November 2009 Journal Summary

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Summary of the articles and information in the Journal.

Editorial (full version below)
Have you noticed the increasing intolerance from those who speak the loudest about tolerance, not just activist groups but also people in positions of leadership?

What is Truth? An elephant or a person?
This is the third of the pamphlets prepared by the Acts 4:12 Committee to address the matter of the Parliament of the World's Religions (PWR) being held in Melbourne from 3-9 December 2009. "Commonly today people parrot the idea that no one person or religion has a full grasp of the truth."

Making a Response to the PWR
With the Parliament of the World's  Religions to be held in December, a number of briefings have been held to help Christians understand the issues surrounding the PWR and discuss how we might respond.

Around the states
SA: IVF for lesbians; South Australia: Abortion; Queensland: surrogacy; Vic: Police marching in midsumma again; Tasmania: relationship 'ceremonies'.

Reducing religious freedom in Victoria
Jenny Stokes writes on Rob Hulls' Media Release regarding religious freedom.

Wesley Mission - appeal decision
Wesley Mission has appealed against the decision that found them guilty of discrimination for refusing to allow a homosexual couple have a foster care child.

Political parties - what do they really stand for?
Peter Stokes reviews the political parties and what they stand for.

The meaning of motivation
Cameron Spinks discusses the meaning of motivation in the proposed hate crimes legislation.

Committee recommends a 'Charter of Rights'
The Committee investigating whether Australia should have formal "protection" of human rights has recommended that Australia should have a Charter of Rights in a Human Rights Act.

Muslim demographics
A new study has found that the global population of Muslims has increased to 1.57 billion - representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.

Apology to Hindus
The liberal Episcopalian bishop of Los Angeles, J Jon Bruno recently offered a formal apology to Hindus for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination, including attempts by Christians to convert them.

Youth Decide - result of the climate change 'vote'
Nicole Reddy reveals the results of the Youth Decides vote on climate change.

Abortion - increases risk for subsequent births
Canadian researcher Dr Prakesh Shah has conducted a 'meta-analysis' looking at 37 published studies on the subject of the link between abortions and subsequent pregnancies having an increased risk of premature birth and lower birth weight.

World News
Nigeria: Christianity and Islam; Porn and child molestation; Russia: Homosexual club closed; UK: More persecution of Christians; USA: Barack Obama

Editorial

Have you noticed the increasing intolerance from those who speak the loudest about tolerance, not just activist groups but also people in positions of leadership?
One might almost suggest a new breed of WOWSER has appeared on the scene, a thought police who want to control how you think and even what you are allowed to laugh at.

In fact some people are actually calling them WOWSERS, but WOWSER actually means "we only want social evils removed". Social evils, those things that physically and mentally damage us. This new breed of so-called WOWSER doesn't want to stop social evils, they want to stop everybody's fun and put nasty meanings on people's humour. Of course, their humour is okay when it ridicules Christians. Take for example a recent segment on the Channel 10 program Good News Week which totally ridiculed Christians for opposing smut on television. They even said that smut was their business so these nasty Christians were actually opposing their program. Heaven forbid that we should do such a thing!

Yet when Hey, Hey it's Saturday put on a repeat of an old 'Red Faces' act about the Jackson five and Michael Jackson you would think a nuclear bomb had been dropped, such was the outcry that exploded around the world.

Similar explosions occurred when some dwarfs acted as jockeys riding human horses at a recent country race meeting. Even though the little people themselves enjoyed the fun and had no problem with this piece of humour, the politically correct brigade came out in force including our own Attorney General who thought it was appalling. He is totally opposed to any discrimination, of course, clearly that means anybody saying anything
is wrong except when he wants to say something
is wrong.

This inconsistency appears to totally elude those who are most inconsistent.

Clearly tolerance has significant boundaries, arbitrarily set up by those claiming to be the most tolerant.

We must be tolerant of their 'social evils', such as bad language, sexual references, nudity, rude comedy, etc, etc, but a bit of harmless fun or a campaign against such social evils is not to be tolerated.

We suspect that anybody standing against  real 'social evils' is going to feel the heat more and more in future days and that heat will have nothing to do with 'climate change' but a lot to do with intolerance of anyone who speaks out in a way that the thought police think is wrong.

We have said many times before that the days when good is called evil and evil is called good are really upon us.

With proposals for a Charter of Rights, reduced exceptions to existing, totally unacceptable, anti-discrimination laws, and the strong possibility of Freedom [from] Religion legislation, the future could be extremely exciting for the non-politically correct or the real WOWSER!

Nevertheless, we know God is in control, he has a master plan and we are only seeing a very small part of that plan.

We are called to be faithful to His calling, to continue to stand for truth and uphold righteousness, ensuring first that we ourselves have a right relationship with God.

Yours, in the service of Jesus the King

Peter and Jenny Stokes