By Pete Winn
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
November 13, 2007
CNSNews.com) - Critics have long debated the effect on society of overtly sexualized images from television, movies and music. But one medical educator and physician has reached a conclusion: He thinks that because of what we have learned scientifically about the brain and the biochemistry behind sexuality, our sex-obsessed culture may be "warping" the minds of young people.
In an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service, Gary Rose, M.D., president of the Medical Institute for Sexual Health in Austin, Tex., talked about his forthcoming book on the neurochemistry of sex. (The Medical Institute for Sexual Health describes itself as a non-profit group founded to confront the global epidemics of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.)
CNSNews.com: Your new book, in part, looks at what science shows concerning the development of the brain over time. What have you found?
Dr. Rose: For instance, we now know, through MRI studies -- magnetic resonance imaging studies that are not harmful to do -- that the pre-frontal cortex, the front part of the brain, is the last part of the brain to mature. That is the part of the brain that deals with long-term judgment and delayed gratification. By scanning multiple brains, we have shown it really is not mature until about age 25.
Guess what? As a culture, we've known that for a long time. My daughter has her master's degree but could not rent a car until she was 25. My son's car insurance rate dropped substantially at age 25. Their brains finally matured so that they could make good decisions, and it took that long for them to no longer be considered risky to car rental companies and insurance companies. We can actually demonstrate that with regard to MRI studies.
CNSNews.com: What about when people have sex?
For the rest of the story, please read here: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200711/CUL20071113b.html
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Book
My book, Out From Under: The Impact of Homosexual Parenting will be released soon. Like most new authors, there is a range of feelings I'm going through. Up to now, I've not shared my full story in any media interview or speaking engagement, tending to soften the blow as it were so the listeners weren't overwhelmed or simply teased. Most autobiographies have in them as much truth as one was comfortable in sharing at the time. However, I do want to gently mention a few different editing techniques and offer some advice to those adult children who are thinking about writing their stories.
First, often for many authors, his/her book is transitioned into a clean swept piece with nicely placed Band Aids over areas that were excruciatingly more painful to experience then the author dares to write. Thankfully, I missed that level of padding.
Second, I discovered that there was another procedure of sugar coating the less savory aspects of one's story so as to not offend the prudent reader. Yes, it is far less disturbing, but you are left a bit jilted rather than experiencing the whole jarring effect. If you really want to be real, then avoid sweetening up the less delightful aspects of your story.
Last, is the decision to not mention areas that are left unfinished as it were. For me, not knowing the outcome is terribly frustrating. What I've chosen to do in my book is mention the unresolved issues, the unanswered questions, and the gray areas - not because it is easy to do - but to let other people understand that life keeps unfolding with new surprizes, hopes, and desires which we were not privy to before. And with these, also come answers to some of our questions.
My story delivers a provocative, gripping, no-holds-barred account of what it was like to grow up within a homosexual environment.
You will be able to order a copy of my book soon.
First, often for many authors, his/her book is transitioned into a clean swept piece with nicely placed Band Aids over areas that were excruciatingly more painful to experience then the author dares to write. Thankfully, I missed that level of padding.
Second, I discovered that there was another procedure of sugar coating the less savory aspects of one's story so as to not offend the prudent reader. Yes, it is far less disturbing, but you are left a bit jilted rather than experiencing the whole jarring effect. If you really want to be real, then avoid sweetening up the less delightful aspects of your story.
Last, is the decision to not mention areas that are left unfinished as it were. For me, not knowing the outcome is terribly frustrating. What I've chosen to do in my book is mention the unresolved issues, the unanswered questions, and the gray areas - not because it is easy to do - but to let other people understand that life keeps unfolding with new surprizes, hopes, and desires which we were not privy to before. And with these, also come answers to some of our questions.
My story delivers a provocative, gripping, no-holds-barred account of what it was like to grow up within a homosexual environment.
You will be able to order a copy of my book soon.
Our Stories
I've noticed that our stories make a lot of difference to other people who don't understand what we have lived through. Over the weekend, a woman surprizingly commented to me that she had never actually thought about children and what it was like for them to grow up with a parent who is involved in homosexual relationships. So our stories enlighten others. I'd like to encourage more of you to share. Not only is it healing, you bring your own thoughts and feelings forward where others can begin to understand and care more about how children deal with a "gay" parent...For many of us, we have to take back the words gay & rainbow, the color lavender, the butterfly, and other symbols which have been usurped from their original meanings. We do this by telling it like it was and is.
From my heart, I welcome you on this journey.
From my heart, I welcome you on this journey.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Gay male parents get dedicated fertility program
ABC News carried this article March 14th at the following: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2949985 extracted 15/03/07
Friday, February 2, 2007
Decision to Have Baby Isn’t Political, Mary Cheney Says
Decision to Have Baby Isn’t Political, Mary Cheney Says
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: February 1, 2007
Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, for the first time yesterday publicly defended her decision to become pregnant and asserted that same-sex couples were equally capable of raising children as heterosexual couples.
Skip to next paragraph
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Mary Cheney, at a Glamour magazine panel at Barnard College Wednesday, said of her baby: “It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate, on either side of a political issue. It is my child.”
“When Heather and I decided to have a baby, it was not going to be the most popular decision ever,” Ms. Cheney said, referring to her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.
She then gestured to her middle — any bulge disguised by a boxy jacket — and asserted: “This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child.”
Ms. Cheney, 37, was speaking at Barnard College in Manhattan in a panel discussion sponsored by Glamour magazine. The baby, whose sex she has not revealed publicly, is due this spring and will be the sixth grandchild for the vice president and his wife.
Ms. Cheney, who is vice president for consumer advocacy at AOL and lives in Virginia, has not said how she became pregnant.
Her father became testy last week during a CNN interview when the host, Wolf Blitzer, asked what he thought of conservatives, specifically James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, who are critical of his daughter’s pregnancy. In refusing to answer, Mr. Cheney told his interviewer that he was “over the line.”
Ms. Cheney said in a brief interview after the panel discussion that she was not speaking for her father but that when she saw the CNN interview, she also felt Mr. Blitzer had crossed a line. “He was trying to get a rise out of my father,” she said.
The discussion took place in a parlor decorated with blowsy flower wallpaper and regal portraits of former Barnard presidents. Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour, asked Ms. Cheney if she had anything to say to critics like Mr. Dobson.
He wrote in Time magazine in December that years of social research “indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father.” He also wrote that his group believes that “birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples.” Two of the researchers Mr. Dobson cited have complained that he distorted their views and said they disagreed with his conclusions.
Ms. Cheney agreed the research was distorted. “Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years on this issue has shown there is no difference between children who are raised by same-sex parents and children who are raised by opposite-sex parents,” she said. “What matters is that children are being raised in a stable, loving environment.”
The audience, of about 100 people, most of them Barnard students, applauded her warmly. So did her fellow panelists, including Gloria Feldt, the former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Kathleen Turner, the actress.
The panel was titled “Success at 20, 30, 40,” and was held to provide material for the September issue of Glamour.
Ms. Cheney expressed some impatience with women who complain about the difficulties of “having it all,” noting that one of her forebears gave birth “in the back of a wagon and had no support system,” living in a tent on the oil fields outside of Casper, Wyo.
“I look at myself, I have a successful career, an incredible partner, we’re about to have a child, and we are incredibly fortunate in that we have the financial means to be able to do that,” she said. “But this notion that women today are overwhelmed with choices, my God, my grandmother would have killed to have these choices.”
Later, Ms. Cheney was asked whether she would support a woman for president. Ms. Cheney, asserting that she was not referring to anyone in particular — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name was never uttered — said she would vote for the most qualified person and that voting for someone based on their sex was “absolutely foolish.”
Ms. Cheney is the author of “Now It’s My Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life,” published last year after she worked in her father’s re-election campaign. In the book, she wrote that she came “pretty close” to quitting when President Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Ms. Leive asked her if she ever thought of calling up President Bush and telling him how she felt. Ms. Cheney said Mr. Bush “let it be known to me that if I wanted to put out a statement, talking about my position publicly, he would fully support it, he would recognize my right to dissent.” She said she did not do so because she was not the candidate.
She also said she continued working for the campaign because the idea of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, becoming president was “terrifying,” acknowledging that her view would probably not be a popular sentiment among the Barnard students.
Even if there were political differences with Ms. Cheney, several of them said after the panel that they found her sympathetic. Leslie Lipton, 20, said she thought Ms. Cheney should be able to have a baby if she wanted one and was raising the child in a loving home.
“I think people will take it as a political statement because she is so much in the public eye,” Ms. Lipton said. “But in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be political.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/washington/01cheney.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1170381305-0eSI/zBak0k21otc/Ub2YQ&oref=slogin extracted February 2, 2007
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: February 1, 2007
Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, for the first time yesterday publicly defended her decision to become pregnant and asserted that same-sex couples were equally capable of raising children as heterosexual couples.
Skip to next paragraph
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Mary Cheney, at a Glamour magazine panel at Barnard College Wednesday, said of her baby: “It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate, on either side of a political issue. It is my child.”
“When Heather and I decided to have a baby, it was not going to be the most popular decision ever,” Ms. Cheney said, referring to her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.
She then gestured to her middle — any bulge disguised by a boxy jacket — and asserted: “This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child.”
Ms. Cheney, 37, was speaking at Barnard College in Manhattan in a panel discussion sponsored by Glamour magazine. The baby, whose sex she has not revealed publicly, is due this spring and will be the sixth grandchild for the vice president and his wife.
Ms. Cheney, who is vice president for consumer advocacy at AOL and lives in Virginia, has not said how she became pregnant.
Her father became testy last week during a CNN interview when the host, Wolf Blitzer, asked what he thought of conservatives, specifically James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, who are critical of his daughter’s pregnancy. In refusing to answer, Mr. Cheney told his interviewer that he was “over the line.”
Ms. Cheney said in a brief interview after the panel discussion that she was not speaking for her father but that when she saw the CNN interview, she also felt Mr. Blitzer had crossed a line. “He was trying to get a rise out of my father,” she said.
The discussion took place in a parlor decorated with blowsy flower wallpaper and regal portraits of former Barnard presidents. Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour, asked Ms. Cheney if she had anything to say to critics like Mr. Dobson.
He wrote in Time magazine in December that years of social research “indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father.” He also wrote that his group believes that “birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples.” Two of the researchers Mr. Dobson cited have complained that he distorted their views and said they disagreed with his conclusions.
Ms. Cheney agreed the research was distorted. “Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years on this issue has shown there is no difference between children who are raised by same-sex parents and children who are raised by opposite-sex parents,” she said. “What matters is that children are being raised in a stable, loving environment.”
The audience, of about 100 people, most of them Barnard students, applauded her warmly. So did her fellow panelists, including Gloria Feldt, the former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Kathleen Turner, the actress.
The panel was titled “Success at 20, 30, 40,” and was held to provide material for the September issue of Glamour.
Ms. Cheney expressed some impatience with women who complain about the difficulties of “having it all,” noting that one of her forebears gave birth “in the back of a wagon and had no support system,” living in a tent on the oil fields outside of Casper, Wyo.
“I look at myself, I have a successful career, an incredible partner, we’re about to have a child, and we are incredibly fortunate in that we have the financial means to be able to do that,” she said. “But this notion that women today are overwhelmed with choices, my God, my grandmother would have killed to have these choices.”
Later, Ms. Cheney was asked whether she would support a woman for president. Ms. Cheney, asserting that she was not referring to anyone in particular — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name was never uttered — said she would vote for the most qualified person and that voting for someone based on their sex was “absolutely foolish.”
Ms. Cheney is the author of “Now It’s My Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life,” published last year after she worked in her father’s re-election campaign. In the book, she wrote that she came “pretty close” to quitting when President Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Ms. Leive asked her if she ever thought of calling up President Bush and telling him how she felt. Ms. Cheney said Mr. Bush “let it be known to me that if I wanted to put out a statement, talking about my position publicly, he would fully support it, he would recognize my right to dissent.” She said she did not do so because she was not the candidate.
She also said she continued working for the campaign because the idea of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, becoming president was “terrifying,” acknowledging that her view would probably not be a popular sentiment among the Barnard students.
Even if there were political differences with Ms. Cheney, several of them said after the panel that they found her sympathetic. Leslie Lipton, 20, said she thought Ms. Cheney should be able to have a baby if she wanted one and was raising the child in a loving home.
“I think people will take it as a political statement because she is so much in the public eye,” Ms. Lipton said. “But in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be political.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/washington/01cheney.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1170381305-0eSI/zBak0k21otc/Ub2YQ&oref=slogin extracted February 2, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
A foster mother pays tribute to the Archbishop of Canterbury's compassion
A foster mother pays tribute to the Archbishop of Canterbury's compassionBy EILEEN FAIRWEATHER - More by this author » Last updated at 21:52pm on 27th January 2007
When the Archbishop of Canterbury supported the Catholic Church in the gay adoption row last week, many were surprised.
Dr Rowan Williams, usually considered a moderniser, was criticised by liberals for asking Tony Blair to exempt Catholic adoption agencies from Government regulations - being introduced in April - which will force all agencies to offer children for adoption to gays.
The Guardian newspaper, in a comment piece, even suggested that the church's moral authority was 'fatally compromised'.
Now it has emerged that Dr Williams may have been influenced by his close involvement with a remarkable couple who rescued a boy brutalised by a notorious social services paedophile ring.
Horrified by the inference that the Archbishop is homophobic, the couple have spoken for the first time of their friend's 'immeasurable' help as they struggled to save a child driven to despair by abuse while in the care of the London borough of Islington.
And they described how Dr Williams even devoted an entire week's prayers for Liam, the terribly damaged boy they went on to foster.
Liam Lucas was just one of the children abused by predatory paedophiles who took advantage of far-Left Islington Council's childcare policies in the Eighties and Nineties, when it pro-actively recruited gay social workers.
Paedophiles exploited its well-intentioned commitment to equal opportunities and soon most of Islington's 12 children's homes had child molesters on the staff who cynically pretended to be ordinary homosexuals. Numerous children and other staff made allegations of abuse, but were branded homophobes and ignored.
Liam - now 29, in a permanent relationship and the proud father of year-old Isabella - was even falsely classified as gay by Islington social services, which decided he should be fostered only by single men.
Quaker couple Brian Cairns, 57, and his wife Kate, 56 - who became friends with the future Archbishop when they were students together - fought to foster him instead. The horrors Liam later disclosed eventually helped end a 20-year regime of appalling abuse.
A lengthy investigation by The Mail on Sunday's sister paper, the London Evening Standard, resulted in government-ordered inquiries, but at least 26 members of Islington social services staff, despite being accused of grave offences, were simply allowed to resign, often with glowing references.
Mr and Mrs Cairns and their foster son Liam were so concerned by the 'rigidity' of the current debate about adoption and equal opportunities for gays, and the invisibility of children's needs, that they have decided to go public.
The Church of England's own adoption agency already allows gay adoptions, and it is thought the Archbishop's support for the Catholic Church's exemption plea mainly reflects the importance he places on freedom of conscience and thought.
Mrs Cairns is herself a leading socialwork academic, author and trainer. "I am not anti gay, any more than is Rowan Williams,' she said.
"I have a close relative who is gay, and I am emphatically not opposed to gay adoption. I am, however, deeply concerned by the bullying, intolerant nature of the present attacks on people with religious or other concerns about it.
"It feels horribly familiar and I fear that rigid thinking about equal opportunities may again blind people to paedophiles who claim to be gay, when all they really want is access to vulnerable children.
"On radio and TV this week I have repeatedly heard politicians insist that every adoption agency, whatever its religious beliefs about the best home for children, must offer gay people "equality of access to all goods and services".
"My blood has run cold every time I have heard that. Children in care are not goods or services, chattels to be claimed or shared. They have, however, often been treated like that, as Liam's appalling experiences show.
"Rowan Williams is a deeply spiritual and humble man, he would never dream of telling anyone how he helped us. But he did - immeasurably."
Liam himself said: "There's a lot about my childhood I can't remember. There's a lot I can remember and wish I couldn't. The best I can say about it is that it's over, and that I learned a lot, that will probably make me a better person in the end."
He was in and out of Islington's care from the age of two, and witnessed his birth mother suffer domestic violence and descend into drug addiction. When he was nine she died of a heroin overdose.
The distraught, vulnerable boy was initially fostered by a motherly woman who asked to keep him. But the council instead sent him, from age five to 11, to a 'therapeutic' boarding school, New Barns in Gloucestershire. This was later closed following a child abuse and pornography scandal.
During school holidays he was fostered by a man later imprisoned for abusing another child in his care. When Liam was nine, Islington placed him in its children's home in Grosvenor Avenue, run by two single males. Both were eventually accused of abuse but escaped investigation by moving to Thailand.
Last year, Thai police charged the deputy head, Nick Rabet, 57, with serious sexual offences against 30 Thai boys, the youngest six years old. He escaped trial by killing himself.
Liam initially liked Rabet, a 'big kid' who pretended he was a sheriff and even wore a sheriff's badge. The unqualified social worker owned a Sussex manor house, which he had turned into a children's activity centre, with quad bikes, pinball machines and horses. He took Liam there at weekends.
Liam was abused by a friend of Rabet's, a senior social services colleague. It is believed he backed the council's decision to find the boy a gay foster father.
Mr and Mrs Cairns spotted Islington's advertisement in 1990 in a fostering magazine.
Mrs Cairns was haunted by the then 13-year-old boy's photo, and the council's claim that he was 'suitable for a single man'.
She said: "I instinctively felt that the ad was aimed at paedophiles."
Mrs Cairns and her husband, also a senior figure in social services, already had three children but immediately applied to foster Liam.
"Islington insisted Liam wouldn't settle in a family because they had decided he was gay,' she said. "I said, "So what? Don't gay people have families?" Besides, he was still a child - how could they be sure?'
Mrs Cairns believes children in care who genuinely identify as gay can particularly benefit from gay carers, but she mistrusts adults deciding children's sexuality for them. Former Islington senior social worker Liz Davies, who blew the whistle on the abuse scandal, said: "Other Islington children were also falsely classed as gay at a very young age."
A rebel Islington social worker defied his bosses and supported Mr and Mrs Cairns' fostering bid after Liam begged him: "I just want a family, I just want to be normal."
Mrs Cairns said: "He arrived and looked around and said, "Please, please don't send me back."'
She recalls that when he first joined the family at their Gloucestershire home, 'he had this shy, placatory smile. But it was belied by his eyes - it hurt me to look at him.
"You thought, My God, who left you with terrors like this? He had nightmares every night. He would wake screaming then pretend to me that he was just woken by a cough. He was so ashamed of his fear and trying so hard to be brave and pretend he was fine. It was heartbreaking. I'd sit up til he slept again. This went on for months."
Eventually, he disclosed abuse at both the home and at boarding school. But his sympathetic social worker, and Liam's files, simply vanished and nothing was done.
Mrs Cairns found the vice-chairman of the school governors, Peter Righton, former Director of Education at the National Institute for Social Work, had for years openly advocated sex with boys in care.
"Righton and I had sat together on the body which regulated social work training. I researched everything he had published and I felt sick. I was devastated by the betrayal of trust, and social work's naivety.
"He got away with this, and influenced social workers to this day, because they feared seeming "homophobic" by challenging him."
It prompted Mrs Cairns to begin confiding secretly with Scotland Yard.
The impasse ended in 1991, when police discovered Rabet's Sussex children's centre was partly financed by convicted child pornographers and that he was part of a ring of wealthy, well-connected paedophiles.
Police also discovered that Righton was a founder member of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange, which campaigned for the age of consent to be reduced to four.
In 1992, Righton was convicted of importing child pornography from Holland. Later, two teachers at New Barns were convicted of sexual abuse, five others tried, and the school was abruptly closed.
Islington admitted 32 'gross errors' in its treatment of Liam, and paid him £5,000 compensation.
His principal abuser quit Britain for a Third World country and is believed to have adopted a boy there.
Liam had a breakdown in 1994 after the ordeal of giving evidence at the trial of New Barns staff.
He became angry, took to drugs and drink, was violent and smashed things. "My descent into crime was sudden and violent and frightened me as much as everybody else,' he admitted.
Liam tried to hang himself and even attempted to strangle Mrs Cairns. She said: "He was wild-eyed and kept saying, "What do you mean, you love me? What does that mean?"
"He couldn't trust anyone, he was a child broken by grief and betrayal. It broke my heart but I had to report him to the police for our own safety."
Liam was sectioned to a mental hospital and later ended up for nine months, at just 17, in a secure jail. Mr and Mrs Cairns, feeling desperate, exhausted and lost, con-fided in their friend Rowan Williams, whose help they described as 'solid and generous'.
"He was deeply moved by Liam's sufferings and he didn't just calm us and provide advice, he offered to make Liam's recovery the focus of his prayers on his annual retreat.
"He is a deeply spiritual man but humble and reticent. He would never, ever volunteer this, but in 1995 he went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, fasted and devoted his week's prayers to Liam's healing."
Liam, who had no idea he was being prayed for so intensely, blamed Mr and Mrs Cairns for his incarceration and no longer kept touch. "But on the last day of Rowan's pilgrimage, at 5am, Liam woke suddenly and, he says, "just knew he had to write to Mum and Dad". He started to get better then,' said Mrs Cairns.
Liam remembers: "I didn't appreciate my foster family. I was too eaten up with bad memories of being a child and of being in care to appreciate what I had, but when I lost them I learned how much they mattered to me. I never thought before that I could trust anyone, or learn to love or be loved. But I did."
Although it was a long journey back to health, and the adult stability he has today, he took responsibility for his own behaviour.
Liam has never re-offended and today teaches social workers about the needs of children. Next month he will contribute to a TV programme for teachers on the same theme.
He considers thorough checks on carers essential. Islington dispensed with all but the most basic checks on self-declared gay staff in order to help them counter 'discrimination'. It meant they were not obliged to provide evidence of childcare experience, qualifications or professional references.
Many now fear such minimal checks will also be made on gay would-be adopters, for fear of prosecution for discrimination.
Mrs Cairns said: "Gay adoptions can work extremely well, but we need sensitively to match the right child to the right carer.
"Liam, for example, was genuinely terrified of men, and he wanted a mum. An abused girl might feel safest with a single woman, or a lesbian.
"We must be utterly rigorous in assessing everyone who wants to care for children, whether heterosexual or gay, male or female - remember Rose West.
"We cannot be less vigilant because an adult says they are from an oppressed group and their feelings should be protected. Child protection matters far more."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=431917&in_page_id=1770 extracted 30/01/07.
When the Archbishop of Canterbury supported the Catholic Church in the gay adoption row last week, many were surprised.
Dr Rowan Williams, usually considered a moderniser, was criticised by liberals for asking Tony Blair to exempt Catholic adoption agencies from Government regulations - being introduced in April - which will force all agencies to offer children for adoption to gays.
The Guardian newspaper, in a comment piece, even suggested that the church's moral authority was 'fatally compromised'.
Now it has emerged that Dr Williams may have been influenced by his close involvement with a remarkable couple who rescued a boy brutalised by a notorious social services paedophile ring.
Horrified by the inference that the Archbishop is homophobic, the couple have spoken for the first time of their friend's 'immeasurable' help as they struggled to save a child driven to despair by abuse while in the care of the London borough of Islington.
And they described how Dr Williams even devoted an entire week's prayers for Liam, the terribly damaged boy they went on to foster.
Liam Lucas was just one of the children abused by predatory paedophiles who took advantage of far-Left Islington Council's childcare policies in the Eighties and Nineties, when it pro-actively recruited gay social workers.
Paedophiles exploited its well-intentioned commitment to equal opportunities and soon most of Islington's 12 children's homes had child molesters on the staff who cynically pretended to be ordinary homosexuals. Numerous children and other staff made allegations of abuse, but were branded homophobes and ignored.
Liam - now 29, in a permanent relationship and the proud father of year-old Isabella - was even falsely classified as gay by Islington social services, which decided he should be fostered only by single men.
Quaker couple Brian Cairns, 57, and his wife Kate, 56 - who became friends with the future Archbishop when they were students together - fought to foster him instead. The horrors Liam later disclosed eventually helped end a 20-year regime of appalling abuse.
A lengthy investigation by The Mail on Sunday's sister paper, the London Evening Standard, resulted in government-ordered inquiries, but at least 26 members of Islington social services staff, despite being accused of grave offences, were simply allowed to resign, often with glowing references.
Mr and Mrs Cairns and their foster son Liam were so concerned by the 'rigidity' of the current debate about adoption and equal opportunities for gays, and the invisibility of children's needs, that they have decided to go public.
The Church of England's own adoption agency already allows gay adoptions, and it is thought the Archbishop's support for the Catholic Church's exemption plea mainly reflects the importance he places on freedom of conscience and thought.
Mrs Cairns is herself a leading socialwork academic, author and trainer. "I am not anti gay, any more than is Rowan Williams,' she said.
"I have a close relative who is gay, and I am emphatically not opposed to gay adoption. I am, however, deeply concerned by the bullying, intolerant nature of the present attacks on people with religious or other concerns about it.
"It feels horribly familiar and I fear that rigid thinking about equal opportunities may again blind people to paedophiles who claim to be gay, when all they really want is access to vulnerable children.
"On radio and TV this week I have repeatedly heard politicians insist that every adoption agency, whatever its religious beliefs about the best home for children, must offer gay people "equality of access to all goods and services".
"My blood has run cold every time I have heard that. Children in care are not goods or services, chattels to be claimed or shared. They have, however, often been treated like that, as Liam's appalling experiences show.
"Rowan Williams is a deeply spiritual and humble man, he would never dream of telling anyone how he helped us. But he did - immeasurably."
Liam himself said: "There's a lot about my childhood I can't remember. There's a lot I can remember and wish I couldn't. The best I can say about it is that it's over, and that I learned a lot, that will probably make me a better person in the end."
He was in and out of Islington's care from the age of two, and witnessed his birth mother suffer domestic violence and descend into drug addiction. When he was nine she died of a heroin overdose.
The distraught, vulnerable boy was initially fostered by a motherly woman who asked to keep him. But the council instead sent him, from age five to 11, to a 'therapeutic' boarding school, New Barns in Gloucestershire. This was later closed following a child abuse and pornography scandal.
During school holidays he was fostered by a man later imprisoned for abusing another child in his care. When Liam was nine, Islington placed him in its children's home in Grosvenor Avenue, run by two single males. Both were eventually accused of abuse but escaped investigation by moving to Thailand.
Last year, Thai police charged the deputy head, Nick Rabet, 57, with serious sexual offences against 30 Thai boys, the youngest six years old. He escaped trial by killing himself.
Liam initially liked Rabet, a 'big kid' who pretended he was a sheriff and even wore a sheriff's badge. The unqualified social worker owned a Sussex manor house, which he had turned into a children's activity centre, with quad bikes, pinball machines and horses. He took Liam there at weekends.
Liam was abused by a friend of Rabet's, a senior social services colleague. It is believed he backed the council's decision to find the boy a gay foster father.
Mr and Mrs Cairns spotted Islington's advertisement in 1990 in a fostering magazine.
Mrs Cairns was haunted by the then 13-year-old boy's photo, and the council's claim that he was 'suitable for a single man'.
She said: "I instinctively felt that the ad was aimed at paedophiles."
Mrs Cairns and her husband, also a senior figure in social services, already had three children but immediately applied to foster Liam.
"Islington insisted Liam wouldn't settle in a family because they had decided he was gay,' she said. "I said, "So what? Don't gay people have families?" Besides, he was still a child - how could they be sure?'
Mrs Cairns believes children in care who genuinely identify as gay can particularly benefit from gay carers, but she mistrusts adults deciding children's sexuality for them. Former Islington senior social worker Liz Davies, who blew the whistle on the abuse scandal, said: "Other Islington children were also falsely classed as gay at a very young age."
A rebel Islington social worker defied his bosses and supported Mr and Mrs Cairns' fostering bid after Liam begged him: "I just want a family, I just want to be normal."
Mrs Cairns said: "He arrived and looked around and said, "Please, please don't send me back."'
She recalls that when he first joined the family at their Gloucestershire home, 'he had this shy, placatory smile. But it was belied by his eyes - it hurt me to look at him.
"You thought, My God, who left you with terrors like this? He had nightmares every night. He would wake screaming then pretend to me that he was just woken by a cough. He was so ashamed of his fear and trying so hard to be brave and pretend he was fine. It was heartbreaking. I'd sit up til he slept again. This went on for months."
Eventually, he disclosed abuse at both the home and at boarding school. But his sympathetic social worker, and Liam's files, simply vanished and nothing was done.
Mrs Cairns found the vice-chairman of the school governors, Peter Righton, former Director of Education at the National Institute for Social Work, had for years openly advocated sex with boys in care.
"Righton and I had sat together on the body which regulated social work training. I researched everything he had published and I felt sick. I was devastated by the betrayal of trust, and social work's naivety.
"He got away with this, and influenced social workers to this day, because they feared seeming "homophobic" by challenging him."
It prompted Mrs Cairns to begin confiding secretly with Scotland Yard.
The impasse ended in 1991, when police discovered Rabet's Sussex children's centre was partly financed by convicted child pornographers and that he was part of a ring of wealthy, well-connected paedophiles.
Police also discovered that Righton was a founder member of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange, which campaigned for the age of consent to be reduced to four.
In 1992, Righton was convicted of importing child pornography from Holland. Later, two teachers at New Barns were convicted of sexual abuse, five others tried, and the school was abruptly closed.
Islington admitted 32 'gross errors' in its treatment of Liam, and paid him £5,000 compensation.
His principal abuser quit Britain for a Third World country and is believed to have adopted a boy there.
Liam had a breakdown in 1994 after the ordeal of giving evidence at the trial of New Barns staff.
He became angry, took to drugs and drink, was violent and smashed things. "My descent into crime was sudden and violent and frightened me as much as everybody else,' he admitted.
Liam tried to hang himself and even attempted to strangle Mrs Cairns. She said: "He was wild-eyed and kept saying, "What do you mean, you love me? What does that mean?"
"He couldn't trust anyone, he was a child broken by grief and betrayal. It broke my heart but I had to report him to the police for our own safety."
Liam was sectioned to a mental hospital and later ended up for nine months, at just 17, in a secure jail. Mr and Mrs Cairns, feeling desperate, exhausted and lost, con-fided in their friend Rowan Williams, whose help they described as 'solid and generous'.
"He was deeply moved by Liam's sufferings and he didn't just calm us and provide advice, he offered to make Liam's recovery the focus of his prayers on his annual retreat.
"He is a deeply spiritual man but humble and reticent. He would never, ever volunteer this, but in 1995 he went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, fasted and devoted his week's prayers to Liam's healing."
Liam, who had no idea he was being prayed for so intensely, blamed Mr and Mrs Cairns for his incarceration and no longer kept touch. "But on the last day of Rowan's pilgrimage, at 5am, Liam woke suddenly and, he says, "just knew he had to write to Mum and Dad". He started to get better then,' said Mrs Cairns.
Liam remembers: "I didn't appreciate my foster family. I was too eaten up with bad memories of being a child and of being in care to appreciate what I had, but when I lost them I learned how much they mattered to me. I never thought before that I could trust anyone, or learn to love or be loved. But I did."
Although it was a long journey back to health, and the adult stability he has today, he took responsibility for his own behaviour.
Liam has never re-offended and today teaches social workers about the needs of children. Next month he will contribute to a TV programme for teachers on the same theme.
He considers thorough checks on carers essential. Islington dispensed with all but the most basic checks on self-declared gay staff in order to help them counter 'discrimination'. It meant they were not obliged to provide evidence of childcare experience, qualifications or professional references.
Many now fear such minimal checks will also be made on gay would-be adopters, for fear of prosecution for discrimination.
Mrs Cairns said: "Gay adoptions can work extremely well, but we need sensitively to match the right child to the right carer.
"Liam, for example, was genuinely terrified of men, and he wanted a mum. An abused girl might feel safest with a single woman, or a lesbian.
"We must be utterly rigorous in assessing everyone who wants to care for children, whether heterosexual or gay, male or female - remember Rose West.
"We cannot be less vigilant because an adult says they are from an oppressed group and their feelings should be protected. Child protection matters far more."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=431917&in_page_id=1770 extracted 30/01/07.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Muslims defend Catholic stance in gay row
Muslims defend Catholic stance in gay row
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
Read Ruth Gledhill's 'Articles of Faith' blog
NI_MPU('middle');
The Muslim Council of Britain has backed the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in the adoption row.
The intervention adds to the pressure on the Government to create an exemption for religious adoption societies under the new Sexual Orientation Regulations.
This week the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York entered the debate with a strong statement of support for the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who wrote to every member of the Cabinet warning that Catholic agencies could not accept a law that would force them to place children with gay couples.
Catholic leaders have given warning that the church’s seven adoption agencies, which placed 227 children last year, cannot breach Vatican guidelines against allowing gay couples to adopt, and would have no alternative but to close.
The Muslim Council said that it backed the churches’ “principled stand”.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the Secretary-General, said: “The right to practise one’s faith or the freedom to have no belief is a cornerstone of our society, as is the right of all to live free from unfair discrimination and harassment.
“Homosexuality is forbidden in Islam. The Sexual Orientation Regulations as we understand them do not promote homosexuality but would provide protection against discrimination and harassment on account of sexual orientation.
“As Muslims, we are obliged to uphold the moral standards and codes of conduct dictated by our faith.”
He said that the refusal to permit an exemption was inconsistent with previous antidiscrimination legislation.
He added that the regulations should “take full account of our multifaith, multicultural, multiethnic society and make accommodation to accord with differing beliefs and values”.
Catholic leaders in Scotland have raised the stakes in the row by warning senior Cabinet ministers from Scotland that they will campaign against Labour candidates in the Scottish elections in May over the issue.
Archbishop Mario Conti, the vice-president of the Bishops’ Conference in Glasgow, wrote to Gordon Brown, the Chan-cellor, John Reid, the Home Secretary, Alistair Darling, the Trade Secretary, Douglas Alexander, the Transport and Scottish Secretary, and Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, and repeated his warning to the Prime Minister that disallowing Catholic agencies to discriminate will be a “betrayal”.
The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2566808,00.html extracted 21/01/07
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
Read Ruth Gledhill's 'Articles of Faith' blog
NI_MPU('middle');
The Muslim Council of Britain has backed the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in the adoption row.
The intervention adds to the pressure on the Government to create an exemption for religious adoption societies under the new Sexual Orientation Regulations.
This week the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York entered the debate with a strong statement of support for the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who wrote to every member of the Cabinet warning that Catholic agencies could not accept a law that would force them to place children with gay couples.
Catholic leaders have given warning that the church’s seven adoption agencies, which placed 227 children last year, cannot breach Vatican guidelines against allowing gay couples to adopt, and would have no alternative but to close.
The Muslim Council said that it backed the churches’ “principled stand”.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the Secretary-General, said: “The right to practise one’s faith or the freedom to have no belief is a cornerstone of our society, as is the right of all to live free from unfair discrimination and harassment.
“Homosexuality is forbidden in Islam. The Sexual Orientation Regulations as we understand them do not promote homosexuality but would provide protection against discrimination and harassment on account of sexual orientation.
“As Muslims, we are obliged to uphold the moral standards and codes of conduct dictated by our faith.”
He said that the refusal to permit an exemption was inconsistent with previous antidiscrimination legislation.
He added that the regulations should “take full account of our multifaith, multicultural, multiethnic society and make accommodation to accord with differing beliefs and values”.
Catholic leaders in Scotland have raised the stakes in the row by warning senior Cabinet ministers from Scotland that they will campaign against Labour candidates in the Scottish elections in May over the issue.
Archbishop Mario Conti, the vice-president of the Bishops’ Conference in Glasgow, wrote to Gordon Brown, the Chan-cellor, John Reid, the Home Secretary, Alistair Darling, the Trade Secretary, Douglas Alexander, the Transport and Scottish Secretary, and Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, and repeated his warning to the Prime Minister that disallowing Catholic agencies to discriminate will be a “betrayal”.
The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2566808,00.html extracted 21/01/07
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Landmark court ruling gives little boy two mommies and a dad
By GREGORY BONNELL The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Gay rights organizations applauded Wednesday while an evangelical group questioned just how many parents one child can have following a landmark Appeal Court decision that allows an Ontario boy to have three parents.
Legal recognition that the five-year-old has two mothers and one father — which some say opens the possibility of nightmare custody battle scenarios — was hailed by Egale Canada as the courts simply catching up to the reality of Canadian society.
"This isn’t the only couple that’s had a baby with another person and wanted the three people to be equally involved in the child’s upbringing," said Kaj Hasselriis, acting executive director of the Ottawa-based gay rights group.
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision Tuesday to recognize the child’s three parents simply shows that the "justice system is ahead of politicians on this issue," Hasselriis said.
"There is now legal recognition of relationships and families that already exist in Canada, and have existed across Canada for years."
The ruling, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, revolves around a lesbian couple raising their son with the continued involvement of his biological father.
In 1999, the couple, one a university professor and the other a lawyer, asked the man, who is also a university professor, to help them start a family.
The female university professor became pregnant in 2000 and gave birth early the following year. The boy, who turns six next month, calls both women "Mama."
Court documents state that the biological father brings his three other children to the women’s home for weekly family dinners.
While the Appeal Court’s decision was specific to the boy and his three parents, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada — which had intervener status in the case under the umbrella organization Alliance for Marriage and the Family — said the ruling will have a "definite ripple effect" throughout society.
"We have great concern about the future serious implications of the decision," said Don Hutchinson, legal counsel for the group.
"It raises questions that are unanswered, such as how many legal parents may a child now have?"
If the relationship between three or more parents breaks down, it would complicate custody hearings, he said.
Those concerns were shared by the judge who first heard and dismissed the case in 2003.
"If this application is granted, it seems to me the door is wide open to step-parents, extended family and others to claim parental status in less harmonious circumstances," Superior Court Justice David Aston wrote in his decision.
"If a child can have three parents, why not four, or six or a dozen," Aston wrote, adding that "the potential to create, or exacerbate, custody and access litigation should not be ignored."
Ultimately, Aston ruled that while he was prepared to declare that the boy could have three parents, he said he didn’t have the legal authority to do so.
On Tuesday, the Appeal Court ruled it did have that authority, namely because it found a gap in the legislation due to new reproductive technologies and society’s understanding of relationships.
But at least one critic disagreed with that line of reasoning.
"It’s not the court’s role to fill legislative gaps," said Joseph Ben-Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values, a conservative Ottawa think-tank.
"The Ontario government must appeal this case regardless of whether they think the decision of the court was right.
"The whole notion that there is such a thing as three parents . . . has potential ramifications on public policy on a lot of levels."
An appeal would "defend the integrity of the legislative process," said Ben-Ami, who added a government study of marriage and family issues is long overdue.
Several so-called pro-marriage groups have called on the federal government to launch a royal commission on marriage and families.
The Chronicle Herald
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/550697.html extracted January 9, 2007
By GREGORY BONNELL The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Gay rights organizations applauded Wednesday while an evangelical group questioned just how many parents one child can have following a landmark Appeal Court decision that allows an Ontario boy to have three parents.
Legal recognition that the five-year-old has two mothers and one father — which some say opens the possibility of nightmare custody battle scenarios — was hailed by Egale Canada as the courts simply catching up to the reality of Canadian society.
"This isn’t the only couple that’s had a baby with another person and wanted the three people to be equally involved in the child’s upbringing," said Kaj Hasselriis, acting executive director of the Ottawa-based gay rights group.
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision Tuesday to recognize the child’s three parents simply shows that the "justice system is ahead of politicians on this issue," Hasselriis said.
"There is now legal recognition of relationships and families that already exist in Canada, and have existed across Canada for years."
The ruling, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, revolves around a lesbian couple raising their son with the continued involvement of his biological father.
In 1999, the couple, one a university professor and the other a lawyer, asked the man, who is also a university professor, to help them start a family.
The female university professor became pregnant in 2000 and gave birth early the following year. The boy, who turns six next month, calls both women "Mama."
Court documents state that the biological father brings his three other children to the women’s home for weekly family dinners.
While the Appeal Court’s decision was specific to the boy and his three parents, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada — which had intervener status in the case under the umbrella organization Alliance for Marriage and the Family — said the ruling will have a "definite ripple effect" throughout society.
"We have great concern about the future serious implications of the decision," said Don Hutchinson, legal counsel for the group.
"It raises questions that are unanswered, such as how many legal parents may a child now have?"
If the relationship between three or more parents breaks down, it would complicate custody hearings, he said.
Those concerns were shared by the judge who first heard and dismissed the case in 2003.
"If this application is granted, it seems to me the door is wide open to step-parents, extended family and others to claim parental status in less harmonious circumstances," Superior Court Justice David Aston wrote in his decision.
"If a child can have three parents, why not four, or six or a dozen," Aston wrote, adding that "the potential to create, or exacerbate, custody and access litigation should not be ignored."
Ultimately, Aston ruled that while he was prepared to declare that the boy could have three parents, he said he didn’t have the legal authority to do so.
On Tuesday, the Appeal Court ruled it did have that authority, namely because it found a gap in the legislation due to new reproductive technologies and society’s understanding of relationships.
But at least one critic disagreed with that line of reasoning.
"It’s not the court’s role to fill legislative gaps," said Joseph Ben-Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values, a conservative Ottawa think-tank.
"The Ontario government must appeal this case regardless of whether they think the decision of the court was right.
"The whole notion that there is such a thing as three parents . . . has potential ramifications on public policy on a lot of levels."
An appeal would "defend the integrity of the legislative process," said Ben-Ami, who added a government study of marriage and family issues is long overdue.
Several so-called pro-marriage groups have called on the federal government to launch a royal commission on marriage and families.
The Chronicle Herald
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/550697.html extracted January 9, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)