Something special for monarchists to ponder:
Ben Summerskill, chief executive of gay rights group Stonewall, says the review is an ideal opportunity to end similar discrimination against homosexuals.
He wants measures to let future generations of Royals take part in a same-sex wedding – without losing their right to inherit the throne.
If this happens we could easily end up with a King and – er – Queen.
From here:
Gay couple sue Christians for barring them from hotel bed
The Christian owners of a seaside hotel may be prosecuted after refusing to allow a gay couple to stay in a double room.
Peter and Hazelmary Bull are facing an unprecedented court case under controversial new equality laws.
Martyn Hall, who lives with his civil partner Steven Preddy, has lodged a county court claim for up to £5,000 in damages alleging ‘direct discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation’.
Last August, the Bulls received a letter from Stonewall, the gay rights organisation, saying it had received a complaint and warning the hotel it was breaking the law.
The following month Mr Preddy, from Bristol, rang to book a double room for two nights.
Mrs Bull, who took the call, said last night that she had wrongly assumed that he would be staying with his wife before she accepted the booking.
When Mr Preddy and Mr Hall arrived, they were told by the manager, Bernie Quinn, that the hotel could not honour the booking.
The couple told him he was acting illegally before leaving and reporting the incident to police
The Chymorvah Hotel lists its rules:
Here at Chymorvah we have few rules, but please note that as Christians we have a deep regard for marriage (being the union of one man to one woman for life to the exclusion of all others).
Therefore, although we extend to all a warm welcome to our home, our double bedded accommodation is not available to unmarried couples – Thank you.
It’s obvious Messrs Hall and Preddy knew about the hotel rules before making the booking. In which case, they were not really looking for a seaside holiday at all, but were out to make a point by deliberately searching for accommodation where they knew they could challenge Christian principle with vacuous 21st Century secular equality. It is significant that no unmarried heterosexual couple has felt the need to sue the hotel – probably because there are plenty of other hotels in the area. Not to mention the fact that heterosexual unmarried couples do not feel the need to engage in a crusade to establish the normality of their behaviour.
When I was in school we used to play truant on the simple principle that we could learn more interesting things outside school than inside; our parents would take the contrary view, hinting that, if we continued in this direction we would come to no good. Now, parents of primary school children are removing their charges from school to avoid tendentious homosexual indoctrination. Who can blame them? The Waltham Forest Council can, apparently:
Parents face court action for removing children from gay history lessons.
Parents face possible court action for withdrawing their children from lessons on gay and lesbian history.
More than 30 pupils were pulled out of a week of teaching at a primary school which included books about homosexual partnerships.
The controversial content was worked into the curriculum at George Tomlinson School in Waltham Forest, East London.
A spokesman for Waltham Forest Council said: ‘As part of the borough’s policy of promoting tolerance in our schools, children are taught that everyone in our society is of equal value.
‘The council does not condone any unauthorised absence from school and action has been taken.’
A part of the borough’s policy of promoting tolerance is evidently being completely intolerant of parents who don’t agree with the school curriculum. And they clearly think that everyone in our society is of equal value as long as you are not someone challenging the prevailing cultural prejudices; if you are, they will sue you.
In the 21st Century, we call this academic freedom.
Raising the rainbow flag in Wales:
A gay pride flag has been flying above a police headquarters.
The flag to be hoisted to mark “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual History Month” at North Wales Police, where Richard Brunstrom, the controversial chief constable is in charge.
However anger is growing about flying the flag, and whether special interest groups should be perceived to be favoured by the police.
David Jones, Tory MP for Clwyd West, called it “political tokenism”.
He added : “I can’t see any reason why any flag other than the Union Flag and the Red Dragon of Wales should fly outside our police headquarters.
“This is tokenism and posturing. People want to see their police force focus on fighting crime, not getting involved in political tokenism and gestures.”
Welsh police posturing instead of fighting crime, ducky:
In the UK, perversion trumps family; from Melanie Phillips:
To place children with two gay men when an adoptive mother and father are available, just to uphold a brutal dogma, is a sickening assault on family life.
The case in Edinburgh reported today, where precisely this grotesque development has occurred, illustrates the sickening way in which what started out as a decent attempt to be tolerant towards a minority lifestyle has turned into a totalitarian assault upon family life and human rights.
For two years these grandparents fought for their right to care for the children, a five-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister, whose 26-year-old mother is a recovering heroin addict. But at 46 and 59 they were ruled to be too old to adopt.
Reluctantly, therefore, they agreed to the children being adopted by another couple, on the basis they would be brought up by a loving mother and father figure. But although several heterosexual couples were available to adopt them, the children were handed over instead to two gay men.
When the devastated grandparents objected they were threatened that unless they dropped their opposition they would never see their grandchildren again on account of their ‘negative’ attitude towards gay adoption.
If anyone should be standing up for the family and denouncing this type of state fascism, it is the Church.
Instead, the Western Anglican church has given its tacit approval by capitulating to a corrupt culture. Anglican prelates declare that being gay is a gift from God; pagan Canadian bishops bless as holy something that isn’t – those that aren’t yet, will soon; Rowan Williams, the Druid in Charge opines dreamily that gay sex is equivalent to marriage.
Demented, cowardly bishops, having abandoned two millennia of doctrine, declare that their slavish, grovelling obeisance to the Zeitgeist is actually prophetic.
Lord have mercy.
From the Globe
Defence to invoke gay marriage as polygamy trial begins in B.C.
Same-sex marriage, they said, would be the slippery slope to polygamy.
Just a few short years after Canadians engaged in a caustic debate over whether two men, or two women, should be allowed to marry, the prognosticators will find out if they are vindicated – however unhappily.
The lawyer for Winston Blackmore, the man with 19 wives in the B.C. religious community of Bountiful who is to appear in court today on polygamy charges, says he will cite Canada’s gay-marriage laws as part of his defence.
It’s an argument that people on both sides of the same-sex marriage fight were expecting: If same-sex marriage is justified under Charter rights to equality, then polygamy is justified under the Charter’s protection of religious freedom.
And why not? In fact why not homosexual polygamy? If we have redefined marriage to mean something other than what it has been for the last 2000 years, let’s just keep going.
And if you would like to marry 20 people in a church, come to the diocese of Niagara; by the time you get here pseudo-bishop Michael Bird will probably have discerned – with integrity – that polygamy is just fine.
The rot in the Diocese of Niagara started many years ago and has been passed down through the laying on of hands to each new bishop: John Bothwell, Walter Asbil, Ralph Spence and now Michael Bird.
John Bothwell began his reign of error in 1972.
In the early 1980s a friend of mine believed that God was calling him to become a priest in the diocese of Niagara; since he was a Christian, this was a brave move. Things went well for him academically, but John Bothwell had devised a test to weed out the undesirables in Niagara priests.
Before the final interviews candidates were made to watch a movie. Not just any movie, but a hard-core pornographic movie of homosexual men performing acts upon one another that normal people would rather not think about. The ostensible reason for this was to prepare the would-be priests for real life in the sunny Niagara Peninsular; indiscriminate inclusivity being paramount, any expressions of disgust were predictably used to filter out judgemental and diversity-intolerant candidates. To his credit my friend failed the test. Subsequently, after steeling himself for the inevitable assault on his sensibilities, he did become a priest
The reason that the diocese of Niagara is in the heretical mess that it is in today is because the way was carefully prepared by Bothwell and the subsequent troupe of delinquent, scelestious theomaniacs posing as bishops that followed in his footsteps.
Even though Michael Bird is a prat extraordinaire, not all the credit for Niagara’s heterodox buffoonery can be laid at his doorstep: in order to prosecute his folly, he stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before. Which is just as well considering his height.
When I was growing up, it was customary to refer to a man’s sexual apparatus euphemistically as “willie”, “jimmy” or some other unfortunate’s Christian name. It took me a long time to catch on to the true meaning of “Charlie’s dead” – an omission in my vernacular that led to embarrassing consequences since it means, your fly is undone. It all seems rather silly now, but it must have made everyone feel comfortable at the time.
Nowadays, of course, the politically correct thing to do is to bring up one’s children to use the correct names – whose utterance once caused such embarrassment – for all anatomical paraphernalia. So at the dinner table, when little Johnny casually refers to the fact that his penis is itching, the proud parents look at him with the smug satisfaction that accompanies those who have broken free of the petit bourgeois mores of their forebears.
However, even for the penis and vagina generation, there are some words that are still taboo:
Church sanctioned for campaign against “sodomy”
The Advertising Standards Authority says Church advert on homosexuality broke decency standardsA church has been sanctioned by the UK advertising regulator for a campaign against “sodomy” in which a Bible verse was used to describe homosexuality as an “abomination”.
The Advertising Standards Authority has has upheld a complaint against the regional press advertisement, headlined “The Word of God Against Sodomy” in capital letters.
The authority ruled that the advertisement, placed in the Belfast News Letter by the Sandown Free Presbyterian Church in Belfast, caused “serious offence” and broke its standards on decency.
In its adjudication the authority, which received seven complaints, rejected the suggestion that the advertisement could provoke violence against gay and lesbian people but said it was offensive and should not be repeated.
Exercise discipline, that is. Learn from the Lutherans: read it all at the National Post.
Lutheran parish suspended over gay pastor
A Newmarket Lutheran parish has been suspended for ordaining a married gay man — a move that the national church called a clear violation of its rules.
But the man at the centre of the controversy said he has no intentions of stepping aside.
Lionel Ketola was made a minister by a non-traditional American Lutheran group that ordains gay men and women. Mr. Ketola was then hired as the associate pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in May and was immediately warned that he had no official status in the national church and the parish would be subject to sanctions.
It is the first time a parish has ever been suspended in the history of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, the largest Lutheran denomination in the country, with 600 congregations and 180,000 members. The rule on ordination says no “self-professed practising homosexual” can be ordained.
“They extended the call [to Mr. Ketola] without the authority of the church,” Rev. Dahle said. As a result, “we have suspended the congregation’s right to be involved in the active life of the church.”
It means that Holy Cross cannot take part in synods, conventions and conferences. It also means that even legitimate clergy at Holy Cross are excluded from national positions.
I am sure this is not over, but it is encouraging to see mainline church leaders with the courage of their convictions – something one could never accuse Fred Hiltz of.
From the Telegraph.
Christian relationship counsellor sacked after refusing to give sex advice to gay couples
He said his problems began last year after he started to train as a psychosexual therapist, treating people’s intimate sexual problems.
He said: “In counselling, you are drawing the couple out, going on a journey with them, enabling them to think in more than black and white. You are not telling anyone what to do or endorsing what they do.
“But in sex therapy you are diagnosing their problems and setting them a treatment plan, not unlike a doctor.”
He said that while he believed in ‘each to their own’, he felt uncomfortable doing anything that would directly encourage gay sex, and raised the matter with his supervisor.
Fellow counsellors complained about Mr McFarlane’s views, alleging he was homophobic, and he was suspended last December by his manager.
After three weeks, he was reinstated and had to promise to abide by Relate’s equal opportunities policy, with the proviso, he claims, that he could raise issues in the future.
Following further complaints, however, he was told that he would face a disciplinary hearing because managers at Relate Avon no longer believed he intended to uphold the policy. He was dismissed and his appeal was rejected.
Picture this: a homosexual couple are having sexual difficulties. Nothing odd about that really, since their plumbing is all wrong for sex. So what do they do? They search high and low for a Christian sex counsellor for advice; eventually they find Gary McFarlane. But he is not only a Christian who disagrees with gay sex in the first place, he is also a heterosexual – what we used to call normal – and has difficulty relating to what goes where in homosexual copulation. The homosexual couple is not to be deterred: they insist that only Mr. McFarlane can advise them on the sexual conundrum of maintaining intimacy when the parts don’t fit.
Which brings home the point that the person at Relate who fired Gary McFarlane is an idiot.
