News for Prayer and Action

Man is not just Unethical, he is LOST and Dead

Sentinels Prayer Update - 2009- #3 | As Ravi Zacharias says, "The biggest difference between Jesus Christ and the ethical and moral teachers who have been deified by man is that these moralists came to make bad people good. Jesus came to make DEAD people LIVE"

A partial win – Home & Away

30/03 Saltshakers | Channel Seven has decided to censor itself, well just a little bit. Nowhere near enough but at least they have listened to the voices of reason – Mums and dads who did not want their children confronted with lesbian passion in a ‘PG’ rated program.

Some might suggest that this censorship is an injustice, but few of them actually have children and most would be justifying their own behaviour by wanting to inflict it on everyone.

The public's response to Channel 7 does indicate that homosexuality hasn’t the widespread support some try to suggest. This is a message we need to amplify by continuing to oppose the promotion and normalisation of all sexual promiscuity and sexual deviancy on TV.

Please contact Channel 7 (see below) and thank them for responding, but let them know that you are not happy they even contemplated this story-line for a PG rated program and that their response is too little, too late. Tell them that you do not consider same-sex relationships as ‘normal’. Ask them to present wholesome positive family values and to also remove the persistent sexual innuendo and sexual promiscuity from this series. Tell them that happy married families make up the vast majority of family relationships in Australia and this is what should be promoted to our children and young people.

Action - Please write and/or phone Channel 7

Please write a short, polite letter to Drama Chief John Holmes, Seven Network PO Box 777 Pyrmont NSW 2009.
And/or phone them. Ensure to ask that your opinion/comment be passed on to Drama Chief John Holmes.
Sydney Ph: (02) 8777 7777
Melbourne (03) 9697 7777

Please also contact your local regional provider of this program.

Unfortunately Seven has no on-line web or email contact – perhaps they are trying to isolate themselves from any opposition or at least make it harder to complain.

We need to mention this, and ask them to set up a simple feedback & complaints procedure on their web site.

Seven Network cuts lesbian kiss after backlash over Home and Away

Suicide "no validation of human dignity": Prowse

30/03 Catholic News | Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Christopher Prowse has said he was distressed at the suffering and death of palliative care worker, Angie Belecciu, a cancer sufferer who ended her life with a dose of Nembutal, but that there was "no validation of human dignity in suicide."

After surviving breast cancer for 16 years, Ms Belecciu was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2006, The Age reports. She was told that without treatment she had about a year to live. Before her death, she was taking 500 milligrams of morphine a day.

..."I see nothing ennobling, no validation of human dignity, in suicide. We must do all we can to make the benefits of palliative care accessible." .... in a Melbourne Archdiocese statement, Bishop Prowse said he did not abide "glamorising" story telling about Ms Belecciu's particular circumstances. "Nor do I condone efforts taken by some to assist people in Angie Belecciu's situation to take their own lives," he said. "I wish more could have been done to ease her suffering. My prayers and sympathy are with her family at this time," he said.

"I see nothing ennobling, no validation of human dignity, in suicide. We must do all we can to make the benefits of palliative care accessible." ... "For Christians, life is a gift from God. It is not ours to dispose of." The Bishop said the Catholic Church, and many others in the community, regrets any bias towards a euthanasia option that Australian society has long condemned.

"May it continue to outlaw euthanasia in all its insidious expressions. Euthanasia is never to be a choice for a healthy society that protects life from beginning to end."

Sticks and stones, pins and needles

Melinda Tankard Reist | A company comes up with a voodoo doll for girls to stab with pins and use to curse the girls they don't like - and we wonder why girl-on-girl violence is on the rise.

The doll is just one more sign of the mainstreaming of violence at every level of society. At a time of heightened concern about bullying, companies find new and creative ways to trade in misery: real flesh and blood girls are treated as pin cushions.

Smiggle, the ultra cute stationery store popular with tweens and teen girls, had added to its line a "voodoo doll" canvas pencil case with plastic photo pocket. "Place photo here" read the helpful instruction on the face.

Corporate credibility for a product enabling girls to hex each other using an ancient occult ritual.

Magazine in Henson scandal runs more photos of nude girls

26/03 | Art Monthly Australia, which was criticised by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, last year for carrying a photograph of a nude schoolgirl on its cover, has published more naked images to test the Government's new guidelines aimed at protecting children.

But the magazine's editor, Maurice O'Riordan, said the three pictures of nude girls complied with the Australia Council's new "children in art" protocols, even though they were starker than last year's image.

Muslim complaint highlights need to retain exceptions for Christian schools

24/03 Australian Chrisian Lobby Newsletter | The peculiar situation of a Muslim student teacher reportedly lodging a complaint because she was denied a place in a Christian school in Victoria has further highlighted the need to retain exceptions for religious schools and bodies in Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act.

Media reports indicate that the Muslim teaching student from Victoria University has complained to the Equal Opportunity Commission “on the grounds of discrimination, prejudice and unequal employment opportunities” despite having been counselled by the university about the school’s policy of only taking those who shared its values. Click here for details.

In a media release issued yesterday, ACL Victorian Director Rob Ward said it impinges on religious freedom to require a Christian school to take on a Muslim student teacher, just as it would in the opposite situation.

“In line with the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, parents choosing to send their children to a Christian school would expect that it would be free to uphold Christian values and beliefs. In this respect teachers – including student teachers – play a vital role,” he said. Please click here to read the media release.

Under the current exceptions to Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act, religious schools and bodies are permitted to limit employment to people who share their faith and values.

However the exceptions are currently the subject of a review and the ACL and other groups have been very concerned that these exceptions might be removed. This latest example demonstrates more than ever why these exceptions to the Act are vitally important.

Stable families best defence against violence: Hickey

23/03 Catholic News | Stable families and committed fathers are society's best defence against crime and violence, and a great many other ills as well, Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey, says.

"Tougher laws and more prison sentences might have their place, but if we want to understand why our society has become so violent we must look at the state of marriage and family," Archbishop Hickey said in a statement.

"In 1993, when there was great concern about crime, Dr Alan Tapper, of Edith Cowan University, published the facts and figures to support his statement, 'family breakdown in the form of divorce and separation is the main cause of the crime wave'.

"Dr Tapper's conclusion has been endorsed by history and by countless other studies of the effect of family breakdown over the last 50 years. Archbishop Hickey also said the modern fashion for cohabitation instead of marriage did not help the adults or the children involved.

Citing a study showing that "the relationship between cohabitation and delinquency is beyond contention," Archbishop Hickey said that "the simple fact is that marriage is the best and safest place for adults and by far the best environment for raising children to be stable and competent adults who are able to contribute to society."

Archbishop backs move to restrict brothels

23/03 The west.com.au | Banning brothels in residential areas would be a welcome first step to curbing prostitution, though laws need to go further by making it illegal to pay for sex, Perth’s Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey says.
  
A vocal opponent of the former Carpenter government’s now redundant plan to decriminalise the sex industry, Archbishop Hickey hopes the Barnett Government’s overhaul of prostitution legislation will provide a substantial deterrent to male customers.
  
He supports the so-called Swedish model, which makes buying sex and brothel ownership illegal, rather than prostitution itself. Attorney-General Christian Porter is working towards delivering the Government’s election promise to ban prostitution outside designated zones but has rejected calls from some Liberal backbenchers to adopt the Swedish model on the basis that he did not support a system which punished only the men who bought sex.

Predators shame schools - one teacher sacked every three weeks

20/03 Daily Telegraph | EVERY three weeks in NSW, one teacher is being sacked for sexually assaulting children or committing other sex crimes against students.

Nine teachers have been dismissed for sexual assault, eight for entering into an improper relationship with a student and seven for child pornography. Nine others were kicked out of public schools for a range of sex offences against children over a 24-month period, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

The shocking figures undermining claims schools are safe for children come as an outraged father pleaded with the Rees Government to protect students.

... New data showed 71 teachers were dismissed between August, 2006 and the end of last year because they committed a crime, engaged in serious misconduct or were incompetent. The figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph under Freedom of Information revealed 25 teachers were sacked for gross inefficiency. ...

NCC denounces Labor's decision to fund abortions

National Civic Council | The decision, coinciding as it did with International Women's Day, reversed a decision of the Howard Government 13 years ago, and follows US President Barack Obama's recent moves to use US overseas aid funds to support abortion.

NCC President Peter Westmore described the Rudd Government decision as "a slap in the face to the millions of Australians who will be forced to bankroll abortions, and a betrayal of women in developing countries who want access to better health, improved food and clean water for themselves and their families, but instead will be offered abortion services".

He said: "If the Federal Government were serious about better maternal and child health outcomes, as it claims, it would be providing medical and surgical teams for mothers, to prevent the large number of preventable deaths in childbirth, which deprive many children of their mothers every year.

"Yet even in our immediate neighbourhood, in Papua New Guinea and East Timor, for example, Australia's contribution to pre-natal and post-natal maternal care is almost vanishingly small."

Mr Westmore described Foreign Minister Stephen Smith's claim that avoiding abortion would continue to be the focus of Australian-funded activities as "sanctimonious humbug".

"There is no evidence that any abortion-providers, in Australia or overseas, focus on avoiding terminations. Instead, they offer abortions as a form of family-planning," he said.

"The Rudd Government's decision to bankroll abortions ignores the context in which the 1996 decision was made. In many parts of the world, women are forced into abortion through government action (e.g., in China), or as a result of threats or intimidation by men.

"It is absurd that at a time when Mr Smith has given $17 million to the United Nations Development Fund for Women to end violence against women, it has allocated money to a program which is based on coercion and destroys life," he added.

Washing machine has done more to liberate women than the Pill, says the Vatican

09/03 News.com.au | THE washing machine has had a greater liberating role for women than the Pill, the official Vatican daily said in an International Women's Day commentary. "The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax," said the headline on the article in Osservatore Romano yesterday.

Protecting Conscience

An Obstacle to Tyranny

03/09 The Christian Post | Last week, what the Washington Post characterized as a “terse posting on a federal Web site” set the stage for a debate on just how seriously our society takes freedom of conscience.

The posting announced that the Obama administration was planning to rescind “job protections for health workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable.” These explicit protections were issued in the last few months of the Bush administration.

Under the current provisions, health care providers can lose federal funds if they don’t accommodate health-care workers “who refuse to participate in care they feel violates their . . . moral or religious beliefs.” The regulations covered “state and local governments, hospitals, health plans, clinics and other entities.” Health-care providers and “abortion rights” advocates were quick to attack the Bush administration for promulgating the regulations.

... In a country that treasures freedom, what could possibly justify compelling people to violate their consciences? There is a long tradition established in the law and court cases not to do this ... Remember, freedom of conscience is the first freedom. And people who can be compelled to act in violation of their most deeply held convictions are not free in any meaningful sense.

The good news is that this appears to be a “trial balloon” of sorts. Administration officials are expecting lots of comments on the proposed change. And we shouldn’t disappoint them. Let them know that we value freedom of conscience too highly to let it be sacrificed, especially to those driven by ideology and profit.

Because what government officials are regarding as an “obstacle” is, in fact, the very foundation of our freedom — and the first defense against tyranny.

Kids grow up 'surrounded by porn'

02/03 News.Com.au | Young Australians will likely see pornography before they are legally allowed because of a proliferation of easily available x-rated material, a study says.

The Australian Institute of Criminology says there is a "very high'' chance that Australian teenagers will be exposed to pornography before the age of 18 - the legal age to view and purchase explicit sexual material.

Institute analyst Colleen Bryant said there was concern that young people were being inundated with sexual information before they were capable of integrating it into a healthy sexual identity.

"The proliferation of pornographic materials and their ease of access are such that it is not a matter of whether a young person will be exposed to pornography but when,'' she said.

Childhood lost: under-age prostitutes strain a system in crisis

01/03 The Age | SHE walks downthe street beside a young man, their arms swinging so close they could be holding hands. She wears black stockings, a tight black shirt and exposed bra, and foundation applied hurriedly in the light of a car mirror. Sunglasses sit high on her head at night, pushing back lank hair she teases with her fingers. They walk along Carlisle Street, St Kilda, into a small park. She squats, then sinks to her knees. In her handbag is $50-the price of oral sex-and a new box of condoms.

... Ona good night in St Kilda, a child like her might have sex with 10 or more men. "It's called fresh meat," an older sex worker says. "They love the youngies. They'll pay more for a youngie than they will an oldie. The corner where they stand on Greeves Street is like peak-hour traffic."

Victoria Police estimates there are up to 15 children and teenagers in state care who regularly work the streets of St Kilda. The Department of Human Services insists the total is as lowas four. Sarah says she knows of 20 under-aged girls working as prostitutes.

New Documentary Reveals New Facts in Terri Schiavo Case

22/02 Christian Cinema.com | The story of Terri Schiavo caused a nationwide uproar that garnered the attention of the worldwide media, the U.S. Congress, and even the office of the President of the United States. The ethical and cultural implications of her case are still being felt throughout society and continue to spark debate.  In the newly-released documentary, The Terri Schiavo Story from Franklin Springs Family Media, previously unexplored facts of the case are revealed through in-depth interviews with participants on both sides of the issue.  Hosted by author and speaker Joni Eareckson Tada, who became personally involved in the case in 2005, The Terri Schiavo Story sheds new light on the controversial decision that led to the death of a 41-year-old disabled woman.

Row over religion law report

01/03 The AGE | A renewed battle over church and state is being fought out in the Australian Human Rights Commission, which is preparing a report for possible federal freedom of religion legislation.

Australian Christian Lobby leader Jim Wallace said yesterday the project seemed to be more about freedom from religion, while Racial Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma accused Brigadier Wallace of spreading fear and innuendo.

The Human Rights Commission was flooded with public responses, which closed on Saturday, not least because of a campaign by conservative Christian groups such as Salt Shakers.

The final number is not yet known, but is close to 1500, nearly 10 times the number who responded to a 2004 project on cultural diversity and security, according to RMIT professor Des Cahill, one of the project's three researchers.

Mr Calma said issues surrounding religion included the right to religious and secular beliefs, secular and religious schools, homosexuality and abortion, scientific research, treatment of women, faith organisations providing government-funded services, and national security.

Training tomorrow's leaders

There is a great need in this nation to assist those students and recent graduates who demonstrate a high potential to become influential leaders for Christ across strategic areas of our nation including politics, law, media, science, education, arts and philosophy.

The Compass program, an eight-day course in Christian worldview, aims to address this need.

For more information and to register interest for 2009, please go to www.compass.org.au .

Lyle Shelton
National Chief of Staff , Australian Christian Lobby