Margaret Court is the women’s tennis equivalent of Don Bradman.

Perhaps the greatest female athlete Australia has produced.

Winner of all four Grand Slam tournament singles titles in the same calendar year (1970).

She won a record 62 Major titles overall.

The International Tennis Hall of Fame states, “For sheer strength of performance and accomplishment there has never been a tennis player to match her”.

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Margaret Court still gets into the news.

Yesterday, for example.

She apparently said, “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman . . . I believe it’s important for young people to know that . . . .”

And, “I say what God says, and that’s why I’ve spoken out.”

Mrs Court, a lapsed Catholic, is now an office bearer in a Pentecostal group.

She has said that homosexuality is often the result of sexual abuse.

This resulted in a “backlash” with people saying there is no scientific evidence of such a connection.

There is, of course, but that is hardly the point.

The point is that homosexual acts are contrary to natural law and young people should know that and should be protected from entrapment.

Britain’s Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice has recently ruled that there is no justification for prohibiting private abortion clinics from advertising their services on television.

Private abortion businesses will be permitted to advertise themselves using terms such as “post-conception advice services”, with the emphasis on how they can arrange ultrasound scans etc.

They will not be obliged to state that they have a financial interest in aborting the babies of those who come seeking “post-conception advice”.

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The Committee requires that the adverts will be subject to a Code stipulating that such advertisements are not to be “harmful, offensive or misleading”.

Doesn’t everybody know that abortion is harmful to the baby?

And isn’t it also harmful to the whole society — in its cheapening of the sanctity of human life.

The small lives to be exterminated are children of God.

And therefore of infinite worth – a fact more important than the profit margins of Mary Stokes International etc.

Canada’s Liberal Party has voted to legalise marijuana if and when they get into power.

Their policy is that legalisation will “ensure the regulation and taxation of its production, distribution and use, while enacting strict penalties for illegal trafficking, etc.”

An unrealistic policy, rivalling the naivety of Australia’s Greens Party.

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We have had, for years, scientific proof that marijuana has serious mental health risks

Marijuana is known to trigger psychosis in some people and makes any pre-existing mental illness worse.

Marijuana users with a family history of mental illness are the ones most likely to develop schizophrenia.

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Yet there are still paid “experts” in the drugs field who espouse what they call “harm-minimisation”.

Which, in English, means tolerating the use of addictive and dangerous drugs and hoping nothing bad will happen.

Such a slack attitude will seem to future generations to rank alongside those tame “experts” of the past, who used to make statements suggesting that cigarettes were not a health hazard.

The Australian Labor Party now officially supports legalisation of “same-sex marriage”.

Activist, Alex Greenaway, calls it “a clear message . . . that it’s time to provide equality for all Australians”.

Which is manifest nonsense.

All Australians are not equal.

Those who break the law are put in prison. That is not treating them as equals.

The question that homosexual activists don’t want to face is whether homosexual acts are harmful enough to warrant the law prohibiting them.

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Homosexually-active persons are not normal.

They know they are not normal.

They know it won’t be easy to suppress their abnormal activities.

For this very reason, the law should encourage, pressure, and persuade them to give them up.

Even more important for young persons who are teetering on the brink of declaring themselves homosexuals . . . .

To give them some incentive to think again . . . .

There are other reasons to oppose legalised homosexual acts — based on disease prevention, child protection etc.

But those mentioned above are basic.

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If we have equal regard for persons afflicted with homosexual tendencies, then we must do all we can to help them.

They aren’t being helped by telling them, yes, your unnatural acts are all you are good for – we’ll leave you to damage yourselves because we don’t care about you . . . .

If we have a real regard for them, we’ll tell them, yes, it is unfortunate that you are this way — but we’ll do everything possible to help you live a normal lifestyle.

Last Monday, the Australian federal parliament passed world-first laws forcing all cigarettes to be sold in plain (olive-green) packs.

Within one hour, the Philip Morris Company began legal proceedings against the government threatening to cost “billions of dollars”.

They claim that the new laws breach constitute “stealing” (i.e. devaluing) their brands under international business law.

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Smoking kills up to half of the people who smoke — worldwide, nearly six million people each year.

This is a life-and-death struggle.

Manufacturers and sellers of tobacco products are serial killers.

Governments should treat them as such . . . .

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Adjusting Australia’s laws so that anybody supplying anybody with a tobacco-product is punishable under attempted murder legislation . . . .

With steep penalties . . . .

If a few CEO’s or others in the supply-chain were gaoled for a few years, might that hasten the end of the tobacco industry?

Source of statistics: (www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index.html)

Fashion clothing company, Cotton On, is being sued by Australia’s competition watchdog, the ACCC.

Cotton On recalled a range of sleepwear in November 2010 after the ACCC discovered the products weren’t up to fire safety standards — despite carrying a “low fire danger” label.

Cotton On continued selling the pyjamas into 2011, according to an ACCC statement lodged in the Federal Court.

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Last year, Cotton On was marketing hip flasks to under-drinking-age teens.

Making the makings of an alcohol binge into a fashion accessory . . . .

Suitable for concealing in one’s jacket pocket or inside one’s shirt . . . .

In fashion colours — hot pink snakeskin, blue or pink floral, graffiti and denim . . . .

Professor of Health Psychology, Dr John Toumbourou, condemned this venture, wanting the flasks withdrawn from sale, being “contrary to public health interests”.

Cotton On did eventually start labelling the flasks as not for sale to people under 18.

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Cotton On seems willing to sell ANYTHING that will make a dollar.

No good waiting for their consciences to make them do the right thing.

It would be nice if the younger set decided to boycott Cotton On and put them out of business.