The European Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Catherine Ashton, is embroiled in a row over a draft statement that refused to condemn attacks on Christians in Egypt and other countries. The row erupted between Lady Ashton and a number of foreign ministers at a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers on Monday. Ireland supported...
The UK’s senior family judge has come out in favour of giving property rights to cohabiting couples who split up after living together. Sir Nicholas Wall, the president of the Family Division, claimed the current system was unjust and judges should have the discretion to decide on claims. Justice Wall said the courts would be...
A prominent UK columnist who has spoken out against the homosexual lobby’s attempts to silence all opposition has been subjected to a “vicious outpouring of hate”, including calls for her to be killed. Last week Daily Mail writer Melanie Phillips warned that “some gay people were in danger of turning into the new McCarthyites by...
The new Chief Executive of Barnardos in the UK has described opposition to homosexual adoption as “absurd and unsubstantiated”. Ms Anne Marie Carrie has attacked people who believe that children fare best when raised by a man and a woman. Ms Carrie says she believes such views harm the welfare of children and must be...
The pay gap between Irish men and women is lower than that of Sweden, which is often held up as a model of good practice in this area, and slightly lower than the average for the EU-27. The data is contained in the Women and Men in Ireland report for 2010. The pay gap in...
Homosexual activist Peter Tatchell is supporting eight British couples who are taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the grounds that prohibitions on same-sex marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships are unlawful and should be reversed. In the last two months of 2010 four same-sex couples in the UK were refused...
There were 6,205 births outside marriage.in the second quarter of 2010, which is higher than for any other second quarter on record, new CSO figures show. The total amounted to 32.9 per cent of all births. Of these, 3,381 births were to unmarried parents with the same address, 17.9 per cent of all births. The...
Stable marriages lead to “more healthy lifestyles and better emotional and physical health,” and have a marked effect on longevity, according to a survey of marriage in seven European countries. The two Cardiff medical students, David Gallacher and John Gallacher, who authored the study, cite a Cambridge study of “one billion person years across seven European...
Mothers are most likely to get custody following separation or divorce, according to a new study of rulings by the family courts. The study also found that maintenance payments to a former spouse are very rarely ordered in Irish family law courts. In the 87 separation and divorce cases studied, there was a spousal maintenance...
France’s definition of marriage as between one man and one woman is valid under French constitution, its highest court ruled on Friday. The definition had been challenged by two lesbians who conceived children by artificial insemination and wanted to legally call their relationship a “marriage.” They battled for rights reserved for married couples, including inheritance...
