Numerous stories detailing alleged gaps in knowledge of sexual issues by children and young people appeared in Irish media over the weekend as the NCCA’s online consultation on a new RSE course for schools came to an end. The Times, Ireland edition, led the way on Saturday with no fewer than three stories detailing the situations children are finding themselves in due to their lack of awareness of online dangers.
“Teenagers’ sex videos shared by paedophiles”, read one story, while another was headlined, “Sex predators targeting children in explicit group chats on Twitter”. A third story explicitly brought up RSE with the headline, “Alert children aged 2 to online risks, charity urges.”
On the Late Late Show Friday night, a man told his story of being in shock when he was diagnosed in 2012, at the age of 21, with HIV. Robbie Lawlor told Ryan Tubridy, he “didn’t know HIV existed in Ireland” and he didn’t understand how he was getting this diagnosis. He had just finished a four year degree in UCD in zoology and was hoping to travel to Australia, but the diagnosis scuppered those plans. He added that education of young people on the matter today is “non-existent”. He is now an activist for HIV/Aids awareness and had a piece in the journal.ie on Friday on that very subject.
The Cabinet has approved a bill to enable same-sex female couples to register as parents of a baby conceived with the help of a sperm donor. In addition, any couple will also be allowed to replace the word ‘mother’ and father’ on birth certs with ‘parent’.
A memo explaining the new legislation says: “Section 10 provides for the inclusion of details of ‘Parent’ in the required particulars to register a birth or stillbirth. This will facilitate both partners in a same-sex female relationship to have their particulars registered in the register of births. Registration of particulars of “Mother” and “Father” will continue to be available. However, any parent may choose to register a birth as ‘Parent’, if they so wish.”
Under current laws, birth certs only allow for the birth mother to be recorded, but under the changes both women in a same-sex relationship will be able to be recorded as parents. The Bill will also work retroactively to allow people re-register past births.
This change in the law was meant to be effected by the Children and Family Relationships Act of 2015, but a drafting error in one section prevented that part of the legislation from becoming law.
This bill will not extend the same rights to men in same-sex relationships who have children as that crosses over with separate surrogacy laws, the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill 2017, being prepared by the Department of Health.
According to a press release from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, currently, “particulars of only one parent, the mother, can be included on the birth certificate. Under these new provisions both parents can be recorded as ‘parent’ on the birth certificate.”
It adds that this “will equally apply to non-same sex parents should they so choose.”
The Bill also includes a provision to enable a mother to more easily rebut presumption of paternity of her estranged husband in registering a birth.
Christians today are persecuted in Iran on a larger scale now more than ever in the past 40 years, according to Article18, a Christian human rights organization focussed on Iran. The claim was made as the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Islamic revolution was feted in Ireland and around the world.
“For 40 years, the Iranian government has harbored an intolerant view towards Christianity,” said Mansour Borji, advocacy director at Article18, a Christian human rights organization focused on Iran.
“Administrations have changed and the methods have varied, but the objective remains the same: to restrict Christians’ influence on all spheres of Iranian life,” he added.
An in-depth report on violations against Iranian Christians in 2018 was jointly released last month by Open Doors, Middle East Concern, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and Article18. The report stated that according to public records, 29 Christians were held in detention in 2018 for terms of 6 months to 10 years (if formally sentenced at all). Eight were released.
The report emphasized that many more detentions of Christians remained undocumented.
The joint report states that most violations occur against converts from Islam. If arrested, they are pressured to recant; if they don’t, they may be charged with evangelism, illegal house church activity, or endangering national security.
Open Doors lists Iran as No. 9 among the world’s most dangerous places to be a Christian, and stated the Iranian government views converts as a Western attempt to undermine Islam and the Islamic Republic.
People’s reactions to proposed ethical guidelines that should govern doctors in light of the new abortion regime are being canvassed in an online poll. The Medical Council have set up the survey as the final part of a consultation process. It is open to all the public. One of the biggest proposed changes is to amend the article that prohibits the deliberate killing of a patient, and replace it with a prohibition on the “unlawful” killing of a patient.
Members of the Medico-Legal Alliance said the proposal to equate the term “ethical” with “legal” would “rob the guidelines of any moral force”.
The Life Institute called the proposed changes “deeply disturbing“.
Spokeswoman Niamh Uí Bhriain said: ” It’s very clear that they understand killing is involved, but they want to reflect that some killing – that of innocent, tiny babies – is to be permitted. It’s appalling, but it does reveal the reality of this cruel abortion legislation, and what the government is trying to force doctors to do.”
Prosecutor’s have opened an investigation into the desecration of a church in Nîmes, France. The church of Notre-Dame des Enfants was attacked last week and a cross was drawn on a wall with excrement on which pieces of consecrated hosts were stuck. The tabernacle was broken and other consecrated hosts were destroyed.
The Bishop of Nîmes, Robert Wattebled, issued a statement that aid the desecration shocked the whole diocesan community and the church would have to close until a purification could be effected. “The sign of the cross and the Blessed Sacrament have been the subject of serious injurious actions. This act of profanation hurts us all in our deepest convictions. Under these conditions, worship can no longer be celebrated in this building until the profanation has been repaired by a penitential rite whose date is not yet fixed” he said.
He added: “Already, the Carmelites, Cistercians and Poor Clares of the Diocese have agreed to observe a day of fasting and worship, as compensation for acts of vandalism. In their own way, all the Catholic communities will be able to associate themselves with this prayer, in the way that will seem appropriate to them.”
Hungarian women with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax, the prime minister has said, unveiling plans designed to boost the number of babies being born.
As part of the measures, the Government also announced a low-interest loan of €31 500 for women under the age of 40 marrying for the first time. A third of the debt will be forgiven if two children are born to the couple and the entire loan waived after a third child.
A loan program for families with at least two children to help them buy homes will be expanded.
For families struggling with housing, the government will give €3,150 towards a mortgage after the birth of a second child, and €12,580, after a third child, with an additional €3,150 for every subsequent child. Grand-parents could be eligible for “GYED” – a type of paid maternity leave until their grandchildren reach the age of three. The Hungarian nursery system will be expanded with 21,000 new places by 2022.
A subsidy of almost €8,000 will be offered toward the purchase a seven-seat vehicle for families with three or more children. The government also plan to spend an extra €2bn on the country’s healthcare system.
State Secretary for Families Katalin Novak told the BBC the government’s new package is based on the number of babies couples would actually like to have, and then to encourage them with financial help. The aim is to increase the fertility rate from 1.45 to 2.1 by 2030.
Hungary’s population is falling by 32,000 a year as women are having fewer children even than the EU average.
According to Mr Orban, it was also a way of ensuring Hungary’s future without depending on immigration.
In a remarkable advance in foetal medicine, a baby in the UK was removed from its mother’s womb for an operation and then put safely back in afterwards so it could continue with its nine-month gestation.
The child had been diagnosed with spina bifida after a routine 20 week scan and its mother, Bethan Simpson, chose the innovative surgery to repair the problem after refusing an abortion.
Spina bifida should not be not a death sentence, she told reporters, adding that the child has the same potential as every one of us.
In the UK, up to 80% of children diagnosed with spina bifida are aborted.
The case also raises serious jurisprudential issues regarding the status of the unborn child. In some countries, legal rights are not conferred upon the child until it is born: but what then of a child that is taken from its womb and then put back?
A charge of criminal abortion has been dropped from the indictment against a man who murdered a pregnant woman as New York state no longer recognises it as a crime according to its new, extreme abortion law.
Prosecutors initially included a charge of abortion as well as murder against a man arrested Friday in his pregnant girlfriend’s killing — but rescinded it when they realised it the charge had been repealed by the legislature.
In the brutal murder, captured on CCTV, the man dragged the woman from her apartment and stabbed her in the stomach. “He’s got a knife! He’s going to kill the baby!” shouted five-months-pregnant Jennifer Irigoyen around 1 a.m. as her attacker pulled her from her third-floor Ridgewood walk-up and down the stairs to the building’s entranceway, horrified witness Maurice Roman Zereoue told The New York Post.
A neighbour said she heard a man and a woman arguing loudly and then the victim “yelling … about wanting to protect her baby.’’
Her boyfriend was subsequently arrested and charged with the killing of both mother and unborn child, but that charge has now been reduced simply to the killing of the mother.
A US federal court ruled that the University of Iowa illegally targeted student religious groups in denying them official recognition. The University had objected to the groups having an ethos requirement whereby their leaders had to be selected from those who followed their faith.
While the case concerned one Christian group in particular, during the course of discovery, it was revealed that the University had put 31 groups on probationary status and every one of them was religious in character.
The University funded many other groups which explicitly restrict or control access to leadership or membership based on categories like race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and U.S. military service. Nonetheless, the University had operated a policy that said “religious registered student organizations are not permitted to require their leaders to agree with and live by the organization’s religious beliefs.”
Ironically, the University claimed they were acting on an anti-discriminatory impulse, but the Court found them to be engaged in discrimination.
A county Louth print and design company has been ordered to pay €2,500 to a gay man for refusing to print invitations for a same-sex, civil partnership ceremony. The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) found that Beulah Print and Design discriminated against Jonathon Brennan on the grounds of sexual orientation under Section 3 of the Equal Status Act.
Beulah told the WRC that the refusal of this service was not due to Mr Brennan’s sexual orientation but was rather due to the subject matter which was contrary to their religious beliefs. They were not refusing the person, just the particular order.
They had turned down requests to print material depicting nudity before based on the same convictions. Beulah stated that they would have refused the same request if it had been made by someone with a heterosexual orientation. They had also served Mr Brennan happily for four years and would continue to do so in the future in respect of other material.
The WRC rejected their argument despite the Supreme Court in the USA and in the UK accepting the same argument in high profile cases in the last few months.
In a statement on the WRC’s finding, Beulah said that it rejected the ruling as it “simply acted in accordance with the light of our own consciences as followers of Christ”.
“For us, designing and printing invitations to such events would be the lending of our approval and even the promotion of the content and is therefore something we could never do.”
