In The Blogosphere

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Court rules boy has dad and 2 moms

I know this took place in Canada.  We can and have seen similar things in the United States also.  Here a judge legislates his/her values or interpretation of what societies values are on the rest of us.

Exactly how can the court justify acting "parents patriae" or "as a guardian" for the minor when the minor has two biological parents who from the tone of the article we are led to believe are competent and fully engaged in the minors life?  Additionally the weak argument that the woman "partner" would have no rights must be as meaningless in Canada as it is here in the U.S.

In the 2006 Colorado elections we voted on whether to give gay and lesbian "marriages" the same legal status as traditional, normal marriages.  The pro-gay side claimed that in the case of death of a gay or lesbian partner the surviving partner is denied the right to inherit.  They claimed in the event of illness of a gay or lesbian partner the other is denied the right to even visit let alone make medical decisions.  This was of course all lies.  There are many legal avenues open to all people which allow a person to give the desired property and rights to anyone they want.  When will we quit being bombarded with lies in order to convince us of the lie that all relationships are created equal? 

 

Case believed to be first in Canada to give a child three legal parents

January 03, 2007

Tim Lai
Staff Reporter

Ontario's highest court has given legal parental status to the lesbian partner of a biological mother, essentially giving a young boy three parents.

The case is believed to be the first in Canada in which a child has more than two legal parents, said Peter Jervis, a lawyer for the partner. He said while there have been birth-registry cases in which lesbian couples sought parentage of their children, the fathers in those cases were not active or were unknown due to sperm donations.

In this case, the biological father, a friend of the lesbian couple, remains involved in the 5-year-old boy's life at the request of the two women. The father would have lost his parental rights if the lesbian partner had been able to adopt the boy under Ontario law.

The lesbian partner brought the case against the biological mother and father, seeking a declaration for parentage. They fully supported the legal action.

The Ontario Court of Appeal ruling released yesterday overturns a 2003 Superior Court of Justice decision not to give the female partner legal status as the child's mother. The judge said the court did not have jurisdiction to grant the title.

Justice Marc Rosenberg, writing on behalf of Chief Justice Roy McMurtry and Justice Jean-Marc Labrosse, found that due to a gap in legislation, the court in this case can exercise its "parens patriae" – the legal term for the state to act as the guardian for a minor – in declaring the partner a mother.

"Advances in our appreciation of the value of other types of relationships and in the science of reproductive technology have created gaps in the (Children's Law Reform Act's) legislative scheme," Rosenberg wrote. "Because of these changes, the parents of a child can be two women or two men."

The sudden death of the biological mother was the couple's main reason in asking for legal status, the court noted. If the woman did not receive the legal rights before her partner died, she would not be able to make decisions on behalf of their son.

"It's very good news for her, for her son and for her family," Jervis said. "She's been the mom of this child since he was born, but this grants legal recognition to her status."

Jervis said he was unable to reach the family over the phone, but he wrote an email with the subject line, "Congratulations, you're a mom."

Like any case at this level, it could create a precedent, he said. "I strongly suspect that if another case like this came forward, there would be a similar request for the courts to exercise its jurisdiction (of parens patriae)."

The "three-parents case" drew criticism from the Alliance for Marriage and Family. The umbrella group – comprising Focus on the Family, the Catholic Civil Rights League, REAL Women of Canada, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Christian Legal Fellowship – was an intervener in the case and opposed the declaration, saying it would go against the traditional family unit.

"This ruling concerns us," said David Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, an organization started by Focus on the Family. "What about grandparents? If there's a divorce and a remarrying, how many parents do we get? Those are questions that are unanswered at this point."

Quist said it's too early to say whether the alliance will appeal the ruling, but he added there may be a need to call a royal commission on the future of the family.

"What we do know from social-science research right now is that children raised by their married biological mom and dad do best, but we also know that's not a fact of life for a lot of kids out there," he said. "Let's put in (some policy) that supports the outcomes for the children the best we can."

 

Source: TheStar.com - News - Court rules boy has dad and 2 moms

TIME.com: 50 Coolest Websites

Hey the title says it all! I haven't been through all the site but make sure you have a lot of time when you start looking at this article. Not only can you find 50 sites from 2006 but you can link to the same article for 2005, 2004 and 2003. Enjoy.....

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Link to TIME.com: 50 Coolest Websites

Tequila Christmas Cookies

 Now this is a cookie recipe!  Thanks to one of my buddies on the Stroke Net.

Enjoy! Be sure and read to the end.
Christmas Tequila Cookies
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup (two sticks) butter
1 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups dried fruit (dried cranberries or raisins)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans
2 cups all purpose flour
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila (silver or gold, as desired)
First, sample the Cuervo to check quality.
Take a large bowl. Check the Cuervo to be sure it is of the highest
quality.
Pour another 4 ounces in a measuring cup and drink.
Turn on the electric mixer.
Beat one cup of the butter in a large fluffy bowl.
Add one teaspoon sugar. Beat again.
At this point, it is best to make sure the Cuervo is still OK. Try
another 4 ounces, just in case.
Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break two leggs and add to the bowl and
chuck in the cup of dried fruit, picking the frigging fruit off the
floor.
Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers, just
pry it loose with a screwdriver.
Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.
Next, sift 2 cups of salt or something.
Check the Jose Cuervo.
Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.
Add one table.
Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find.
Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall
over. Don’t forget to beat off the turner.
Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and
make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.
Cherry Mistmas.

Source: Tequila Christmas Cookies - StrokeNet Message Board

Happy New Year

I'm really looking forward to the New Year. Everything was so new in 2006. It seemed like I was just along for the ride; if somebody decided I should do something that is what I did. Lately I've been trying to take more control of my environment and life. This is good for me but sometimes I think it drives Awesome Chick nutty. It must be an adventure to be married to somebody who is charging through life one minute and sitting down the next with no clue what he was doing the minute before. Of course AC handles it great.


During the last half of 2006 I turned a major corner emotionally. I'm much more accepting of my cognitive disabilities and even enjoy working out those compensatory strategies on my own. I've been coming up with ways that work for me. I've even been doing that in the therapy area to. We found a therapist that listens to what Awesome Chick and I decide is important for us to work on. Then she helps us understand what will help us achieve the results we want. Then we figure out things that fit into our life, our way of doing things and quite frankly things that we enjoy doing that will help achieve the result. It has been over a year since my strokes. I know that the chance of actual healing of my brain is very very low at this point. I also know that the sky is the limit as far as how much the quality of my life can improve and the number of ways that can happen are countless.


My son came home from college for Christmas. Wow was I shocked. He had a beard!!! I wasn't even sure if he was able to shave that peach fuzz I thought he had on his chin. I was also shocked because I've been wearing a beard the last few months, almost the exact same style. The big difference is one of us has a mostly gray beard and one of us has a very dark beard with not a hint of gray. I will leave it to the reader to guess which is which.  My daughter is in the process of starting a new business. She was in catering with her grandfathers’ food store. Now she is going to do interior decorating for people who just want to decorate their houses for a party. Wow, when AC and I have a party we budget how much we spend on beer and Doritos. I guess some people re-decorate their houses just for the party, then go back after.


That brings me to the next big event of the last part of the year. I was approved for SSDI. The long term disability insurance company I have required that I apply. That was no big deal because they also hired an attorney at their expense who did all the work. Awesome Chick and I just had a couple of phone conferences with the attorney and that was it, I got a letter that said I was approved. Wow, I've always wondered if Social Security would still be there when I retired so my wife and I have always really saved and invested. Now I'm on Social Security at 46 years old. Oh well, I'm dam lucky to have what I have.
On a solemn note I was watching some of the funeral for President Ford. Something occurred to me. We will probably never have a president again from the time of World War II. The people who fought that war, governed our country and kept our country going at home were my grandparents generation. I've always had huge respect for them. Tom Brokaw called them the Greatest Generation. I think he could be right. Although since 9/11/2001 I have seen many young people serving our country and their families that I have a feeling are made of the same stuff.

 

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Source: StrokeNet Message Board -> The Journey Back

Talking about NBC: Darfur violence spreads to Chad - Today - MSNBC.com

 

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NBC: Darfur violence spreads to Chad - Today - MSNBC.com

Ice Cubes on the Brain

 A problem I have had for quite some time.  Actually this feels kind of cool.  I have been assured it is harmless.

More and more I have been having the ice cube sensation. I read it described like this on Stroke Net quite a while back and I couldn't describe it better. It is like ice cubes are melting in my head. Actually it is kind of a cool feeling. It is also one of those things that when you tell the Dr. about it they just shrug like they have no idea. It's a good thing it is a pleasant sensation.
I figured out that the bout of seizures I had over the weekend was because of a medication change last week. I should have felt it coming on but was caught off guard. Anyway it is good to know what the cause was. I hate "seizure days" though because they are even bigger holes in my memory than regular days. I also feel very lethargic and more easily confused for a couple of days.

 

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Source: StrokeNet Message Board -> Ice Cubes on the Brain

A New "Catholic" Community

What happens when a religion that was started and given to us by a God who is love and infinitely selfless gets turned inward to focus on the selfish needs of the person practicing it?  Abominations like what this article describes is what happens.

A New Catholic Community

October 2006
"My name is Victoria Rue. And I am a Roman Catholic womanpriest."
So began Sunday Mass on April 2, 2006, at the Spartan Memorial Chapel at San Jose State University in California. Concelebrating with Victoria Rue was Don Cordero, a married former Jesuit priest. For those present, this was a momentous occasion: It was the inaugural Mass of a "New Catholic Community" that, says Rue, reverences people who "seek authenticity and inclusion in the worship ceremony, who have experienced divorce and remarriage, who are diverse in sexual orientation, who seek progressive exploration of ideas, who want imagination and daring, who are concerned deeply about God's creation and how to preserve it and who seek personal and spiritual integrity." According to the San Jose State campus newspaper, the Spartan Daily (April 4), this "first official gathering" drew "about 30 participants," of whom "most were elderly."
The high point of this Mass, during which God was referred to as "She," was the vibrant music, Rue told the Spartan Daily, and "when we each turned to face one another, looked one another in the eyes, and then hugged each other [and] said, ‘this is my body, this is my blood'…."
Momentous indeed. To those 30 or so souls present, this was the dawning of a new day: A real Roman Catholic Mass presided over by an actual female priest!
If the name Victoria Rue rings a bell to some readers it is because she was named by Theresa Marie Moreau in her January 2006 NOR article, "A Mockery of Catholicism," as one of nine women who were "ordained" on July 25, 2005, in a ceremony presided over by three women "bishops" aboard the Thousand Islander III tour boat in the St. Lawrence Seaway off the Canadian coast. Rue was described as a 58-year-old "feminist theologian, a writer/director/teacher of theater who teaches Comparative Religions and Women's Studies at San Jose State University."
Rue's "ordination" was part of an ongoing series of women's "ordinations" put on by the Roman Catholic Womenpriests organization. According to the group's website, "Dr. Rue's ministries include teaching, writing and directing theatre. She convenes two weekly Eucharists at San Jose State University (for students and the larger community). She lives with her beloved Kathryn, her partner of sixteen years." So there's more to Rue than we previously knew: In a piece about her just after her 2005 ordination, the Spartan Daily (Sept. 19, 2005) called her "openly lesbian," and related how she "entered a convent once in the late '60s to be a nun," but later dropped out.
Being a lesbian is no small part of what Rue intends to do and represent: "Our Roman Catholic Womanpriest Movement wants to show that priests can be married, can be celibate, can be with a committed partner, can be heterosexual, can be homosexual, that all of the sexualities that are given to us by God are blessed sexualities." All sexualities? Most certainly. "Sexuality," Rue claims, "is a gift from God, not just some sexualities, all sexualities." That would include pedophilia, man-boy sex, bestiality, rape, and who knows what else.
The subtitle of Theresa Moreau's NOR article was "Absolutely Null and Utterly Void." The Vatican has repeatedly affirmed that it has no authority to ordain women. John Paul II, in his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, slammed the door (once again) on women's ordination and pre-empted further discussion on the matter.
Rue's "New Catholic Community" is but a feeble bastardization of the real thing -- a "mockery" as Theresa Moreau's article put it. But Rue will have none of that: "The Masses that Don Cordero and I preside at…and the Mass that I preside at [alone]…are Roman Catholic Masses that are in union with the Roman Catholic Church. I am a validly ordained Roman Catholic priest" (Spartan Daily, May 10, 2006).
Not so fast, said the Bishop of San Jose, Patrick McGrath, who is not generally known for vigorous defenses of Church teachings. Bishop McGrath released this statement in The Valley Catholic, the official newspaper of the Diocese of San Jose: "Victoria Rue is not a validly ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Members of the Roman Catholic Church should not participate in celebrations of the sacraments that are conducted by Victoria Rue, as those celebrations are not in union with the local or universal church." Bam!
But is it enough?
Beyond issuing his terse statement, Bishop McGrath has no plans to reprimand or excommunicate or in any other way acknowledge Victoria Rue. And the silence, Rue admits, dismays her. "The bishop did not try to communicate with me before making his statement that was published in all parish bulletins of San Jose. I want the bishop to hear my story of how I have been called to be a priest and how I was ordained a priest." (He could do that by simply reading Theresa Moreau's Jan. 2006 NOR article.) Reacting to Rue's request for dialogue, diocesan director of media relations Roberta Ward told the Spartan Daily, "Quite frankly, it would be a short conversation because she is simply not a validly ordained priest."
But Rue refuses to go quietly into that dark night. Being ordained a Roman Catholic priest "felt like something I had been called to all my life," she told the Philadelphia Inquirer (April 12, 2006), and was something "I was now able to live out loud about." For someone determined to "live out loud," the silent treatment must be particularly frustrating. Nevertheless, recalcitrant she remains: "If anything, [Bishop McGrath's] statement has only helped to clarify why people are there [at her Masses]. And these Masses will continue" (Spartan Daily, May 10, 2006).
With "anywhere three to 30 people" attending Rue's "Masses" (San Jose Mercury News, May 28), Roberta Ward maintains that there is no point in drawing more attention to them. But the attention of the secular media -- both local and national -- has already been drawn, as well as that of the San Jose State campus community. And as diminutive as Rue's "New Catholic Community" is, it is not a singular aberration. We question the wisdom of employing an ignore-it-and-hope-it-goes-away tactic. Souls are at stake here, that of Rue and those snared in her web.
Note to Bishop McGrath: Admonishing the sinner is one of the seven Spiritual Works of Mercy. But silence in the face of sin -- public and repeated sin -- where is the mercy in that?

References:

Ordinatio Sacerdotalis

Roman Catholic Women Priests - website

Source: New Oxford Review

Religion of Misogyny

 This requires no comment.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Religion of Misogyny

Here is a translation of the astoundingly evil, misogynistic speech by the highest Australian Islamic leader, Sheikh Taj Din Al Hilaly.

“Those atheists, people of the book (Christians and Jews), where will they end up? In Surfers Paradise? On the Gold Coast? Where will they end up? In hell and not part-time, for eternity. They are the worst in God’s creation.”

“When it comes to adultery, it’s 90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.”

“But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, writer al-Rafee says, if I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life. Why would you do this, Rafee? He said because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it.”

“If you get a kilo of meat, and you don’t put it in the fridge or in the pot or in the kitchen but you leave it on a plate in the backyard, and then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats eat the meat, you’re crazy. Isn’t this true?”

“If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cats, or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn’t roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won’t get it.”

“If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.”

“Satan sees women as half his soldiers. You’re my messenger in necessity, Satan tells women you‘re my weapon to bring down any stubborn man. There are men that I fail with. But you’re the best of my weapons.”

“...The woman was behind Satan playing a role when she disobeyed God and went out all dolled up and unveiled and made of herself palatable food that rakes and perverts would race for. She was the reason behind this sin taking place.”

UPDATE at 10/26/06 8:54:38 am:

While the highest Islamic authority in Australia spews this kind of sick, deranged hatred, the Federal Police Commissioner says that reporting his statements is “fueling terrorism.” Yes, really. Media blamed for Islam bias.

AUSTRALIAN Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty believes the media is fuelling a growing bias against Islamic Australians, warning that increased vilification of Muslims is fomenting home-grown terrorism.

In a speech delivered in Adelaide, Mr Keelty played down Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali’s inflammatory comments on women, asserting that “many in the community also say offensive things and many of them are white Caucasian Australians”.

He said rising vilification of Muslims was being fuelled by irresponsible media outlets which sensationalised terrorism-related stories with little basis in fact. And he called on Australians to teach the values of democracy and multiculturalism to the younger generation so that “our future is not worse than our past”.

Mr Keelty - who clashed with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in 2004 after the commissioner blamed the suicide attacks on Madrid train system on the war in Iraq - said he met privately with Muslim groups in Adelaide yesterday.

“You hear more and more stories of treatment of the Islamic community that really is substandard by members of our own wider community,” he said at a lunch hosted by the South Australian Press Club. “It is vilification, picking them out of the crowd because they dress differently or they speak differently.

”If we are not careful we risk raising a generation of Australians who will have a bias against Islam."

 

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Source: lgf: Religion of Misogyny

Daily Mass

 

Before I stroked I was a daily Mass goer. I know that isn't popular now days. It was obvious from how empty the church was each morning; me and only about a dozen retired parishioners. It's not hard to explain why I went. It just seemed like the right thing to do to start out the day worshiping God.
Well since my strokes I can't drive and I don't walk around by myself because I will easily get lost. So it has been hard for me to get to Mass. Today Awesome Chick took me before she went to work. It was like a homecoming for me. It was another part of my normal life that I feel I'm getting back. We talked about this and it would be too hard for her to take me every day. But she is doing to take me every Friday morning. I hope I can hook up with one of my old Mass buddies and catch a ride another morning or two.
This is also another step in my independence. I'm hoping to be able to get into some volunteer work and doing it through my parish makes sense. Before stroke I used to be involved in Catholic ministries in the jails and nursing homes in the areas. What a blessing it would be to work my way back.

Source: StrokeNet Message Board -> The Journey Back