Remember a while when I blogged about the Ontario Liberal government’s plan to push sex education onto kindergarden and elementary children, with no parental notification and no opt-out option for parents? The end result of that was that Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal leader, backed down. But, apparently there is an election going on up there, and McGuinty might get another chance to appease his gay-rights special interest groups with some new education proposals put forward by the Toronto District School Board.
Brian Lilley interviews a Toronto pastor about McGuinty’s plan: (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)
Prince Albert now explains what’s in the proposed standards:
Excerpt:
As the Ontario election campaign moved into the final two weeks Friday, Dalton McGuinty, the self-proclaimed education premier, was accused of keeping parents in the dark about a new policy to combat homophobia in schools.
The Toronto District School Board developed a 219-page curriculum resource guide for the new school year to cover kindergarten through Grade 12 called “Challenging Homophobia and Heterosexism.”
Among other things, it recommends schools not advise parents when teachers will be introducing concepts such as gender discrimination, homophobia and non-traditional families in the classroom.
[…]The school board guide recommends schools not send home notes or permission slips before starting any class work on lesbian, gay, bisexual transgendered or queer issues.
If a school treats sexual orientation or anti-homophobia differently from the other curriculum topics “this could be construed as discriminatory practice,” concludes the curriculum guide.
The guide also says there should be no accommodations for parents who want their children exempted from the anti-homophobia discussions because of religious reasons or for teachers who feel it contradicts their beliefs.
“If a parent asks for his or her child to be exempted for any discussions of LGBTQ family issues as a religious accommodation, this request cannot be made because it violates the human rights policy,” states the guide.
I think that this proposal will become Ontario law if the Ontario Liberal Party wins the election on October 6th.
A New Brunswick father who was convicted of assault for spanking his 6-year-old son in 2009 has been granted a re-trial by the New Brunswick Court of Appeal.
The court found that the original trial judge was too “subjective” in determining the severity of the spanking, and pointed out that Canadian law allows corporal punishment as long as the child is between two and 12 years old and only reasonable force is used.
In the original trial, the father told the court that he, his wife and their three children were driving from their home in Durham Bridge to a museum in Fredericton in August 2009 when his 6-year-old son became unruly. The court heard that the boy was screaming in the back seat, kicking the front seats, throwing things and unbuckling his seatbelt. The father said he repeatedly tried to calm the boy down and threatened to spank him if the bad behavior continued.
The mother eventually stopped the car and the father spanked the boy three times on the clothed buttocks, according to his testimony, adding that he slapped his own leg several times to warn the boy before administering the spanking.
Millicent Boldon, who testified at the original trial as a witness of the event, told the court she called the police after seeing the man slap the boy “at least ten times,” and heard the child yelling, “You’re beating me senseless. Stop. You’re hurting me.”
Another witness, Jim Burns, said he couldn’t tell if the father was striking the boy or not, as their backs were turned to him, but testified that he saw 18 “blows” delivered.
But Justice Richard Bell and Justice Wallace Turnbull said in their decision that they overturned the original conviction because the original judge, who is not named in the appeal ruling, erred in giving more credence to witnesses whose testimony was inconsistent than to the father, stating the original judge “applied a subjective standard when she said ‘no spanking should go on and on to the point that strangers pick up the phone and call the police.’”
According to Justice Bell, “In this case the trial judge’s sole basis for convicting the appellant flowed from the duration of the punishment. In my view she applied a subjective standard by delegating to an onlooker the determination of guilt or innocence.”
The disturbing thing about this situation is that the husband and wife did not make any mistake. Normally, I can blame the man for marrying a feminist who opposes moral judgment and discipline of any kind. But in this case, it’s not the wife who is to blame. It’s some other woman who calls the police. I think it’s significant that the caller in question is female and that the judge was female. It’s similar to the other case from Quebec in which a daughter and mother got a female lawyer and went to a female judge in order to get the father’s grounding of the daughter overturned. This case is much worse than that case, because there was nothing that could be done by the husband and wife to prevent it.
Why would any man get married in a society in which men are not respected as providers or the protectors in the family? Where men don’t have the right to try to form the character the children will have, (instead of the public schools, where a huge majority of the teachers are female)? What is the point of marriage for a man if he is just going to be a sperm donor and ATM? Do men have any role in disciplining children who behave in an abusive and selfish manner – especially to their own mothers? If not, then why should a man bother marrying at all, if he is just going to produce children who start out their lives by not respecting their own mothers? Do people not realize that boys who are raised without fathers are exactly the men who are more likely to treat women badly? No man should get involved in a family if all he is going to do is pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce children who lack self-control and responsibility. What is the point of that?
By the way, I think it would be very ironic if the woman who made the call were pro-abortion, which is quite likely to be the case, in Canada.
An Alberta woman won’t be going to prison for strangling her newborn baby with her thong underwear.
Katrina Effert, 25, wiped away tears as an Edmonton judge ruled Friday she can serve a three-year suspended sentence with probation.
Effert was 19 when she secretly gave birth in her parent’s basement in Wetaskiwin, south of Edmonton, in April 2005. She then tossed the baby’s corpse over a fence into a neighbour’s backyard.
Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Joanne Veit said the public naturally grieves for the dead baby boy.
“But Canadians also grieve for the mother,” she said. “This is a classic infanticide case — killing a newborn after a hidden pregnancy by a mother who was alone and unsupported.”
Effert was twice convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 10 years. But the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that the murder conviction was unreasonable and substituted one of infanticide.
Medical experts testified Effert had a disturbed mind when she killed her baby.
The Crown has already asked the Supreme Court of Canada to review the case.
Prosecutor John Laluk said Effert deserved four years in prison because she showed no remorse for her crime by lying to police and initially blaming her boyfriend for the killing.
The maximum sentence for infanticide is five years, but Veit said prison time is rarely handed out for such offences. She said the wildly inconsistent stories Effert gave police were actually “painful evidence” of her mental imbalance at the time.
As part of her probation, Effert must notify officials if she becomes pregnant again so she can receive assistance and counselling.
Veit described Effert as a person of good character with no prior criminal record who spent nearly six years living under restrictive bail conditions.
But part of the ruling that also has pro-life advocates troubled is Judge Veit’s decision that Canada’s acceptance of legalized abortion entitled Effert to kill her child. Judge Veit ruled, according to multiple media reports, that because Canada allows abortions it reflects how “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.”
“Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother,” said Veit, who said that, while what Effert did was “very grave,” there were no aggravating factors. Prosecutors said the aggravating factors included how Effert initially lied to police about whether she was a virgin and how she initially tried to blame the father of the child for her actions.
“I am of the view that those actions, along with the action of throwing her baby’s body over her back fence, are painful evidence of Ms. Effert’s irrational behavior as a result of her disturbed mind,”the judge said, according to the Sun News Network. “In summary, this is a classic infanticide case – the killing of a newborn or a justborn after a hidden pregnancy by a mother who was alone and unsupported.”
Ultimately, the judge rejected prosecutors’ call for a four-year prison term, saying the suspended sentence is “just” in the case.
At times like this, I think that it is a good thing for us to consider what it takes to make a judge like this, to see whether it might be possible to make one by having a plan. That way, instead of having a judge who opposes protecting unborn on the bench, we can have one who supports protecting the unborn instead. So how do we make our own judges?
Born September 9, 1942 at Brantford, Ontario. Education at University of Ottawa; London School of Economics. Chair, Alberta Securities Commission 1977-81. Appointed judge of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, and ex officio member of the Alberta Court of Appeal, June, 1981. Appointed deputy judge of the Superior Court of the Northwest Territories, August 21, 1991. Appointed judge of the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada June 7, 1990.
Wow, she is a smart lady – she has a good resume, too. I don’t think that too many people have qualifications like hers. Making a good twin of her would be pretty tough to do, and there are no guarantees of success.
Here are some steps that I would recommend to Christian parents if they wanted to have a better than average chance to make a judge like this judge.
The Christian man, when single, should study in a tough field, even if he hates it, like computer science.
The Christian woman, when single, should study in a tough field, even if she hates it, like computer science.
Both of them should work at jobs that pay well, even if they hate them, and save their money in preparation for their marriage.
They should get married, and then she should stay at home to homeschool several children.
They should try to be as frugal as possible so they can afford homeschooling, private schools and college tuition.
They should teach their children about all the different areas in the world where the truth of Christianity or Christian values are being attacked by different ideologies and speculations, in this case, by feminism and abortion.
They should analyze the skills and talents of each of their children, and try to lead them towards fields where they can have an influence on the world for truth and for goodness. The main criteria is not what the child wants, but what the child can do well, and what serves God the most. What the child wants is a factor, but not the main factor.
One of the children might go on to become a judge.
Might this work? It seems to me that it is more likely to produce the judge than the alternative view, which is not studying hard topics, not taking hard jobs, not being frugal, not having a stay-at-home homeschooling mom, and not saving up college tuition. I don’t think it would be fun or easy, but it is the good and loving thing to do, if we care about what happens to little babies.
I remember taking second year calculus back when I was doing my undergraduate degree in computer science, (I also have the Masters degree in computer science), and I was crying because it was so hard for me to understand it. I failed my first calculus test in that class, and ended up with a B as a final grade. I remember that my Dad felt very badly about how hard it was for me, and he would keep bringing me tea and snacks and he would try to encourage me and drive me to my night classes and pick me up afterwards – even though he hated driving at night.
I graduated with highest honors. I was the first one in my family – a family of immigrants – to go on to graduate school, and graduated with a 3.9 GPA. But when I was crying, and there was no one to help me, I felt very sad about it. You do what you have to do, not what you want to do. And as a result of that suffering, I now have the money I need to pay for Christian scholars to come out to churches and universities where my friends have organized lectures and debates for people to see.
UPDATE: My buddy Justin tells me to link to this post at the Canadian bioethics site Unmasking Choice.
WINTERY KNIGHT 