Jim Wallace Says He Speaks For All Christians.

From ChristianityToday, a report on the debate over aid in dying in Australia:

The vast majority of Christians are opposed to euthanasia and would be deeply concerned about last night’s passing of the second reading stage in the South Australian Upper House of a bill to legalise voluntary euthanasia, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said today.

ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said reported claims by the group ‘Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia’ that many Christians support euthanasia give a false impression regarding the true views of the overwhelming majority of Christians.

“ACL has battled strongly against euthanasia being legalised for years at both State and Federal levels and before numerous parliamentary inquiries. In consulting with churches and Christian leaders we have been left in no doubt that the vast majority of Christians are opposed to euthanasia,” Mr Wallace said.

“It has become a tactic by some groups to assume a representation that they don’t have. We saw this in the charter of rights debate and we are again seeing this in the current debate over euthanasia in South Australia. These tactics are clearly designed to confuse people about the true stance of the overwhelming majority of Christians on these matters.”

After All That Noise: End of Life Counseling in Health Care Bill.

The AP is reporting that end of life care, ballyhooed as "death panels," forced euthanasia, and encouraging our elder and terminal to die, is in the current health care bill as announced today.

The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.

For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions, and make their wishes known in advance through living wills and similar legal documents. But when House Democrats proposed this summer to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, it touched off a wave of suspicion and anger.

Prominent Republicans singled it out as a glaring example of government overreach.

Nice to know that cooler heads prevailed - and glaringly obvious that Republicans, who in the past have encouraged participation in end of life discussions, were only playing up the noise and lies for their own purposes this summer.

As I've written for AlterNet and elsewhere on this blog, giving elders and terminal patients choice in how they die saves them from the pain of unnecessary and ineffective treatments, helps their family to better sustain the grief of death, saves the families and the country money, and saves the dying from spending their last days in a hospital.

Now if only the Dems would get some balls regarding abortion....

World Congress of Families Hates "Radical Feminists"; Loves Russia.

Press Release today from Religion Press Release Service:

WORLD CONGRESS OF FAMILIES COUNTERS FEMINIST DISINFORMATION ON UN RESOLUTION SUPPORTING "TRADITIONAL VALUES"

(Washington, DC) World Congress of Families Managing Director Larry Jacobs decried what he called "feminist disinformation" on a resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Councilaffirming "traditional values. " The resolution also calls for a UN workshop in 2010 to examine the way traditional values are the foundation for human rights:http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/sdpage_e.aspx?b=10&se=100&t=4.

Sponsored by the Russian Federation, the resolution was passed by a vote of 26 to 15, with 6 abstentions. Just like the Amsterdam Declaration adopted by World Congress of Families V (http://www.worldcongress.org/WCF5/wcf5.dec.htm) , the resolution reaffirms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Radical feminists have since gone ballistic, citing the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, who identifies "traditional practices" to include "female genital mutilation, honor killings, spousal abuse, dowry-related violence and customary laws that deny women equality."

Jacobs responded: "Only radical feminists would consider honor killings and female genital mutilation to be ‘traditional values.' These odious practices of violence are confined to a few societies worldwide, and should continue to be eradicated."

Jacobs continued: "When the World Congress of Families, and the international pro-family movement, speaks of traditional values, we mean those that support the natural family -- including parental rights, respect for the rights of the unborn and infirm, freedom to practice religious faith, and a recognition of the different but co-equal roles of men and women in the family."

Even the term "natural family" derives from the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says the family is "the natural and fundamental group unit of society, and is entitled to protection by society and the state."

Jacobs observes: "In the past, instead of helping women, children and victims of violence by enforcing the existing human rights provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, radical feminists and their allies have used various United Nations agencies to try to force agenda-driven sex education, condom-distribution, abortion, and homosexuality on traditional societies. The UN Human Rights Council Resolution on "Traditional Values" represents a threat to the radical feminist, homosexual and pro-abortion goals, not an endorsement of spousal abuse."

Jacobs concluded: "The Russian Federation is to be congratulated for sponsoring this affirmation of the rights of families in the face of various onslaughts by international bodies. Russia may be prompted in part by its own experience and understandable concern about the nation's very low birth rate and decline in traditional family formation. Whatever the reason, we are grateful for Russia's move in support of traditional values and the natural family."

World Congress of Families has held five international Congresses, from 1997 to 2009. The last was World Congress of Families V in Amsterdam, August 10-12 of this year (www.worldcongress.nl).

For more information on the World Congress of Families, visit www.worldcongress.org. To schedule an interview with Managing Director Larry Jacobs, contact Communications Director Don Feder at 508-405-1337 or dfeder@rcn.com.

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the ‘seedbed' of civil society (as found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948). The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families -- Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007). The fifth World Congress of Families was held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, August 10-12, 2009 (www.worldcongress.nl andwww.worldcongress.org).

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