Svend Robinson, NDP MP of Burnaby, has come “out of the closet,” as homosexual parlance has it, thereby strengthening the relentless drive to make the sordid homosexual “lifestyle” acceptable. Robinson has long crusaded for so-called “sexual orientation” to be protected under the anti-discrimination clauses of the Canada Human Rights Act. In November 1986, he proposed in the House of Common Justice Committee that the legal age for permitting sodomy be lowered from 18 to 12 years of age. As one reason for his latest action, Robinson gave the need to be able to walk in Stanley Park hand in hand with his lover.
Homosexual marriage
In Toronto, lesbian librarian Karen Andrews, supported by the Canadian Union of Public Employers (CUPE), went to court to demand Health Insurance coverage for her lover and herself. The Toronto Library Board already approved, lawyer Howard Goldblatt told the Supreme Court of Ontario on February 24 and CUPE already pays the premiums of common law spouses of “heterosexual” workers. To refuse kindred treatment to homosexual’s amounts to discrimination under the Ontario Human Rights Act, he argued.
The Peterson government added sexual orientation to the Ontario Human Rights Act in December 1986, after a furious debate in which opponents were denounced as bigots, rednecks, homophobes and hate peddlers. Despite the Ontario Act, Mr. Justice Nicholas McRae ruled on March 8 that the lesbian definition of spouse is not that of the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. But because of the Act the case will be appealed after first seeking a “discrimination” conviction from the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. The latter falls under the authority of Attorney General Ian Scott and is much more likely to approve of homosexual activity.
MPs in Denmark are now discussing the legalization of homosexual marriages. The Danish argument in support of legal homosexual “marriages” is a supposed reduction in the spread of AIDS.
Denmark is following in the footsteps of Sweden. The latest Swedish legislation gives live-in lovers, normal or homosexual, identical rights to couples married by church or state. The “cohabitees” law took affect on January 1, 1988.
Meanwhile in Britain, the trend is in the opposite direction. IN February 1988, the government passed a bill restricting the international promotion of homosexuality by state agencies – local, municipal or national. A hostile amendment sought to limit the provision to the teaching profession only, but this was defeated in the House of Lords. Among other things the bill rejects the promotion of the “acceptability of homosexuality as a family relationship.”
Witchcraft
Another pagan sex custom, which is growing in strength is witchcraft. Its Toronto representatives suffered a temporary setback, however, when the Ontario Registrar’s office refused to bestow the authority to conduct marriage ceremonies upon one of its devotees, Charles Arnold. Arnold is a secretary at Humber College of Applied Arts and Technology and a so-called second-degree high priest of Wicca. In 1987, he received recognition for the purposes of paid holidays when University of Toronto philosophy professor Donald Evans solemnly testified that witchcraft is a true religion.
Rather than directly refuting witchcraft’s claim to be respectable, the permission to marry people was denied on technical grounds, such as the secrecy of the rites and ceremonies of marriage and the absence of a central authority within the Wicca “faith.”
Rosario, Argentia
A local pro-family group in Rosario has instituted a new “award.” The “Herod Award” will be given annually to journalists, politicians and doctors who “distinguish” themselves by promoting the destruction of pre-born children.
Paris, France
On Sunday, January 17, over 20,000 people marched through the streets in Paris to commemorate the two to three million babies killed under the abortion law passed 13 years ago, on January 17, 1975.
The marchers, organized by the Association of Objectors of Conscience to all Participation in Abortion (A.O.C.P.A), also held a meeting outside the headquarters of the French pharmaceutical firm of Roussel-Uclaf, the manufacturers of the abortion drug RU486. They were protesting the recent official approval by the Ethics Committee of the French Academy of RU486 despite the serious reservations of medical scientists around the world concerning the possible effects of the drug on both mother and child.
Surrogate Mothers
The banning of surrogate motherhood in North America came a step closer with a February 3 ruling of the New Jersey Supreme Court, declaring childbearing for pay illegal in that state. However, the fact that the natural mother of “Baby M,” Mary Beth Whitehead, was only given visiting rights to her child, indicates that much remains to be done before the practice is banned altogether.
“Surrogate” mothers are the result of technology combining with the feminist philosophy of complete reproductive “rights” and a woman’s control over her body no matter what. Whitehead, since divorced and remarried, was artificially inseminated with the sperm of a complete stranger in return for a promised sum of money. When the baby was born she renounced the contract and decided to keep the baby herself. After two weeks, she and here husband fled to Florida where they kept the baby for three more months until they were hunted down by private detectives.
The state Supreme Court’s decision has given the baby to the couple whose husband provided the sperm. That couple now has a baby which is not the baby of the wife, but of her husband with another woman; while the other woman, who is the natural mother, now has no baby.
As the “Baby M” case illustrates, surrogate motherhood represents the commercialization of motherhood among people who reject both the traditional and Christian view of family life and parenthood.
On February 10, 1988, West Germany announced it would outlaw surrogacy altogether. In May of 1987, Israel also suppressed it, while in France, England and Australia surrogate contracts are now legal.
West Germany will also ban research on human embryos and curb artificial insemination. The freedom of scientists, said Justice Minister Hans Engelhard, must be limited when their experiments begin to undermine the dignity of the human race.
Homosexual Ministers
The United Church, says Rev. Peter Tink of Oshawa, will be “ripped apart” unless an “official” recommendation to ordain homosexuals is quashed. Signs are he may be right.
Already in 1984, the United Church went through a highly publicized trauma discussing the very same issue.
The church is led by a highly bureaucratized management with the lowest possible doctrinal convictions. On every issue of sexual or family morality the United Church has applied the most permissive standards over the last 25 years.
The report, issued in March 1988 by the Church, is entitled Toward a Christian Understanding of Sexual Orientations, Lifestyle and Ministry. It treats homosexual, bisexual and “heterosexual” as if they were equally valid “ways of life.” A number of United Church members are convinced that such a treatment has little to do with Christianity, which rejects sodomy in no uncertain terms. Naturally, proponents of the report, such as homosexual University of Toronto chaplain Eilert Frerichs, accuse opponents of being “homophobic and discriminatory.”
Peter Tink is by no means alone in his stand. Unlike in 1984, when opposition was slow in forming, this time signs of revolt are everywhere. In Ottawa, some congregations threatened to withhold their shares of general funding. In Toronto representatives from 25 congregations voted to delay a decision whether or not local congregations should discuss the report. In Regina, a United Church spokesman indicated that the Saskatchewan conference of parishes and ministers is split on the report’s recommendations in Alberta, the Church Renewal Fellowship rejected the recommendations as “theological gobble gook.”
The Report’s reasoning, noted the Western Report (March 21) includes:
A radically “updated” view of marriage and the family;
A heavy dependence on psychological theory of the last two decades;
An apparently unquestioning acceptance of current feminist-homosexual tenets;
Cavalier dismissal of scripture by means of “biblical reinterpretation.”
Ontario RNs plan abortion support
The Registered Nurses of Ontario plan to vote for a resolution at their London, Ontario meeting on April 28 and 29 in support of increased accessibility, full funding, and abortion on demand. Planning has been kept as quiet as possible to take opponents by surprise.
