World Family Policy Center Newsletter

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FEATURED NEWS ARTICLES

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1. Top California Court Rules Gays May Marry

Reuters

May 15, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The California Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriages on Thursday in a major victory for gay rights advocates that will allow homosexual couples to marry in the most populous U.S. state.

The court found that California laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples are at odds with rights guaranteed by the state's constitution. Opponents of gay marriage vowed to contest the ruling with a statewide ballot measure for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages.

The ruling would allow California to be the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow gay marriage. Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Vermont permit same-sex civil unions that grant largely similar rights as those for married couples but lack the full, federal legal protections of marriage.

The California court's 4-3 decision overturns state laws prohibiting same-sex nuptials and is likely to influence other states expected to rule on gay marriage.

To view the entire article, visit http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1530409120080515

Court Decision Is Victory for Gay Marriage Backers

NY Sun

May 7, 2008

Gay marriage advocates have won a partial victory in New York, as the state's highest court has left in place a lower court ruling that recognized a lesbian couple as being married.

The Court of Appeals declined yesterday to review the mid-level appellate court's decision to recognize the couple's Canadian marriage, the first such ruling by an appellate court in New York State.

For now, that lower court decision remains binding across the state.

In 2006, the state's Court of Appeals found that there was no right to same-sex marriages under the state constitution, leaving unanswered the question of whether the state would recognize same-sex marriages and civil unions performed in other states and abroad. So far, lower courts around the state have mostly said yes.

There is no specific law out of Albany addressing the issue, but New York state has long recognized most marriages from other states, even when a couple would not be eligible to get married under New York law.

To view the entire article, visit http://www2.nysun.com/new-york/court-decision-is-victory-for-gay-marriage-backers/

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2. Japan Steadily Becoming a Land of Few Children

Washington Post

May 5, 2008

TOKYO -- Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. celebrated a national holiday on Monday in honor of its children. But Children's Day might just as easily have been a national day of mourning.

For this is the land of disappearing children and a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world.

The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.

The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for 34 straight years and is the lowest among 31 major countries, according to the report. In the United States, children account for about 20 percent of the population.

Japan also has a surfeit of the elderly. About 22 percent of the population is 65 or older, the highest proportion in the world. And that number is on the rise. By 2020, the elderly will outnumber children by nearly 3 to 1, the government report predicted. By 2040, they will outnumber them by nearly 4 to 1.

The economic and social consequences of these trends are difficult to overstate.

To view the entire article, visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/05/AR2008050502224.html?nav=rss_world

Russia's Abortion-Caused Underpopulation Crisis Requires Foreign Workers

LifeNews.com

May 2, 2008

Moscow, Russia (LifeNews.com) -- The underpopulation crisis unlimited abortions has caused in Russia is so bad, that the nation will likely need to import large numbers of foreign workers because of labor shortages. U.S. CIA director Michael Hayden says he's concerned that will lead to racial unrest in a nation with numerous nuclear missiles.

Abortion has been used as a method of birth control for decades in Russia and other eastern European nations. Russia will likely lose one-third of its current population by 2050 as a result.

The Russian population has been shrinking since the 1990s and, though it is the largest sized country in the world, it has just 141.4 million citizens -- less than half of the United States.

According to the Washington Times, Hayden gave a speech saying he's concerned about internal racial and religious issues in Russia because of the need of foreign workers and the tension that could cause.

"To sustain its economy, Russia increasingly will have to look elsewhere for workers," he said, and noted that likely means new population growth in Russia will come from poorer nations with largely Islamic people.

To view the entire article, visit http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/apr/08042808.html

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3. Study: Stay-at-Home Mom Worth Nearly $117,000 a Year

FoxNews

May 8, 2008

BOSTON — If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she'd rake in a nifty sum of nearly $117,000 a year.

That's according to a pre-Mother's Day study released Thursday by Salary.com, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm that studies workplace compensation.

The eighth annual survey calculated a mom's market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer.

This year, the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, while a working mom who also juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.

One stay-at-home mom said the six-figure salary sounds a little low.

"I think a lot of people think we sit and home and have a lot of fun and don't do a lot of work," said Samantha Russell, a Fremont, N.H., mother who left her job as pastry chef to raise two boys, ages 2 and 4. "But they should try cleaning their house with little kids running around and messing it up right after them."

The biggest driver of a mom's theoretical salary is the amount of overtime pay she'd receive for working more than 40 hours a week. The 18,000 moms surveyed about their typical week reported working 94.4 hours — meaning they'd be spending more than half their working hours on overtime.

Working moms reported an average 54.6 hour "mom work week" besides the hours they spent at paying jobs.

To view the entire article, visit http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354638,00.html

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4. Only Abstinence Education Offers 100 Percent Guarantee for Safe Sex

LifeNews.com

May 9, 2008

It’s been discovered. Nobody thought having “safe sex” was possible in every case. Each year 2.6 million teenagers become sexually active—a rate of 7000/day. With high school, nearly half report having engaged in sexual activity and 1/3 are currently active (Kim/Rector//Heritage Foundation).

As it turns out, teen sexual activity is extremely costly for teens and for society as a whole. From 1985-1990 alone, the federal government spent $120 billion on teenage childbearing. Teens who engage in sexual activity risk all kinds of costly and detrimental outcomes not limited to STD infections, emotional and psychological harm, lower educational attainment, and unmarried childbearing. All of these have direct impact on Medicare, Medicaid, government spending----and the budget.

It is known that STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) infect -- about 12 million Americans per year, with 65,000 plagued with an incurable form (CDC). STDs are a direct cause of infertility in both men and women.

Nearly half of all pregnancies as well as 1 million teen pregnancies (95%) are unintended (CDC), and there are approximately 40,000 new HIV infections per year. An estimated 1.3 million babies die every year through abortion, and 84% of all US abortions are performed on unmarried women (US Dept of Commerce; GPO/1998). Teens who have babies out of wedlock are more likely to end up at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. All of these numbers have huge economic implications for the country.

But society has found something that works 100% of the time. They found something on which you can completely depend---much better than condoms which may work part of the time. And that’s if you use them right.

The answer is easy, even though many don’t want to hear it--- “abstinence until marriage”. It breaks the unwritten rule of sex on demand. It clearly illuminates the slavery to our desires so many of us face. And it emblazons the oft repeated saying, “Why buy the cow, if the milk is free?”

To view the entire article, visit http://www.lifenews.com/nat3919.html

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5. Detergent Suicide, Fumes Fuel Japanese Panic

MSNBC

May 1, 2008

TOKYO - A man triggered panic in a northern Japanese city Thursday when he killed himself by mixing detergents in his house, releasing toxic fumes that drove 350 people from their homes — the latest in a series of such suicides.

The panic in Otaru came just hours after national police urged Internet providers to crack down on Web sites that have spurred a wave of detergent-related suicides. Some 50 people have reportedly killed themselves over the past month in Japan by mixing household chemicals to produce hydrogen sulfide.

The method, the latest in a series of suicide fads in Japan in recent years, is even being used as a weapon. A farmer in another part of northern Japan was arrested Thursday for allegedly trying to kill his 82-year-old mother with the gas, police said.

To view the entire article, visit http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24410067/

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6. Scientist Says British Human Cloning Bill Would Allow Human-Chimp Mating

LifeNews.com

May 2, 2008

London, England -- A leading scientist says the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill the British parliament is considering is so grisly that it would allow scientists to mate humans and chimps. Dr. Calum MacKellar says he's worried the bill, which promotes human cloning, would allow interspecies mating.

MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, says he worries the bill would open the door for the "humanzee," created by breeding apes and humans.

He told the Scotsman newspaper that he thinks a new species could theoretically be born if the bill allows the grisly science to move forward.

"The Human Fertilisation and Embryo Bill prohibits the placement of animal sperm into a woman. The reverse is not prohibited. It's not even mentioned. This should not be the case," he explained.

If the process isn't banned, he worried scientists are likely to try it.

While mating humans and other species wouldn't be successful, MacKellar told the newspaper he thinks it would work with apes since their DNA most closely resembles that of human beings.

"If you put human sperm into a frog it would probably create an embryo, but it probably wouldn't go very far," he said. "But if you do it with a non-human primate it's not beyond the realms of possibility that it could be born alive."

He said the result of the crazy experiments could be a debate about whether the "humanzee" had legal rights and whether the new species should be exploited for its organs for patients.

To view the entire article, visit http://www.lifenews.com/bio2424.html

Quote of the Day: "Be generous with appropriate hugs, kisses, pats on the back and handholds. Let these small actions demonstrate the love you have for family and friends."

~ Author Unknown