Monthly Archives: January 2011

The Anglican Church of Canada doesn’t approve of more incarceration for criminals

Posted on by
4

From here:

The Anglican Church of Canada’s long-time partner, the Church Council on Justice and Corrections (CCJC), has criticized a federal plan that would increase prison capacity and rates of incarceration. CCJC has prepared an information packet for churches and is encouraging all Canadians to consider the implications of this plan.

“Proposed new federal laws will ensure that more Canadians are sent to prison for longer periods, a strategy that has been repeatedly proven neither to reduce crime nor to assist victims,” wrote CCJC president Laurent Champagne in a recent letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“Increasing levels of incarceration by marginalized people is counter-productive and undermines human dignity in our society,” he wrote. He encouraged the government to consider other methods of dealing with offenders, including well-supervised probation or release, bail options, reporting centres, and supportive housing programs.

There are two ways to reduce crime: the first and best option is to bring the criminal into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ; the second is summary execution.

The Anglican Church of Canada is in favour of neither.

Julian Assange is indifferent to lives being put in jeopardy by Wikileaks

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

Julian Assange said U.S. informants named in secret cables ‘deserved’ to be killed and initially refused to redact their names, a new book has revealed.

WikiLeaks published thousands of names of Afghans in 77,000 classified war files put on the whistle-blowing website, attracting criticism from international charities and governments.

In later releases of secret U.S. embassy cables in November around 15 per cent of files were withheld to protect lives and every file was checked before release.

Amnesty International said in a letter to WikiLeaks last year that all names in Afghan war logs should be redacted.

‘We have seen the negative, sometimes deadly ramifications for those Afghans identified as working for or sympathizing with international forces,’ it said.

Assange’s apparent gung-ho attitude in an early meeting to naming to naming U.S. informants stunned his media collaborators, the new book claimed.

The title said he told international reporters: ‘Well, they’re informants so, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.’ The book continues: ‘There was, for a moment, silence around the table.’

If this is true – and there is little reason to doubt that it is – Assange has painted a rather large target on his back. Of course, if he is assassinated – well, he had it coming to him.

The adoption mess in the UK

Posted on by
3

From here:

A leading children’s charity complained yesterday that too many people think gays make inferior parents.

A survey by Barnardo’s said nearly a third of the public think heterosexual couples make better parents than same-sex couples.

The charity’s new chief said that prejudice against gays is harming the chances for young people in the care system winning new homes through adoption.

In 2008, a Christian couple were turned down as foster parents – even though they had already fostered 15 children – by the Derby city council because the couple would not “agree to tell any children in their care that homosexual lifestyles were acceptable” and the children would have to attend church. Pretty sinister.

From here:

Lawyers are to seek a judicial review of a decision by social workers to ban a Christian couple from fostering young children because they refused to sign up to new gay equality laws.

The action against Labour-controlled Derby City Council is likely to become a test case for the Government’s Sexual Orientation Regulations. Social workers rejected an application by Eunice and Owen Johns, who have four grown-up children, to be foster parents because they refused to agree to tell any children in their care that homosexual lifestyles were acceptable.

The couple, who have been married for 39 years, had applied to offer weekend respite care for foster children under the age of 10.

But the adoption panel was also unhappy that the couple was adamant that any child in their home would have to go to church with them on Sundays. Mrs Johns, a retired nurse, is a Sunday school teacher.

The rejection is being challenged in court, but it’s hard to be optimistic for the couple: as of 2010 in the UK, Christian adoption agencies in the UK have been forced to close for much the same reason.

From here:

Nearly every Christian adoption agency in the United Kingdom has been forced to close after resisting the government’s equality laws.

The legislation prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, and requires adoption agencies to consider same-sex couples as potential parents.

However, Christian agencies say they can’t comply because homosexuality goes against their beliefs.

Since the U.K. equality bill was passed in April, the number of adopted foster care children has dropped by 30 percent, and it’s estimated there are 4,000 children still awaiting adoption.

Clearly, the UK’s adoption strategy is not one of finding enough caring people to adopt children, but of finding enough people who are either in or approve of same-sex relationships to adopt children. And all the better if they are anti-Christian.

The most shocking 4-minute abortion debate you will ever see

Posted on by
8

From here:

CBR’s shocking, graphic video juxtaposed a soothing video produced by the Northland Family Planning Centers, a late-term abortion chain of 3 mills in Michigan, with the reality of abortion.

CBR’s video got such a huge initial response, CEO Gregg Cunningham decided to take some time to remaster it to grotesque perfection. CBR is calling this video “the most shocking 4-minute abortion debate you will ever see.” CBR may be right…

[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/abortionvideo.flv 700 500]

The Elton John cover-up

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

A US chain store deemed a magazine cover featuring Elton John’s family so offensive, it was covered to “protect” young shoppers.

The manager of the Harps store in Mountain Home, Arkansas, placed a “modesty shield” over the issue of US Weekly, despite John, his civil partner David Furnish and baby Zachary all being fully clothed.

Local resident Jennifer Huddleston took a picture of the shield and posted it on Twitter.

“This was taken at my local grocery store,’ she wrote on the social networking site. “I was shocked and horrified.”

“They are saying they need to keep children from seeing it, because it is a gay family.”

Harps said at first that they had no opinion on the matter but company president Kim Eskew later said the shield had been removed.

“In this case our store manager received some complaints and, as has been our custom, placed the shield over the cover of the magazine,” she said.

“When we began receiving complaints at our corporate office, we reviewed the magazine in question, removed the shield and are selling the magazine in all our locations today without any shield.

“Our true intention is not to offend anyone in our stores and this incident happened at just one of our 65 locations, which when brought to our attention we reversed.”

The fact is, today you can barely do anything without offending someone; so you might just as well concentrate on doing a thorough job of offending someone you thoroughly disagree with.

Rowan Williams’ differing reactions to persecution

Posted on by
Reply

Rowan Williams condemned the murder of David Kato in Kampala. He went on to urge the British government to provide asylum for other homosexuals who might be in danger in Uganda.

All very proper, of course; except I don’t remember him pressuring the UK government to accept Iranian homosexual refugees – who, after all, are in considerably more danger than those in Uganda.

Rowan seems to enjoy impossible balancing acts: not satisfied with trying to indaba together the two incompatible religions represented by liberal and conservative Anglicanism, he is now trying to denounce anti-homosexual factions in other nations without implicating the most enthusiastically systematic abusers of homosexuals now extant – Muslims.

From here:

The archbishop of Canterbury has urged the government to offer protection to gay and lesbian people seeking asylum in the UK after the “profoundly shocking” killing of a Ugandan gay rights activist this week.

Williams said: “Whatever the precise circumstances of his death, which have yet to be determined, we know that David Kato Kisule lived under the threat of violence and death.

“No one should have to live in such fear because of the bigotry of others. This event also makes it all the more urgent for the British government to secure the safety of LGBT asylum seekers in the UK. This is a moment to take very serious stock and to address those attitudes of mind which endanger the lives of men and women belonging to sexual minorities.”

Meanwhile, the Archbishop is “powerless to help” Christians who are being routinely murdered, tortured and raped in Islamic nations, but trusts they will be encouraged because they “have not been forgotten” – at least, not completely.

From here:

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will say Christians who are suffering because of their beliefs would be helped through the knowledge they have not been forgotten.

“We may feel powerless to help; yet we should also know that people in such circumstances are strengthened simply by knowing they have not been forgotten,” Williams will say, according to extracts of the address released in advance.

“And if we find we have time to spare for joining in letter-writing campaigns for all prisoners of conscience, [rights groups] Amnesty International and Christian Solidarity worldwide will have plenty of opportunities for us to make use of.”

Delivering the sermon at the cathedral in Canterbury, he will cite a number of countries where Christians are suffering, including Iraq and Zimbabwe………..

Williams, the spiritual leader of more than 70 million Anglicans worldwide, mentions the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother-of-five in Pakistan sentenced to death for defaming the Prophet Mohammed.

“Our prayers continue for [Asia Bibi] in Pakistan and others from minority groups who suffer from the abuse of the law by certain groups there.”

Richard Dawkins claims doing good to strangers is a “misfiring”

Posted on by
1

Starting at around 10:00 in this interview, Dawkins illuminates the CBC interviewer on the subject of right behaviour by claiming that to help a homeless person is the misfiring of a Darwinian impulse.

From Dawkins’ perspective this is a logical, if bleak, conclusion. He rather lets his side down, though, by backpedalling: he reassures the interviewer that this does in no way belittle attempts to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

Rubbish. According to Dawkins’ Darwinian lights, “belittle” is a moral evaluation and has no meaning in the context of pitiless, indifferent evolution.