Anglican Mainstream

By John Bingham, Telegraph

The Law Society has banned a conference on family issues to be addressed by a senior High Court judge because debating gay marriage breached its “diversity policy”.

Sir Paul Coleridge, the Family Division judge who recently launched a new charity to combat marital break-up, had been lined up as the main speaker at the annual event at the Law Society’s London headquarters later this month.
 
But organisers were forced to cancel it at short notice after the Law Society ruled that the programme reflected “an ethos which is opposed to same sex marriage”.
 
They accused the Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, of an “extraordinary” attempt to stifle debate on current affairs and warned that the cancellation itself could be against equality laws.
 
Lawyers, journalists and think tank chiefs were due to speak alongside Sir Paul at the annual conference organised by the World Congress of Families, a US-based non-religious group which promotes traditional family values.
 
Around 120 people were expected to attend event which this year took as its theme: “One Man. One Woman. Making the case for marriage, for the good of society.”

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By Suzanne Yoshihara, C-Fam

Is family breakdown the cause or the cure for the global crisis of population decline? Two new articles in top foreign policy journals raise the question.

By Harriet Sergeant, Mailonline

Nothing can excuse the nine men found guilty this week of grooming young white girls for sex, in a case that has shocked the nation and raised troubling questions about race.

But in truth, the abusers are not the only guilty party.

In the dock with them should have been our whole system of care for the most vulnerable children in society.

Uncomfortable though it may be to acknowledge, the dysfunctional state of many care homes allowed — even facilitated — these men’s vile activities in relation to at least one young victim.

The girl, who was 15 at the time of the abuse, was meant to be receiving round-the-clock ‘solo’ residential care, but went missing 19 times in three months for up to two weeks at a time.

Instead of trying to find her, her carers would resort to text messages asking: ‘When are you coming back?’
It later transpired she had been abused by up to 25 men in a single night.

How was this possible in a system that is meant to protect such vulnerable children — and on which the government lavishes £2 billion a year?

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by Wendy Wright, Turtle Bay & Beyond

By Christine Dhanagom, LifeSite News

A district judge ruled last Friday that the state of Montana was required by its constitution to pay for contraception as part of a government health care program for children.

The Healthy Montana Kids Program, which provides health coverage to children of families with incomes up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, had previously funded birth control pills when used for non-contraceptive purposes, such as controlling acne or to regulate a girl’s period. Under an exemption written into the Montana Health and Human Services administrative rules, birth control pills prescribed to prevent pregnancy were not covered by the program.

Last week’s ruling overturning the HHS rule was a result of a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood of Montana. The organization argued in its complaint that the state was “interfer[ing] with young women’s abilities to make medical decisions about their health” by not paying for their birth control pills.

Siding with Planned Parenthood, District Judge James Reynolds held that Montana had “failed to provide a compelling state reason” for excluding contraception, and was violating a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy.

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by Johann Christoph Arnold

New Book Available Now!

In a world that is increasingly hostile to children, it is vitally important to give each one the childhood they deserve. In his latest book, pastor Johann Christoph Arnold offers an approach to parenting that is grounded in faith and old-fashioned in the best sense. It won't be easy, but parents can still welcome children, raise them the right way, and prepare them to stand their ground in these challenging times.

Arnold doesn't mince words, but he shows genuine concern for the plight of parents faced with difficult parenting decisions. As the fabric of family and society is torn apart, this book offers concrete advice for parents who want to pass on to their children the values their parents gave them.

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Offer applies to United States, United Kingdom, and Australian addresses only. Anyone can download the free e-book, buy the book at Amazon, or read excerpts at right.

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By Melanie Phillips, Mailonline

So now we can see the outcome of the witch-hunt against ‘Islamophobia’. With the conviction yesterday of nine men for organised sexual crimes from rape to sex trafficking, the full horrific details of more than two decades of sexual violence against young, predominantly white girls living in children’s homes in the north of England have been revealed.

The gang lured an officially estimated 47 girls (the figure may well be higher) aged 12 to 16 with gifts, alcohol and drugs before passing them around to have sex ‘with several men a day, several times a week’ in flats, houses, cars, taxis and kebab shops. After phone calls inviting them to come and have sex with a girl, men would turn up to do so by the taxi-load. One 13 year-old was forced to have sex with 20 men in one night.

Terrible as all this is in itself, there is far worse. For this monstrous abuse could all have been stopped years ago. The authorities had evidence this was going on as long ago as 1991. The question immediately arises: how on earth could a blind eye have been turned to all this by the social services departments under whose care these girls were living, as well as by the police to whom they went for help?

The answer is as clear as it is devastating. For these men were all Muslims: eight of them of Pakistani origin and one from Afghanistan.

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Read also:  Muslims, 'sex gangs' and white working-class women by Brendan O'Neill, Telegraph

By Francis Phillips, Catholic Herald

Giving girls as young as 13 the contraceptive Pill without their parents’ knowledge is yet another hugely misguided policy. Time for a change of approach?

By John Bingham, Telegraph

Roman Catholic schools have been officially warned that they could be breaking the law by encouraging pupils to oppose gay marriage.

The Welsh Government has written to Catholic schools in Wales following complaints over teachers inviting pupils to sign a petition against the Givernment’s plans to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.
 
Ministers in Westminster are still "looking into” whether or not to issue a similar warning to schools in England.
 
More than 600,000 people so far have signed the Coalition For Marriage campaign petition, supported by figures such as Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
 
The Catholic Education Service said last month that it had contacted its 385 secondary schools in England and Wales asking them to circulate the letter by the Archbishops of Westminster and Southwark – the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols and the Most Reverend Peter Smith – which was recently read in parishes, defending the traditional definition of marriage.
 
They were also encouraged to consider publicising the petition. 

Secular and humanist campaigners accused Catholic schools of “political indoctrination” by promoting the campaign among schoolchildren.

But Church education chiefs insisted they were “proud” to teach Catholic values in schools.

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From The Christian Institute

Children as young as four are being removed from school for sexual misconduct, figures have revealed.

They are among almost 15,000 youngsters who have been expelled or suspended for sex offences – including assaults on teachers – in the past five years.

More than 1,100 were primary school children, some in reception classes.

Boys aged just four have been kicked out of schools in Dorset, Yorkshire, Wiltshire and the West Midlands.

Incidents in County Durham included indecent exposure and possessing sexual material. In Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, a boy of ten was suspended for inappropriately touching four pupils.

Offences catalogued from all the figures included sexual abuse, assault, harassment, and lewd behaviour.

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By Graeme Archer, Telegraph

Evidence is so strong that children raised in standard two-parent families fare best that it takes a wilful perversion to ignore it.

I don’t have any paternal instinct; zilch. Perhaps this is selfishness. But there’s more than enough love and companionship in my existence. The universe is indifferent to “Graeme Archer”; that I will at some point be swept away, like a sandcastle by the waves, leaves me oddly content. Wash me, thoroughly (sic), of my iniquity, says the Psalm – and wash the Earth free, too, of my human stain, once I’ve gone.
 
So perhaps I’m wrong to comment on the case that emerged this week of the gay couple who are “devastated” to have ended up with two children from different racial backgrounds, after a mix-up at an IVF clinic. On the other hand, perhaps my unpaternal objectivity helps.
 
A lack of desire to reproduce I always imagined to be a psychological correlate of same-sex attraction. It seems evolutionarily obvious, though untestable, why we gay people exist. Raising children well is the most difficult, and important, human activity. It must help a tribe’s survival prospects for each generation to produce a few adults not impelled to pass on their genes. “It takes a village”, as they say, and uncles and aunts with no children of their own can lend a hand to the others.
 
Those without children can help lift the load, but the burden still lies most heavily on the actual parents, of course. Fortunately, there’s a very efficient incubator in which to maximise successful child-rearing: the emotional bond between mothers and fathers. The heterosexual family.

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by David Lindsay

[...]  And Brendan Boland was 14. Cardinal Brady's baiters from Dublin to London need to ask themselves how they would have reacted in 1975 to sex between a middle-aged man in their own circles and a 14-year-old boy, or how they would react to such a thing now.

Whether or not His Eminence, as he was not then anywhere near becoming, dealt well or badly with the problem, he did at least identify it as a problem, and he did at least deal with it at all. In those days, sex between men and boys was actively promoted in institutions run by British local authorities, and openly so in the academic work used to train and assess social workers. Patricia Hewitt, later to have overall responsibility for every social worker in England, was working with Harriet Harman to give legal cover to the Paedophile Information Exchange and to Paedophile Action for Liberation.

Is the BBC going to ban appearances by Peter Tatchell, who would make such activities no offence under the criminal law? Whereas they would remain a specific offence under Catholic Canon Law if the younger party were any age below 18. Have you got that? Eighteen. It is perfectly obvious who has the moral high ground. And who has not.

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By David Lindsay

All three parties supported Harriet Harman's Equality Bill, as it then was, under which Catholic schools are to be pursued for having dared to teach that marriage can only ever be the union of one man and one woman, which at this moment is still the law of the land.
 
As set out in the most comprehensive study of this, among other, matters ever published, Harman and Patricia Hewitt ran the National Council for Civil Liberties when it was passing resolutions in support of the Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation, and when it was publishing calls to legalise and destigmatise sex between adults and children.
 
Hewitt went on to have overall responsibility for every social worker in England, while Harman’s pro-pederast past was explored in detail by Martin Beckford in the 9th March 2009 edition of the Daily Telegraph, but that newspaper was too spineless or too compromised to put it on the front page where it belonged, so the story was allowed to die, at least for the time being.

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Read Martin Beckford's article referred to above here

by Phil Vinter, Mailonline

• Film features graphic scenes of computer generated couple having sex
• Conservative MP says education video is 'shattering the innocence of childhood.'

The BBC is to review a controversial film for youngsters which shows a computer-generated couple having sex, after it was slammed by MPs.

Corporation bosses were summoned by concerned Schools minister Nick Gibb to answer questions about the education video which is directed at primary-aged children as young as nine.

Mr Gibb told The Sun: 'Parents are justifiably worried materials like this are being used in lessons.'

In addition to computer-generated images in explicit sexual positions the Sex and Relationship Education CD-Rom by BBC Active also features animated figures making love.

There is also footage of a naked man and woman, used to demonstrate the differences between the sexes, information about 'wet dreams' and graphic diagrams of genitalia. 
 
There are also graphic descriptions of what happens to men and women's body parts during sex.
 
Read here

By Melanie Phillips, Mailonline

At last, a member of the judiciary has broken ranks to warn of a social disaster that has taken place on the courts’ own watch.

Tomorrow, a High Court family judge, Sir Paul Coleridge, will launch a foundation to promote marriage and to warn of the catastrophic consequences of family breakdown.

[...]  The institutionally liberal Law Commission recommended one liberalising family measure after another, such as easier divorce, ending the stigma of illegitimacy or establishing equal rights for cohabitants, both gay and straight.

At the same time, New Left thinking about radical and non-judgmental ‘lifestyle choice’ swept through the intelligentsia. One baleful result was that supposedly objective research itself became corrupted.

The truth became not only unsayable but unknowable, as government researchers airbrushed the category of marriage out of official statistics, making it impossible to quantify the effects of different kinds of relationship.

Academic researchers who tried to tell the truth about the devastating effects of divorce on children found themselves professionally ostracised and at risk of having their grant funding cut.

The actual damage to children from divorce and elective lone parenthood was further masked and minimised by other researchers, who were either consumed by guilt over their abandonment of their own children, or cravenly chose to go with the flow. Meanwhile, research carried out mainly in the U.S. which produced overwhelming evidence of the relative harm done by family breakdown in virtually every area of children’s lives, was wickedly brushed aside.

Of course, there are many lone parents who do a heroic job against all the odds raising their children well. And there are some situations where it is indeed best for truly warring or abusive couples to part.

But research has shown that most marriages are not broken by such extremes but merely by grumbling dissatisfaction.

And in that kind of situation, it is usually better for the children if the parents stay together.

To which liberals have sneered that staying together ‘for the sake of the children’ is a cruel and heartless doctrine. But since when was putting the welfare of their children ahead of parents’ own interests considered cruel and heartless? Only since society decided that children were an inconvenient obstacle to the right of parents to live lives of unfettered selfishness. 

Now Sir Paul has decided someone has to break through all this lethal nonsense.

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by James Chapman, Mailonline

• Sir Paul Coleridge said family breakdown is 'destructive' to society
• Tomorrow the judge will launch a campaign to promote marriage
• He voiced concern over the 'Hello! magazine, Hollywood image' of marriage

Britons have an addiction to divorce fuelled by a 'Hello! magazine' attitude to marriage, a top judge has warned.

Sir Paul Coleridge said family breakdown was 'one of the most destructive scourges of our time'.

Citing growing evidence of harm to a generation of children, he said youngsters whose parents separated saw their educational achievements and job prospects damaged.

In a highly unusual move for a serving judge, Sir Paul will tomorrow launch a campaign – backed by senior legal figures and Church leaders – to promote marriage.

There was 'incontrovertible' proof that married couples were more likely to stay together, he said.

Sir Paul, one of the most senior family court judges, voiced particular concern over what he called the 'Hello! magazine, Hollywood image' of marriage, saying: 'The more we have spent on weddings, the greater the rate of family breakdown.'

And he also warned that a trend for older couples to split once children leave home was having an 'extremely emotionally disturbing' impact on families.

Sir Paul's campaign is expected to be supported by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu and the Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks, while patrons of the campaign include former chief family law judge, Baroness Butler-Sloss, family lawyer and academic Baroness Deech and Baroness Shackleton, the divorce lawyer who acted for Prince Charles and Sir Paul McCartney
 
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By David Lindsay

How can a drug as powerful as the Pill ever be used other than under the strict direction of a physician, never mind be used on the body of an early adolescent? And obviously, it has no purpose except to facilitate sexual intercourse. There is no comparison with vaccination against cervical cancer, which may or may not encourage a young girl to become or remain sexually active. Putting her on the Pill can have no other purpose. Hiding this sort of thing from parents is the classic behaviour of the child abuser and his victim.
 
Femaleness has been classified as in itself a medicable condition by means of the contraceptive pill, which is simply not a medicine at all. It is, in point of fact, a poison, designed precisely to stop healthy body parts from performing their natural functions, and accordingly attended by all manner of horrific side effects, for no reason except to make women permanently available for the sexual gratification of men, and despite the unrivalled effectiveness of Natural Family Planning if it is taught and practised properly, a practice only possible by a faithful married couple. The Pill, in turn, has wrought havoc by filling our water supply with synthetic oestrogens.
 
Following logically, maleness itself has also been so classified, leading to the heavy medication of boys purely for being boys, by means of Ritalin and other powerful “treatments” for largely or entirely invented conditions. The impact of antidepressants on the rise of violent mental illness, especially among young men and teenage boys, also calls for the most unflinching examination. As does the impact of cannabis on the rise of schizophrenia, and by extension also on lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, brain tumours, serial miscarriage, low birth weight, male and female infertility, impotence, and a huge number of other conditions.

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By John Woods, Mailonline

Jamie was ten years old when he saw his first pornographic sex scene. During a sleepover, a classmate offered to show him ‘some funny pictures’ on his laptop.

‘At first I found it a bit scary and a bit yucky,’ Jamie told me as he shifted uncomfortably on his chair during our therapy session.

‘I didn’t know it was possible for people to do those sort of things — and there were lots of nasty close-ups. But it gave me funny feelings and the pictures started to stick in my head.’

For the next three years, while his parents assumed he was using his computer for his homework, Jamie visited porn websites for up to two hours a night.

Even when his school performance began to suffer, they had no idea of the murky world their shy, quiet son was inhabiting while upstairs in his bedroom.

While it’s not his real name, Jamie is typical of the young men I meet. He explained: ‘The websites led me to other websites and soon I was looking at even weirder stuff I could never have imagined — animals, children, stabbing and strangling.

‘I stopped leaving my room and seeing my friends because when I was away from the pornography, I was dying to get back to see what else I could find.’

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by Stephen Adams, Telegraph

Girls as young as 13 are should be given the contraceptive pill by pharmacies without a GP's prescription or parental permission, say public health experts.

Some health authorities have held pilot schemes which cut out doctors when providing the Pill, arguing it is a good way to reduce teenage pregnancies. They have recommended the schemes are rolled out across the country, and have been supported by the government.
 
The Department of Health said pharmacies should be able to supply the Pill to under 16s if proper safeguards were in place.
 
Pharmacists "should be fully satisfied young people understand all the issues before they prescribe any contraceptive, including encouraging the young person to talk to their parents", said a spokesman.
 
Managers in at least three areas have already decided to open their schemes to under 16s, while others are considering extending pharmacy provision of the Pill to those below the legal age of consent.
 
However, Christian campaigners have criticised the schemes, arguing they are "dangerous" and "undermine the law with regards to underage sex".

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From Turtle Bay & Beyond