SHOULD LUTHERANS ORDAIN GAYS?

This Friday the Holy Cross Lutheran church in Newmarket, Ontario, will become the first Lutheran church in Canada to ordain a gay man, 45-year-old Lionel Ketola.

However, if tomorrow’s plan goes forward, the congregation could face anything from a verbal warning to expulsion from the national church organization according to Bishop Michael Pryse of the Evangelical Lutheran church of Canada.

While Bishop Pryse has worked to establish full church status for gays, he said many Lutheran congregations simply aren’t ready for such a sweeping social shift: “Most members of our church aren’t going to be happy.”

In the United States two congregations have ordained lesbian pastors who are in stable relationships.

Mr. Ketola says he “feels thrilled and very privileged. I feel excited about the opportunity to offer a public witness that really has the potential to open up safe spaces in the church for queer people.”

Do you agree the Lutheran church should ordain gays who are in relationships?

Today the Supreme Court of California ruled that gay marriage is legal in the state.

SHOULD GOVERNMENTS GIVE OUT DRUGS?

The results of Vancouver’s controversial safe-drug-injection site are in and they are decisive. Insite, which offers clean needles and assistance to hard-drug users, is a remarkable success story. It saves lives, reduces infections and disease, and paves the way the way to detox. Eight thousand people have visited the site since it opened in 2003. The site costs the government about $3 million a year.

So why is the Harper refusing to say whether it will extend the legal exemption under which the site operates beyond June 30?

It would seem Harper’s minister of health, Tony Clement, rejected his own department’s advice and abruptly changed course.

Mr. Clement, by all appearances, does not want more research. He wants research that conforms o the Harper government’s antipathy toward supervised injection facilities and provides the impetus to shut down Insite or at least reject applications for similar facilities elsewhere in Canada.

Should the Harper government extend Vancouver’s supervised drug facility?

Should the government set up other facilities in cities in Canada?

Do you think there is a better way to spend $3 million annually on a drug program?

SHOULD YOU BE FORCED TO UNDERGO CHEMO?

An 11-year-old Hamilton boy, who likes singing and dancing and writing stories, was diagnosed with leukemia four year ago. He underwent chemotherapy and this January celebrated one year cancer-free. But the disease came back in February. The boy did one round of chemotherapy, then decided to stop aggressive treatments in favour of natural remedies, including chelation therapy, vitamins, oregano and green tea. His father agreed with his son.

Chemotherapy made him extremely ill and caused effects such as vomiting, bloating, pain in his spine and difficulty walking.

The boy’s father said his son “told us that he didn’t want to undergo any more treatment because he felt that it wasn’t going to give him quality of life, that he felt it would probably take away his life.” Two of Canada’s top pediatric oncologists have said he will die without the aggressive treatment.

Enter the Hamilton Children’s Aid Society. They obtained a court order saying the boy is compelled to undergo chemo. A judge had earlier ruled the boy is not capable of understanding the implications of refusing therapy.

Now his family can only visit him under the watchful eyes of CAS workers and security guards; his father was evicted from the hospital in handcuffs after reacting in anger when his son was seized. The father said: “We may still lose against them, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up: He would rather just go traditional and natural and take it for as long as it would take him so that he could be with his friends, and so that he could be at home with his family and play with his sister and just try to have fun and live as long as he could live.”

The boy’s family has now retained a high-profile Toronto lawyer to represent their interests.  Today the boy will receive his fourth and fifth rounds of aggressive cancer treatment under the constant watch of security guards, nurses and CAS agents.

In its lead editorial this morning The Globe and Mail came out strongly for enforced treatment:  “The 11-year-old in Hamilton may know his own body, and may not wish to suffer any more.  The father may respect his son’s wishes.  But loath as a democratic society should be to intervene in family matters, it is right to assert the value it puts on children’s lives by insisting that children can’t make life-and-death decisions.”

Do you agree the boy should be forced to undergo chemotherapy?

Do you agree with the judge that an 11-year-old boy could not make an informed decision in this matter? The Catholic church teaches that seven is the age of reason.

Who should be able to make the decision about treatment in this case?

CAN MYANMAR BE HELPED?

Today the first American plane with relief supplies reached Myanmar (Burma). But the question is how much help will the desperate people actually receive? According to the U.N fewer than one-third of the refugees have received any aid and the estimated death total has reached 216,000.

The problem is the military junta. Relief distribution is dreadfully slow because of restrictions imposed by the military regime. A member of the junta has announced that foreign aid workers are prohibited from entering the disaster area and they must give all their supplies to the military for distribution. Food boxes have been slapped with the names of the military, clearly a self-serving propaganda effort by a group that knows little or nothing about the distribution of disaster relief.

Two immediate dangers are food riots and epidemics. Flooded areas in the disaster zone are contaminated with human and animal waste making them “an effective breeding ground” for diseases like cholera and typhoid. Yet only two of 20 visa requests by World Vision have been processed.

As a horrified world offered help, the generals continue to be obstructive. Aid workers waited in vain for visas and the junta haggled about import duties on emergency supplied. “This,” wrote the Economist, “is criminal.”

So what can be done to help the dying and injured in Myanmar?

Should the West try to ignore the junta and fly in supplies and personnel without their permission?

Or should the West aid and abet the junta by giving them relief supplies directly for distribution even though they are likely to make a hash of it?

Or should the West withhold supplies until the junta agrees to fully cooperate>

What do you think?

Finally, do you think Canadians will give money to relief agencies such as World Vision if the junta continues to interfere and delay the relief effort?

SHOULD QUEEN’S PARK DROP THE LORD’S PRAYER?

Thousands of Ontarians have signed petitions and sent on-line submissions urging Premier Dalton McGuinty to retain the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each day in the Legislature.

McGuinty says he believes that the Ontario legislative day should begin with a more inclusive opening that reflects the province’s diverse communities. “We continue to change as a province, as a society in terms of our makeup and our cultures and our faiths, and I think we have got a responsibility to ensure that all people feel truly at home here.”

McGuinty, who is a Catholic (his mother opposes any change) pointed out that other legislatures have dealt with this issue by eliminating opening prayers altogether or substituting a moment of silence.

Conservative member Garfield Dunlop said he has personally received hundreds of e-mails with 90-95per cent expressing support for the Lord’s Prayer.

Conservative MPP Peter Shurman said that he does not have a problem with keeping the Lord’s Prayer even though he is Jewish (and a friend and former radio colleague of mine at CJAD in Montreal).

If you were a citizen of Ontario would you be inclined to retain the Lord’s Prayer or drop it?

SHOULD TIM FIRE THE MANAGER?

Let me acknowledge my bias here.

I am a big fan of Tim Hortons. Their coffee is scalding hot and robust and their doughnuts (especially sour cream plain) are the best in the business.

But Tims stumbled badly the other day. The coffee chain, one of the most valued brands in the country, fired a 27-year-old single mother of four, Nicole Lillman, because she gave away a timbit (16 cents) to the restless child of a regular customer. (When head office heard of the incident in a local store in London, they promptly hired her back.)

Nicole was fired after she was hauled into the manager’s office and told she had been caught on video giving away free food. Nicole said: “When I told my daughter I lost my job, she started crying. She’s only six, and she doesn’t know. She said, ‘We won’t have any food any more.’”

The fate of the manager who fired Nicole is still being decided.

In your view, what should happen to the manager?

Should he be fired?

IS A MINISTER’S LOVE LIFE A PRIVATE MATTER?

Questioned in the Commons about his ex-girlfriend’s ties with men in biker gangs, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier told the opposition to butt out of his private life: “People’s private lives are none of your business.”

Prime Minister Harper backed up his minister: “I hear that one of my cabinet minister’s has an ex-girlfriend. It’s none of my business. Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Dion are quite a group of gossipy old busybodies.”

But is that the end of it? The girlfriend, Julie Couillard, a 38-year-old Montreal divorcee, was involved with biker gangs, was once the target of a biker threat on her life, was married to a criminal who later became a police informant and dated another criminal who was gunned down in a gang-style murder.

This is the woman whom Foreign Affairs Minister Bernier requested be considered his “spouse” when he was travelling on foreign trips.

Deputy Liberal leader, MIchael Ignatieff, said the case did not involve morals but security.  “The issue is whether the national security clearances for the minister were conducted number one, and secondly, whether she had inadvertently or advertently, connection or contact with or exposure to documents related to the national security of Canada.”

Gilles Duceppe charged that Bernier had recklessly opened himself to  blackmail.

Do you agree with Bernier that this whole incident if a private matter?

Or do you agree there is a security dimension to the case and it should be pursued further?

Should the Minister of Foreign Affairs,  who represents the face of Canada abroad, be mixed up in this kind of liaison?

DOES ABSTINENCE WORK?

It would seem too many people beat the drums for sexual abstinence by imparting false information: that abstinence-until-marriage materials incorrectly suggests that HIV can pass through condoms because the latex used in condoms is porous. (Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, the Vatican’s septuagarian celibate in charge of family values also peddled that canard); another abstinence advocate described condoms as “flimsy pieces of rubber” that students should not trust.

According to surveys in the U.S. 46.8 per cent of all high school students reported having had sexual intercourse. For high school seniors this figure reaches 63 per cent. The mean age for first sexual intercourse in Canada is 16.5 years.

The executive director of the American Public Health Association said ethical and human rights concerns arise when abstinence is presented as the only option.

John Santelli, professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia University, says: “The demographic reality is that abstinence-only is out of touch with the reality of young people.”

Do you agree?

SHOULD HILLARY BOW OUT?

It was not a goodnight for Hillary Clinton.

She lost North Carolina in a blow-out and won Indiana by a hair. As a result she will never have enough pledged delegates to win the nomination. (Neither, of course, will her opponent) Still, she has vowed to fight on and, as I understand it, plans to be in the field in West Virginia today.

Senator Clinton has two choices now: to watch the inevitable play out, choosing the appropriate time to concede defeat: or to fight to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations, even though the DNC has disqualified those states for holding their primaries too early.

She could, if she wanted to, force a floor fight at the convention;  she would probably lose.  (She would have the DNC and the Obama forces ranged against her).  Win or lose she would leave the Democratic party shattered.

She may well be, as she claims, the better candidate to fight John McCain this fall.  But some of her own supporters are beginning to wonder how formidable she would be if she somehow won the nomination by snatching it from Obama at the 11th hour.

Does Senator Clinton’s courageous campaign entitle her to keep on fighting?

Or for the good of the party should she bow out?

What do you think?

IS MARRIAGE IN TROUBLE?

New figures from Great Britain suggest marriage in in steep decline.

If present trends continue, one in 10 marriages will end in five years and a staggering 45 per cent of couples will divorce. In fact, marriage is at its lowest level of popularity since records began in 1962. Now 43 per cent of children are born to mothers who are unwed and 2.2 million people cohabit. Seventy per cent of Britishers think there is nothing the matter with sex before marriage. I t would also seem that the highest rate of marriage is among the more affluent.

Figures also suggest that the married state brings the most benefits - better health, longer life, better sex, greater earnings for men and better outcomes for children. Women benefit as much as men.

So why are so many younger less affluent people eschewing marriage altogether?

The reason I hear most often personally is what is important is your commitment, not a piece of paper or a formal ceremony. Either you have the commitment or you don’t. If you do, a marriage certificate adds nothing to it; and if you don’t, a marriage certificate won’t help anyway.

A Catholic marriage consultant in London, seems to agree with the above: “If commitment, consent and covenant are present in a relationship, if promiscuity is missing and there’s a spiritual aspect to the commitment, doesn’t that have a real value too?”

Do you believe marriage is on the rocks?

Does a certificate or a ceremony add anything to a mature commitment? (Perhaps it should be noted that cohabitations have a much higher break-up rate than marriages).