I was talking recently to Professor "Bernard Grumphoffer," a prominent biologist at a large, mid-Western university, who claimed that gay sex won't work. He said that a saw is not a hammer and a hammer is not a saw and everything has a primary purpose. Gay sex does not fit into that premise. (Professor Grumphoffer asked that his real name not be [...]
A History of Canadian Catholicism by Terence J. Fay (McGill University Press, $27.95, 400 pages) Terence J. Fay is a Jesuit priest and author of A History of Canadian Catholicism. The latter fact you would know from looking at the cover of the book. The former is impossible to find anywhere in the book, so great are the efforts to hide Fay's [...]
There must be a market for moral compasses because I gather so many big wheels at big conglomerates lately have lost theirs. Following is a short list of CEOs and conglomerates who have lost theirs. If you can't find a moral compass, send them a copy of the Ten Commandments. The Business Eleventh Commandment doesn't seem to be working for them. It [...]
Spanking has whacked its way into the headlines once again. We all know the story. A Christian fundamentalist community in rural Ontario is torn apart when local Children's Aid workers raid homes and take away children. The details of the case are unknown because of a court gag order. But the arguments remain the same. My personal view is that spanking doesn't [...]
In May, the House debated the private member's motion (M-392) of Garry Breitkreuz (CA, Yorkton-Melville), which sought to have the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights review the current definition of human being to comply with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, with the hope of including the unborn child under Criminal Code protections. Predictably, abortion supporters [...]
It had to happen of course. An assault on the last taboo. New York author Judith Levine has written a book called Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex. In the volume she writes that children are sexual creatures and that in denying this we are in fact hurting them. Briefly, kids should be having sex. "What is a [...]
Students, if you want a career in journalism, you should pay strict attention to what I'm going to say. It could make you another Izzy Asper or a columnist for a small pro-life newspaper. I used to think that Santa Claus was the biggest myth in the world. I was wrong; it's "freedom of the press." It is a total illusion. If [...]
Charles Krauthammer is a Uruguayan-born, McGill University-educated medical doctor cum Washington D.C.-based political pundit whose work appears regularly in the American press. An ethnic Jew (it is unknown whether he practices) and confined to a wheelchair, he is a moderate conservative who has reservations about embryonic stem cell research. However, in the April 29 issue of The New Republic, he laid out [...]
A Canadian Press story inadvertently proved a recent Leger Marketing poll about media practices correct. The story, which appeared in the May 6 Toronto Star, began, "Canada may have the reputation of being somewhat bland, but a new poll suggests many Canadians think their media are sensationalist and biased." How ironic is it that a news report about a poll on the [...]
So much ink, so many articles, about the freedom of the press and the fact that one particular newspaper group, owned by one particular family, might be attempting to limit this sacred liberty. Newsworthy of course, and extremely worrying. But not at all surprising. We haven't had a genuinely free media in this country for generations. There are definitely pockets of free [...]
In the recent federal and Ontario election battles, I had much more empathy for Stockwell Day than I had for Jim Flaherty, whose political position I felt was slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Jim, unfortunately, gave the impression that if his aged mother was a bag lady he wouldn't have hesitated to hustle downtown and truck her off to [...]
The 20th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was cause for much liberal self-congratulation. The federal government announced it would spend $1.5 million in pro-Charter propaganda and Jean Chretien praised the document, calling it "the most profoundly democratic declaration in our history." What was curious about Chretien's self-congratulatory remark (as Trudeau's Justice Minister he was one of the framers of [...]
I think everybody must have gotten a good laugh when they read the news story "Passengers halt flight," in the Toronto Star. Passengers on a charter flight from Italy to Cuba voted to turn back after noticing flames coming from an engine, overruling the pilot who insisted all was safe. Shortly into the March 3 Air Europe flight from Milan to Varadero, [...]
I read with great interest The Interim's report of a Grade 11 student who was given an "unofficial suspension" for wearing a pro-life shirt that read, "Abortion is Mean" (January 2002). The principal at Central Elgin Collegiate in St. Thomas, Ont. saw fit to send Lisa Klassen home because, as he put it, some people found her message "offensive." One might argue [...]
Liberal MP Paul Szabo (Mississauga South), an outspoken and active pro-life parliamentarian, has written a book on The Ethics and Science of Stem Cells. Szabo told The Interim he wrote the book "To promote discussion among parliamentarians and the public about this very important and timely topic." It was distributed to all MPs and senators and is available to anyone who requests [...]