Anglican Mainstream

By John Bingham, Telegraph

The Roman Catholic church could face legal action for refusing to carry out gay weddings despite Government assurances it could not, a committee of MPs and peers has warned.

Catholic bishops were advised earlier this year that they might have to stop carrying out weddings in the way that they currently do if they wish to avoid being taken to court under human rights laws.

The church’s legal advisers said that the uncertainty could even lead to Catholic couples being forced to get married twice – once in front of a civil registrar before a separate church service, as happens in France and elsewhere.

The problem is confusion over whether Catholic priests are acting as “public” officials when they carry out weddings, under a legal arrangement dating back 120 years.

Catholic bishops and other church leaders have been vocal opponents of the plans for same-sex marriage and have made clear that they do not wish to carry them out.

The Government’s same-sex marriage bill includes legal protections to ensure that no priest or church will be “compelled” to carry them out.

But Prof Christopher McCrudden, a legal expert advising Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, warned recently that this might not prevent them facing a legal challenge on the grounds that they are discriminating while acting as “public” officials.

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by Kadhim Shubber, wired.co.uk

New and existing customers will have to opt out of filtering program.

By W. Bradford Wilcox, Slate

Civil partnerships review – terms of reference and timetable 

Purpose

To review the operation and future of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 (CPA) in England and Wales.

Objectives

To carry out a full public consultation, assess the evidence and publish a report on
• The functioning and operation of the CPA in England and Wales;
• The future of civil partnerships in England and Wales, including whether they should apply to all couples; and
• Options and recommendations for changes to civil partnerships in England and Wales.

Scope

The review of the CPA will cover England and Wales and will

• Examine evidence about how well the current arrangements for civil partnerships are working, drawing on views from the public and organisations with an interest and international comparisons
• Assess the need and demand for civil partnerships when marriage is available to all, and whether any changes to civil partnership arrangements are necessary
• Identify all the implications of and issues raised by the identified options (including risks and devolution issues)
• Assess the costs and benefits of the options
• Make recommendations for any changes to the operation and future of the CPA.

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By Brian Donnelly, Herald Scotland

THE Church of Scotland stands to lose more than £1 million a year in givings as congregations begin resigning from the Kirk in the row over gay ordination.

The first wave of resignations has seen six congregations quit, with half of the parishes in the Kirk's financial heartland. The controversy could have a bigger impact on Kirk coffers as more are expected to follow over the next two years.

In Edinburgh, Holyrood Abbey Church worshippers give £215,000 a year, New Restalrig gives £114,000 and St Catherine's Argyle collects £196,000, while Gilcomston South in Aberdeen, brings in £300,000 a year and on Lewis the Kinloch and Stornoway churches bring in £210,000 between them. In total, the Kirk brought in £60.5m in givings in 2011.

It is understood that wealthier traditionalist congregations who depart may offer less well-off parishes help if they wish to leave.

The developments came as father and son ministers said they would leave the Church over the move to allow congregations to ordain gay ministers made at its May General Assembly, despite the decision still having to be ratified. Rev David Randall of Ayrshire has followed his father Rev David Randall Snr of Logie St John's in Dundee in becoming the latest to say publicly that he will leave.

"I have always just felt it seems they are willing to pursue this liberalising pro-gay agenda regardless of the cost and it is emerging the cost is going to be very high. That is inevitable. There have been warning voices over the last three or four years that have just been ignored. It's very sad.

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By Gerard M Nadal, Coming Home blog

When tsunamis make landfall they can be rebuffed by mighty cliffs of granite, or accommodated by soft sandy beaches which allow the mighty waves to strip them, leaving them disfigured and littered with the tsunami’s wasteful debris and shattered bodies when the floodwaters retreat back into the abyss from whence they came. So it seems that the Church in America, once a towering giant, has become increasingly accommodating to the Culture of Death as it washes over her with impunity.

The examples over the past year alone abound.

[...]  Are we surrendering on all of these issues? We welcome the “Catholic” politicians with open arms who are at the same time accelerating the implementation of a diabolical agenda.

In this Year of Faith, as our churches continue to empty, an unsolicited thought for our leaders. If fundamental moral truths and goods are not worth fighting for, then don’t be surprised when many find that there isn’t much worth staying for.

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Same-sex marriage is 'adult-focused and gender-free'

Children have 'human right to be nurtured by both birth parents'

Campaign launch coincides with start of House of Lords Committee Stage of Same Sex Marriage Bill

An informal group of professionals and parents today (17 JUN) launches a new campaign to put the wellbeing of children at the centre of the same-sex marriage debate.

The move comes as the Coalition's controversial Marriage (Same-SexCouples) Bill begins its Committee Stage in the House of Lords today.

The 'Gay Marriage No Thanks' group brings together legal, educational, medical and sociological experts. It is driven by concerns that the impact on children has been overlooked in a debate that has concentrated instead on claims of equality and religious freedom.

In an advert aimed at Peers in today's Times newspaper the group presents Ten Good Reasons why the House of Lords should say No to the Bill. The majority of them focus on the impact that the proposed changes will have on children and young people.

The group has today also launched a dedicated website(www.gaymarriagenothanks.com) that is intended progressively to provide easy access to the wealth of evidence on the subject – for Peers, civil servants, media, parents and others. It operates under the tagline 'because children matter'.

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by James Chapman, Mailonline

Critics of gay marriage are to get a new protection in law, senior government sources say.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller is said to be about to propose changing the Public Order Act so those who believe same-sex weddings are wrong can say so publicly without fear of prosecution.

The move is part of government attempts to prevent legislation running into further trouble as it progresses through Parliament.

Faith minister Baroness Warsi abstained in a key vote in the House of Lords, telling friends that religious groups needed extra protection.

Now the Culture Secretary is preparing to amend the Public Order Act so it is ‘clear that people will be protected who want to express their belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman’, a source said.

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The General Synod meets in York on 5th – 9th July for the first time since the rejection of the draft legislation on Women Bishops last November. A large period of time on the Saturday will be devoted to work on this issue with a debate on the Monday. The Friday afternoon will see the first Presidential Address by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, which will be an opportunity for him to outline the main challenges facing the Church of England over the coming period.

The meeting of Synod will also include debates on Safeguarding following the Chichester Commissaries' reports and Welfare Reform and the Church. There will also be a vote on the Yorkshire Diocesan Reorganisation Scheme.

The agenda provides for the Synod to meet in private on the morning and afternoon of Saturday 6 July for reflection and facilitated discussion on the issue of Women Bishops. Some of this time will be spent in groups and some in plenary. The group work will take the form of 24 groups of 20 people with a trained facilitator, with Synod members from each House in the groups. On Monday morning there will be a debate on a motion from the House of Bishops which proposes that draft legislation be prepared and introduced at the November group of sessions on the basis of option one in the report from the working group. Synod members will have until 10am on Sunday to table amendments to the Motion.

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by Regis Nicholl, Breakpoint

It is the “greatest social conservative movement of our time.” That’s how Jonathan Rauch describes same-sex “marriage.” And he summons no less than Edmund Burke to support his claim.

From Burke’s “Reflections on the French Revolution,” Rauch quotes, "Society is . . . a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born." Therein lies a “mighty stream of tradition,” Rauch claims, that “gays are asking to join” in their bid for marriage.

I suspect the father of modern conservatism would beg to differ, given his reflection in the same essay that “religion is the basis of civil society” and that, as Burke explained elsewhere, it is on the Christian religion that “all our laws and institutions stand.” (My emphasis.)

by Charles Moore, Telegraph

Since one’s attitude to homosexual acts is now considered the main way of judging whether a person is civilised, one must salute those in public life who defy this. To oppose gay ‘equality’ today is roughly as brave as it was to be publicly homosexual in, say, 1970: your position is not absolutely illegal, but it is perilous. Given how wobbly many Anglicans are on the issue, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London should be commended for their courage in the House of Lords debate. The Chief Rabbi, Lords Sacks, should be reproved. Orthodox Judaism is absolutely clear on this issue, but Lord Sacks absented himself. Perhaps he feels that Jews should not intervene in secular society. But if such a key social institution as marriage is beyond his responsibility, why did he agree to become a legislator?

The most laughable argument for the same-sex cause was that advanced by Lord Browne of Madingley, the former chief executive of BP. ‘Gay marriage,’ he told his fellow peers, ‘is a matter of strategic importance for British business.’ Really? Would we sell more to Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Russia or China if our top male executives turned up with their husbands for business dinners?

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by Peter Hitchens, Mailonline

By the end of his or her childhood, a British boy or girl is much more likely to have a TV set in the bedroom than a father at home.

Our 45-year national war against traditional family life has been so successful that almost 50 per cent of 15-year-olds no longer live with both their parents.

At the same time we have indulged our neglected and abandoned young with electronics, so that 79 per cent of children aged between five and 16 have a TV in their room.

As we soppily mark ‘Father’s Day’ with cards, socks, sentimentality and meals out, we should remember that in almost all cases the absent parent is the father. There is no doubt about the facts here. Let me list some of them.

The cost of our wild, unprecedented national experiment in fatherlessness is now £49 billion each year – more than the defence budget.

This figure, currently costing each taxpayer £1,541 per year, is rising all the time, and has gone up by almost a quarter since 2009.

The money partly goes on handouts and housing, which an old-fashioned family with a working father would not have needed.

Partly it goes on trying to cope with crime, disorder, truancy, educational failure, physical and mental illness and general misery, which are so much more common among the fatherless than in those from stable homes.

And there is more to come. One in three marriages ends in divorce, while many who would once have married never even bother. About 300,000 families of all kinds separate every year. There are now three million children growing up in fatherless homes.

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By Blaise Joseph, Conjugality

By Philippa Taylor, CMF

A controversial study on gay parenting published this summer generated such an outcry of protest on its findings and ad hominen attacks on the author, that it led, among other things, to an official investigation into the ethics of the study and possible scientific misconduct (he was cleared).

‘…criticisms of the underlying ethics and professionalism are misplaced because nearly every methodological decision that was made has ample precedents in research published by many other credible and distinguished scholars.’

Thomas J. Paprocki, Conjugality

A Google search on the Internet for the name “Matthew Shepard” at one time produced 11,900,000 results. Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old college student who was savagely beaten to death in 1998 in Wyoming. His murder has been called a hate crime because Shepard was gay.

A similar search on the Internet for the name “Mary Stachowicz” yielded 26,800 results. In 2002, Mary Stachowicz was also brutally murdered, but the circumstances were quite different. Mary, the gentle, devout 51-year-old Catholic mother of four urged her co-worker, Nicholas Gutierrez, 19, to change his gay lifestyle. Infuriated by this, as he later told police, he allegedly beat, stabbed and strangled her to death and then stuffed her mangled body in a crawl space in his apartment, located above a Chicago funeral home, where they both worked.

I know about Mary Stachowicz, not from the Internet, but personally, because Mary was my secretary at the parish where I was pastor before I was named a Bishop. She worked part time at the funeral home and part time at the parish. One afternoon, she didn’t show up at her usual starting time. This was unusual because she was always on time. A call to the funeral home disclosed that her car was still in their parking lot and her purse with her car keys was still at her desk, but there was no sign of Mary.

As Mary’s family and friends prayed and worried about her disappearance, Gutierrez prayed with them. Three days later, her mutilated body was discovered in a crawl space in his apartment.

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by Sasha Aslanian, MPR News

Opponents of Minnesota's new same-sex marriage law released their lobbying report today, showing that they were outspent 10 to 1 by supporters of the bill to legalize gay marriage.

Autumn Leva of Minnesota for Marriage said her group raised $200,000, and had three registered lobbyists compared to 14 on the side advocating same-sex marriage. Minnesotans United For All Families, the group that supported same-sex marriage, has previously said it spent more than $2 million in a successful lobbying campaign that featured phone banks, television commercials and personal appeals to lawmakers.

"We know that the constituents we reached out to were very much involved. Many, many emails phone calls letters went through to legislators who then essentially ignored them," Leva said. "You know, I'm not sure even with a lot more money what could have been done with legislators who seemed determined to turn their back on constituents."

John Helmberger of Minnesota for Marriage says the spending disparity is, in his words, "proof that if you spend enough money you can get some legislators to do almost anything."

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