GAY TRUTH

A Christian couple in rural Illinois vow they will never host same-sex “marriages” or civil unions at their bed and breakfast, despite having just been docked $80,000 in damages to a same-sex couple they turned away in 2011. Jim and Beth Walder were looking for a low-stress occupation when they opened the TimberCreek B&B in Paxton, Illinois in 2003. They never got their wish, having been flooded out three times since then and watched as half the trees on their pastoral property were torn down by a gale. But worse was to come. Hard on the heels of Illinois recognizing same-sex civil unions, a homosexual couple, Todd and Mark Wathen, inquired as to whether they would be hosting civil unions. “No,” responded Jim Walder. “We only do weddings.” At this point the Wathens had already been turned down by one B&B.   But Walder didn’t just turn them down, the couple later complained. He hurt their feelings when he emailed them that, “We will never host same-sex civil unions.

The number of children being treated by the National Health Service for gender dysphoria has increased by 1,000 percent over the past five years, according to a story in the London Sun . The paper reports that at the NHS Tavistock and Portman clinic where all UK transgender patients under 18 are treated, “their families are given counselling and, in some instances, [the patients are given] hormone blocking treatments” as preparation for a possible “sex change” after 18. “Last month it was revealed a five-year-old boy returned to school in Nottinghamshire as a girl,” the Sun added. “They should be getting psychotherapy,” Dr. Joseph Berger, a leading Canadian psychiatrist, told LifeSiteNews. “These children are unhappy for a variety of reasons. They should be treated for their unhappiness. Cutting off penises and breasts is not the treatment for unhappiness.” The Sun reported that the number of youth being treated for gender dysphoria had climbed from 97 in 2010 to 1013

By Kevin Donnelly , Australian Catholic University In the entrance to the Victorian Parliament the words " Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety " can be seen on the mosaic floor. The belief is that power should never be concentrated where only a few direct the lives of others and that political control and decision-making must be dispersed. While the Biblical proverb is most relevant to how our Westminster parliamentary democracy works it is also relevant to the debate about whether or not there should be a plebiscite, or people's vote, on the issue of changing the definition of marriage . In totalitarian and autocratic regimes, whether theocracies or secular dictatorships, power is restricted to the few and the majority is silenced and unable to make its voice heard or to influence how society is shaped. Thankfully, in liberal democracies like Australia the opposite is the case. Freedom of expression, universa

Between 1973 and 1990, when my beloved mother passed away, she and her female romantic partner raised me. They had separate houses but spent nearly all their weekends together, with me, in a trailer tucked discreetly in an RV park 50 minutes away from the town where we lived. As the youngest of my mother’s biological children, I was the only child who experienced childhood without my father being around. After my mother’s partner’s children had left for college, she moved into our house in town. I lived with both of them for the brief time before my mother died at the age of 53. I was 19. In other words, I was the only child who experienced life under “gay parenting” as that term is understood today. Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community didn’t really know what was going on in the house. To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school wi