Yesterday in California, a federal judge overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

In November 2008 a referendum in California known as Proposition 8 voted, by a 52 percent majority, to ban such marriages.

Judge Walker now rules that Proposition 8 “does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples . . . Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians . . . the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.”

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Judge Walker seems aware that his wishes have no hope, ultimately, of succeeding.

He has granted a temporary stay of his order until Friday, allowing opponents of same-sex marriage time to file appeals which will obstruct — more or less indefinitely — resumption of same-sex marriages in California.

Appeals could drag on for years.

This whole episode may well be a storm in a teacup.

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California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger welcomed the ruling as “a milestone in America’s road to equality”.

Others say that, far from moving towards equality, it’s just another reminder of how some people are more equal than others.

If you believe in traditional marriage, your opinion isn’t equal enough to count for anything whatever – even if more than half the electorate agrees with you.

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 . . . but none of the above analysis addresses the most basic questions.

Do most of those opposing same sex-marriages have any idea of what marriage is?

If God exists, can a marriage be valid that is carried out in a way disobedient to him?

Must not marriages outside a church be suspect?

Marriages in non-Catholic churches – can they be pleasing to God?

Marriages in Catholic churches between couples currently living together in sin — what about them?

Likewise, what about marriages in which contraceptive practices are employed?

What tiny, minimalist, percentage of heterosexual so-called marriages are marriages in an objective sense?

* * *

Of course, only God knows the intentions in the hearts of those involved.

It is not for us to try to do his job.

The Day of Judgment soon comes.

Each of us must look to the saving of his own individual soul.

Prime Minister Gillard urges Australians to express their fears about asylum seekers, without worrying about “political correctness”.

What is she up to?

Is she saying that if voters tell her they want boat people to stop arriving, she will make it happen?

When Mr Howard more or less made it happen, didn’t the ALP leadership (including JG) label his methods “draconian” and “racist”?

Have they suddenly had a change of heart?

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One person un-worried about political correctness is Rev Fred Nile, head of the so-called Christian Democratic Party (CDP), for whose Senate candidates we will have an opportunity to vote soon.

The CDP’s policies include the following:

Australia should adopt a ten year moratorium on Muslim immigration, allowing an assessment to be made on the social and political disharmony currently occurring in countries like the Netherlands, France and the UK, so that Australia may avoid making the same mistakes.

This would also allow a decade for Muslim leaders and community in Australia to reassess their situation, rejecting any attempt to establish an “Islamic nation” within Australia.

The CDP’s website also draws attention to a couple of poll results:

On 12th March, 98.7% of people polled by the Daily Telegraph agreed with the Christian Democratic Party’s call for an immediate moratorium on Muslim immigration.

On 18th March, Channel 9’s Sunday program asked: “Do you think fundamentalist Islamic beliefs can co-exist with broader Australia values?”  94% said NO.

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Australia is obliged under United Nations conventions to accept refugees arriving on our shores. But we are not obliged to retain fake refugees. It is our duty to detect and reject any who merely seek to by-pass normal processes of applying for refugee status in Australia.

It is said that most of those arriving at Christmas Island have paid tens of thousands of dollars to people-smugglers for the opportunity to sail to Australia. These people are delaying or preventing others who have applied for refugee status and are held up in unhygienic refugee camps waiting hopefully for their turn.

There is definitely a need for thorough screening. Did it not turn out that four of the Tamil asylum-seekers rescued by the Oceanic Viking were later deemed a threat to national security by ASIO?

The other day, ex-AFL football star, Mal Brown, in a speech at an anniversary luncheon, referred to Aboriginal footballers – in the course of an attempted joke – as “cannibals”.

The media have blown his stupidity up into a big deal.

Mr Brown commented, “If the Aboriginal people take exception to it, then for that I am sorry, but when I die they can assess me on what I have done, not what I have said.”

Aboriginal footballers are being quoted saying they are “outraged” and “livid” — and that Mr Brown’s words were “disgraceful” – which, of course, they were.

However, it’s also true that as a coach Mal Brown did a lot for young Aboriginal footballers — many now household names — and they should thank him for that.

Perhaps they will when they realise they’ve been used — again — by the media whose interest in them is getting sensationalist headlines, little else.

* * *

ABC Online’s headline read: “Footballers speak for the ugly racist in us all”

True enough. Everyone tends to favour those like ourselves at the expense of those who seem different.

Aborigines are perhaps just as good (or bad) at this as the rest of us.

I recall an Aboriginal girl patient of mine saying she had decided not to go to the local nightclubs any more. I asked why. She said, “Too many wogs go there.”

The term “indigenous” is, itself, suspect.

Some Aborigines like calling everybody else “non-indigenous”.

Which is unfriendly, and also a lie. The word indigenous comes from two Latin words meaning, literally, “born here”.

I was born here. But some Aborigines resent me enough to imply that I don’t belong here.

* * *

One Aboriginal sports administrator, Paul Briggs, said yesterday, “Aboriginal people are facing the Mal Browns of the world daily . . . we don’t have the low life expectancy and the poor health issues and the poor education issues because of anything other than the social relationship, the cultural relationships and the racism that permeates Australian society.”

That kind of remark helps nobody. It’s unfair to most whites. It encourages resentful, passive, victim-mentality in blacks.

Technicolor over-statements and over-simplifications make good media.

They make fixing real-life problems harder.

In the last year, over 4000 asylum seekers arrived in Australian waters by boat — an increase of 29 percent over the previous year.

Many were Afghans and Sri Lankans who paid Indonesian smugglers to transport them. The number of Afghan arrivals was up 45 percent.

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Australia’s opposition parties claim that this increase results from Mr Rudd, on becoming Prime Minister, having scrapped the previous government’s “tough” policy of making asylum seekers remain either on Pacific islands or in detention centres in remote parts of Australia, until their status was determined.

Worldwide, numbers of asylum requests have not increased, which negates the Labor government’s theory that the increase is due to greater unrest overseas.

It seems that Australia’s weakened laws were the big factor.

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Some church leaders, both Catholic and non-Catholic, criticise opposition leader Tony Abbott’s promise that when he becomes Prime Minister he will re-toughen the laws.

Somebody from the Edmund Rice Centre (nominally Catholic) called his policy “fundamentally flawed” and “cruel”.

Overseas experience suggests, however, that too-rapid acceptance of persons of Muslim and other foreign cultures leads mainly to trouble.

BRITAIN got it wrong in 1996 by legalising Sharia tribunals operating in mosques setting up a de facto parallel and alternative system of justice — which they are still more or less stuck with.

In CANADA, a similar move met with spirited opposition from, interestingly, Muslim women. They pointed out how such a system would lead to injustices – including unpunished domestic violence, women’s evidence in court being less valued than that of men, daughters inheriting only half of what sons inherit etc. Their campaign resulted in such sectarian legal arbitrations being banned.

* * *

Australia should determine that there shall be one set of laws for all people who live here.

Traditionally our laws have been based on those inherited from a mostly Christian moral culture. It has worked out better than the justice systems of almost all other nations.

Not being specifically Catholic, some Australian laws are pretty weak and need attention — the half-hearted attitude of Protestant Christians regarding abortion being an obvious example.

A couple of weeks ago, leaders of 47 nations met in Washington, USA, for a “Nuclear Security Summit”.

They were greeted by President Obama.

 “If,” he said, “Terrorist networks such as al Qaeda ever succeeded in acquiring the materials for a nuclear weapon, they would surely use it. In short, it is increasingly clear that the danger of nuclear terrorism is one of the greatest threats to global security . . . .”

One wonders why he would say that.

Terrorists are achieving exactly what they want already without nuclear weapons.

Conventional explosives used by persons sufficiently morally bankrupt and fanatical can keep the rest of the world mentally at their mercy.

* * *

Meanwhile the USA and Australia are achieving the opposite of what they wish to achieve by their current policies.

President Obama, talker about justice and peace, has, since becoming president , increased the number of US troops in Afghanistan by 200 percent (from 30,000 to 90,000)

The result of which has been to alter the mentality of every Muslim in the world from hating the US and its allies a lot, to hating them (us) a lot more.

Every extra Western invader on Middle Eastern soil makes every Muslim you meet day by day more likely to kill you.

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Yet the world’s Muslims have something more frightening on their minds than the West’s ineffectual invasion attempts.

It is this: THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO DIE IN SUICIDE BOMBINGS ARE MUSLIMS.

The hatred and in-fighting within Muslim societies is horrible to contemplate.

The biggest hope for Muslims in today’s world is that more and more Muslims will turn to Christianity.

You hear plenty about Christians turning Muslim. You hear less about those doing the opposite. But there are a lot of them.

For all kinds of reasons they receive little publicity.

You will not find them in the “free” press/radio/TV of Western nations.

You can find plenty on the internet by googling for about 30 seconds.

* * *

The Pope has the potential of doing more for future world peace than does Mr Obama or any other military agent. (more about that tomorrow)

Those seeking to undermine the Pope and the Catholic Church are mankind’s worst enemies

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The French government’s law banning Muslim women from wearing traditional face-covering veils in public places looks like being delayed.

President Sarkozy is said to have received advice that the legislation may be “unconstitutional”

He is also under pressure from lobby groups like “Human Rights Watch”, which calls the proposal “a lose-lose situation” — saying that it “violates the rights of those choosing to wear the burqa, while doing nothing to help those compelled to do so . . . at a time when Muslims in Europe feel more vulnerable than ever . . . .”

Mr  Sarkozy has called the burqa “an assault on women’s dignity” and “a rejection of French values”. But, being a man who likes to have two bob each way, he called Islam in 2008, “one of the greatest and most beautiful civilisations the world has known”.

Are we witnessing here an embarrassing failure of nerve?

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Likewise, American president, Mr Obama, recently asserted his “deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country”.

Australia seems to be joining the same club, with Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs, Laurie Ferguson, saying in August 2009 that “Muslim Australians have contributed to almost every sphere of community life, helping our nation to become more open, enterprising, innovative and creative.”

British pop-atheist writer, Christopher Hitchins, author of the book “God Is Not Great” is currently associating himself with a low-risk act of non-daring, proposing to humiliate the Catholic religion by arresting the Pope. His courage, however, never reached the point of naming his book “Allah is not great”. Had he done that, he would be dead by now.

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From the beginnings of Christianity, until the disastrous Second Vatican Council of the 1960’s, the Catholic Church sought always to create Catholic States.

 After the Second Vatican Council, however, the Church itself started putting pressure on traditionally Catholic States to “secularise” themselves.

As a result, in today’s world there are now 57 (approximately) Islamic States.

And there are zero Catholic States.

Zero.