In the US, a Colorado baker is currently fighting a ruling that he violated the state’s anti-discrimination law for refusing to bake a cake to celebrate a gender transition.
Jack Phillips previously refused to make a same-sex wedding cake on religious grounds and was penalised by the state’s Civil Rights Commission. However, that decision was overturned by the US Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision in 2018 on the grounds that the Commission exhibited an anti-religious bias. Court liberals Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan joined the majority opinion wrote by chief Justice John Roberts.
In the present case, in arguments before Colorado’s appeals court, Phillips’ attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom urged the court to overturn a ruling issued last year against their client on procedural grounds and said the court should uphold Phillips’ First Amendment rights.
Phillips was sued by Autumn Scardina, a biological male who identifies as a woman and who ordered a pink cake with blue frosting from Phillips’ shop, Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2017.
During the 2021 trial, according to The Associated Press, Phillips said he believes someone cannot change genders and he did not celebrate “somebody who thinks that they can.”
A couple whose genetic son was born to a surrogate mother allege the State has breached their constitutional rights by not allowing the woman to be legally recognised as the child’s mother. Irish law currently gives automatic legal recognition only to the birth mother. Surrogacy separates the role of mother into at least two women, namely the woman who gives birth and the woman who provides the egg. In some cases, a separate woman raises the child. It is why some countries ban surrogacy completely.
Kathy and Brian Egan, of Castlecomer Road, Kilkenny, are claiming the State’s failure to provide retrospective recognition of parentage is an “invidious discrimination” against their family.
A Ukrainian woman carried and gave birth to their genetic son in 2019 via a surrogacy arrangement. Ukraine is one of only three European countries to allow commercial surrogacy. The other two are Russia and Belarus.
Mr Egan is the child’s genetic and legal father while Ms Egan is his genetic mother and legal guardian, a relationship that will cease when he turns 18. She is not legally recognised as his mother.
The family seeks various declarations, but Counsel said there is no request for an order that would specify in detail the manner in which the Oireachtas should regulate international surrogacy.
The Quebec College of Physicians in Canada has started to lobby for euthanasia for new-borns.
In a press release last December the College argued that MAiD should be available for children aged 0-1 and 14-17. “Suffering does not take age into account and for minors it can be as intolerable as for adults,” it said. With respect to euthanasia for newborns, the College offered as a model the Groningen Protocol which Dutch doctors use to decide whether to euthanise infants.
Alex Schadenberg, of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, suggested that the recommendations of the College make no sense. “Why would you then have to give the child a lethal dose? If the child is not going to survive, the child can be kept comfortable and die naturally. There’s no reason for us to kill the child. There’s no reason for us to do this at all,” he told the National Post.
Two Russian Orthodox priests are on trial on criminal charges for their opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine. If convicted, they could be imprisoned or have to pay massive fines. They are the first members of the clergy known to be facing criminal prosecution for protesting against the war from a religious perspective.
Both priests are members of a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) which did not join the Moscow Patriarchate with other parts of ROCOR in 2007.
Fr Ioann Kurmoyarov is being prosecuted for videos he posted on his YouTube channel in which he criticises the Moscow Patriarchate’s support for the war, suggests the “aggressors” will not go to heaven, and argues that “Every condemnation of this aggression, this war on Ukraine, is a spiritual matter. All Christians should do it on principle”.
Fr Ioann has been in detention in St Petersburg’s Kresty-2 Prison since early June and will remain there throughout his trial.
The vast scale of abortion in Ireland and the lack of support for positive alternatives was raised by the leader of Aontu at the party’s Ard Fheis on Sunday.
Meath-West TD, Peadar Toibin said the new abortion law “has ended the lives of 23,000 children north and south. That’s 900 classrooms of children who would be here with us today are not, directly due to these laws”.
“I ask you if you can’t trust a politician in relation to these lives what can you trust them on?”
Looking to tackle of the causes of abortion, Mr Toibin said his party “seek an Irish society built on compassion, empathy and kindness, where the most vulnerable are the most protected. We will support mothers, economically and socially so that they have the confidence to raise their children to their full potential. We seek to protect children with disabilities, from low income families and baby girls from the discrimination of abortion. We will support them not just up until the day that they are born, but through their whole lives”.
People who self-identify as ‘liberal’, especially women, are significantly less likely to be happy with their lives or satisfied with their “mental health”, compared to their conservative peers aged from 18-55.
That’s according to the 2022 American Family Survey, from YouGov and the Deseret News, which found that liberals are about 15 percentage points less likely to be “completely satisfied” with their lives.
The survey goes on to find that liberals are about 18 percentage points less likely to be “completely satisfied” with their “mental health” than conservatives.
The problem appears to be especially acute for liberal women, who register the lowest levels of satisfaction with their lives and mental health. Indeed, only 15% of liberal women in the age group surveyed are “completely satisfied” with their lives, compared to 31% of conservative women; likewise, only 15% of liberal women are “completely satisfied” with their mental health, compared to 36% of conservative women.
Commenting on the findings, sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox said two family factors appear to have a lot to do with this ideological gap: marital status and family satisfaction.
“Given that conservatives aged 18-55 are about 20 percentage points more likely to be married, as well as 18 percentage points more likely to be satisfied with their families, the lesson here is obvious. Marriage and family are strongly linked to happiness and to personal mental health in particular”.
He said, “The problem facing liberals, then, is that too many of them have embraced the false narrative that the path to happiness runs counter to marriage and family life, not towards it.”
A bereaved father and his three children lost their challenge to a law under which he was refused a widower’s contributory pension because he and his partner of more than 20 years were not married.
Johnny O’Meara’s partner, Michelle Batey, was aged in her 40s when she died from Covid-19 early last year. The couple had planned to marry after her recovery from breast cancer in 2020.
Their case was rejected by Mr Justice Mark Heslin on Friday for reasons including that the relevant law was not contrary to the Constitution’s guarantee of equality.
He said he could not interfere with the aim of the legislation to support and promote marriage.
He disagreed with the applicants the reason for the WCP is to protect the family, which includes the children. That is not the reason for, or the aim of the WCP, and nor was this case about families or this particular family, he said.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has raised serious concerns about the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill saying the definition of harmful online content is “hazardously vague”.
“It empowers a State-appointed body, the media commission, to ultimately decide what can and cannot be said online by deciding what is and is not harmful; enables a Minister to expand the definition of harmful online content; decide what entities fall under the scope of ‘designated online service providers’; and regulates their compliance with binding codes created by the commission,” the civil liberties body says.
Elsewhere, the Bill says a broadcaster or a provider of an audiovisual on-demand media service, such as the RTÉ Player, will not broadcast anything that may “reasonably be regarded as causing harm or offence”.
They also raised concerns about another piece of legislation dealing with hate crimes and other forms of hate speech which is due to be published in coming weeks by the Department of Justice.
A prominent Irish theologian has warned that the legacy of Irish religious could be “betrayed” by the gifting of third-level Catholic institutions to the State.
The Vatican must investigate several deals made by the Church in Ireland to hand over Catholic colleges in recent years, Prof. Eamonn Conway told The Irish Catholic.
The founder and until recently Head of Theology and Religious Studies at Mary Immaculate College said there needs to be a “formal evaluation” of the deals by the relevant Vatican bodies, such as the Dicastery for Culture and Catholic Education.
Prof. Conway questioned what the Church has received in return for the gifts of the Catholic institutions “in terms of safeguarding resources for the Church’s mission in Ireland”.
“It is important that the sacrifice of previous generations of Catholics who proudly and generously founded and built up these colleges, and that of the many religious sisters and brothers who worked selflessly over the years to provide a free education, is neither forgotten nor betrayed,” Prof. Conway said.
The Pro Life Campaign has blasted a call to introduce prison time for people engaged in pro-life activity within a hundred metres of abortion-providing facilities. Very few countries have laws of this kind.
Spokesperson Eilís Mulroy was responding to a proposal by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission that legislation to enact so-called “safe access zones” should include criminal penalties, rather than merely civil remedies.
Ms Mulroy branded the proposal “an excessively authoritarian suggestion”.
She said it was “inherently discriminatory”, because “it singles out a particular ideological and moral worldview for punishment”.
She added legislation to combat ‘intimidation’ and ‘harassment’ was not required, as these were already offences under public order laws.
“Nonetheless, the excessive measures which would have the impact of banning the optional provision of pro-life literature and even quiet and reflective prayer are being railroaded through the Oireachtas,” she stated.
