Jason Akermanis,  a leading Australian Rules  football player who has played over 300 senior AFL games and is at present part of the Western Bulldogs (Footscray) team, is in strife over comments regarding homosexuality.

Akermanis wrote an article for the Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper in which he said that any AFL player who is homosexual should keep that fact to himself: “Other players would feel uncomfortable sharing a locker room with such a player.”

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Akermanis’s club has punished him with extra weeks out of the team (he is already out because of a bad leg, but they’ll be keeping him out longer than medically necessary as a punishment).

Media “experts” seem unanimous in condemning Akermanis for his stated opinion which they consider offensive.

The AFL’s CEO has also chimed in, “Jason doesn’t know what he is talking about . . . we’re in the 21^st century and let’s get with it.”

Meanwhile, what do ordinary members of the public think?

Last Monday a poll in The Age newspaper asked, “What punishment should Jason Akermanis face for suggesting etc . . .?”

56 percent of 11,000 who voted said his punishment should be “NOTHING”.

Admittedly the wording of the question related to the complicating factor that at one stage Akermanis claimed the Herald Sun had altered his column – and then admitted that they hadn’t.

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Jason Akermanis is sticking by his opinions, having repeated them in a number of interviews.

He probably thinks that freedom of speech prevails in Australia. Not everybody is so sure . . . .

Everybody knows that what Akermanis said is in the paper is true – whether or not it was tactful to print it.

Those of us who have played in Australian Football clubs know that the uncomfortable-ness which he mentions would be very real.

This will continue to be true into the 22^nd century, if there is one.

It is just a fact of life.

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As the Catholic Catechism says, “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered . . . . under no circumstances can they be approved. Homosexual persons are called to chastity . . . .”  (Catechism, 2357-59)

Two days ago, Science journal published an account of the work of Dr Craig Venter and associates in the USA who have succeeded in creating a genetic code from scratch and inserting it into a cell.

The artificial genome of 1.8 million DNA units – the basis of about 1,000 genes – was introduced into bacteria called Mycoplasma mycoides.

These organisms, with their new artificial home-made genes on board, have been able to reproduce normally.

They synthesise only the proteins which the new genes dictate.

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Dr Venter claims that this synthetic biology could allow scientists to create new fuels, new plastics etc. — the beginnings of “a new industrial revolution”.

Medical research may also be accelerated by synthetic microorganisms providing new ways of delivering nutrients, vaccines and medicines to the body.

But in the hands of politicians such biology could, of course, be used to create deadly pathogenic germs – hitherto unknown, incurable and useful for wiping out one’s enemies . . . .

So, like all blessings, this blessing is a mixed blessing — only as good as the morals of those into whose hands it falls.

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Looking further into the future, one can visualise true cyborgs becoming a reality.

Super bio-computers with artificially-created neurones resembling those of the human brain — super-intelligent, semi-synthetic, semi-human living beings?

Will they be conscious? Will they feel pain?

More importantly perhaps, will they have a relationship with God?

If they do, they may be just what we need to help us straighten out our ideas — before we destroy ourselves, our souls and our planet with our cleverness.

14,000 people wearing pink ponchos stood on the Melbourne Cricket Ground last Friday night prior to the football match between Footscray and Melbourne.

Organisers said the number 14,000 was significant — being the number of new cases of breast cancer diagnosed in Australia each year.

Among the participants were Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, federal Health Minister, Nicola Roxon and ex-athlete, Raelene Boyle.

The event is said to have raised $700,000, to go towards “raising awareness and helping people fight breast cancer”.

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What kind of “awareness” will it go towards raising?

Early detection by means of mammograms etc. is a good thing to promote.

But what about prevention?

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The World Health Organisation says that women drinking two or more standard drinks of ALCOHOL per day significantly increase their breast cancer risk.

Those drinking 5 standard drinks increase their chance of breast cancer by 50 per cent.

That’s a serious risk.

Do Australian girls and women know these things?

Are we going to tell them?

Dr Peter Boyle, director of WHO’s International Agency for Cancer Research, wants better public-health policies to combat excessive drinking:

“The clear link between breast cancer and even modest levels of alcohol drinking is a major concern, particularly in view of the changing drinking patterns of women in many countries.”

But statistics from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare suggest that Australia’s alcohol drinking rates are not falling.

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To seriously reduce breast cancer rates in younger women we must also stop suppressing the fact that breast cancer and ABORTION are linked.

We’ve known for years that women who have had induced abortions have a 50 percent higher breast cancer rate than other women.

Those aged under 18 at the time of their first abortion have a 150 percent increased risk.

Therese Rein, wife of Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, wants Australian families to give their mothers a UNICEF maternal health kit for Mothers Day this year.

She told ABC Radio that, while one in 13,000 Australian women die in childbirth, in some developing countries it is as high as one in 8.

This blog is not questioning Therese Rein’s motives.

But there are always questions every time UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) gets involved in anything.

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These UNICEF kits contain items needed to make childbirth away from a hospital safer. They include sterile dressings, equipment to cut umbilical cords safely etc.

UNICEF plans to provide these kits to lots of pregnant women in developing countries.

All of which sounds good.

But it’s always a worry when abortion-promoting agencies like UNICEF start diversifying into areas that are good.

Nobody wants women to continue being deprived of medically-safe childbirth.

But can we trust UNICEF not to tie availability of these excellent kits to a poor community’s willingness to promote abortion, sterilisation, contraception and other ethically-loaded forms of non-help?

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In January 2010, Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, President of the G-8 group of nations, announced that G-8-funded maternal health care would include only positive assistance  – clean water, inoculations, nutrition, training health workers in safe childbirth etc.

Then what happened?

Feminist and other population control groups set up an organization called “White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood”, specifically to lobby G-8 countries to include “sexual and reproductive health and rights” (which, in English, means abortion), in their maternal health care plans.

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UNICEF repeatedly asserts that access to abortion reduces maternal mortality — and that mortality rates haven’t decreased in decades.

However, British medical journal, Lancet, in April 2010, reported that maternal mortality has decreased by 35% globally since 1980 — and that UN agencies significantly overstate maternal mortality rates.

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To include abortion in maternal health care proposals is to impose western anti-child values and practices on developing nations, contrary to their cultures and religion.

A policy perhaps best described as “elitist western imperialism”, in that it imposes population control ideology under the disguise of maternal health.

How come over 3000 Sydney girls aged 12 to 14 were out and about, many unsupervised, at 3am?

They wanted to see an under-age entertainer — and their parents either hadn’t tried to, or at least succeeded in, stopping them.

The tinies wouldn’t do what the police told them, so they almost crushed each other to death.

The entertainment was called off and the children told journalists the thing was badly organised and that they were hard done by.

Police say lack of parental supervision was why they cancelled the performance.

But are parents allowed to supervise children?

Don’t children have rights that trump any authority parents might try to exert?

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Parents are forever being told they should “listen to their children”.

In the context of the internet porn-filter debate, we got lectured by experts saying things like:

 “For young people everywhere online communication and social networking sites form an important part of social identity construction and it’s not realistic to simply ban children from connecting and communicating online. The answer, as usual, is that we should talk with young people, listen to their concerns and allow them the space to think through and reflect on their own experiences . . . .”

That’s a quote from Nina Funnell, media researcher at the University of NSW, in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day.

Have you ever heard such drivel? Only an academic paid to talk that way could talk that way.

“Net Filter Patronises the Digital Generation”, said the headline . . . .

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If there’s one thing our youth need it is to be patronised.

Sure, the young have a role to play in society.

That role is to keep quiet, to listen to and obey their parents, and to try to grow up — ignoring their so-called peers if they choose to rebel against traditional morals and virtues.

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Ideally children should be with at least one parent for as much of their first 20 years as possible.

One parent staying home isn’t always easy.

Making the necessary sacrifices is an act of generosity which God will reward.

A group of people, including author, Richard Dawkins, and lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, threaten that if the Pope visits Britain later this year, he will be arrested to appear before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “crimes against humanity”.

Mr Robertson quotes the ICC definition of a crime against humanity which includes “rape and sexual slavery and other similarly inhumane acts causing harm to mental or physical health, committed against civilians on a widespread or systematic scale”. 

He claims that because “acts of sexual abuse by Catholic priests are not isolated or sporadic . . . but part of a wide practice, both known to and unpunished by, their de facto authority . . .” they fall under the ICC’s jurisdiction.

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A recent study of child abuse by Professor Philip Jenkins of Pennsylvania State University showed that, of all professions, Catholic priests have the lowest offence rate. Doctors, school teachers, prison warders and sport coaches are all worse.

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/HistoryofChristianity/American/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTE0NTk3Nw==

Most child abuse takes place in the home — typical offenders being Mum’s latest boyfriend or an uncle.

Those are the facts. But who wants facts?

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If the Pope is found guilty and locked up who will benefit?

He might be found guilty. Was he, perhaps, not quick enough in defrocking an abusive priest under his charge?

The priest involved, Reverend Stephen Kiesle, was defrocked, but not until receiving a formal hearing. It took a long time — about four years.

There is, of course, always a danger of being too quick. How impossible it is to prove that any alleged wrongful act did not happen.

Have not lawyers accused tens of thousands of non-custodial Australian fathers of child-abuse, leaving the father — already deprived of his house, car and most of his wages — banned from seeing his own child?

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Pope Benedict has done more to protect children from abusers than any previous pope.

In 2001, though the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he took direct charge of abuse cases, removing them from the hands of local bishops.

He has now, as Pope, instituted tougher training for seminarians, seeking to stop paedophiles becoming priests in the first place.