The rate of out-of-wedlock births in Britain is at its highest point for at least 200 years, according to a major new study of the history of the family from a leading think-tank. Cohabitation levels have also soared from under five per cent pre-1945 to 90 per cent today, according to report by the Centre...
An Australian family court has issued an order to approve a sex change procedure for a 10-year-old boy. The court was told that the boy, known only as Jamie, had been dressed as a girl for the past two years, had been allowed to use the girls’ toilet at school and was “presenting as a...
The Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn (pictured), has said that he is not “doctrinaire or rigid” about his target of transferring 50 per cent of Catholic primary schools to other patrons. His statement came after senior Church figures expressed alarm at the Minister’s suggestion last month that half of its schools would change patrons under...
A Spanish GP who opposes abortion has been refused the status of “conscientious objector” in a landmark ruling in Spain. The unnamed family doctor from a public medical centre in Antequera in southern Spain, who refused give referrals to pregnant women seeking terminations tried to register as a conscience objector, the Daily Telegraph reports. But...
An electrician in the UK who has worked at a publicly funded housing association for 15 years is facing the sack because he has a small palm cross in his company van. Colin Atkinson, from Wakefield, has been found in breach of company rules on ‘neutrality’ and faces a disciplinary hearing in May. His case...
The Equality Tribunal has awarded more than €35,000 in compensation to a transsexual for gender discrimination. The worker, whose new identity is Louise Hannon (50, pictured), won the case against former employer First Direct Logistics Ltd yesterday. Hannon, who was born a male, has not had an operation and was not undergoing hormone treatment when an...
Nearly a third (28 per cent) of all American women with two or more children have children by more than one man, according to a new study. The report, which is the first nationwide study multiple partner fertility shows that 28 percent of all U.S. women with two or more children looked at data on...
An attempt by two gay men who adopted a child born in Louisiana to force that state to reissue a birth certificate in their name has been struck down by US Appeals court. The two men, Oren Adar and Mickey Smith, jointly adopted a Louisiana-born boy in New York in 2006, and they sought to...
Plans by Ireland’s Catholic bishops may see parents accompanying their children to “Sunday school” at weekends. The classes are set to be proposed for Catholic parents whose children don’t attend church schools but who still want them to get religious instruction, according to an Irish Independent report. T here is no link between the new...
A bill sponsored by Democratic state Senator in the US state of Illinois to amend civil union legislation to provide for a conscience clause for faith-based adoption agencies was defeated yesterday. The state’s Senate Executive Committee rejected the bill by a narrow vote, 7 to 6, after homosexual rights groups and the influential liberal lobby...
