While married Americans now account for about half the adult population, they pay 74% of income tax. A recent report shows that, even as the share of married people in the US has declined, the share of tax they pay has declined at a far slower rate indicating that, proportionally, they are earning more income and paying more in tax than ever before.
The report was compiled by the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan “Fact-Tank” whose aim is to inform public debate without taking any policy positions themselves.
The author of the report, Anthony Ciluffo, said this is an indication of the increasingly visible “marriage-gap” which has developed in the US and elsewhere whereby marriage is becoming both a sign of and a driver of education and wealth.
“The fact that married Americans continue to pay roughly three-quarters of the nation’s income taxes, in spite of their dwindling share of the adult population, is in part a result of the changing demographics and economics of marriage. Marriage is increasingly linked with higher levels of education, which are in turn linked to higher incomes” he said.
Cultural traditions that give the impression of State-endorsement of religion, such as the prayer before the start of each Dáil session, should be ditched according to Ronan McCrea, a law lecturer at University College London. Writing in The Irish Times he says that while such traditions might be mere cultural symbols, migrants from abroad might not understand that and mistake them for actual State endorsement of a particular religion.
“The problem with the European arrangements [favouring certain religious symbols] is that they rely to a large degree on insider knowledge that allows people to distinguish between the situation on paper and the actual situation. . . If one comes from a society where politics and religion are deeply intertwined, prayers in parliament may appear to be much more than a cultural symbol.”
He added: “This divide between symbolic religiosity and substantive secular politics leaves European societies open to allegations of hypocrisy when they ask migrants from areas of the world with more muscular religion to accept that religion and politics are separate and that religiously controversial ideas such as free speech on religion and gay rights must be accepted.”
Specifically, he believes the prayer at the start of each Dáil session to be particularly problematic: “It is hard to see a prayer that involves a wish that “Christ Our Lord” will guide parliamentarians’ work as a mere cultural symbol.” He concludes: “If we wish migrants to this country to feel at home and to accept a division between religion and politics that may be challenging for them, it is important that the majority appear to honour those commitments too.”
Delegates at a UK Teachers union conference called on its members to promote LGBT+ issues, including transsexuality, to children from nursery school on. They also urged the Government to include LGBT+ issues in mandatory sex education classes, and to extend the requirement for those classes from State schools to all private schools including faith-based schools.
The teachers passed a motion which called on members to “campaign to ensure a comprehensive age-appropriate content including promotion of LGBT+ matters for all schools from nursery throughout all phases of state education”.
Annette Pryce, a member of the NUT executive committee and teacher in Buckinghamshire, added that the “right wing, religious lobby” had prevented ministers from proposing a more “inclusive” agenda for sex education classes to include teaching about LGBT+ issues.
Kiri Tunks, a teacher in East London and the NUT’s vice president, said that the opt-out available to faith schools and parents is a “dangerous loophole” which will “leave many young people ignorant and vulnerable”.
The Church of England announced that they support the introduction of statutory sex education in schools, but Andrea Williams, chief executive at Christian Concern, said that teaching SRE to young children would be “devastating” and risks “robbing them of their innocence”.
Transsexualism has striking similarities to “transableism” where people believe they are actually disabled, a family researcher has said. Glenn T. Stanton writing in the Federalist magazine gave numerous examples of “transable” people who want to have body parts removed in order to ‘align’ their bodies with their minds. One such example is that of an American woman named Chloe Jennings-White, who is able-bodied but wants a severed spinal cord. The condition is also known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder but Stanton says, “Cutting the body does not seem to heal the mind”. He concluded that like transsexuals, people with such feelings “must be treated compassionately but truthfully”.
In a strongly worded statement, the Bishops of the Church of Ireland have voiced their opposition to any dilution of their schools’ faith-based admission policies. This is in response to Minister of Education, Richard Bruton’s proposals to reduce or eliminate faith-based schools’ ability to prioritise children of their own faith-community when schools are oversubscribed. In their statement, released during Holy Week, they say that “changing the admissions rules, as proposed, will do nothing to increase resources in specific areas. Instead, the change will merely create a new cohort of children who are excluded from education within their own faith. To prevent a Church of Ireland school from prioritising children from that community will lead to a splintering and a diminishing of that link causing hurt, confusion and disillusionment.
Numerous groups and commentators have voiced criticism of the Government’s plan to end the Good Friday ban on sales of alcohol in 2018, including Senator David Norris.
Kathy Sheridan opined in the Irish Times that many who support the retention of the ban do so, not for religious reasons, but for a desire “to hold on to a tradition they suspected might be a force for good”. Furthermore, she added “Some had been disturbed by the preceding debate with its undertones of a country that seemed incapable of functioning without alcohol for a day. More than that, it seemed like just another heart-sinking example of commerce and vested interests being allowed to drive change, with little regard for the symbolism of such decisions.” In the Irish Independent, Shane Coleman also questioned the commercial interests pushing for the change: “The publicans, who form one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country, say it’s costing them €30m to €40m a year – they must be making some money the rest of the year. Even if that figure is true, must commerce and consumerism prevail on each one of the 365 days a year?”. Meanwhile, on Morning Ireland, Fine Gael Senator Joe O’Reilly has argued against ending the Good Friday alcohol ban, while Senator David Norris has done likewise on Newstalk’s Pat Kenny show, so this change in policy of the Government might not yet be a “fait accompli”.
A Swedish Appeals Court has ruled against a midwife who was fired for refusing to assist in abortions. It is now likely that she will appeal her case to the European Court of Human Rights. Ellinor Grimmack took the anti-discrimination case when she had an offer of employment rescinded by one hospital, and was refused employment by other hospitals. This is despite there being a shortage of midwives in Sweden. In a statement to the newspaper Aftonbladet, Grimmack said: “As a midwife, I want to exercise a profession which defends life and saves lives at all cost. Are healthcare practitioners in Sweden to be forced to take part in procedures that extinguish life, at its beginning or final stages? Somebody has to take the little children’s side, somebody has to fight for their right to life.” But a Swedish court ruled yesterday that Grimmark has no choice but to participate in abortions if she wants to keep her job.
“Participation in abortions should not be a requirement for employment as a medical professional. In accordance with international law, the court should have protected Ellinor’s fundamental right to freedom of conscience,” said ADF International Director of European Advocacy Robert Clarke in a statement after the ruling. “For that reason, Ellinor is considering an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.”
The TV network HBO has been hit with a wave of criticism for a documentary that critics claim is callous in its depiction of abortion. Students for Life spokesperson Reagan Barklage said some of the scenes were very graphic, noting that one segment included audio from a procedure room at an abortion clinic where viewers could hear the killing of an unborn baby during a first-trimester abortion. “The sound of that child’s death, was gut-wrenching,” Barklage said. “It was inconsiderate and cruel to not only include the sound of the suction machine but also show the blood remaining on the machine afterwards.” She argued that the scene was insensitive to the “innocent preborn child,” and “to the many post-abortive women who continue to be haunted by that horrible sound of the suction”.
“Some women can no longer go to the dentist because the sound of the cleaning machine reminds them of the suction machine from their abortion,” Barklage said. “Other women can’t even turn on their vacuum because it reminds them of their abortion years ago.”
A 64 year old woman in Spain gave birth to twin babies in February after having received fertility treatment in the USA. She was given the treatment despite having had a six year old child taken off her by social services in Spain, and despite having been diagnosed with a personality disorder prior to having that child. Now social services have intervened again and taken her twins from her, barely two months after their birth, after detecting ‘signs they could be at risk.’ A spokesman for social services in Burgos said: ‘Since she left hospital, a multidisciplinary team has been monitoring the situation. All the reports conclude that the twins need protection in another environment.’
This case is the latest in a litany of shocking instances of post-menopausal women being given fertility treatment to have children. Carmen Bousada, Spain’s oldest mother ever at 67, died of cancer aged 69 in July 2009 three years after giving birth to IVF twins Cristian and Pau.In October last year Spanish doctor Lina Alvarez gave birth at aged 62 to a healthy girl, 10 years after her menopause at the age of 52 thanks to IVF treatment. The world’s oldest documented mother is Daljinder Kaur from India, who gave birth in 2015 at the age of 70 after two years of IVF treatment. Britain’s oldest mother is Elizabeth Adeney, from Suffolk, who had a son aged 66 in 2009 after travelling to Ukraine for treatment.
A visiting lecturer at the world renowned Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium has been dismissed for presenting arguments in a philosophy class that abortion is a form of murder. In an article he wrote and distributed to students, Mercier presented both philosophical and anecdotal arguments in favour of his firmly pro-life position and denounced a widely used term in French for abortion — IVG (“voluntary interruption of pregnancy”). “IVG is a euphemism that masks a lie. The truth is that abortion is the murder of an innocent person,” he wrote. Feminist groups complained that Mercier was presenting his “personal opinion in class. The University suspended Mercier’s two courses while his case was reviewed and later dismissed him without giving any reason.
