Archive for the ‘LifeStyle Choices’ Category

Whoa baby! A downside to going childless

Friday, July 9th, 2010

When I was in university, one of my favourite T-shirts featured the panic-stricken face of a woman. “I forgot the baby on the bus!” shrieked the cartoon bubble coming from her outh.

Several years later, I got involved with a guy who wanted to get married and have kids. Having just started working and embarking on a life of independence, the thought of having a baby turned my stomach.

I had my first full-time job with a steady paycheque in a new city with a gaggle of new friends. A baby didn’t fit into my plans.

That relationship ended and the years flew by. I moved from province to province and then abroad for a while, fuelled by adventure and opportunity. My parents worried I’d never settle down.

Then I met the man I ended up marrying but I was 39 by the time we tied the knot. Sure, plenty of women in their 40s are having kids but I didn’t relish the prospect of late motherhood.

Consequently, I am among the growing percentage of women who are childless. Nearly 20% of American women finish their childbearing years without having kids, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. In comparison, only 10% of American women aged 40 to 44 had never given birth in 1976….read the rest here.

How will it feel, I wonder, to be lonely in your old age and to be nursed by a complete stranger when the time comes instead of your own family?

Was feminism really worth it in the end?  Was it?

Angry little boys who had no fathers

Monday, July 5th, 2010

There’s been a lot of analysis about the G8/20 protests of last weekend.  Lots of pundits trying to figure out why the violent Leftists are so upset.  They come up with elaborate and largely erroneous explanations as to cause.   For the most part, these governments are mostly socialist.  I mean, why would a protestor be upset at Obama?  The man is redoing America in light speed to conform to what these protestors want.  So what’s the real issue here?  Well, these governments represent an authority figure.  It doesn’t matter that, in many respects, the authority figure believes what they believe.  It’s just that they represent an authority figure – any authority figure - and that’s what they despise.

People always try to reduce problems of substance to problems of form.  What do I mean by this?  Simply that human beings prefer not to deal with messy and painful issues that demand accountablity and culpability.  In short, we don’t want to admit that our behaviour is what is fuelling the decline of our society, not the trinkets of economic policy.  Instead of dealing with the real issue in a transparent and honest way, we prefer to lay the blame at the government. It’s the government’s screw-up.  There’s not enough community centers (the Left) or cops (the Right) to deal with the problem of youth violence.  But no one wants to admit that the kids have no fathers.  That’s why they’re in the slammer. And why don’t they have any fathers?  Because of easy divorce.  Because of sex outside marriage.  Because of the de-Christianization of society.  That’s why. But like I said, no one wants to admit the truth.  That would demand a moral transformation from us as a society to fix the problem. And that’s simply not going to happen, so it’s much easier to blame the lack of a government program to make up for our lack of sexual restraint and lack of fidelity to our partners and kids.  It’s much easier to blame the “lack of services” and throw money at a problem than it is to admit the truth and begin the slow and arduous road back from the brink.

And as for the G8/G20 punks, if a reporter had the guts to pull anyone of them aside and ask them to describe their relationship with their fathers, they would have all the answers they would need to understand why they are doing what they are doing.

Fathers are more than sperm donors.  They serve a necessary and crucial role in our society…as we are sorely discovering.

This is Father’s Day

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

Today is Father’s Day.  The difference between a father and a sperm donor comes down to 2 things:  relationship and sacrifice.  If a man does not engage with his offspring, then he’s just a sperm donor.  The sperm donor might donate through “conventional means” or unconventional ones.  But he’s still just a sperm donor.   Sperm donors are the logical extension of fathers who don’t father, who don’t care, who don’t discipline, who don’t sacrifice, who don’t give a damn…who don’t love.  Why bother with the messy business of separating oneself emotionally from women and children when you can get paid to donate?  It’s kind of like giving blood.  Sperm donors masturbate and give their sperm instead.  Think of it as a community service. (more…)

My Daddy’s Name is “Donor”

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

New York, NY—MAY 31, 2010— The Commission on Parenthood’s Future today released internationally the groundbreaking report My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation, co-investigated by Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval D. Glenn, and Karen Clark. The report reveals stunning findings about the lives of adult offspring of sperm donation, one of the most common reproductive technologies and one that has been practiced widely in the U.S. and around the world for decades….

Read the rest here.

This Sunday is Father’s Day.  There will always be a Father’s Day for true Fathers, but it is not at all guaranteed that this holiday will not be demoted so as not to offend all of the sperm donors out there.  If we call it “Sperm Donor’s Day”, it kind of catches everyone and no one is excluded.


Lost Generation? – Doesn’t Have To Be

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

New dads can also suffer post-partum depression

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Depression is quite common in the Western world.  It has been widely known for years that many new mothers can develop post-partum depression.  However, new research has discovered that men can also be affected.

Researchers from the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk sought to get an accurate estimate for what percentage of men experience depression in the year after their child was born, using commonly accepted depression measures. They conducted a statistical review of 43 previously published studies involving 28,000 male and female adults.

Some 10.4% of fathers experience depression during the postpartum period, the analysis showed. In the general population, 4.8% of men are believed depressed at any given point in time, according to government data.

(more…)

Cell phones linked to brain cancer? The jury is still out

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Despite the inflammatory headline from this article in the Globe and Mail, a closer inspection of the results of a new study suggests that researchers are still not able to conclusively link cell phone use to brain cancer.  But the researchers think that further investigation is warranted, given the risks involved and the huge increase in cell phone use since they collected the data for their study. (more…)

Your kids are too fat and need some exercise

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Study after study confirms that our children are fat and not active enough. 

Hey parents:  please turn off the TV and the Nintendo and tell your kids to go play outside.  It would do them a lot of good!  While you’re at it, you should also get some exercise.  Take care of your body!

Dangers of Car Air-conditioning

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

This has been checked on Snopes.com and there is truth to the article below. Again it’s not saying NOT to use your air conditioner but that we should open our windows to let out the harmful fumes (Benzene) prior to turning on the AC.

No wonder more folks are dying from cancer than ever before. We wonder where this stuff comes from but here is an example that explains a lot of the cancer causing incidents. Hmmm. Many people are in their cars first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, 7 days a week. As I read this, it makes me feel guilty and ill. Please pass this on to as many people as possible. Guess its not too late to make some changes

(more…)

Family breakdown costing £41 billion a year: report

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Family breakdown is costing UK taxpayers £41 billion a year, according to new report.

Among the costs are £12.38bn for tax and benefits payments to broken families and £8.03bn for civil and criminal justice spending, according to the study.

Think-tank, the Relationships Foundation produced the report, which put the cost to individual taxpayers at £1,350 a year.  The Cambridge-based organisation said that family breakdown “reduces health, wealth and wellbeing.”  It added that in the current economic situation the cost is “unsustainable.”

The final totals were arrived at by adding together a number of different costs to the taxpayer that come about as a result of family breakdown.  Executive Director of Relationships Foundation, Michael Trend, said, “This report deals with the unpopular truth that choices have costs and consequences, and that these are not always borne by the choice-maker.”

He said, “Reduced health, wealth and wellbeing all put more pressure on relationships making the cycle of breakdown more likely to continue.”

Tory leader David Cameron has recently called Britain a “broken society,” saying family breakdown is at the root of many of the problems facing the country.  And at the weekend a poll for The Times newspaper showed 70 per cent of respondents believed society is now broken.

At the beginning of this month social commentator Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail, drew attention to the need to encourage marriage in order to halt a breakdown in moral and social behaviour.  She said the erosion of marriage was key to the “disintegration” of the family and wider society, and that the only solution was to protect the institution with “a web of formal and informal laws, conventions and attitudes.”

In 2008 a report from the Good Childhood Inquiry identified family relationships as being central to children’s wellbeing.  One the report’s authors commented that it is not just the event of family breakdown itself but also the life that has to be lived afterwards that causes harm.

Later in 2008 Barbara Wilding, then Chief Constable of South Wales Police, said family breakdown was driving teenagers into a “gang culture based on violence and drugs.”

Last year the Shadow Home Secretary blamed the devaluing of marriage for producing a generation of children who do not know right from wrong.  Chris Grayling said in a speech at Westminster, “Family breakdown has reached a scale where many young people grow up with no vestige of stability in their lives, and no concept of a family-focused upbringing.” (Source)

I think I’ll go postal when the next “economic conservative” tells me that social conservative issues aren’t that important to him.

Condoms for the Desperate

Monday, January 18th, 2010

As I pointed out in this post, there’s no shortage of the sexual hucksters collecting for the unfortunate… 

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (LifeNews.com) — Following the earthquake in Haiti, millions of people are dealing with death, a lack of food and water, shelter, and basic medical care. Planned Parenthood, sending a good time for a fundraising opportunity, is asking for donations for its local affiliate to promote birth control and condoms.

In a new note sent to its supporters on Facebook, Planned Parenthood talked about the giving opportunity.

“The international Planned Parenthood arm is accepting donations for PROFAMIL, a locally based Haitian organization,” the abortion business says. “Fully 100% of donations will go directly to PROFAMIL’s operations.”

At the International Planned Parenthood secure giving web page, the abortion giant says PROFAMIL has been operating in Haiti since 1984 to provide “sexual and reproductive healthcare.”

The group “educates the public about prevention and ensures widespread access to condoms” to “young people aged 10-25″ with “regular condom demonstrations.”

In other words, Planned Parenthood is asking for money to help it pass out condoms and birth control to children who are looking for their next meal and medical care for injuries they and their family sustained in the earthquake.

The Planned Parenthood Help Haiti fundraising site says its local affiliate “meets regularly with the Minister of Health to develop strategies for increasing access” to birth control and contraception and that the group regularly targets “rural communities where the people are totally isolated” and likely have little access to food and water now.

Concerned Women for America president Wendy Wright talked with LifeNews.com about the fundraising appeal.

 

“Haitians need food, water, shelter, safety, comfort. They are wandering in a daze and in pain,” she said. “Yet all Planned Parenthood thinks about is how to benefit from their suffering. Instead of offering a cup of water, they offer a condom.”

“As corpses fill the streets and the world wonders how few Haitians will survive this crisis of mass proportions, Planned Parenthood’s goal is to reduce their numbers even more,” Wright said.

“Planned Parenthood exhibits its racist intentions again. If successful, Haitians would be denied the joy of children and the hope that their country will live on,” she added.

 

Another web site touting PROFAMIL notes that the pro-abortion group ‘does everything possible to ensure widespread access to condoms” and that, during “2005, the organization distributed over 600,000 condoms through its network of clinics, mobile health units, and community promoters.”

The group has also complained that Haiti is a pro-life nation that prohibits the killing of unborn children and injuring women in abortions.

This isn’t the first time Planned parenthood has sought to exploit the victims of a natural disaster.

In August 2005, Planned Parenthood announced it was giving out free morning after pills to victims of Hurricane Katrina who were battling rising waters, destroyed homes and are seeking basic necessities like food, water and shelter.

“As Hurricane Katrina ripped through the southeastern United States, Planned Parenthood [is] there to offer one free month of birth control or one free emergency contraception kit to women from Louisiana and Mississippi,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America interim president Karen Pearl wrote at the time.

Also, Planned Parenthood of New York City offered women free abortions and morning after pills to area victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The goal of the 12 days of free services was to “reach out to women who have been displaced and ease their fears,” the abortion business said at the time.

 News of the donation request follows a LifeNews.com expose‘ of a former abortion business owner who said she thought Haiti had too many people.

Ye Need Jesus, Tiger…Go Brit!

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

School Closures and Sterilized Sex: A Connection Ya Think?

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

This has nothing to do with this.

It’s all just one big coincidence.

If ye won’t have children and ye prefer sterilized sex and sterilized relationships, nature will shut ye down.

Big Brother is the Price of Freedom without Truth

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

LONDON, August 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The British government will force thousands of the “worst” families in the country to live with 24-hour CCTV surveillance in a bid to cut back on child abuse and neglect, the Children’s Ministry has said. In the next two years the government plans to expand an existing family monitoring program from 2000 families to 20,000 at a total estimated cost of £400million.

Despite growing complaints that New Labour’s new Britain has in the last ten years become the most spied upon nation in the world, ahead of even China, the Labour government announced late last month that 20,000 “problem families” who have run afoul of social services officials will be watched around the clock and subjected to surprise inspections by government agents.

The new rules will begin by focusing on truancy, alcohol abuse or reports of malnutrition. Parents will be monitored to make sure children go to bed on time, eat proper meals and attend school.

“This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem. There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support,” said Children’s Secretary Ed Balls in announcing the massive expansion of the surveillance program….


This is the price of not submitting to, and refusing to live within, the confines of the truth. 

When a civilization attacks the traditional family, the tyranny of the State seeks to correct the imbalance caused by deadbeat parents who have long abandoned their responsibilities.  The State helped create the problem of family breakdown by their promotion of liberal values, and now it seeks to “correct” the abuses they have wrought by taking a page out of Orwell.

It only goes to show that if the State and its citizens do not respect traditional morality, there will be a steep price to pay.  How ironic it is that the “Apple of False Freedom” which started the sexual revolution has turned out to be so sour by taking away the freedoms that it purported to extol and protect.

Exit (and Enter) Stage Left

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

SHANGHAI, July 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Although 2009 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the one-child policy, China’s second largest city is not celebrating. Far from it. The Times Online reports that far from fearing overpopulation, the city of Shanghai has pleaded with married couples to help them stave off the looming crisis of demographic implosion by having a second child.

Shanghai has announced pro-procreation policy, that contrasts sharply with the rest of the nation’s strict enforcement of the “one couple, one child” policy that has inflicted forced abortions, involuntary sterilizations, and catastrophic fines inflicted on the local population to limit the growth of its 1.3 billion persons. Yet the fewer numbers are exactly what has Shanghai worried, because the city is faced with not enough young men and women to sustain its aging population.

“We advocate eligible couples to have two kids, because it can help to reduce the proportion of the aging people and alleviate a workforce shortage in the future,” Xie Linli, director of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission, told the Times.

Zhang Meixin, a spokesman for the commission, also told the Times that more than three million people over the age of 60 constitute the population of Shanghai. That makes this age cohort 21.6 percent of Shanghai’s population, which as Zhang stated, “That is already near the average figure of developed countries and is still rising quickly.”

If the rate of demographic decline continues, they project that by 2020, the number of elderly will make up 34 percent of the city’s population. The Times reports that a similar phenomenon is happening throughout all of China, and by 2015 the working-age population will begin to decline, and begin to increase the pressure on the social system to support the aging group of pensioners….

Look around today.  If a family has more than 2 kids, they’re considered weird and abnormal.  In fact, everywhere you look, you see an aging population. I was at a wedding recently and my cousin and I were the only ones to have more than 3 children.  Obama is even putting people in place who want to impose compulsory population control in America. It’s all just part of the brave new world we’ve constructed for ourselves. The underlying presumption is that nature is merely arbitrary – a product of evolutionary forces that can be manipulated without consequence.  No design, no purpose, just randomness. 

As our demographic implosion is soon to demonstrate, however, that theory is going to be exposed for the lie it always was. The population controllers never figured that screwing with human reproduction would cause this sort of catastrophe.  What were they thinking?  Just how are we to support an exponentially aging population without embracing a culture of life? 

Well, actually, it can be done…

There are two facets of the “Logan’s Run” Plan…

In the year 2274…the survivors of war, overpopulation and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside. Here, in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything. There’s just one catch: Life must end at thirty unless reborn in the fiery ritual of Carrousel. (Source) Check the video out here.

A) Euthanasia.  That’s obvious. It’ll have to be rather aggressive too. None of this voluntary stuff. Once you hit 65 (or maybe 30 like in the Movie), maybe it will be time for you to check out, pops.  You’ve lived your life. Don’t be such a drain on the system.  You’ve had your share of condoms and vasectomies. Now it’s payback time.  Go “with dignity”, OK?  Don’t be such a drag on the rest of the society.  Just take these pills and fade to black.

However, by itself, that’s not likely to do the trick. It will definitely help, for sure, but it won’t be enough so enter Plan B…

B) Farming.  No, not the kind you do with a hoe, fool. I’m talking about human farming…as in creating babies WITHOUT fathers or mothers on a massive scale.  That way, we don’t upset the pleasure principle that we live and die by.  No more messy 9 month pregnancies.  It’s all state and machine controlled.  So there will be a perfect equilibrium of young people. 

Population Management 101.

We’ve already made fathers unnecessary. Just how long do you think technology is going to wait before a human womb will be unnecessary?  Logan’s Run showed it.  They got the population control prediction correct in our brave new world. I don’t see why their presentation of these human farms is going to be off that much, either. 

In principle, our culture has already accepted this idea, even if the technology is not there yet.

But the fact is that we’re well ahead of schedule. It won’t be the twenty third century. It will occur in this one, the way things are going.

And of course, if the State is dictating entry and exit, you might as well be bought and sold for a price.

See, folks?  Isn’t sexual liberation great?


No Religion Without Sexual Permission

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

LONDON, May 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com ) – British churches will be forced to accept practicing homosexuals or “transsexuals” in positions as youth workers and similar roles, under upcoming equality legislation, the government has said. The Labour government’s Equality Bill will prohibit churches from refusing to hire active homosexuals even if their religion holds such behavior to be sinful, said deputy equalities minister Maria Eagle. The legislation is due to come into force next year, and churches fear that it will force them to act against their religious convictions in a broad range of areas. Eagle indicated at a conference called “Faith, Homophobia, Transphobia, & Human Rights” in London, that the legislation “will cover almost all church employees.” “The circumstances in which religious institutions can practice anything less than full equality are few and far between,” she told delegates. “While the state would not intervene in narrowly ritual or doctrinal matters within faith groups, these communities cannot claim that everything they run is outside the scope of anti-discrimination law. “Members of faith groups have a role in making the argument in their own communities for greater LGBT acceptance, but in the meantime the state has a duty to protect people from unfair treatment.” The bill allows a religious exemption for roles deemed to be “for the purposes of an organised religion” but restricts this definition to those who conduct liturgical celebrations or spend their time teaching doctrine. The Daily Telegraph quoted Neil Addison, a Roman Catholic barrister and expert on religious discrimination law, who said that the bill will leave churches powerless to defend the fabric of their organization. “This is a threat to religious identity. What we are losing is the right for organizations to make free choices,” he said Equality commissioners include the homosexual lobbyist, Ben Summerskill, the head of the leading British homosexualist activist group Stonewall. Summerskill has called for churches to be forced to employ homosexuals and for the police to stop Christians who were peacefully protesting against ‘gay rights’ laws outside Parliament. Tony Grew, a homosexualist activist and the former editor of PinkNews.co.uk, wrote recently that the Equality Bill will “entrench gay rights in all aspects of public life.” Grew wrote on PinkNews that the bill will open unprecedented opportunities for homosexuals. The bill, he said will cover central government departments, local authorities, education bodies, NHS bodies and the police service, plus a wide range of other public and private bodies, including churches and church-run institutions. It will impose the “Equality Duty” on all organizations providing public services, he said, such as residential care homes that “would have to consider the needs of same-sex couples.”

It’s very sad that the Catholic Church in Britain (and soon to be the whole Western world) will have to go underground to be true to its faith.  Many of us have been sounding the alarm bell for years, but people just wouldn’t listen or get involved.

We did our best, but it wasn’t good enough. 

I don’t care so much for myself.  Being 40, my life is half over, if I’m lucky.  It’s my kids and my grandchildren that I fear for.  They’ll have to practice their faith in secret, like fugitives and outcasts from society.  Because they will not bend the knee to the Gay god and accept the homosexual dogma, they will be punished for not adhering to the State religion. The Sexual Jihadists will be marching around the country kicking down doors and terrorizing people of faith with their “gay rights” laws. They’ll even setup their secret gay police and hire informants to ensure churches are following the new sexual guideliness mandated by the government. Kinda like what happened in the old Soviet and Nazi days.  (I wonder if this law will be strictly applied to the Mosques as well. This, I have to see.)

Freedom of association is dead in Britain.   If you are a Christian, you will not be able to associate publicly with other Christians in any sort of organized way without accepting the gay passport to do so.  The next step will be to expand the inquisition and imposition from Church building to individual Christian homes. After all, why should they stop at Churches, when they know where influential Christians live?

The sexual liberation of the 60s has turned into the sexual tyranny of the twenty-first century. And the really pathetic part of it is that most Christians are still asleep. Where have our leaders been — the bishops and other Christian leaders?

Please. Don’t get me started.  They’ve either been asleep, on drugs, or in the tank for the Lobby.

And as for the parents who still have no idea of what is about to befall them, they will find out soon enough at their kids’ future Sunday School class.  The teacher is going to be teaching them about how great it is to have two moms, and that a father is really not necessary in the end.  But then it will be too late. On reflection, it’s not difficult to understand how feminism paved the road for the homosexual take-over.  Demote the father and reduce his role to being a mere option among many.

You can think about this while you are waiting for the knock at the door and your arrest.

The Charge? 

Conducting unlawful religious activities without permission of the Sexual Secretariat.

Liberals pass resolution to end gay organ donor ban

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

At their convention in Vancouver this past weekend, Liberal Party delegates passed a resolution that supports lifting the ban on gay men from donating organs.

“Apparently it was a positive discussion, and it passed easily, so I was quite pleased about that,” says gay Toronto MP Rob Oliphant. “It seems to be a shift in the party in understanding that this is an issue of discrimination, not an issue of some trumped-up health issue.”….(Source)

Normally I would say this would be a great case for the courts, then I thought….not really.

Nobody is concerned with the facts.

So we all have to die because we won’t admit the truth about risky sex.

Remember, folks, sin makes you stupid.

Vous récoltez ce que vous semez

Friday, May 1st, 2009

I had a friend over last night for supper, and remarked how important Quebec is to Canada and how transformation will not come without a revival in Quebec.  They took us down. They’ll bring us back up.

Here are his remarks to me from our conversation last night:

Thank you, John, for the perspectives on Quebec which you shared yesterday.

This morning I happened to be reading Ezekiel chapter 7, about God punishing a people who had turned to iniquity, and realized that this may well be what Quebec is headed for.  The text even touches on immigration:

“... the city is full of violence.  Wherefore I will bring the worst of the heathen, and they shall possess their houses:  I will also make the pomp of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be defiled“  – Ezekiel 7:23-24.

One of these things is not like the other…

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

 AFRICAN BISHOP: 

April 30, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As an Archbishop, dealing on a daily basis with people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, I know that the Pope is speaking the truth. I suspect that those who were so vociferous in condemning the Pope have never touched an HIV infected person, let alone rendered any care and attention. It is so much easier to distribute gadgets, especially at other people’s expense.

What reduces infections is less casual sex, not more condoms. That is the truth. Those who accuse the Pope of being “unrealistic,” that young people will have sex anyway, have no respect for the young people. When they are given true orientation, they freely respond with far greater sexual responsibility that the armchair social experts can ever imagine.

As an African Archbishop, it is my nephews and nieces that are in danger of dying of HIV/AIDS. Let no one ever suggest that they are more concerned about them than I am. The condom distributors should listen to the truth coming not only from the Pope and Bishops, but even from impartial and serious scientific research. The facts are there, as Cardinal Pell has briefly illustrated. To ignore these facts is the greatest disservice anyone can do to the future of Africa. The struggle continues, and we are overcoming!

CANADIAN BISHOP:

 MONTREAL, April 14, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) -

….

During the recent interview, Turcotte also addressed the controversy over Pope Benedict’s remark against condoms during his recent trip to Africa.  According to Cardinal Turcotte, it would be “ridiculous” to suggest that the Pope said condoms should not be used.

“Essentially, the pope said that it took two things to fight this disease, the means, but also a change of mentality. He pronounced this sentence to show that condoms were not in and of themselves the perfect solution; we took his words out of context and all this was largely amplified,” said Cardinal Turcotte.

“As if the pope had said that condoms should not be used. This is ridiculous! When someone has AIDS, it is his or her responsibility to protect the people with whom he or she has intercourse.”

OK, boys and girls, can you spot the difference?

Frenzied laws are failing our young people

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Scotland is staring into the abyss of social collapse. Too many of our young people are caught up in a maelstrom of drug- and alcohol-fuelled promiscuity, hedonism, vandalism and outright nihilism. It is a whirlwind, which we will reap for a long time to come.

We are paying the price for denying too many of our young people security, stability and morality, a price paid in shattered lives and broken children. Yet as the human debris of our failure accumulates, our politicians have become paralysed by a chronic fear of moralising. In place of leadership and a moral compass, a stifling political consensus seems to compel our parties and our parliament into ever more frenzied regulation.

In recent weeks much coverage has been given to the decision by the Scottish government to limit sales of alcohol to young people by increasing the selling price through restrictions on a variety of retail offers and by asking local authorities to consider raising the age for alcohol purchases. This policy mirrors the approach taken by this and previous administrations to drug use, vandalism, anti-social behaviour, obesity, even promiscuity, and might usefully be called the “command and control” model of public governance.

Advocates of such a model take the view that “bad behaviour”, whether it be public drunkenness, health-threatening over-eating or teenage promiscuity, are all immutable and unchangeable. The urge and desire to commit acts of this type cannot be curbed, far less removed, goes the argument, therefore public, social and health policy must all be orientated towards mitigating the effects.

It is an approach that is deeply flawed and utterly discredited. It is also, however, the logical destination for a policy that refuses to judge or differentiate between actions conducive to the public good and those who threaten it.

When our fellow citizens err and lapse, we seldom focus on them or ask why they behaved as they did. Rather we rush to impose legal restraints, forgetting that no external restrictions can ever match the effectiveness of self-restraint. When a toddler is shot with an airgun, we regulate the sale of such weapons; alcohol abuse by our young people is met with legislation to restrict sales, and sexual promiscuity with regulations aimed at ensuring contraception and abortion are widely available. We do not as a society take action to tackle the underlying motivation; instead we limit our action to blunting the impact of our excesses. We obsess over the symptoms and ignore the cause….

Like the manic sorcerer whose spells have gone disastrously wrong, our politicians cannot control the urge to cast yet more spells upon the chaos. It is an approach that seems to be driven by moral cowardice and perhaps because the alternative, to admit they were wrong, is far too frightening….

(Source)

If the bolded sections above do not explain the West in a nutshell, I don’t know what does. Read the whole article by Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland. It’s fabulous.