New Zealand Conservative

As millions celebrate today the Supreme Court's striking down of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), many will be giving thanks to Edie Windsor, the 83-year-old plaintiff in the case, and her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. What most people will not know, however, is the instrumental role that a few members of the New York City chapter of DignityUSA played in this historic moment. DignityUSA is an organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics that was formally expelled by the Roman Catholic church in 1986 by then- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger . Among the NYC chapter's many members is Brendan Fay, an Irish-born activist and filmmaker who lives in Queens with his husband, Tom Moulton. After DOMA was signed into law in 1996, Fay and his friend and fellow activist Jesus Lebron began working for marriage equality, organizing a rally on the steps of Manhattan's City Hall in February 1998. They continued to organize and participate in rallies, discussio...

I certainly try to be good, and I try to be nice and when I can't be I try to do and say nothing, but I don't always succeed. Anyone who thinks that I'm going to be reasonable and nice and easy to talk to in all circumstances is going to be disappointed. I think differences between the Catholic and Protestant theologies changes our expectations of people, depending on which faith tradition is more a part of how we believe. As I understand it, from the Protestant perspective, one's acts proves how "Christian" one is. If you don't act the part, you aren't a Christian. I think this relates also to the idea of once saved, always saved. If you fall, it just means that you were never saved in the first place, so calling into question a person's Christianity is essentially saying that they not saved. The Catholic perspective is different, however.  Salvation can be lost by what we do and how we think. We believe any person can be tempted to d...

I will no longer read or respond to private messages or emails that seek to convince me that I'm on the wrong side in this whole issue, or that I am aiding in the harassment, or that I being disrespectful, or the implication being made that I am a bit simple and didn't know what I was doing. Say what you will in public where everyone can see, or don't say it at all. I am really pissed now, and I'm certainly seeing how this whole thing spiraled out of control in the first place.

I drove into Wellington from the Coast on Thursday night, leaving home just after 6pm. It was pretty wild, what with the really deep puddles on the motorway that couldn't be seen until you were right in them making it sound as if the car was scraping against something, and the massive tree that fell onto the entire south-bound left lane on Ngauranga Gorge, and the intense wind that just took my breath away from the south, so intense I had to walk backwards into it so that I could breathe. With all of that, we got to our destination of the Cathedral for the yearly special Mass that always happens on the third Thursday of June. Coming back it wasn't quite so bad, and my husband was driving so I could look around as we drove rather than maintain a death grip on the steering wheel. I managed to warn him of a massive puddle that I did see, but the only thing he could do was take his foot off the accelerator to hit it at a slightly lower speed. Thankfully were were going only 7...

Peter Aranyi has written a though t provoking post on a recent court case between two bloggers. Is this what we want? Internet ‘take down’ and indefinite gagging orders? Well worth reading , to think about the principles of the issue, not the specifics . UPDATE: Added the "t" to thought above, and the second part of the last sentence, ie the bolded content.

Last week, an outfit called Safekids called for the Government to enact legislation that would make it mandatory for scooter riders of all ages to wear helmets. A ten-fold increase in the number of children seriously injuring themselves on push scooters has sparked a call for a law change that would see youngsters made to wear helmets while riding. Push scooters have become increasingly popular with school-age children over the past two years but the rise has seen a corresponding increase in the number of scooter-related injury claims for children up to 14 years old. ACC figures show the number of claims has risen from 697 in 2008 to 6474 last year . The increase has alarmed child safety group Safekids, which is campaigning for the introduction of a compulsory helmet law for scooter users. Safekids director Ann Weaver said requiring children to wear a helmet would reduce the risk of serious head injuries . Wearing a helmet all the time would reduce the risk of serious head ...

Quite a good article in the Catholic Herald today by a direct descendant of Charles Darwin (who first proposed the theory of evolution). His great-great-great granddaughter explains why she is Catholic. ‘Are you related to the economist?” People sometimes ask when they see my surname. I explain that, yes, John Maynard Keynes is my great-great-uncle – his brother Geoffrey married Margaret Darwin, my great-grandmother. “So you’re related to Darwin too?” Yes, he’s my great-great-great grandfather. Eyes might fall on the cross around my neck: “And you’re a Christian?” Yes, a Catholic. “How does a Darwin end up Catholic?” [...] My journey back to faith was as much a movement of the heart as a thoroughgoing intellectual inquiry. It had to be both: if my ancestors’ lives trouble faith then as their descendant I couldn’t but confront the issues head on. That I freely chose to be a Catholic after much thought and analysis, and wasn’t brainwashed into it, baffles my friends and family...

Satire site "The Civilian" has announced plans to follow in the footsteps of Twitter and limit satire to 140 characters , just for a laugh.

God or Atheism — Which Is More Rational? PETER KREEFT The conclusion that God exists doesn't require faith. Atheism requires faith. Is it rational to believe in God? Many people think that faith and reason are opposites; that belief in God and tough-minded logical reasoning are like oil and water. They are wrong. Belief in God is far more rational than atheism. Logic can show that there is a God. If you look at the universe with common sense and an open mind, you'll find that it's full of God's fingerprints. A good place to start is with an argument by Thomas Aquinas, the great 13th century philosopher and theologian. The argument starts with the not-very-startling observation that things move. But nothing moves for no reason. Something must cause that movement, and whatever caused that must be caused by something else, and so on. But this causal chain cannot go backwards forever. It must have a beginning. There must be an unmoved mover to begin a...

Robert R. Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind , has written an article on the goals of activists to normalise homosexuality through the education of children. June 10, 2013 (Mercatornet.com) - The logic works like this: If homosexual acts are moral, as so many now insist, then they should be normative. If they are normative, they should be taught in our schools as a standard. If they are a standard, they should be enforced. And so it has come, and is coming, to be. Education is an essential part of the drive to universalize the rationalization for homosexual behavior; so it must become a mandatory part of the curriculum. The infiltration of higher education by LGBT studies is well known. However, less attention seems to have been paid to the effort to spread LGBT propaganda in elementary schools and high schools. Because of the young ages of students K through 12, the introduction of pro-homosexual materials has required a special sensitivity from those who are trying...

An awesome granite bench was installed last week. It was probably more than a little frivolous, but it just looks so amazing. The picture doesn't really do it justice, unfortunately. Yeah, I'm still working out which height I want the drop down green lights to be. They're not easy to adjust if you're doing quite a big change, as that involves undoing the light fitting from the ceiling and pulling down some more string that is generally more than a little entangled with the wiring. The really hard part is getting everything back in and then twisting the whole fitting into place. No tap yet, that's coming tomorrow and then I need to organise the plumber to do it and the dishwasher and the insinkerator. I'll have to check if it's better to wait until the glass splashback is installed. Tomorrow, and abysmal shelf that wrecked the architrave of the small window will be fixed, so after that can get the splashback guy in. My fridge is still a couple o...

Awesome. After his school (like many others) was bullied by the ACLU in America to disallow a prayer at his high school graduation, Roy Costner, who was to give the valedictorian speech, tore it up and instead said the Lord's Prayer to huge cheers from those present. We need more people like this.

It seems bizarre to me that the National Government has just signed another deal with a Maori group whose ancestors joined in with the murderous rampages of the infamous Te Kooti. No mention of that in the Prime Minister's speech, nor in the Stuff article on the settlement. What's more, a PHD student in the Waikato has had his script on Te Kooti picked up by the Maori film development unit, Te Paepae Ataata. A feature length film will be out in about six years. Great, it will probably try to glorify the man. Not PC has post up on the actual history of Tuhoe and their involvement with Te Kooti and why the Government of the time confiscated their land. Imagine, if you will, that a savage murderer has been moving up the country, and he's heading your way. He seeks refuge in your large, rambling property (which you share with extended family). Instead of either handing him over or doing him in (in both of which you would be justified), you and your whanau choose i...

And now, another agency is being accused of targeting conservative groups: EPA accused of singling out conservative groups, amid IRS scandal: The allegations concern the Environmental Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests -- allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones. The allegations are under investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is also holding hearings on the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups. I wonder what the outcome of all this will be.

A hilarious review of Dan Brown's "Inferno". Well, more like a gentle roasting, and it comes out "well done", something rare in this medium: The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was swamped in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description, thought the 5ft 9in man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket. The whole article is well worth a read . Meanwhile, it brings back my memories of a conversation with some-one on Catholicism. As the conversation moved further and further away from reality I ended up exclaiming "Your view of Catholicism seems entirely founded on the Da Vinci code". "Oh, bu...

Anti-Same-Sex Marriage Protest in France - one million turnout The politics around same-sex marriage is really interesting. Unlike other real civil rights issues, this one is being entirely driven by the elites responding to a small, but vocal lobby group of activists. It is opposed strongly by large percentage of the population in most countries where it has been passing lately, yet this does not seem to slow down it's progress despite the electoral kiss of death it confers. As Brendan O'Neill explains : Throughout modern history, big, democratic, civil rights leaps forward have had two things in common. First, they were demanded by very large and often very angry sections of the public; and second, it took ages and ages for the political classes to concede to them. And when they did eventually cave in and legislate for the new liberty or opportunity being demanded by the hordes, they tended to do so begrudgingly, often while wearing a sneer... ... The gay marriage...

Things are rotten in the State of New Zealand. Just glancing down the Scoop headlines for today leaves a sickening feeling that there's just a little too much "sick and twisted" out there. An Invercargill man today admitted sexually violating an 8-year-old girl at Oreti Beach this year. Jordan Storm Pavlovich, 21, who until today had name suppression, appeared before Judge Kevin Phillips in the Invercargill District Court and admitted sexually violating the girl on February 2. [ Link ] 10 years, minimum. He gets out age 31. But there is a twist to the story - He's married and step father to young children. Are they safe? The mother thinks so , because he was apparently high on a legal cannabis substitute - K2. Looks like there needs to be an investigation into side effects for this "safe" drug. If the excuse holds up in court, then even more so. Meanwhile, at the other end of the country: Two Auckland men have been left bloodied and bruised a...

Fatherhood Banned Here A father-son bonding session planned by a North Island primary school was cancelled after a single mother demanded to be included. Two "Band of Brothers" seminars were arranged by Matakana School to help fathers get more involved in their sons' lives, and as a forum for dads to share their issues. One session was for dads and another was for fathers and sons. A solo mum wanted to attend but was told she couldn't because her presence would inhibit discussion. She was told a mother and son seminar was planned for later in the year. "We really just wanted an opportunity for the guys to open up and chat, and they wouldn't particularly want to do if there were females around - which I think is understandable," said principal Darrel Goosen. The woman's son was welcome at the second seminar and the guest speaker offered a specific session with her and her son but she continued to insist on attending, Goosen said, so the scho...

There was a very disturbing story in the Dominion Post earlier this week that I noticed elicited very little comment online and on talk-back radio this week, even though it was mentioned on talk-back at least. That was the story of a young woman being banned from and childcare centre for "inappropriately restraining a child" . Her crime? She stopped a child from hitting another child, and this lead to her being banned from the centre. A woman has been banned from a Wellington childcare centre after a Ministry of Education staff member saw her "inappropriately restraining" a child . Even though the woman, in her 20s, was neither a parent nor a staff member at Miramar's A'oga Amata Childcare Centre, the ministry is continuing to monitor the Samoan community centre. A ministry spokeswoman said a staff member saw someone "inappropriately restraining" a child during a visit to the centre on April 23. The child was not hit or hurt, but the minis...