Muslims Order Christians to Leave Village in Pakistan

Christians drew wrath by objecting to sexual assaults on girls and women.

KHANEWAL, Pakistan, June 7 (CDN) — The head of a Muslim village last week ordered 250 Christian families to leave their homes in Khanewal district, Punjab Province, local residents said.

Abdul Sattar Khan, head of village No. 123/10R, Katcha Khoh, and other area Muslim residents ordered the expulsions after Christian residents objected too strenuously to sexual assaults by Muslims on Christian girls and women, said a locally elected Christian official, Emmanuel Masih.

Most of the village’s Christian men work in the fields of Muslim land owners, while most of the Christian women and girls work as servants in the homes of Muslim families, said Rasheed Masih, a Christian in the village who added that the impoverished Christians were living in appalling conditions.

The Muslim employers have used their positions of power to routinely sexually assault the Christian women and girls, whose complaints grew so shrill that four Christian men – Emmanuel Masih, Rasheed Masih, his younger brother Shehzad Anjum and Yousaf Masih Khokhar – sternly confronted the Muslims, only to be told that all Christians were to leave the village at once.

“The Muslim villagers came to us with the expulsion order only after Christian women and girls raised a hue and cry when they became totally exasperated because they were sexually attacked or forced to commit adultery by Muslims on a daily basis,” said Khokhar, a Christian political leader.

Khokhar said the unanimous decision to compel the Christians to leave their homes and relocate them was possible because the Christians were completely subject to the Muslims’ power.

“The Muslims had been telling the Christian women and girls that if they denied them sex, they would kick them out of their native village,” Emmanuel Masih added.

Christians created the colony when they began settling in the area in about 1950, said Anjum. Since then the migration of Muslims to the area has left the Christians a minority among the 6,000 residents of the village, said Emmanuel Masih.

“There is no church building or any worship place for Christians, and neither is there any burial place for Christians,” Emmanuel Masih said.

He said that the Rev. Pervez Qaiser of village No. 231, the Rev. Frank Masih of village No. 133 and the Rev. Sharif Masih of village No. 36, Mian Channu, have been visiting the village on Sundays to lead services at the houses of the Christian villagers, who open their homes by turns.

Asked why they didn’t contact local Katcha Khoh police for help, Emmanuel Masih and Khokhar said that filing a complaint against Muslim village head Khan and other Muslims would only result in police registering false charges against them under Pakistan’s notorious “blasphemy” statutes.

“They might arrest us,” Khokhar said, “and the situation would be worse for the Christian villagers who are already living a deplorably pathetic life under the shadow of fear and death, as they [the Muslims] would not be in police lock-up or would be out on bail, due to their riches and influence, very soon.”

 

Couples Charged with ‘Blasphemy’

That very fate befell two Christian couples in Gulshan-e-Iqbal town, Karachi, who had approached police with complaints against Muslims for falsely accusing them of blasphemy.

On May 28, a judge directed Peer Ilahi Bakhsh (PIB) police to file charges of desecrating the Quran against Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William after a mob of armed Islamists went through their home’s garbage looking for pages of the Islamic scripture among clean-up debris (see “Pakistani Islamists Keep Two Newlywed Couples from Home,” May 27).

Additional District & Sessions Judge Karachi East (Sharqi) Judge Sadiq Hussein directed the PIB police station in Gulshan-e-Iqbal to file a case against Joseph and William, newlyweds who along with their wives had shared a rented home and are now in hiding. The judge acted on the application of Muslim Munir Ahmed.

Saleem Khurshid Khokhar, a Christian provincial legislator in Sindh, and Khalid Gill, head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance in Punjab, said that police were threatening and harassing relatives and close friends of Joseph and William to reveal their whereabouts.

Islamists armed with pistols and rifles had waited for the two Christian couples to return to their rented home on May 21, seeking to kill them after the couples complained to police that the radical Muslims had falsely accused them of desecrating the Quran.

The blasphemy laws include Section 295-A for injuring religious feelings, 295-B for defiling the Quran and 295-C for blaspheming Muhammad, the prophet of Islam – all of which have often been misused by fanatical Muslims to settle personal scores against Christians.

Maximum punishment for violation of Section 295-A, as well as for Section 295-B (defiling the Quran), is life imprisonment; for violating Section 295-C the maximum punishment is death, though life imprisonment is also possible.

In village 123/10R in Khanewal district, Anjum noted that it is only 22 kilometers (14 miles) from Shanti Nagar, where Muslims launched an attack on Christians in 1997 that burned hundreds of homes and 13 church buildings.

Yousaf Masih added, “Muslim villagers have made the life a hell for Christians at village 123/10R.”

Report from Compass Direct News

Pakistani Islamists Keep Two Newlywed Couples from Home

Armed Muslims upset that Christians complained to police of false ‘blasphemy’ charge.

KARACHI, Pakistan, May 27 (CDN) — Islamists armed with pistols and rifles waited for two Christian couples to return to their rented home this week, seeking to kill them after the newlyweds complained to police that the radical Muslims had falsely accused them of desecrating the Quran, according to a local Christian legislator.

Christians Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William and their wives, who requested anonymity, went to an undisclosed location after Christians in Gulshan-e-Iqbal town, Karachi, warned them that the armed Muslims were stationed in front of their joint home on Friday (May 21), said Saleem Khurshid Khokhar, a representative of Sindh in the Punjab Provincial Assembly.

“These 10 unidentified, armed Muslim men were still patrolling in front of the houses of Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William, waiting for them to return and shoot them to death,” Khokhar told Compass earlier this week.

The Christians were returning from having tried to file a complaint against the Islamists at Peer Ilahi Bakhsh police station of Gulshan-e-Iqbal town – where Muslim police responded by shouting angry obscenities at the couples and began secretly planning to charge them under Pakistan’s widely condemned “blasphemy” laws, Khokhar said. Both couples were wed on April 2.

Earlier that day (May 21), about 20 Muslim extremists had threatened to kill the Christian couples after accusing them of desecrating the Quran, the legislator said. Having just moved into the joint home in a predominantly Christian slum, the previous day the couples had gathered a large pile of garbage after cleaning up debris, including pieces of old newspapers, left by the previous tenants.

On Friday (May 21), after Joseph and William had left for work, their wives threw the debris onto the pile of garbage, Khokhar said. An area resident, Bashir Pervezi, told Compass that a door of their home was open and anyone passing by could see the women at their household work.

“I was standing in front of the new Christian tenants’ house while 20 bearded, armed Muslim men arrived and started searching for something in the garbage,” Pervezi said. “After about 35 minutes of searching, they started shouting at the women and hurling threats of dire consequences, threats of killing family members for desecrating the holy pages of Quran and Hadith [words and deeds of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad] by dumping them onto waste.”   

The two housewives went out and read every scrap of paper, said Pervezi, but they found no pages of the Quran or the Hadith, said both Pervezi and Khokhar. 

The women did their best to reason with the armed Muslims, who only continued to insist that the new Christian tenants had desecrated the pages of the Quran and the Hadith, Khokhar said.

“The armed Muslim men who had arrived from an unknown place terrorized both Christian women by threatening that they should prepare to face death for desecration of the pages of the holy Quran and the holy Hadith,” Khokhar said.

Local Christian residents told Khokhar as well as Compass that they found no pages or excerpts of Quranic verses or of the Hadith. The area Christians confirmed Khokhar’s assertion that the armed Muslims went away hurling threats. The women immediately informed their husbands of the confrontation.

Joseph and William consulted with local residents and decided to go to the police station for justice and protection. When they and their wives submitted an application to register a case against the 20 Islamic extremists for threatening them and leveling false allegations of desecrating the Quran and Hadith, the station house officer (SHO) and other Muslim police officers became furious, the couples told Compass.

Police began to shout obscenities at them, they said. A sympathetic police officer aware of their innocence notified them that the SHO was secretly planning to register a First Information Report against them under Article 295-A of the blasphemy law – hurting religious feelings, which can bring life in prison – and would put them in jail, Khokhar said. The officer told them to hurry away. 

As the couples made their way home, Christian residents warned them that 10 Muslims armed with pistols, Kalashnikovs and long-range rifles were waiting for them and kept them from returning home, Khokhar said.

The two couples went to an undisclosed location to avoid danger.

The SHO at the Peer Ilahi Bakhsh police station was unavailable for comment; after Compass made repeated requests to speak with him, a police station registrar said that the SHO could not comment because he was ill in the hospital.

Khokhar called on the government to immediately repeal all discriminatory laws, including the controversial blasphemy laws – 295-A for injuring religious feelings, 295-B for defiling the Quran and 295-C for blaspheming Muhammad – as they have often been misused by fanatical Muslims against Christians.

Maximum punishment for violation of Section 295-A, as well as for Section 295-B (defiling the Quran), is life imprisonment; for violating Section 295-C the maximum punishment is death, though life imprisonment is also possible.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Church of Sweden Ordains First Openly Lesbian Bishop

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

STOCKHOLM, November 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Sweden’s Lutheran church announced it had ordained its first openly homosexual bishop on Sunday, less than a month after it gave its ministers the right to "marry" same-sex couples in church.

The Church of Sweden, which was the state church until 2000, had backed the parliament’s adoption of the same-sex "marriage" law, which took effect on May 1. Its synod approved homosexual church "weddings" on October 22.

Eva Brunne, 55, was consecrated as the Bishop of Stockholm in a ceremony at Uppsala cathedral, just north of the Swedish capital, the Church of Sweden said in a statement.

Brunne is in a civil union partnership with another woman, Gunilla Lindén, who is a Church of Sweden pastor. Together they are the guardians of a three-year-old child.

"It is very positive that our church is setting an example here and is choosing me as bishop based on my qualifications, when they also know that they can meet resistance elsewhere," Brunne told the Associated Press.

Anglican bishops from England and Northern Ireland in fact refused to attend the ordination.

Five bishops from various levels within the Anglican Church, including Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, decided not to attend the November 8th ceremony, the Dagen newspaper reports.

"The Anglican Church has a moratorium right now concerning the ordination of bishops who live together with someone of the same sex," Alan Harper, a bishop from Armagh in Northern Ireland, told the newspaper.

Swedish Archbishop Anders Wejryd, who conducted the ordination of Brunne, disputed the claim that the Church of England was boycotting the ceremony.

"That’s not true at all," he told the Kyrkans Tidning newspaper. "We send invitations to those with the highest rank. That’s why the Archbishop of Canterbury received an invitation, but no one expected him to say yes."

According to Wejryd, the international invitees who declined to take part in the ordination included "many who generally never come."

Other invitees who declined to attend, according to Swedish news service The Local, were bishops from the Lutheran churches of Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as the World Lutheran Federation.

This Report from LifeSiteNews.com

www.LifeSiteNews.com

Australian Territory Approves Same-Sex Civil Ceremonies

By Patrick B. Craine

CANBERRA, Australia, November 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has legalized civil partnership ceremonies for homosexuals.

Same-sex couples in the ACT have been able to register their union since last year, but were not permitted a ceremony.

The legislature of the territory, where the nation’s parliament is located, passed the bill on Wednesday, following an amendment banning opposite-sex couples from obtaining the civil unions.  The bill was moved by the ACT’s Greens party.

The ACT’s amendment was passed so as to satisfy federal requirements that such unions not mimic marriage.

"We understand that this is not same-sex marriage," said Shane Rattenbury, the Greens member who drafted the bill.  "This legislation is another step along the road to full equality for same-sex couples in Australia, and we are delighted that the assembly has passed it today."

The federal Commonwealth Parliament, which has the power to override legislation passed in the country’s two territories, has strongly opposed same-sex "marriage," and the ACT legislature has been fighting with them for same-sex civil unions since 2006.

That year, the ACT passed legislation approving same-sex civil unions, but their attempt was struck down by then-Governor General Michael Jeffery on the advice of then-Attorney General Philip Ruddock.

The law would have effectively granted same-sex couples the same rights and benefits as married couples, simply leaving out the term "marriage."  At the time, then-Prime Minister John Howard said the ACT’s move sought to undermine the nation’s 2004 Marriage Amendment Bill, which established marriage as a union between one man and one woman, and specifically excluded same-sex "marriage."

Regarding the current bill, one member of the ACT’s legislature, Vicki Dunne, who serves as shadow attorney-general, predicted that the federal government would stop the bill.  "It is almost certain the Commonwealth will intervene," she told the Telegraph.  "It still sounds like a marriage and it still feels like a marriage and therefore it probably is a marriage."

Last year, the federal government granted new legal and financial benefits to same-sex couples by making changes to about 100 federal laws.  Nevertheless, they continued to declare their intention to uphold the true definition of marriage.

"The government believes that marriage is between a man and a woman so it won’t amend the marriage act," said Attorney-General Robert McClelland.

Australia’s Senate has now initiated an inquiry into the Marriage Amendment Bill, however, hearing arguments this week both for and against same-sex "marriage."  The submissions the committee received, totalling more than 20,000, were against same-sex "marriage" by a ratio of two to one.

This Report from LifeSiteNews.com

www.LifeSiteNews.com

Amnesty International Pushes "Gay Marriage" Down Under

By Piero A. Tozzi

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 12, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Activist organization Amnesty International is putting its weight behind an Australian bill seeking to legalize "same-sex marriage" in that country, claiming that "internationally recognized" non-discrimination norms dictate such a result.

In a submission to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee of Australia’s Senate, Amnesty’s Australian affiliate contends that laws limiting the right to marry to opposite-sex couples amounts to "arbitrary discrimination" in contravention of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The group further interprets a provision of the ICCPR guaranteeing adults the right to enter into "consensual marriage" as applying to same-sex couplings. Critics contend this distorts the meaning of the word "marriage" without regard to context and the apparent intent of the drafters. The ICCPR provision cited, Article 23, states that "The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized," and that "No marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses."

Underscoring what critics say is the problem of United Nations (UN) treaty monitoring bodies exceeding their mandates and seeking to reinterpret treaties to include novel concepts not agreed upon by those who negotiated or ratified the treaties, Amnesty asserts that "For more than a decade, non-discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation has been an internationally recognized principle which has been endorsed by UN treaty bodies and numerous inter-governmental human rights bodies." Specifically, Amnesty cites interpretations of the ICCPR and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by their respective treaty monitoring bodies as forming a soft-law jurisprudence in favor of a new non-discrimination category.

The creation of such a non-discrimination category is hotly-contested among UN member states, however. To date, efforts to enshrine "sexual-orientation and gender identity" as a category on par with ones such as race and religion in a legally binding document have been repeatedly rejected.

Amnesty points to a French-initiated statement signed by roughly 65 member states, including Australia, last December asserting the existence of a non-discrimination category based on sexual orientation and gender identity in support of Amnesty’s call to allow same-sex couples to enter into "a legally binding union of couples, otherwise known as marriage." The Amnesty submission contends that preventing "same-sex couples from entering into a legally binding union on the basis of sexual orientation" contravenes "the statement Australia supported in the UN General Assembly last year."

A contemporaneous counterstatement, however, signed by nearly 60 nations, principally from the Islamic world, Africa and Oceania, along with independent statements made by Russia, Belarus and the Holy See, pointed out that no non-discrimination category based on sexual orientation and gender identity exists in international law. Amnesty’s submission makes no reference to the counterstatement.

Critics of the French-led statement pointed out at the time that, though non-binding and supported by only a minority of member states, advocates would hail it as a soft-law norm signaling of a movement by states toward a rights-based acceptance of homosexual conduct – in this particular case, using it to place same-sex unions on par with marriage.

This Report from LifeSiteNews.com

www.LifeSiteNews.com

Australia Considers Same-Sex "Marriage"

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

CANBERRA, November 10, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As part of its inquiry into the Marriage Amendment Bill the Australian government yesterday heard arguments for and against same-sex “marriage.”

The Australian Green party is pushing for the redefinition of marriage as part of their platform in anticipation of next year’s federal election.

Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to allow Labor MPs a free parliamentary vote on same-sex “marriage” when it comes before the House. “This is not a gay issue, it’s a human rights issue,” she said

“I’m calling for the prime minister to … grant his members a conscience vote so we can get a true reflection of how the Australian community is feeling,” Hanson-Young told ABC TV this week, adding, “The majority of Australians think people should be able to marry who they want.”

The Sydney Star Observer reports that the Bill has prompted a considerable response from citizens, with the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee receiving more than 20,000 submissions in the past two months.

The committee reported on Monday that the submissions ran about two to one against same-sex “marriage.”

“16,752 emails were received against amending the Marriage Act to include same-sex couples, while only 8,666 emails had been received for,” the report stated.

The Australian Family Association’s (AFA) submission reaffirmed that marriage should be reserved as a union between a man and a woman.

“We submit that marriage deliberately identifies and protects a particular type of relationship – the uniquely pro-generative male-female relationship – which carries a unique (and not inconsiderable) significance for both contemporary Australian society, and for the entire human species,” the AFA stated.

The AFA is encouraging Australians to send a strong message to their elected leaders to defend traditional marriage. A petition and contact information is available on the group’s website.

“Without a public ‘uprising’ to defend marriage,” said the group, “it is conceivable that Australia could join other nations (namely Canada, Spain, Belgium and some American states) in legalising same-sex ‘marriage’. We are charged therefore with the serious responsibility of working to retain the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Now, and over the next year we must garner an increasing mass of people to take a stand for marriage.”

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee is scheduled to publish the results of its inquiry into the Marriage Amendment Bill on November 26, 2009.

This Report from LifeSiteNews.com

www.LifeSiteNews.com

COLOMBIA: SIX MONTHS LATER, PASTOR STILL MISSING

The Rev. William Reyes’ wife awaits word, fears for safety of her children.

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana, March 23 (Compass Direct News) – Six months after the disappearance in Colombia of the Rev. William Reyes of Maicao, La Guajira, no one knows what happened to him.

This week marks six months of agonizing uncertainty for the family of Rev. Reyes. On Sept. 25, 2008, the pastor of Light and Truth Inter-American Church disappeared en route home from a ministers’ meeting in Valledupar, a city in the neighboring department (state) of Cesar.

Family members and friends fear that guerrilla fighters kidnapped the veteran minister; they have not seen or heard from him since his disappearance. Rev. Reyes and colleagues in the Fraternity of Evangelical Pastors of Maicao had received repeated threats from illegal armed groups operating in the La Guajira peninsula since March 2008.

Guerrillas or their paramilitary rivals may have assassinated Rev. Reyes and disposed of his body, and some observers even speculate that he may have fallen victim to rogue units of the Colombian army that murder innocent civilians to inflate the body counts of “terrorists” killed in battle.

But nobody knows for sure what happened to the 41-year-old father of three – William, 19, Luz Nelly, 17 and Estefania, 9. His wife and children live with gnawing fear and uncertainty.

“Some days I feel so desperate, I don’t know what to do,” Idia Miranda de Reyes told Compass by telephone from her home in Maicao. Through tears, she added, “My daughter Estefania helps me stay strong. She tells me, ‘Mama, don’t cry,’ remember that God is with us.’”

Tensions heightened for the Reyes family on Feb. 19, when armed men entered another Maicao church just a few blocks from the Light and Truth Church while worship was in progress and forcibly removed a woman from the congregation. The pastor of the church refused to disclose the victim’s identity or discuss the circumstances of her disappearance, citing concerns for the safety of the woman, her family and other members of his congregation.

Such caution is understandable in Colombia, a country that suffers the highest incidence of kidnapping in the Western Hemisphere and a homicide rate 11 times greater than in the United States.

Six months of silence in regard to her husband’s fate, coupled with this new threat to her community, has made Idia Miranda Reyes justifiably fearful for her family’s safety. Moreover, she now faces financial hardship. The Truth and Light Church kept her on the payroll until Feb. 15, when the congregation appointed a new minister to replace her husband.

She is considering a move to another city to be near her extended family but wants to wait until her daughter, Luz Nelly, graduates from high school this spring. For now, the family survives on donations from friends and church members.

“We know that God is doing something through this,” Reyes said. “I don’t understand what that is, but I’m going to keep trusting Him.”

The Reyes family has received moral support from the Christian community in Colombia. On Oct. 4, 2008, thousands of marchers from Maicao’s churches held a public demonstration to protest the disappearance of Rev. Reyes and demand his immediate release.

The march produced the only clue to his fate. Following the demonstration, the minister’s wallet turned up inside the church building with his identification documents intact. His wife took that as a message that he was still alive and that his captors would be contacting her soon.

That has not happened. But such delay tactics are not unusual in Colombian kidnapping cases, according to Michael Joseph of the Commission for Restoration, Life and Peace of the Evangelical Council of Colombia.

“It’s disconcerting that we have received no ransom request,” Joseph said. “It means he could have been killed. On the other hand, we do know that Rev. Reyes had been receiving extortion threats by phone and text message from months before he disappeared. So really it’s anybody’s guess.”

Joseph traveled to Maicao last October to interview Rev. Reyes’ wife on behalf of the commission, which then mounted a public letter-writing campaign together with Justapaz, a Mennonite Church-affiliated organization based in Bogotá. Concerned citizens petitioned the office of Attorney General Dr. Mario Iguarán to “take all steps necessary to locate Pastor Reyes and to protect his family,” and the organizations are still urging people worldwide to write to the Colombian official. A model letter can be found at http://www.justapaz.org/spip.php?article114 .

At press time, law enforcement authorities had not responded to the petition, but this is not unusual for kidnapping cases in Colombia. The attorney general’s office reportedly faces a backlog of 1 million unsolved homicides, abductions and other serious crimes.

General lawlessness in some areas of the country means that Colombians often face retaliation from the same criminals who murder or kidnap loved ones, should they dare report such crimes to the authorities as Rev. Reyes’ wife has done. She lives in fear as she awaits word of her missing husband.

“I have three kids, and I am very fearful for them,” she said. “If it were not for the solace the Lord gives me, I would go crazy. I am trusting in God alone.”

Report from Compass Direct News

 

 

CENTRAL INTERIOR ASSEMBLY SAYS ‘YES’ TO SAME-SEX BLESSINGS

The assembly of the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior (APCI) has requested its bishop, Gordon Light, to allow clergy whose conscience permits to bless civilly-married gay couples where at least one party is baptized. The assembly passed the motion when it met Oct. 17 to 19, reports Anglican Journal.

A notice of a similar motion was filed at the synod of the diocese of Ontario but was declared out of order by the diocesan bishop, George Bruce, who acted on the advice of the diocesan chancellor (legal advisor). The ruling was appealed at the synod held Oct. 16 to 18 but was upheld by a majority vote of delegates.

At the APCI assembly, Bishop Light gave concurrence to the motion but suspended any action pending consultations with the Canadian house of bishops, which meets Oct. 27 to 31 to discuss, among others, how best to respond to renewed proposals for moratoria on the blessing of same-sex unions, the ordination of persons living in same-sex unions to the episcopate, and cross-border interventions.

Since the 2007 General Synod four dioceses have already passed similar motions – Ottawa, Montreal, Niagara, and Huron. The diocesan synod of New Westminster approved same-sex blessings in 2002.

Of the 50 clergy and lay delegates at the APCI assembly, 36 voted yes (72 per cent), 10 voted no (20 per cent), and four (8 per cent) abstained. APCI is composed of 18 parishes (including 35 congregations) which was constituted after the former diocese of Cariboo closed its diocesan office in 2001 because of financial pressures surrounding lawsuits about abuse at the St. George’s Indian Residential School in Lytton, B.C.

“We had a very respectful discussion. All voices were heard,” said Rev. Susan Hermanson, rector of St. Peter’s Anglican church in Williams Lake, who moved the motion. She said that approval of the motion “allows us to accept gays and lesbians fully as part of our family and, as in all families, we can disagree with one another and still be part of the family.”

In a telephone interview, she added that the motion was also meant to “take a reading” of where APCI was on the issue. She noted that in 2000, the diocesan synod of Cariboo had approved a motion affirming the full inclusion of gay and lesbian couples in the life of the church. Since then, parishes have been discussing and studying the issue further, she said. “We have, in fact, been discussing this issue for the last 30 years now,” she said.

In her written background and explanation, Ms. Hermanson noted that APCI “is a diverse community and therefore respects and honours those who, because of their theological position or as a matter of conscience, cannot agree with the blessing of same-sex unions.”

Anglicans opposed to same-sex blessings believe that homosexuality is contrary to scripture and to Anglican teaching. To date, 14 of about 2,800 congregations have left the Canadian Anglican church over theological disagreements over homosexuality. These churches have joined a group called the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) and placed themselves under the episcopal oversight of the primate of the Southern Cone, Archbishop Gregory Venables.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

ORDINANCE DESIGNED TO ADVANCE GAY ‘RIGHTS’ OVERTURNED BY VOTERS

Voters in the town of Hamtramck, Michigan have overturned an ordinance which would have given legal protections to homosexual behavior, expression and attire, reports Catholic News Agency. The regulations could also have forced businesses to permit men who perceive themselves as women to use women’s restrooms.

Any attempts to prevent such activity, according to the Thomas More Law Center, would have subjected violators to investigations, criminal prosecution, civil litigation, and fines of up to five hundred dollars a day.

The proposal, labeled as a “human rights” ordinance, was defeated 2,903 votes to 2,333.

Father Andrew Wesley, the administrator of St. Ladislaus Parish in Hamtramck and one of the leaders in the fight against the ordinance, wrote a letter published last week in Hamtramck’s The Citizen newspaper supporting overturning the ordinance and denying that the Catholics and Muslims in the town were being intolerant by opposing the measure.

Ordinance opponents knew that “this type of legislation has been used successfully by gay groups in other parts of the country to bring lawsuits against businesses because physical males were refused entrance into women’s restrooms,” Father Wesley’s letter said.

He added that the wording of the ordinance has also been used to bring lawsuits against Catholic adoption agencies which refused to allow same-sex couples to adopt children.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented on the ordinance opponents’ election victory.

“Radical homosexual groups have lost statewide attempts to impose their agenda on the public,” he said. “They are now engaged in a strategy of putting pressure on municipalities –in many cases successfully – to enact draconian provisions like Hamtramck’s. In this case their new strategy failed as the will of the people prevailed.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph

ANGLICAN PRIEST APOLOGIZES FOR “MARRYING” FELLOW GAY CLERGY

The Anglican minister who undertook to perform a much publicized “marriage” ceremony for two of his fellow clergy in a Church of England parish last May has expressed regret for his actions, which were in direct defiance of Church of England rules, and is being let off with a slap on the wrist, reports Thaddeus M. Baklinski, LifeSiteNews.com.

Rev. Dr. Martin Dudley officiated at the homosexual “wedding” of two homosexual clergy at St. Bartholomew the Great church in London, using a slightly modified version of the Church of England’s marriage ceremony. The modified form began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God to join these men in a holy covenant of love and fidelity.”

The ceremony occurred at a particularly sensitive time for the Church of England – in the immediate and heated leadup to the decennial Lambeth Conference, an event that numerous traditional Anglican priests and bishops ultimately boycotted due to the Anglican Church’s increasingly brazen rejection of Christian sexual ethics. Rev. Dudley’s actions were immediately condemned by bishops in the traditional Global South.

The Most Rev. Henry Orombi, the Archbishop of Uganda, called the ceremony “blasphemous” and called on Rowan Williams to take decisive action, warning that the Anglican Church could “disintegrate.” Archbishop Orombi added, “What really shocks me is that this is happening in the Church of England that first brought the Gospel to us.”

The Bishop of London, the Right Rev. Richard Chartres, ordered an investigation into the proceedings, which involved “a series of frank discussions with the Rector,” a diocesan statement issued yesterday said.

In his letter to Dudley, dated 18 Jun 2008, Bishop Chartres said, “You have sought to justify your actions to the BBC and in various newspapers but have failed more than two weeks after the service to communicate with me.”

“The point at issue,” continued the bishop, “is not Civil Partnerships themselves or the relation of biblical teaching to homosexual practice. The real issue is whether you wilfully defied the discipline of the Church and broke your oath of canonical obedience to your Bishop.”

Bishop Chartres concluded by warning Dudley, “St Bartholomew’s is not a personal fiefdom. You serve there as an ordained minister of the Church of England, under the authority of the Canons and as someone who enjoys my licence. I have already asked the Archdeacon of London to commence the investigation and I shall be referring the matter to the Chancellor of the Diocese. Before I do this, I am giving you an opportunity to make representations to me direct.”

In a letter to the bishop dated July 21 but not released publicly until posted on the London diocese web site today, Rev. Dudley promised that he wouldn’t do it again unless church policy changes.

In it Rev. Dudley said: “I regret the embarrassment caused to you by this event and by its subsequent portrayal in the media. I now recognise that I should not have responded positively to the request for this service.”

“I can now appreciate that the service held at St Bartholomew the Great on 31 May 2008 was inconsistent with the terms of the Pastoral Statement from the House of Bishops issued in 2005,” he said.

“Nonetheless, I am willing to abide by its content in the future, until such time as it is rescinded or amended, and I undertake not to provide any form of blessing for same sex couples registering civil partnerships.”

The diocesan statement then concluded that both sides had agreed to put the incident behind them: “As a consequence, the Rector has made expressly clear his regret over what happened at St Bartholomew the Great and accepted the service should not have taken place.

“Bishop Richard considered the matter and has decided to accept the Rector’s apology in full. The matter is therefore now closed.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph