet. “You have something we don’t have in Toronto. I am extremely jealous,” he said. Besides its allure as a place to read and research, it is an ideal location “To flirt, to find boyfriends and girlfriends, that is important as well.”
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the euthanasia prevention coalition and a UWO alumnus, told LifeSiteNews.com, “I believe that the decision to open a ‘pride’ library means that the administration of UWO and Mr. Davenport in particular, have decided to become known for their outwardly radical positions. We need to respond by not donating to UWO and not sending our children to attend UWO,” he urged.
LifeSiteNews.com NewsBytes
Rumors of a Third Nominee to the Supreme Court. If you think what the outside groups did in the Alito nomination was tough, it was like a kindergarten class compared to what is next
http://www.freecongress.org/commentaries/2006/060217.asp
A culture war is being waged by radical Islamists against a post-Christian West largely disarmed by multiculturalism
http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=3874
The disturbing truth about Sweden’s moral decay should serve to sober us from our own complacent drunken stupor.
http://www.afa.net/clp/GetArticle.asp?id=63
Columnist Rips Evangelical Leaders for Becoming 'Trojan Horse' for the Left
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/2/afa/162006b.asp
Activists Planning to Stage '06 World 'Gay Pride' Celebration in Jerusalem
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/2/afa/172006a.asp
Reacting to TheDaVinciChallenge.com
http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=2&art_id=31948
Massachusetts Bishops dealt setback in pursuit of gay adoption exemption
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/17/bishops_dealt...
Demography doesn't explain everything but it accounts for a good 90 per cent - Mark Steyn
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18159605%255E7583,...
Congress to Consider Bill to Curb Online Betting
http://www.family.org/cforum/news/a0039557.cfm
Who's afraid of a marriage vote in Maryland?
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.marriage15feb15,0,378554.st...
The Next Conservatism and Conservation - regard environmentalism warily
http://www.freecongress.org/commentaries/2006/060213.asp
Canadians to need ID card, Stockewell Day says
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_T...
Bill Gates Supporting Catholic AIDS Program
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=84606
Abortion and the gay agenda: secularism's big guns to destroy the family
http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_11754.shtml
Al Gore's diminished capacity - Cal Thomas
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/calthomas/2006/02/16/186908.html
Gay principals soon take helm at both Newton high schools
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/02/16/gay_principals_soo...
Clinton in Pakistan: Says convict cartoon publishers
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48889
Five Chinese human rights activists have disappeared of late
http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5416
Chinese press censorship: purging editors and publishing denials
http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5420
Western society is suffering a crisis of masculinity
http://catholicinsight.com/online/social/article_646.shtml
Issues of benefits and even love aren't the keys to why cultures allow a man and woman to marry
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/13892269.htm
European Secularism Is No Match for Islamic Fundamentalism
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=12532
Evolution special edition: Discovering life's design
http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=228
'Ex-Gay' Ministry Leader Finds Homosexual Episcopal Bishop's Alcohol Problem Unsurprising
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/2/afa/162006c.asp
"The Founders on Religion" disproves claims that signers of US Declaration of Independence and Constitution were at best Deists and more probably atheists. *See Feb. 14 entry further down on the First Things page*
http://www.firstthings.com/
Two US doctors have suggested the sale of organs such as kidneys should be legalised to meet the rising demand.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4719374.stm
NYC plans to design official condom
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-15-nyc-condoms_x.htm?csp=34
Prominent priest: Boycott Da Vinci Code film
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/abbott/060216
Judge upholds Florida's parental notice abortion law
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060210/APN/602101031
Canadian Newborn gets heart transplant
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_T...
Hollywood And Aclu Vs. Catholicism
http://www.catholicleague.org/06press_releases/quarter%201/060214_Hollywood%20AC...
Brokeback - Understanding Propaganda
http://www.rense.com/general69/prop.htm
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