On October 31, 1991 (Halowe’en), Dawn Black (NDP, New Westminster-Burnaby, B.C.) introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons in favour of funding for birth control. Pro-lifers have been saying for years that the contraceptive mentality increases rather than decreases abortions and the dissolution of the family, but feminists and others won’t listen. Dawn Black’s bill proposed to reinstate a [...]
A Manitoba Court of Appeal verdict handed down November 1, effectively closed the doors of Winnipeg’s estimated 20 video-porn stores. In a split decision, a majority of the judges ruled that Manitoba’s obscenity law is constitutional. “Sexual stimulation is not protected by the charter of rights and freedoms,” the judges maintained, overturning the August 1989 arguments of Court of Queen’s Bench Justice [...]
In the recent case involving a Cincinnati art gallery, jury members deemed the late Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs “lewd,” “grotesque,” and “disgusting” but still they didn’t find them obscene. The jurors had been convinced by a parade of “experts” that the pictures possessed artistic merit. Even though they thought the sexual practices depicted were patently offensive, the weight of the defense testimony made [...]
On November 20, 1990, ten Toronto rescuers appeared before Judge Mercer. They were represented by counselor, Paul Chumak. Charges went back to July 14, 1990, when the ten pro-lifers were arrested and charged with mischief and blocking the entrance to Dr. Monole Buruiana’s abortuary in the east end of Toronto. Receiving sentence were: Adriana Bannon, Stratford George Denish, London Rev. Ken Campbell, [...]
Alberta Report On November 7, the editor of the Edmonton Catholic weekly, the Western Catholic Reporter (WCR), was fired. He had been hired August 1. According to Mr. John Gill, lawyer and member of the WCR board, Mr. Rodney Stafford-Mayer was dismissed because the newspaper’s board of directors “were not generally satisfied with the way he was performing his job.” Reports that [...]
Dartmouth, N.S. – Some 250 people gathered here November 9-11 for the first Human Life International strategy weekend in the Atlantic area. Randy Engel, editor, award winning journalist, and author of the recently published Sex Education: The Final Plague, was one of the speakers. “There is no good form of classroom sex education, any more than there can be a good form [...]
Peace River (FNIF) Teachers in northern British Columbia endure religious persecution from the B.C. Teachers’ Federation. Two dozen teachers in the Peace River area, most of them Protestants, received notice in a BCTF Newsletter that the organization planned to “nail them to their respective crosses” after they defied union picket lines last spring to continue teaching. The two dozen are part of [...]
For years a few atheists and influential sectors of the Jewish community have lobbied to ban Christianity from public schools in Ontario and elsewhere. Christianity in public schools, it must be understood, meant Protestantism. Public schools in Ontario had always been Protestant schools. That’s why from the 1840’s onwards, Catholics in Ontario fought to have their own schools. In recent years, the [...]
Toronto – The Ministry of Education policy allowing only education about religion, effective from the beginning of 1991, has been the subject of mixed reviews. It is seen by some as an attempt to be fair to all. Others view it as a non-solution to the problem it attempts to address. Under the new policy, boards of education are permitted to offer [...]
On October 4, the European Community Court of Justice handed down its verdict in the Abortion Information Case. Outlaw The verdict upholds the right of the Irish State to outlaw the supplying of information about abortion services by officers of the students’ Union of Dublin’s Universities. Unfortunately, the court confined its ruling to the circumstances of the particular case referred to it [...]
A Planned Parenthood (PP) Ontario policy position paper, mailed in October 1991 to all school board chairpersons in the province, recommends mandatory attendance for sex ed programmes. These “should start in kindergarten and continue to grade 12,” the paper urges. But PP Ontario alleges the following problems with provincial sex ed programs. • “A lack of standardized content because the Ministry of [...]
ANNOUNCEMENT THE INTERIM IS CONCLUDING ITS DISCUSSION OF FULLY ALIVE IN ITS FEBRUARY ISSUE. ANYONE WISHING TO PARTICIPATE SHOULD SEND US A LETTER RIGHT AWAY. CUT OFF DATE WILL BE JANUARY 13. Subheadings and numbers have been added to some letters in order to aid comprehension. ‘Overwhelmingly positive’ To the Editor: I am bewildered by the overwhelmingly negative perspective in the October [...]
Dr. Robert McClure was the first layman to serve as Moderator of the United Church of Canada (1968-1971). He died at the age of 91 on November 10, 1991. There were many tributes to a life of astonishing variety and achievement. During his life he had received many honours. McClure had served as a medical missionary for 25 years in China. He [...]
NATIONAL BORDERS ARE NOT IMPORTANT IN GOD’S EYES. WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT IS THAT ALL PEOPLE RESPECT THE LAW OF GOD AND IN PARTICULAR THE SANCTITY OF LIFE. IF BABIES ARE NOT SAFE EVERYWHERE THEY ARE NOT SAFE ANYWHERE. Mike Gerrety Police Chief Mike Gerrety had only six years to go before retirement on a comfortable pension. He might have retreated from [...]
• A Commons committee holds hearings on the Robert Wenman bill (intended to protect doctors who might have hastened the deaths of terminally ill patients); • The State of Washington holds a referendum on legalized euthanasia (it lost, but in a very close vote, 54 to 46 per cent); • Derek Humphrey’s suicide book Final Exit, is a bestseller. (A Montreal woman [...]