A Year Later, Global “Safe Abortion” Campaign Yields Little Support

By Samantha Singson

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) After nearly a year of soliciting signatures as part of a campaign for global “safe abortion,” Marie Stopes International has little to show for it. Less than 500 people have signed an online petition which calls for “full access to legal, voluntary, safe and affordable abortions as part of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care” around the world.

The campaign, which was co-sponsored by the pro-abortion groups Ipas and the UK-based group Abortion Rights, was launched at the International Global Safe Abortion Conference that took place in October 2007 in London, an event that was held in conjunction with the UN and UNICEF sponsored Women Deliver conference. Both the conference and the campaign seek to bolster international commitment to abortion and call “for women’s access to legal, safe abortion to be recognized as a fundamental human right.”

A detailed look at the list of campaign supporters reveal that nearly 20% of the signatures are from employees of the three sponsoring organizations. Of the 498 signatures on the campaign website, 77 are from Marie Stopes employees, 16 from Ipas employees and 3 from those who work at Abortion Rights.

The campaign says that it is “intolerable” that restrictive laws, lack of resources and “politically and ideologically-motivated interference” remain obstacles for women to access “contraceptive and abortion technologies to save women’s lives.”

The campaign disparages government programs which focus on Millennium Development Goal 5 to improve maternal health but “neglect the 13 percent of maternal deaths caused by unsafe abortion globally and fail to support the full range of preventive actions required.”

I must interrupt here... what about the 100% infant death rate of abortion? Oh, I must have forgotten, "right to choose" doesn't include one's own choice to live.

Abortion proponents often link unsafe abortion and maternal mortality to push for legal, so-called “safe” abortion. Critics of the Marie Stopes argument are quick to point out that the 13 percent figure is highly suspect, as few countries even record the sex of an individual at time of death, let alone keep records on cause of death.

Critics also challenge the assertion that legal abortion would result in fewer maternal deaths. In Poland, after abortion was severely restricted in 1993, the country showed a sharp decline in both the abortion rate and in maternal deaths. Ireland, where abortion remains illegal, reports one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world.

Marie Stopes boasts that last year alone it provided over five million people in 40 countries with sexual health and family planning counseling, “safe abortion” and post-abortive care, as well as training health professionals. Around the world, Maries Stopes has become a major player in the national health care systems of developing nations. In 2006, Marie Stopes, a registered charity, reported “amounts receivable for the provision of services” totalling almost 56 million pounds sterling, or roughly, $100 million US.

Ipas is also a giant in the abortion industry. Ipas works to “expand the availability and accessibility of medical equipment and supplies that health professionals need to deliver high-quality reproductive health services.” Ipas’ manual vacuum aspiration instruments, suction devices used to perform early abortions and “menstrual extractions,” are used and distributed worldwide.

Maries Stopes plans to present the collected signatures to world leaders at the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on International Human Rights Day on December 10, 2008.

Hopefully when Murder Stopes presents their impressive 477 signature petition, they are laughed off the stage....finally I make a post with good news. :-)

In Orissa Christians treated worse than animals, says Father Bernard

by Nirmala Carvalho

As the situation gets back to normal amid fears and tensions, what happened is slowly emerging. Victims talk about the violence inflicted upon them, a true “attack against the sacredness and dignity of human life”. Beaten repeatedly and left unconscious for hours in the forest, Fr Bernard Digal tells his story.

Mumbai (AsiaNews) – “The attack on Christians in Orissa was an attack against the sacredness and dignity of human life. The world must know this,” said Fr Bernard Digal. “In some countries even animals have rights and laws. In Kandhmal we were treated worse than animals. Every possible indignity, obscenity and torture was meted out against helpless Christians. Men, women, children; everyone was targets of brutal atrocities.”

Fr Bernard Digal is the treasurer of the Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneshwar. He spoke to AsiaNews about his pain over what is happening in Orissa. He, too, was wounded, beaten for hours by radical Hindus, left for a whole night unconscious, half naked, in the forest, until he was found by his driver. Now he is in the intensive care unit in Mumbai’s Holy Spirit Hospital.

During his talk with AsiaNews he was given another unit of blood. But his thoughts were with his people and family, all forced to flee to save their lives, now stranded in a refugee camp near Bhubaneshwar.

“My heart is filled with gratitude because God saved my life. But whilst I am being treated here my people are hiding in the forest and even there, there is no security,” he said. “There are mothers breast-feeding their infants, children, young and old people, all hanging on a precarious thread, in terror. Even refugee camps are not free of dangers.”

“I was visiting the parishes in Kandhamal district exactly on 23 August when Swami Laxamananda Saraswati and four of his followers were killed by Maoists. On 25 August, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and other radical Sangh Parivar groups decided to go on a dawn-to-dusk strike, bringing thousands of people together.”

On the 25 Father Bernard went to visit Father Alexander Chandi in Sankrakhol Parish when a Hindu mob attacked the latter’s church.

“On the night of 25 August the parish church and the priest’s house were sacked and set on fire. From far away we could hear the crowd shouting hate-filled slogans, levelling accusations against Christianity. . . . Fearing for our lives we fled into the forest.”

“The extremists also set my car on fire,” Father Bernard said. “Whilst Father Alexander stayed in the forest I went looking for some relatives who were in the area. I walked at least 15 kilometres. At one point the extremists caught me and beat me with iron rods, lances, axes and big stones. I don’t know for how long they beat me because I lost consciousness. My driver found me the next day, after ten hours, and I was taken to hospital. It is only there that I regained consciousness.”

Without acrimony but also without any warmth, Father Bernard said: “I was beaten and left naked in the forest for ten hours. Others were cut to pieces or burnt alive. Is all this human? Or is it an attack against life itself?”

“In Kandhamal the lives of Christians are under attack from Hindutva radicals,” the priest said. “The police and the government are incapable of doing anything about it. Sometimes they are not even willing to take preventive measures to contain these forces who are destroying our life and dignity.”

Even though there are still tensions and fear, the situation is getting back to normal in Orissa, said Fr Babu Joseph, spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference of India.

Still refugee camps need tighter controls to prevent Hindu radicals from infiltrating them. The wounded require medical treatment. And everyone is wondering when they can go back to rebuild their homes.

U.N. Thugs - Durban II

By Christine Williams, FrontPageMagazine.com | 9/2/2008

Support for Israel has never ranked high on the United Nations’ agenda. And the upcoming World Conference Against Racism, scheduled for early 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland, presents a valid case. Many observers are concerned that the UN-sponsored event will simply serve as yet another a platform to launch attacks against Israel -- as the previous world anti-racism conference did in Durban, South Africa, seven years ago.

Even by the standards of the organization’s traditional antagonism toward the Jewish State, the U.N.’s 2001 Durban gathering marked a low point. To the extent that “racism” was discussed, it was only to condemn Israeli policies. Little wonder that the conference, known as “ Durban I,” is largely remembered as a U.N.-backed assault on Israel.

Now it’s back. And if early evidence is any guide, Durban II, as the Geneva event is already being called, will be a replay of its predecessor. Consider that the chair of the conference’s planning committee is Libya, whose longtime leader, Muammar Gadhafi, has recently claimed that the Israeli Mossad aims to assassinate Barack Obama. The vice chair of the conference, meanwhile, is communist Cuba. And the fact that Iran's president has notoriously called for Israel’s destruction has not, expectedly, prevented it from playing a key leadership role in the upcoming conference.

Nor does it bode well for Durban II that its agenda will be set by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). In particular, the conference will consider responses to “Islamophobia.” In this connection, the OIC’s members will consider what they regard as the problematic Western right to free speech. Referring to the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed published in Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten and to “Fitna,” Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s documentary about Islam, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu recently promised to send “a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.” He went on to warn Western countries to “look seriously into the question of freedom of expression.”

For their part, Western countries should make clear that they will not allow the OIC to dictate what can and cannot be said about Islam. Instead, they should shift the focus onto the OIC. Instead of concerning themselves with alleged Western prejudices, Islamic states would do well to ponder the rampant racism in the Muslim World. Darfur, where an estimated 300,000 Muslims have been killed by their fellow Muslims, prompting the United Nations to call it the worst human rights disaster in the world, would be a logical starting point. From there, the OIC might consider the continued bloodshed between Shiites and Sunnis, and the fanatical suicide bombers who have claimed the lives of thousands of their co-religionists. One need hardly look to the West to find “Islamophobia” in action.

As for “racism,” the conference’s nominal subject, it is worth bearing in mind that slavery - the most racist of practices - endures in the Islamic world even as it has been abolished in the West. In OIC member states like Sudan and Mauritania, Arabs still keep black African slaves. Sudan 's president, Omar al-Bashir, who was indicted by the World Court for human rights abuses in Darfur, is reputed to have black slaves in his own house. According to NGO reports, some 200,000 southern Sudanese have been enslaved during Bashir’s reign, a practice that the UN has charged is “deeply rooted in Arab and Muslim supremacism.” (Such grim statistics did not deter the Sudanese Minister of Justice from demanding, in a stunning act of hypocrisy, reparations for historical slavery during Durban I.) And while Mauritania legally abolished slavery in 1980, it is still practiced secretly. Even Muslims in the West have not accepted its ban on slavery. For example, four Arab princesses were found in July living in Brussels with 17 slaves.

The persistence of slavery in the Muslim world is not, of course, surprising. In August 1990, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights was affirmed by the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). It stated that Islamic Sharia law is the sole source of the Islamic perspective on human rights. And slavery is codified in Sharia law. It is doubtful, naturally, that this detail will be much discussed during Durban II.

In light of recent history, it makes sense that Israel has decided to boycott next year’s conference. Canada has also decided to boycott Durban II, and other Western countries should consider following the Canadian example. It’s the height of absurdity for free nations to have to endure lectures on human rights from its preeminent abusers. In 2001, they could have claimed to be unaware of the conference’s sinister agenda. Seven years later, ignorance is no longer an excuse or an option.

MSNBC reassigns liberal-biased 'reporters'

Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 9/10/2008 6:00:00 AM

A conservative media analyst says the decision by MSNBC to drop Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as co-anchors of its political night coverage is an effort to regain some of the credibility that the network lost when the liberal bias of the two hosts was challenged on the air by their colleagues.

Veteran reporter David Gregory will now anchor MSNBC's coverage of the presidential and vice presidential debates, along with election night. Olbermann and Matthews will remain as commentators on the cable news network's coverage. During the Republican and Democratic conventions, Olbermann, Matthews, and MSNBC pundits engaged in a series of spats.

Bob Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute, believes MSNBC did not make the move sooner because it had risen in the ratings.

"There is a segment of the population out there that likes to hear Keith Olbermann rant against any conservative, but you can only do that so much and still have credibility," Knight contends. "Over the last couple of weeks, obviously Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann unleashed so much venom toward Sarah Palin and other Republicans that they felt that the reputation of the network was at stake, so they finally made the move."

According to Knight, it is yet another reminder that the major television networks are suffering from liberal bias.

"It's not just MSNBC. There've been two revealing polls in recent days. One of them was of uncommitted voters, and 50 percent of them believe that the media were trying to elect Barack Obama – they saw that much bias," Knight adds. "And then another poll that just came out said that a large number of people thought the media were being very unfair to Sarah Palin. And then when you have US Weekly losing 10,000 subscribers [who were] furious at how they treated her on their cover, you can see the public rising up and saying 'enough is enough.'"

Knight says it hurts a network's credibility any time the objectivity of an anchor is being questioned on the air by his own colleagues, as was the case with MSNBC. He recommends that if the networks really wanted to stop their declining ratings, they would employ more conservative commentators because they "speak more to the heart of America."

Politics Needs New Generation, Says Pope

Encourages Sardinians in Seeking Solutions

CAGLIARI, Sardinia, SEPT. 9, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says the world of politics and the economy needs a new generation of committed laypeople.

The Pope affirmed this during a Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Bonaria in Sardinia, a semi-autonomous Italian island located in the Mediterranean Sea. The Holy Father visited the island for a one-day pastoral visit on Sunday, meeting with priests and young people and marking the centenary of the proclamation of Our Lady of Bonaria as patron of Sardinia.

During his homily, the Pontiff asked for Mary's intercession to help Christian families, "which today more than ever are in need of confidence and support at the spiritual as well as the social level."

May she help you to identify appropriate pastoral strategies so that young people will find Christ since, by nature, they bring a new energy but are often victims of widespread nihilism," he continued.

Benedict XVI asked that the Virgin Mary make believers capable of "evangelizing the world of work, the economy and politics, which needs a new generation of committed lay Christians, capable of seeking with competence and rigor moral solutions for sustainable development."


Theological formation

Later in the day, the Pope met with priests, seminarians and students of the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Sardinia.

He encouraged the professors to help their students have a "daily personal experience of God," especially through the Eucharist, "celebrated and experienced as the center of existence."

Theological formation, the Holy Father added, "must lead you to achieve a 'complete and unitary' vision of revealed truths and of their assimilation into the Church's experience of faith. From here arises the dual need to know the totality of Christian truths and to know them not as separate from one another, but in an organic way, as a unit, as a single truth of faith in God."


Trap of individualism

Before leaving the island, the Bishop of Rome met with youth, with whom he spoke about the true measure of success.

"What can we say of the fact that in modern consumer society, earnings and success have become the new idols before which so many prostrate themselves? The consequence of this is that people are led to give value only to those who [...] 'have found fortune' or who are 'notorious,' and not to those who must struggle with life every day," he said.

"There is a risk of becoming superficial, of taking dangerous shortcuts in search of success, thus giving life up to experiences that bring immediate satisfaction but that in themselves are precarious and deceptive," the Holy Father continued. "There is a growing tendency to individualism, and when we concentrate only on ourselves we inevitably become fragile."

The Pope concluded: "May each of you rediscover God as the meaning and foundation for all creatures, light of truth, flame of charity, bond of unity. You will no longer be afraid to lose your liberty, because you will experience it fully by giving it for love. You will no longer be attached to material goods, because in yourselves you will feel the joy of sharing them. […]

"If you really discover God in the face of Christ, you will no longer think of the Church as an institution external to yourselves, but as your spiritual family."

Media accused of creating controversy over Palin's faith

A conservative media analyst points out that it took the wire services and major television networks a year to discover who Reverend Jeremiah Wright was -- yet only 48 hours to begin running "sneering pieces" about Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin's religion. Tim Graham says that shows a glaring double standard.

The Associated Press has written an article claiming that Governor Palin's biography for the National Governor's Association "obscures" her "deep roots in Pentecostalism." According to the AP, Pentecostalism is "a spirit-filled Christian tradition that is one of the fastest growing in the world" and "often derided by outsiders and Bible-believers alike." (Read commentary on the AP report)

Although Palin attended a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church up until six years ago, she is currently a member of Wasilla Bible Church, an independent evangelical congregation.

Tim Graham of the Media Research Center says he finds it strange to see secular reporters trying to report on Sarah Palin's religious beliefs "when they don't seem to have any" themselves.

"For them to sort of suggest that Sarah Palin is an inauthentic Christian, that the churches she's belonged to are derided by Bible-believers -- it reads like opposition research; it doesn't read like news from a wire service," he remarks.

Graham says many Democrats in the media are still upset about the Jeremiah Wright story and are trying to "fictionalize a Jeremiah Wright scenario" in Palin's life. "You've already seen these leaked videos of Sarah Palin talking about how our soldiers are hopefully on a mission from God," he notes. "That is the sort of language that scares secular reporters and doesn't really bother Christians at all."

The first media attack on Palin's faith was launched by NBC News, which criticized her for once saying that the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq is a "task that is from God."

By Jim Brown - 9/8/2008 Source: Onenewsnow.com

CNN coverage of Obama and the Born Alive Act

Very, very informative. Watch.

Deception on infant protection bill haunts Obama

Barack Obama continues to be dogged by claims that he is misleading people about his past opposition to a bill in the Illinois legislature protecting babies who survived late-term abortions.

New audio reveals that while arguing against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) in the Illinois Senate in 2002, state lawmaker Obama suggested two doctors tending to a baby who survived a botched abortion would be too much of a burden to the child's mother.

"And that essentially adding an additional doctor -- who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments -- is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion," he stated.

Jill Stanek is an Illinois pro-life activist and columnist who has written extensively about Obama's record on abortion. She says the Democratic presidential hopeful "definitely does not have one iota of concern" for the baby.

"He only cares about the doctors, making sure they get enough sleep -- and the mom, making sure that even though her pregnancy is terminated, that she can have the dead baby that she wanted," says Stanek. "So that's apparently his goal with abortion."

Obama has claimed that he opposed the Illinois infant protection bill because it threatened Roe v. Wade and that he would have supported it if it had included language identical to the federal bill. However, the bill did contain language identical to the federal measure -- and Obama still opposed it.

Last week the pro-life group National Right to Life produced legislative records it claimed proved Obama had "blatantly misrepresented" his opposition to BAIPA. After Senator Obama returned from his Hawaiian vacation, his campaign finally admitted the two bills contained identical language.

Stanek says Obama owes her and National Right to Life an apology for accusing them of lying about his record. "He misrepresented for four years the fact that he had voted the way that he did," she says. "As recently as Saturday night, he was denying that what was true was true."

Columnist Brian Fitzpatrick notes that major media outlets have virtually ignored the fact that the Obama campaign admitted he has misled the public on the matter since 2004.

ONENEWSNOW.COM

CEDAW Committee Abortion Misinterpretations Infect Human Rights Committee

By Samantha Singson

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Last week, the Office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights, which is responsible for overseeing treaty compliance committees, released the concluding observations of the most recent sessions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee and Human Rights Committee (HRC). Both committees used the July sessions to pressure countries appearing before them to liberalize abortion laws, even though no UN human rights treaty mentions abortion.

The HRC, which monitors state compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), told Ireland that it “should bring its abortion laws into line with the Covenant” so that women would “not have to resort to illegal or unsafe abortion that could put their lives at risk or to abortions abroad.” The HRC cited Article 6 of the ICCPR, which states “every human being has the inherent right to life,” as justification for the concluding observation.

Since 2003, HRC has pressured at least 14 countries to legalize abortion or liberalize laws by misinterpreting the ICCPR provisions like the “right to life.” Abortion rights advocates claimed victory in the HRC in 2005, when the Committee made an unprecedented ruling against Peru for allegedly violating the rights of a woman who was denied permission by the government to obtain an abortion.

According to an analysis by Focus on the Family’s Thomas Jacobson, who has been monitoring the work of the CEDAW Committee and the HRC, “The HRC now interprets this article to mean that the ‘right to life’ of a pregnant woman is violated if she is not permitted to terminate the life of her preborn child. Pregnancy has come to be viewed as life-threatening (instead of life-giving). To the HRC, the ‘right to life’ has become the ‘right’ to abortion.”

No binding UN treaty includes a right to abortion. Observers are becoming increasingly concerned, however, by how mainstream committees like the HRC are following the CEDAW trend of misinterpreting treaty articles and questioning nations about their abortion laws. Over the last ten years, CEDAW has pressured over 60 nations on abortion.

At the last CEDAW session alone, CEDAW Committee members questioned Lithuania, Nigeria, Finland, the United Kingdom and Slovakia on their abortion laws, using lowering maternal mortality as a pretext. CEDAW Committee members blasted Lithuania on a draft law which would limit when and in what circumstances abortions are allowed. Committee members also sharply criticized Slovakia’s concordat with the Holy See, which protects the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to participating in abortions.

While the rulings of treaty bodies are technically non-binding, abortion activists have brought litigation throughout the world citing the ruling of UN human rights treaty bodies, like the CEDAW Committee, in challenging laws against abortion. Such arguments helped convince the Colombian constitutional court to liberalize that country’s restrictions on the practice.

Both the CEDAW Committee and HRC are scheduled to hold their next sessions in October in Geneva.

I can only wonder when these people will start saying that the sun is blue and the sky is yellow, and people will start believing that, too.

Democratic + Catholic + Senate = pro-abortion

Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 8/27/2008

The head of the Catholic League says although there are more "wild-eyed" supporters of abortion in the Democratic Party than Delaware Senator Joe Biden, Barack Obama's vice-presidential running mate is a strong ally of the abortion lobby. He also has a suggestion for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a professed Catholic: review the basics of Catholicism.

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League laments that of the 16 Democratic senators who are Catholic, all are pro-abortion. Senator Joe Biden's approval rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) ranges from 75-to-100 percent.

Although in the past Biden has declared opposition to partial-birth abortion, Donohue notes that when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on the procedure, Biden criticized the decision.

"So put this together," he suggests. "You have a man running for president on the Democratic ticket who believes in selective infanticide, joined by a pro-abortion Catholic, with delegates at the convention which are wildly out of step with what Americans feel about this serious subject, and you have the Speaker of the House who doesn't even know what her religion teaches about the subject," Donohue contends.

He is referencing NBC's broadcast of Meet the Press on Sunday, when Speaker Pelosi (D-California) denied that the Catholic Church opposes abortion. NBC's Tom Brokaw asked Pelosi the same question that Barack Obama said was "above his pay grade."

"If he [Obama] were to come to you and say, 'Help me out here, Madame Speaker. When does life begin?' -- what would you tell him?" Brokaw inquired.

"I would say, as an ardent practicing Catholic, uh this is an issue that I have studied for a long time, and what I know is over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition," Pelosi answered. "And...Saint Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is that it shouldn't have an impact on a woman's right to choose."

Donohue notes the Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that "human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception."

"To misrepresent what the Catholic Church teaches on the subject, and which the Catechism has said that from the first century -- the Catholic Church has been opposed to abortion, that it's never changed its teaching on the subject -- and when she said 'I've been studying this for a long time,' one has to wonder about her cognitive abilities," the Catholic League spokesman contends.

According to Donohue, pro-abortion Catholics like Nancy Pelosi have, for years, been "living in a state of denial." He also says he is offering Pelosi a free copy of the book Catholicism for Dummies.

Update: The Associated Press is reporting today that Speaker Pelosi is not backing off the contentious comments she made about abortion during Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC. Her remark that "doctors of the church" have not been able to define when life begins prompted swift rebukes from Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl and Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, who said Catholic teaching has consistently condemned abortion.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, says she based her statement on St. Augustine's view that "there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation."

But Cardinal Justin Rigali and Bishop William Lori responded that "the church's moral teaching never justified or permitted abortion at any stage of development." And Chaput says abortion "is always gravely evil -- and so are the evasions employed to justify it."

Pelosi is no Catholic and she makes a mockery of my faith.

NBC to 'gay' journalists: 'Your victories are our victories'

from the files of "objective media"

Brian Fitzpatrick - 8/29/2008 - OneNewsNow.com

It's spelled NLGJA, but they pronounce it "Negligee." The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) just held its annual convention here in Washington, DC, attracting hundreds of journalists – and ringing endorsements – from virtually every major publication and broadcaster in the news media.

In a full-page ad in the convention program, NBC Universal declared it is "proud to support NLGJA," under the bold headline: "YOUR VICTORIES ARE OUR VICTORIES."

After listening to speaker after speaker express hatred and contempt for political and religious conservatives while plotting how to advance the homosexual activist agenda through journalism, I'm left wondering whether Americans know the extent of the media's bias on homosexual issues. Do they know that the news media have thrown themselves fully behind the gay rights movement? Every major news organization sponsored the convention, bought space in the program, or had recruiting booths.

Hatred. NBC/National Journal reporter Matthew Berger said he experienced "reverse Stockholm syndrome" while on the campaign trail covering GOP religious conservative Mike Huckabee. "Stockholm syndrome" is what afflicts hostages who come to love their captors. If Berger's feelings changed after traveling with the Huckabee campaign, they went in the opposite direction. He acknowledged how difficult it is for a journalist to do his job when you "hate" the people you're covering. Berger said he was happy when he was transferred to the "gay-friendly" Rudolph Giuliani campaign.

Sending an outspoken activist like Berger, the former president of NLGJA's Washington, DC, chapter, to cover the Huckabee campaign is like sending a hard-right activist to cover the Obama campaign. What was NBC thinking? Maybe they had no choice. Does NBC have anybody on staff who doesn't hate religious conservatives?

Kerry Eleveld, news editor for a homosexual-themed magazine appropriately named The Advocate, described as "refreshing" Pastor Rick Warren's questions to the presidential candidates at the Saddleback Church forum on August 16. However, she also got big laughs when she said she understood how others might find the pastor's participation in the political process "nauseating."

Discussing attitudes toward homosexuality, Los Angeles Times opinion pages editor Robin Rauzi revealed Big Media contempt for the rubes in Flyover Country: "We feel our readers are ahead of where they are in Kansas City."

Political activism. During a sparsely attended (11 out of hundreds of conferees) session promoting objectivity in news coverage, a reporter from a Florida newspaper acknowledged his biases: the "public's right to know," and "equality." By "equality," he meant the homosexual activist political agenda. He revealed the tension that ought to have bedeviled every journalist at the conference: how to avoid ideological bias while covering the news.

On a partisan level, the conferees clearly leaned toward the Democrats. One speaker frankly admitted that the homosexual activist community generally expects most gays to be Democrats. Two panels touched on a partisan controversy raging in the homosexual community: James Kirchick, assistant editor of The New Republic, said gays are "shocked" and "up in arms" because the owner of "Manhunt," a very popular same-sex "dating" site, contributes money to presumptive GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

Even Patrick Sammon, president of the organization for homosexuals in the GOP, the Log Cabin Republicans, stressed that his organization does not support social conservatives. Sammon called former Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Rick Santorum a "bigot." Another journalist observed that "some people" in DC make it their business to "out" homosexual staffers of GOP congressmen with an "anti-gay agenda."

A panel supposedly intended to foster accurate coverage of religion quickly turned into a political strategizing session aimed at "retaking Christianity" from conservatives. The moderator and organizer of the panel, furniture magnate Mitchell Gold, is the founder of Faith in America, a homosexual activist organization targeting the religious community.

Gold said, "The single biggest [obstacle] to gays having equal rights in the country is religion," so "I set myself to learn about it." One of the panelists, Ann Craig, director of Religion, Faith & Values for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), said, "We're not getting anyplace until we begin conquering the debate" in the religious community.

How to do it? Panelist Jimmy Creech, the former United Methodist pastor defrocked in 1999 for conducting same-sex "marriages," told the journalists to seek out "other voices" rather than quote the 700 Club's Pat Robertson and Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson. According to Creech, conservative Christian leaders like Robertson and Dobson are "the most radical Christians in America today," and represent "a very minority point of view."

The sole journalist on the panel was David Waters, editor of the Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" blog. Waters urged reporters "not to go" to established leaders like Robertson and Dobson, contrasting them to "real people" in the pews.

Sponsorship. Who paid for this blend of journalism and activism? The NLGJA convention was underwritten by most of the biggest names in the news business. At the $25,000 level: the McClatchy Company. At the $15,000 level: CBS, CNN, Gannett Foundation, ESPN, and Hearst Newspapers. Kicking in $10,000 were NBC, Fox Business, Fox News, News Corporation, and The Washington Post. Good for $5,000 were ABC News and Bloomberg. Publisher and broadcaster Cox Enterprises bought the inside cover of the program, and CBS News "salutes NLGJA" on the back cover. Gannett (USA Today) "salutes" NLGJA in a full-page ad, as does The New York Times in a half-page ad. A.H. Belo Corporation (Dallas Morning News, Providence Journal) declares it is a "proud sponsor" in a full-page ad, while The Washington Post "congratulates" NLGJA in its full-page ad.

Recruiting. NLGJA members generally view themselves as members of an oppressed minority group, which suggests they're likely to bring a political agenda to their journalism. The NLGJA convention doesn't seem to be a likely place to find objective reporters. Nevertheless, most of the top organizations in journalism sent recruiters: The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, AP, NPR, Bloomberg, even conservative-leaning Fox. The poor Fox recruiter seemed lonely.

The political and ideological bias so readily apparent at the NLGJA convention reflects a glaring problem in the news industry as a whole. Reporting the news objectively is still a matter of professional pride to most journalists, but many also have bigger fish to fry.

Philippines Court Rejects Claims of New York Based Pro-Abortion Group

Finally some good news...

By Samantha Singson

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The Philippine Court of Appeals recently rejected claims made by a radical pro-abortion group based in New York. The court dismissed an effort seeking to overturn an executive order promoting natural family planning. The petition was filed earlier this year by a group of Manila residents who relied heavily on legal advice and material from the international pro-abortion litigation group, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR).

Executive Order No. 003 was instituted in February 2000 by then-mayor of Manila, Jose Atienza. The executive order “upholds natural family planning not just as a method but as a way of self-awareness in promoting the culture of life while discouraging the use of artificial methods of contraception.”

CRR admits that the executive order technically applies only to city health centers and hospitals and does not explicitly ban “artificial” contraception. But CRR and the petitioners alleged that the executive order created “serious and lingering damage to residents” and that the executive order has in practice resulted in a “sweep” of contraceptive supplies and services from city health centers and hospitals. Further, they claim that the executive order “deprive(s) many women of their main source of affordable family planning supplies.”

“Imposing Misery,” a CRR publication severely critical of the executive order, claims that the Philippines is in violation of international law and has a legal duty to “ensure right of citizens to a full range of family planning services and information.”

The document argues that the Philippine government is required to provide contraception under its international legal obligations. The document specifically mentions the CEDAW Convention, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the non-binding Beijing Platform for Action. CRR’s international law argument relies almost exclusively on the non-binding interpretations of the treaty monitoring bodies, which have routinely overstepped their mandates by criticizing sovereign states on their abortion laws and reproductive health programs.

“Imposing Misery” outlines a litigation strategy to challenge the executive order. CRR recommends that “lawyers and advocates should explore different legal avenues to bring a court case challenging the executive order. "At the national level, an administrative complaint can be filed. Citizens who feel their rights have been violated by the policy can also file a petition in the courts, including the Supreme Court. If options at the national level prove ineffective, individual complaints can be taken to international bodies under the CEDAW Optional Protocol and the ICCPR.”

CRR regards the challenge to the Manila executive order as an important test case. According to CRR’s 2007 annual report, a positive decision to rescind the ban “would establish constitutional protections for reproductive rights throughout the country. It could also be used to defend similar rights in neighboring countries, as well as in Catholic countries throughout the world.”

Government officials have defended the focus on natural methods of family planning, as modern contraceptives have not been banned and are still available commercially throughout the country.

Though the Philippine Court of Appeals has dismissed the petition, the petitioners have vowed “to take their case to the international courts,” and other domestic avenues to challenge the order remain open.

California: Gay rights trump religious freedom

August 21, 2008 - American Family Association

The California Supreme Court, which recently legalized same-sex marriage, has ruled by a 7-0 vote that homosexual rights trump religious freedom. The ruling barred doctors, because of their Christian beliefs, from withholding unnecessary medical care to gays and lesbians. The ruling says that under state law sexual orientation rights trump religious freedom.

Justice Joyce Kennard wrote in the ruling that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state's law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."

Doctors at the Christian clinic referred the lesbian to another clinic, but the lesbian refused their referral - demanding that the Christian clinic perform the procedure. When the Christian doctors refused to violate their religious convictions, the lesbian sued and the Supreme Court gave her the victory.

This ruling will affect every business in California. If a similar victory in a federal court is won, every business in America will be affected.

For example: Alabama Fertility Specialists (AFS) has begun a campaign to bring Honda of Alabama to its knees because Honda will not cover artificial insemination for a lesbian in it’s insurance.

Honda advised their insurance carrier to "exclude domestic partners (same-sex partners) from ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) benefits including diagnostic services related to fertility/infertility..." If this doesn't work, then count on AFS to sue.

Alabama Fertility Specialists alerted the media, their supporters and gay groups about Honda’s actions and called on supporters and gays to bombard Honda with phone calls and letters.

World Health Organization Circumvents Abortion Laws in Bangladesh

By Samantha Singson

(NEW YORK— C-FAM) The World Health Organization (WHO) launched an initiative recently to boost a program for menstrual regulation in Bangladesh. WHO states that the objectives of this program are to “ensure the quality of [menstrual regulation] and to share the knowledge of safe motherhood.”

“Menstrual regulation,” also known as "menstrual extraction" (ME) is billed as a family planning method for women who missed their regular menstrual period and who strongly suspect that they are pregnant but cannot or do not want to wait for the results of a pregnancy test. Critics charge that menstrual regulation is a technique used to provide abortions in countries, like Bangladesh, where abortion is illegal.

A fund of $2.73 million, which was established with funding from the Netherlands Ministry of Development Cooperation and in partnership with the government of Bangladesh and non-governmental organizations working on menstrual regulation, will support projects over a four-year period starting this year.

Since there may not be an actual pregnancy to terminate, menstrual regulation is sometimes available in countries that prohibit abortion. If the woman was pregnant at the time the menstrual extraction is performed, the evidence of an abortion is either destroyed during the procedure or easily disposed of. Menstrual regulation is sometimes regarded as a cross between "foresight contraception" and "hindsight abortion."

Bangladesh has allowed menstrual regulation since the 1970s. A memo from 1979 established menstrual regulation as an "interim method of establishing non-pregnancy" for a woman at risk of being pregnant, whether or not she is actually pregnant.

Officials touted the menstrual regulation initiative as a positive step to help Bangladesh achieve Millennium Development Goal 5 to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters. The maternal mortality rate in Bangladesh is decreasing, but is still one of the highest in the world. According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), of the 2.5 million women who become pregnant each year, an estimated 370,000 develop fetal complications which the health facilities in the country are neither equipped nor able to handle.

Proponents of the WHO initiative assert that the decreasing maternal mortality rate can be primarily attributed to increased family planning services, including menstrual regulation. They argue that making menstrual regulation more widely available reduces the maternal deaths, decreasing the likelihood that a woman would recourse to an unsafe abortion.

UNICEF cites lack of access to emergency obstetric care, lack of skilled birth attendants, and maternal malnutrition as the primary causes of maternal death in Bangladesh, not unsafe abortion. According to UNICEF statistics, half of Bangladeshi women of reproductive age are underweight and in 2001, only 11.8 percent of deliveries were assisted by qualified medical personnel.

Critics of the WHO initiative charge that the menstrual regulation program may lead to fewer deliveries, and thus lower the maternal mortality rate, but it will not make women’s deliveries any safer.

The WHO is currently reviewing project proposals from interested organizations and research institutes working on menstrual regulation.

European Union Agency Calls for a Re-definition of Marriage, Criminalization of “Homophobia”

European Union Agency Calls for a Re-definition of Marriage, Criminalization of “Homophobia”

By Maciej Golubiewski

(WASHINGTON, DC — C-FAM) A recent report from the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) of the European Union (EU) has called for binding EU regulations that would equalize the legal status of married heterosexual couples with that of same-sex and opposite-sex couples across Europe. It also recommends policies aimed at “promoting visibility of homosexuality and other gender identities” and criminalizing homophobia through “hate crime” legislation.

FRA contracted writing of the report to a group called FRALEX. FRALEX is roughly the same group as the now defunct EU “network of independent fundamental rights experts,” a group that was widely criticized for trying to get the government of Slovakia to abrogate a treaty with the Vatican that provided conscience protection for doctors unwilling to carry out abortions.

The European Parliament requested FRA’s opinion in drafting a new EU law, called a directive that would prohibit discrimination based on “sexual orientation” in employment, education, social security, health care, and access to goods and services. Current EU laws extend that kind of protection only in the area of employment, leaving other areas to be treated in national legislation.

The 165-page report goes beyond examining the proposed directive and contains analysis of all possible aspects of EU and national laws that possibly discriminate against homosexuals. Areas include employment, freedom of movement, asylum, family reunification, freedom of assembly, and criminal law.

The report argues that EU law should force member states, in which there is no registered-partnership or “gay marriage” legislation, to treat poeple in these arrangements as married couples. Currently, the EU allows citizens of the EU and their family members to move and reside freely anywhere in the EU. The EU also allows third-country nationals who are spouses of EU citizens to reside legally in the EU. Both of these regulations refer to marriage in the traditional sense, although they allow exceptions when the move or reunification happens between countries that recognize other forms of relationships as equivalent to marriage.

The extension of marital privileges to same-sex and cohabiting opposite-sex couples is justified in the report by reference to the EU’s “fundamental principle” of “equal treatment.” Yet, the definition of same-sex and opposite-sex couples is not precisely defined in the text. The authors refer to “stable and permanent relationships” or “de facto durable relationships” or relationships with “a sufficient degree of permanency.” Arguably, only couples involved in a sexual relationship would benefit from the proposed extension of current EU regulations. The report does not contain any prescriptions of how governments might attest to and discern such relationships.

Other parts of the report call for mandatory national “equality bodies,” preferably with independent units dealing only with homosexual issues. It argues for endowing them with “quasi-adjudicatory functions” that would allow them to issue “binding sanctions or orders, subject to review by courts.” It also argues for a sweeping EU regulation that would make “homophobic hate speech a criminal offense.”

Maciej Brachowicz, a human rights expert from Poland-based Jegiellonian Club, told the Friday Fax that “if one were to agree with FRA’s opinion, there are barely any legal grounds left for claiming that any inequality in social life should not be treated as discriminatory.”

Oregon citizens denied vote on marriage issue

Jeff Johnson - OneNewsNow - 8/20/2008

The Oregon Constitution says voters have the final say over any laws passed by the state legislature. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, says they don't.

After Oregon voters passed a marriage protection amendment declaring marriage to be only the union of one man and one woman, liberal lawmakers tried to sidestep the amendment by passing a "domestic partnership" law. As Austin R. Nimocks -- senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund -- explains, lawmakers are not supposed to have the final say in Oregon. "The citizens of Oregon reserve to themselves in their constitution the right to have the final say on any legislation...," notes Nimocks.

The attorney says when the Oregon legislature passed the domestic partnership law, citizens petitioned for a vote to determine whether the law would remain. But state officials refused to certify the referendum petitions -- a step Nimocks describes as "a dangerous precedent for the future of the democratic process in America."

"Right now, we're still considering our options on what to do," says Nimocks. "It's quite clear that the citizens of Oregon still want to have their say on this important law."

Both the U.S. District Court and the Ninth Circuit ruled that Oregon voters have no legal right to have their valid signatures counted in a referendum petition drive. Nimocks calls those court decisions a "tragedy for democracy."

"In America, every citizen's vote should count," the attorney says in a press release. "The court has tossed aside one of the most important rights we have as Americans. The people didn't thwart this effort; government bureaucracy did."

Media avert eyes as Obama caught in infanticide deception

by Brian Fitzpatrick - 8/20/2008

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign has admitted that he has misled the public since 2004 on a hot-button social issue, but Big Media has virtually ignored the story.

The Illinois senator and a leading pro-life organization have accused each other of lying about his reasons for leading the fight against an anti-infanticide bill in the Illinois state senate between 2001 and 2003.

On Saturday, Obama accused the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) with "lying" about his record. On Sunday, however, his campaign was forced to concede the NRLC's charge was accurate.

Obama's opposition to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) has been a major problem for his political campaigns since 2004, when his opponent in the U.S. Senate race accused him of supporting infanticide. BAIPA would have required hospitals to provide care to infants that survived an abortion attempt, rather than withhold treatment and allow them to die.

Most such cases involve an abortion procedure in which labor is induced prematurely. The infants are expected to be killed by their own mothers' contractions, but a few survive the birthing process. The lungs of the survivors usually are not mature enough to sustain life, so the babies need immediate medical intervention. Many Illinois hospitals, however, decline to provide the lifesaving care.

Why would anybody oppose such a bill? According to CNSNews editor Terence Jeffrey, Obama opposed it because it would have defined a baby that survived an abortion procedure as a person: "Defining a 'pre-viable fetus' that survived an abortion as a 'person,' he argued, 'would essentially bar abortions....'"

In 2002 the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a federal version of BAIPA with a "neutrality clause" stating the bill did not affect the legal status of "the species homo sapiens prior to being 'born alive.'" Even the radically pro-abortion organization NARAL withdrew its opposition to the bill. Since 2004, Obama has said he would have supported the Illinois BAIPA if the state version of the bill had included "Roe-neutral" language found in the federal version. Has he been telling the truth?

Not according to NRLC. Last week, NRLC produced Illinois legislative records it said proved Obama had "blatantly misrepresented" his opposition to BAIPA. According to NRLC, Obama presided over a 2003 committee meeting that amended the Illinois bill to make it virtually identical to the federal bill – then voted against the amended bill anyway.

In an interview following Saturday's Saddleback Church presidential forum, CNN/CBN reporter David Brody asked Obama to comment on the NRLC allegations. Obama told Brody, "I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying." Obama continued, "I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported, which was to say that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion."

On Sunday, however, Obama's campaign staff conceded to The New York Sun that Obama "had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate." The staff tacitly admitted that Obama has been misleading the public since 2004.

Pro-life organizations immediately seized upon the controversy, but except for CNN, the liberal media have ignored it. NewsBusters reports that on Monday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer played a clip of Obama's accusation that NRLC was "lying." Blitzer said CNN is "checking the facts," but so far CNN has not reported NRLC's documentary evidence or the Obama camp's acknowledgement that NRLC has the facts straight.

Big Media has been ignoring the BAIPA story for months; the essential facts were reported by Jeffrey as early as January. This weekend, Obama put the story on the national radar screen by publicly accusing the NRLC of "lying." His campaign staff's subsequent admission that NRLC was correct – calling into question Obama's reasons for opposing a bill that would have prevented infanticide – has created a story screaming for attention.

How could a U.S. presidential candidate have opposed a bill that protected the lives of innocent, fully born babies, a bill so incontestably in the moral right that the most ardent pro-choicers in the U.S. Senate supported it unanimously? Is Barack Obama even more radically pro-choice than NARAL? Would Obama deny medical care to living, breathing infants just to reinforce the abstract right of mothers to decide whether their children are to live or to die? Big Media owes it to the public to tell the full story.

As of this writing, stony silence.

Source: http://www.onenewsnow.com/

Obama pro-abortion all the way, says NRLC

Rusty Pugh - OneNewsNow - 8/13/2008 9:20:00 AM

A pro-life group says not only is Barack Obama 100-percent pro-abortion, it is now known that he even opposed a law designed to protect children who survived an abortion and were born alive.

New documents just obtained by the National Right To Life Committee (NRLC) prove that Senator Obama (D-Illinois) has, for the past four years, blatantly misrepresented his actions on the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill.

In 2000, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was first introduced in Congress. The bill was a two-paragraph bill intended to clarify that any baby who is entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who shows any signs of life, is to be regarded as a legal "person" for all federal law purposes, regardless if the baby was born during an attempted abortion.

Susan Muskett is legislative counsel for the NRLC. "Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an Illinois State Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion – even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion," she explains.

"Obama's legislative actions in 2003 – denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions – were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose."

A group of evangelical and Catholic leaders claimed this week that pro-life voters should be willing to support Obama in his presidential bid because there has been a "positive shift" in language on the issue of abortion in the Democratic Party platform, which typically mirrors the principles and policies of its presidential nominee. But at least one pro-life activitst notes the proposed platform seeks the repeal of all state-level pro-life laws.

See this video. It is disgusting and disturbing, and I am nauseated. It is not graphic images but the content speaks of reprehensible acts defended by Barack Obama.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Blog/Default.aspx?id=212396

Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

From Ignatius Insight

August 9th is the Feast Day of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who was martyred on that day in 1942 in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Fr. Charles P. Connor, in Classic Catholic Converts, writes:

The story of the Jewish Carmelite Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in the world as Edith Stein, presents us with one of the more brilliant converts to come to the Faith in [the twentieth] century; it also places us in close contact with a horrendous tragedy of the modern world, the Holocaust.

Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany on October 12, 1891, the youngest of eleven children. In 1913 she began studies at the University of Göttingen in Germany. She soon became a student of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl and was later attracted to the work of Max Scheler, a Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism in 1920. A chance reading of the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila revealed to her the God of love she had long denied. She entered the Church in 1922.

For eight years Edith lived with the Dominicans, teaching at Saint Magdelene's, which was a training institute for teachers. She wrote:

Initially, when I was baptized on New Year's Day, 1922, I thought of it as a preparation in the Order. But a few months later, when I saw my mother for the first time after the baptism, I realized that she couldn't handle another blow for the present. Not that it would have killed her—but I couldn't have held myself responsible for the embitterment it would have caused.

In fact, after her conversion Edith continued to attend synagogue with her mother. Meanwhile, she continued to grow and impress as a philospher. In 1925 she met the Jesuit Erich Pryzwara, a philosopher who would have a tremendous influence on Hans Urs von Balthasar. Pryzwara encouraged Edith to study and translate St. Thomas Aquinas; she eventually wrote a work comparing Usserl with Aquinas.

In 1933 Edith entered the religious life with the Carmel of Cologne, Germany. She fell in love with the person and writing of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. She wrote:

My impression was, that this was a life which had been absolutely transformed by the love of God, down to the last detail. I simply can't imagine anything greater. I would like to see this attitude incorporated as much as possible into my own life and the lives of those who are dear to me.

After taking her first vows, Edith was known as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She continued to write, Fr. Connor notes, "continually developing the theme that Christ's sacrifice on the Cross and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are in fact one and the same sacrifice. From her religious background, she knew the importance of sacrificial prayer for Old Testament prophets." She wrote of how Jesus' sacrifice as the Incarnate God-man was the final, perfect sacrifice that replaced all of the sacrifices of the Old Testament.

Because of the rise of Nazi power, Edith and her sister Rosa, who had also converted to Catholicism, moved to Holland in 1938. On August 2, 1942, Edith and her sister were taken from the convent by two S.S. officers. She was martyred seven days later. Fr. Connor writes: "On October 11, 1998, fifty-six years, two months, and two days after her death at Auschwitz, Edith Stein, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic Church by Pope John Paul II."

Ferdinand Holböck writes in New Saints and Blesseds of the Catholic Church : 1984-1987 (Volume 2):

The Church now presents Sister Teresa Benedicta a Croce to us as a blessed martyr, as an example of a heroic follower of Christ, for us to honour and to emulate. Let us open ourselves up for her message to us as a woman of the spirit and of the mind, who saw in the science of the cross the acme of all wisdom, as a great daughter of the Jewish people, and as a believing Christian in the midst of millions of innocent fellow men made martyrs. She saw the inexorable approach of the cross. She did not flee in fear. Instead, she embraced it in Christian hope with final love and sacrifice and in the mystery of Easter even welcomed it with the salutation,"ave crux spes unica". As Cardinal Höffner said in his recent pastoral letter, "Edith Stein is a gift, an invocation and a promise for our time. May she be an intercessor with God for us and for our people and for all people."

Scientists closer to developing invisibility cloak

Mon Aug 11, 7:36 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite. They are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don't. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don't create reflections or shadows.

It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.

The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation's Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center.

WOW!!!...


Source: Yahoo News

Record Check: Planned Parenthood

Do you know the reality of Planned Parenthood’s record? You may be surprised at these statistics and facts about the nation’s number one abortion provider:

1. Planned Parenthood was founded in 1916 by Margaret Sanger, a birth control advocate and proponent of eugenics. In her 1932 article, “A Plan for Peace,” Sanger argued, “a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”

2. Planned Parenthood is the number one abortion provider in America, performing over 290,000 abortions each year (In 2005, latest year statistics are available, according to The Wall Street Journal).

3. Planned Parenthood abortions are up. According to a recent investigation by The Wall Street Journal, “even as the total number of abortions in the U.S. has dropped, the number performed by Planned Parenthood has grown steadily.” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards told the paper “that she has encouraged more Planned Parenthood clinics to offer abortions,” in order to make up for independent abortion providers who are closing their doors at a fast clip.

4. Planned Parenthood is a very profitable “non-profit.” According to its latest annual report, Planned Parenthood had a $114.8 million “excess revenue over expenses” for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007.

5. Planned Parenthood is literally a billion dollar enterprise. The latest Annual Report also showed total revenues at $1,017,900,000 – over one billion dollars.

6. Planned Parenthood relies on your tax dollars. The latest Annual Report records revenues of $336.7 million came from “government grants and contracts” – one third of its total revenues, and nearly three times the amount of that same year’s “excess revenues.” Yet, Planned Parenthood continues to lobby Congress for increased funding and special discount drug purchases for its clinics.

7. Planned Parenthood’s “One Million Strong Campaign” it its most aggressive advocacy campaign ever. The organization plans to spend at least $10 million “to recruit patients, as well as their friends and families, to lobby legislators and vote for candidates who support Planned Parenthood’s agenda,” according to the Los Angeles Times. This is three times the amount they have spent on past elections.

Source: Susan B. Anthony List


Disgusting.


Planned Parenthood has $1 Billion in revenue. They are exempt from taxes. I'm convinced that future generations who have woken up from this current intellectual stupor will equate this bloodbath industry to some other of society's worst crimes against humanity.

Watch this: VIDEO

Senator Michelle Bachmann speaks out in favor of defunding Planned Homicide.

Capello backs Ronaldinho-Milan partnership

ROME (AFP) - England coach Fabio Capello said the acquisition of Ronaldinho has made AC Milan favourites for the Serie A title.

Milan have not been champions of their country since 2004 and last season they finished a dismal fifth - missing out on Champions League qualification - despite winning the World Club Cup.

However, they have bought well over the summer, bringing in Italy international defender Gianluca Zambrotta from Barcelona and box-to-box French midfielder Mathieu Flamini from Arsenal.

But the piece de la resistence was surely the capture of Ronaldinho, whom Capello believes can return to his top form.

"It is lucky for Milan that he is going to the Olympics," Capello said in an interview published in Thursday's Gazzetta dello Sport.

"He will return match-fit and motivated following his year off."

The twice former world player of the year enjoyed three successful seasons at Barcelona, winning two titles and the Champions League, but lost his way last season amid rumours his commitment was waning as his love for the night-life affected his performances and attitude.

But Capello believes he can still get back to his form of old.

"If he has the desire to get back to his best, to rediscover his old self, to become once again one of the best three players in the world, he's gone to the right place.

"Milan has everything to put him back into orbit."

Milan have had a good pre-season, even winning the Tim Trophy earlier this week - a three-way competition between Italy's biggest three clubs, Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus, where they each play 45 minutes against their two rivals on the same evening.

Milan won both their mini-matches on penalties following draws to claim the trophy, considered quite prestigious despite its format which usually sees the teams playing virtually two separate line-ups in their two matches.

With that success, their summer signings and the fact that Milan will not be distracted by the Champions League this coming season, Capello agrees with Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon that Milan are title favourites.

"Great transfer signings and Tim Trophy success; Milan are favourites for the scudetto if, as I believe they will do, they concentrate on the championship," said Capello.

"Europe can wait this time. (Coach Carlo) Ancelotti will use his best team in Serie A."

However, Capello admitted that the pressure is on Milan who, despite winning the Champions League in 2007, have a lot to prove in their own domestic championship.

"Milan can't wait any longer. Waiting makes you grow old. It's important to pick the right signings," said Capello, suggesting that maybye Milan still need some new faces, particularly with striker Marco Borriello facing two months on the sidelines.

Source

Loss of Clerical State for Paraguay's President-Elect

Fernando Lugo Had Been Bishop of Society of Divine Word

ASUNCION, Paraguay, JULY 30, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI has granted a reduction to the lay state for the president-elect of Paraguay, a former Catholic bishop who had been suspended "a divinis."

The apostolic nuncio in Paraguay announced today the Pope's decision regarding Fernando Lugo.

Archbishop Orlando Antonini explained at a press conference that the Holy Father "granted [Lugo] the loss of the clerical state, with all the obligations, as a priest and bishop of the [Society of the] Divine Word."

The nuncio said Lugo's request was accepted because "the people have elected him" and "his clerical state is not compatible with the pr! esidency of the republic."

"Having examined all the circumstances carefully, His Holiness Benedict XVI has granted him the loss of his clerical state with the consequent loss of its inherent rights," he added.

A January 2007 decree signed by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, had announced the suspension "a divinis" of Lugo, for having declared himself a candidate for the Paraguayan presidency. The Code of Canon Law prohibits this.

On Dec. 18, 2006, Lugo had requested the loss of the clerical state to become a candidate in the elections.

On April 20, 2008, the day after winning the election, Lugo asked the Church, and Benedict XVI in particular, for forgiveness for the sorrow his disobedience to canon law had caused.

According to a communiqué read by the nuncio, the Pontiff is now exhorting Lugo "to be faithful to the Catholic faith in which he was baptized and to lead a life that is consistent with the Gospel."

Lugo will take office Aug. 15.

Beyond Obama's Beauty

By KENNETH BLACKWELL | February 14, 2008
source: www.NYsun.com

It's an amazing time to be alive in America. We're in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first frontrunning freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.

We won't truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won't arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender.

Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.

The reality is this: Though the Democrats will not have a nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its time America takes a closer and deeper look at him.

Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He's not. He's the next George McGovern. And it's time people learned the facts.

Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton.

Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.

Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he's not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.

Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America. But let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial "beauty."

Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong Il, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists — something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.

Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on "the rich."

How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.

Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, "All praise and glory to God!" but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" — hijacked — Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban — ban — on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.

The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But Mr. Obama could win if people don't start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of "bringing America together" means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.

But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is and — yes — they're talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama's radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton.

It's time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let's first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilizational war.

Campaña en el sur de Irak para la restauración de las iglesias cristianas

Campaña en el sur de Irak para la restauración de las iglesias cristianas
En primera fila, la comunidad de Basora de los Caldeos

CIUDAD DEL VATICANO, lunes, 28 julio 2008 (ZENIT.org).- Las comunidades cristianas de las provincias del sur de Irak han lanzado una campaña para la restauración de las iglesias que la incuria y las guerras han dejado inservibles.

La noticia, difundida por el sitio Baghdadhope, ha sido dada por el padre Imad Aziz Al Banna, de la archidiócesis de Basora de los Caldeos, quien explicó que la comunidad local cristiana ha pedido al Gobierno la correspondiente financiación y trabaja en colaboración con la oficina que se ocupa de los intereses de los grupos no musulmanes y con el Ministerio de Planificación y el Consejo de la Provincia de Al-Basrah.

Al Banna recordó además la reciente reapertura de la iglesia de Um Al Azhan, en Al-Amarah, en la cercana provincia de Maysan, y subrayó su confianza en la acción de conservación del patrimonio religioso cristiano por parte de las instituciones públicas, subrayando que la situación relativa a la seguridad anime esta iniciativa, urgente ahora que algunas familias que habían huido del sur de Irak están retornando.

Menos conocida y numerosa de las de Bagdad y del norte del país, la comunidad cristiana del sur de Irak tiene raíces antiquísimas que, según el sacerdote siro-ortodoxo de la iglesia de la Virgen, el padre Sam'an Khaz'al, se remontan al siglo IV, demostrando que Basora era ya entonces un lugar de difusión del cristianismo hacia los territorio del golfo arábigo.

Hace cerca de un mes, reabrió sus puertas la iglesia caldea de Um Al Azhan (Nuestra Señora del Dolor) en Al-Amarah. El edificio, construido en 1880, ha sido restaurado y a finales de junio acogió una Misa y un bautismo celebrados precisamente por el padre Al Banna.

Aunque en la zona viven sólo 18 familias cristianas y a pesar de las dificultades actuales en las provincias meridionales, en la iglesia se celebrará una misa mensual y se realizarán cursos de catecismo durante todo el verano.

"Son incontables en Irak los edificios de culto destruidos o dañados durante la guerra o en el curso de ataques contra las diócesis locales" explica un artículo de "L'Osservatore Romano".

En junio de 2007, uno de los momentos más difíciles vividos por los cristianos en el país, culminado con el asesinato en Mosul del padre Ragheed Ganni y de tres subdiáconos, fueron tomadas como objetivo dos iglesias en el barrio Dora en Bagdad: la de San Juan Bautista y la de Santiago, esta última con el intento de transformarla en mezquita.

Anteriormente, en diciembre de 2004, provocó dolor e inquietud el atentado que devastó el obispado caldeo de Mosul. El patriarca de Babilonia de los Caldeos, el cardenal Emmanuel III Delly, dijo que había sido destruido el más bello símbolo de la Iglesia Caldea de Irak.

Traducido del italiano por Nieves San Martín

Aprobación vaticana al primer Máster en Ciencias Religiosas por Internet

Al Instituto Superior de Ciencias Religiosas de Barcelona (ISCREB)

Por Miriam Díez i Bosch

BARCELONA, lunes, 28 julio 2008 (ZENIT.org).- Un centro de Barcelona se ha convertido en el primero del mundo en ofrecer un Máster en Ciencias Religiosas por Internet con la aprobación de la Santa Sede.

Según ha contado su director, Antoni Matabosch, a Zenit, "el ISCREB se ha convertido en el primer centro del mundo a quien la Congregación para la Educación Católica le ha concedido la aprobación formal de ofrecer el Máster en Ciencias Religiosas por Internet".

La Diplomatura por Internet funciona desde el curso 2003-2004, después que el Vaticano le concediese el permiso, en julio de 2003, como centro piloto para desarrollar esta modalidad de estudios.

De esta manera, el ISCREB es la primera institución docente en el campo teológico que obtiene el permiso para poder dar grados académicos - Diplomatura (Grado) en tres años y Máster en dos años - por vía telemática, en lengua catalana y castellana. El Máster es en la especialidad de Identidad Cristiana y diálogo.

El Instituto Superior de Ciencias Religiosas de Barcelona (ISCREB) ha incrementado este curso un 11 % su alumnado, pasando de 648 en el curso 2006-2007 a 730 en el 2007-2008.

Esta cifra ha aumentado gracias a los alumnos virtuales que cursan la Diplomatura en Ciencias Religiosas a través de la modalidad Teología x Internet, ya que dentro de un campus virtual situado en la web del centro (www.iscreb.org) los estudiantes gozan de un acompañamiento personalizado de profesores y tutores.

El próximo curso en el segundo semestre (de febrero a junio) se impartirá de forma presencial un Postgrado coorganizado por el mismo ISCREB y la Universidad Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona sobre Religiones y Diálogo. Para el curso 2009-2010 está previsto que continúen los estudios hasta obtener un Máster en la misma especialidad.

El primer ciclo de estudios (tres años) ofrece un tratamiento completo de los principales termas teológicos, bíblicos, morales, históricos y del pensamiento contemporáneo, con la finalidad de proporcionar a sus alumnos una sólida formación académica.

Los estudios presenciales del ISCREB ofrecen en el segundo ciclo dos especialidades: la de Teología Bíblica y la de Diálogo Intereligioso, Ecuménico y Cultural.

Otra novedad del ISCREB es que en el próximo curso adaptará todas sus titulaciones de segundo ciclo al Espacio Europeo Universitario, dentro del proceso de Bolonia, en el que la Santa Sede está completamente implicada. Así, explica Matabosch, "lo que hasta ahora se denominaba "Licenciatura", el próximo curso se llamará "Máster"".

El Instituto Superior de Ciencias Religiosas de Barcelona está ubicado en el edificio del Seminario Conciliar de la archidiócesis y su web es www.iscreb.org

Cases of Forced Abortions Surface in China

by Louisa Lim, NPR
A slogan on a village building outside Baise in southwest China, reads, "Keep the birth rate low to enhance the quality of the population."

Morning Edition, April 23, 2007 · During the past week, dozens of women in southwest China have been forced to have abortions even as late as nine months into the pregnancy, according to evidence uncovered by NPR.

China's strict family planning laws permit urban married couples to have only one child each, but in some of the recent cases — in Guangxi Province — women say they were forced to abort what would have been their first child because they were unmarried. The forced abortions are all the more shocking because family planning laws have generally been relaxed in China, with many families having two children.

Liang Yage and his wife Wei Linrong had one child and believed that — like many other couples — they could pay a fine and keep their second baby. Wei was 7 months pregnant when 10 family planning officials visited her at home on April 16.

Liang describes how they told her that she would have to have an abortion, "You don't have any more room for maneuver," he says they told her. "If you don't go [to the hospital], we'll carry you." The couple was then driven to Youjiang district maternity hospital in Baise city.

"I was scared," Wei told NPR. "The hospital was full of women who'd been brought in forcibly. There wasn't a single spare bed. The family planning people said forced abortions and forced sterilizations were both being carried out. We saw women being pulled in one by one."

The couple was given a consent agreement to sign. When Liang refused, family planning officials signed it for him. He and his wife are devout Christians — he is a pastor — and they don't agree with abortion.

The officials gave Wei three injections in the lower abdomen. Contractions started the next afternoon, and continued for almost 16 hours. Her child was stillborn.

"I asked the doctor if it was a boy or girl," Wei said. "The doctor said it was a boy. My friends who were beside me said the baby's body was completely black. I felt desolate, so I didn't look up to see the baby."

Medical sources say fetuses aborted in this manner would have been dead for some time, so the tissue is necrotic and thus dark in color.

"The nurses dealt with the body like it was rubbish," Wei said. "They wrapped it up in a black plastic bag and threw it in the trash."

This was also the treatment given to the stillborn baby of He Caigan. Family planning officials turned up at her house, in the countryside several hours outside Baise, before dawn on April 17 to force her to go to the hospital. This would have been her first baby — but she hadn't married the father, in contravention of family planning laws. She was already 9 months pregnant, just days away from delivery.

"They told me I'm too young, I couldn't keep the child and I should have an abortion," she said. "I'm too young to get a marriage certificate — I'm only 19 and my boyfriend's only 21."

After the forced abortion, her boyfriend left her. She said that she's still in great physical pain and that her life had been ruined.

An eyewitness, who requested anonymity for fear of the consequences, said that he counted 41 occupied beds on just one floor of the maternity hospital in Baise and that he believed none of the women he saw had come to the hospital of their own free will.

Coerced abortions such as these were not unusual after China's one-child policy was first introduced in 1980. But a law passed five years ago guarantees China's citizens a degree of choice in family planning matters. When contacted for comment, an official at China's State Commission for Population and Family Planning said she'd heard nothing about forced abortions in Guangxi and asked for more details. But in Baise, a family planning official surnamed Nong acknowledged that such behavior would violate regulations. Despite the fact that these allegations refer to events that happened just within the last week, he said an investigation had already been held.

"We were very surprised to hear of these accusations," Nong said, "but our investigation concluded some individuals who were dissatisfied with our family planning policies were fabricating stories. These facts simply don't exist. We really love and care for women here."

Official figures published by the Xinhua news agency shed some light on why a forced abortion campaign might be judged necessary. They show that the Baise government missed its family planning targets last year. The recorded birth rate was 13.61 percent, slightly higher than the goal of 13.5 percent. This is significant because the career prospects of local officials depend upon meeting these goals.

Wei Linrong and her husband Liang Yage, were incensed by their treatment, seeing it as little short of murder.

"I think their methods are too cruel," said Wei, "my heart really hurts. Such a tiny baby, it was innocent. And they killed it."

"Every time we talk about this child, we both cry," Liang added. "We can't bear talking about this child."

Liang and his wife risked further official disapproval by contacting a Christian group overseas to publicize their plight. China may once have depended on its state apparatus of control and fear to silence those who suffer human rights abuses at the hands of its officials. But China's victims are angry, and they want their voices to be heard.

UN Secretary General Nominates Abortion Advocate for Top Human Rights Post

....this can't possibly get anymore backwards. Why not nominate Michael Vick as the new head of PETA? Or place Adolf Hitler at the head of some kind of "Diversity Taskforce."

By Samantha Singson

(C-FAM - NEW YORK) United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to name abortion advocate Navanethem “Navi” Pillay of South Africa as the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) this week despite reservations from the United States.

According to the New York Times, the United States has privately raised concerns about Pillay’s nomination to the top human rights post because of her strong support for abortion. Pillay is a founding member of the international non-governmental organization Equality Now, a group that has spearheaded campaigns for abortion access in Poland and Nepal. Pillay remains on the board of the organization which receives major funding from pro-abortion foundations including George Soros’ Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation.

In her interview with the Judicial Service Commission in 1994 when she was being considered for membership to South Africa’s Constitutional Court, Pillay expressed concern that including a “right to life” article in the South African Constitution would create problems in relation to abortion. “This is the one clause [the pro-life lobby] are going to latch on to for their cause…” Pillay said.

During that interview, Pillay also expressed concern that the constitutional article did not define whether or not such a right begins at conception, leaving it “open to litigation” which could potentially threaten women's “reproductive rights.” When pressed on why she would be so opposed to a reasoned debate on the issue, she responded with the question, ‘why have not other rights been put in there as patently as this one which would be the woman's right to, reproductive rights, for instance?”

Pillay became prominent for her role as presiding judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a post she occupied from 1995 until her appointment to the International Criminal Court in 2003. Pillay has been a favorite among women’s groups and is consistently endorsed by feminist NGOs for top level jobs at the UN, including Secretary General. Radical feminist NGOs first endorsed Pillay for the High Commissioner on Human Rights post four years ago, but the job went to Canada’s Louise Arbour.

The High Commissioner is the principal UN official with responsibility for human rights and is accountable to the Secretary-General. According to UNHCR definition, the High Commissioner is charged with the task of leading the international human rights movement by acting as a “moral authority” and coordinating and streamlining human rights within the UN system. This would include all of the human rights treaty monitoring bodies which have increasingly overstepped their mandates to pressure more than 60 sovereign nations on their abortion laws in recent years.

Critics are concerned that Pillay will adopt the same positions on social issues as her predecessors, Canada’s Louise Arbour and Ireland’s Mary Robinson. Both Arbour and Robinson support abortion as a human right. Both also enthusiastically endorse the “Yogyakarta Principles,” a document claiming homosexual rights as binding human rights including same-sex “marriage,” adoption by homosexual couples and state-funded sex change operations.

A formal announcement from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Pillay’s nomination is expected this week.

Excuse me while I go vomit.