Tag Archives: Australia

Crucify him!

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Australia is voting on whether to permit same-sex marriage.

As a result, some of those among us who self-identify as tolerant, inclusive, caring and loving have decorated a few churches with the epithet, “crucify No voters”, a salutary reminder that, in 2000 years nothing much has changed or, as Ecclesiastes puts it: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

From here:

At least two churches in Australia have been spray-painted over the weekend with graffiti that says “crucify No voters,” referring to those who vote against gay marriage in the country’s postal vote survey.

Sydney

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A few photos from Sydney. There are many more that will have to wait since my Aussie Internet connection seems to be running on wet string and tin cans.

The view of Sydney harbour from our friends’ apartment where we stayed for a while:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe obligatory opera house shots:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Bondi Beach:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASome colour from the Botanic Gardens:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAResting in the Botanic Gardens:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASt, Mary’s Cathedral:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABuskers:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPeople walking across the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge. No, I didn’t try it:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Australia: BC not PC enough

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From here:

A DECISION to use politically correct terms – which do not mention Jesus Christ – for dates BC and AD in the new national history curriculum was an act of Christian cleansing, church leaders said yesterday.

BCE (Before Common Era), BP (Before Present) and CE (Common Era) are the new neutral terms to replace the historical terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini).

Removing BC and AD from the curriculum was an “intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history”, Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen said yesterday.

“It is absurd because the coming of Christ remains the centre point of dating and because the phrase ‘common era’ is meaningless and misleading,” he said.

It was akin to calling Christmas the festive season, Archbishop Jensen said.

All of which is BS: a civilisation that is determined to expunge any reference to its foundations from public discourse will shrivel and die – deservedly so.

Australia has a law that allows private schools to expel homosexual students

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It comes as no surprise that an Anglican bishop is at the forefront of those who are appalled by the law.

A SENIOR Anglican bishop calls it “appalling” and a gay and lesbian rights group condemns it as “deeply offensive”, but the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, backs a NSW law that allows private schools to expel gay students simply for being gay.

Through a spokesman, Mr Hatzistergos, described the 30-year-old law as necessary “to maintain a sometimes delicate balance between protecting individuals from unlawful discrimination while allowing people to practise their own beliefs”.

Even though the very existence of the law is enough to give Anglican bishops an attack of the vapours, in practice it seems unlikely that the law would be administered in a draconian way:

Brigadier Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby has no qualms about the law. The head of the influential Christian pressure group said a church school should have the right to expel any openly gay child.

“But I would expect any church that found itself in that situation to do that in the most loving way that it could for the child and to reduce absolutely any negative affects.

“I think that you explain: this is a Christian school, that unless the child is prepared to accept that it is chaste, that it is searching for alternatives as well, that the school may decide that it might be better for the child as well that he goes somewhere else. I think it’s a loving response.”

In such a case, why should a Christian school not have the authority to expel the student? Why would the student want to attend the school in the first place?

An Australian couple will abort twin boys because they want a girl

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Children are no longer seen as gifts from God, bearing their creator’s image, but commodities to be picked through and discarded until a suitable specimen is found. This isn’t particularly surprising: it is one of the inevitable consequences of discarding Judeo-Christian ethics and replacing them with if it makes me feel good, it is good relativism.

From here:

A married couple who aborted twin boys the wife was expecting after IVF treatment have gone to court to choose the sex of their next child – because they want a girl.

The husband and wife already have three sons and said they now want to have a girl after their baby daughter died soon after birth.

They are both aged in their 30s and have taken their case to a legal tribunal after an independent medical body known as the Patient Review Panel rejected their bid to choose the gender of their next child using IVF.

The couple said they had made the decision to terminate the twin boys but could not continue to have unlimited numbers of children.

Aborted babies being left to die

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From here:

BABIES that are surviving late-term abortions at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital might be being left on shelves to die, according to an Anglican minister.

Dr Mark Durie, minister of St Mary’s Caulfield, said staff were finding it hard to cope with a reported six-fold increase in late-term abortions at the Women’s since abortion was decriminalised in Victoria two years ago. He said because conscientious objection by medical staff was now illegal, the hospital could employ only people who endorsed late-term abortions.

Dr Durie is bringing a motion about late-term abortion to the annual Anglican synod, which opened in Melbourne last night.

He calls on the state government to answer five questions about late-term abortions:

■ How many are happening, and how late?

■ What are the reasons for the abortions?

■ Are those born alive receiving medical care, or what is their cause of death?

■ What has been the effect on staff morale at the Royal Women’s Hospital?

■ What has been the effect on staff recruitment?

He said in one case – not at the Women’s – a trainee was deeply traumatised when she was told to drop a living foetus in a bucket of formaldehyde.

The Anglican diocese of Melbourne backed decriminalising abortion in its submission to the Victorian Law Reform Commission review in 2007. Archdeacon Alison Taylor told The Age at the time that in some circumstances, such as foetal abnormality, abortion was the ”the least problematic solution”.

The Anglican diocese of Melbourne was, predictably, on the wrong side of this issue; let’s hope that that changes.

Abortion in Canada has been legal and unrestricted since 1988. In spite of its pretensions to speak on social justice matters with a “prophetic voice”, the Anglican Church of Canada continues to maintain a mealy-mouthed silence about abortion, including late-term abortion and the fate of aborted babies that survive – until being dropped into formaldehyde.