Challenges for 2013

Babette Francis

We wish all Endeavour Forum supporters a Happy New Year, and we hope you are all feeling fit and energetic because 2013 holds many challenges. The good news is that pro-family organisations defeated the same-sex marriage Bills in the Australian federal parliament and in Tasmania, the bad news is that there are same-sex marriage Bills lurking in other state parliaments even though their Constitutional validity is dubious as marriage is under federal law.

The bad news from the US is the re-election of President Obama, the most pro-abortion, pro-homosexual President in US history. The good news is that the Republicans - who have a strong pro-life plank in their party platform - retained control of the US House of Representatives, and won a record number of Governorships across the country, the most since 1920.

More good news from the US is that not only are the numbers of abortions showing a steady decline but so are the number of doctors willing to perform abortions.
LifeNews referred to the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, (September 2011) which found 97% of physicians surveyed say they have encountered patients wanting an
abortion while only 14% of doctors are willing to do one. That’s lower than the 22% willing to do abortions in the last survey in 2008.

We need to translate these successes into the Australian scene, including the many restrictions on abortion legislated at the state level in the US such as parental notification laws. Another challenge confronting us is the move by the federal Labor government to include sexual orientation and gender identity in anti-discrimination legislation. (See Moira Kirkwood's article on p. 3). This has led to such atrocious situations as a male student who dresses as a woman but has had no surgery or hormone treatment, being allowed to use the women's locker room and walk about naked in front of young girls.

Students from Olympia High School and children in the Evergreen Swim Club and Aquatics Academy (Washington state) share use of the locker rooms with Washington Evergreen State College. College officials claimed that its nondiscrimination policy doesn’t allow the school to stop the man from exposing himself to girls as young as six years old in a women’s locker room. A local district attorney has also stated that he doesn’t plan to enforce the state’s indecent exposure statute to protect the girls. Rather than prevent the man from using the locker room, the school has installed curtains and asked the girls to change behind them.

Another area of concern is paid parental leave - it discriminates against non-career mothers who get only the baby bonus, worth much less than PPL. Career mothers also get generous child care subsidies. Coalition policy as it is currently articulated is discriminatory even between career mothers, as a high-paid executive will get far more in PPL than a nurse or teacher. We need to convince both Labor and Coalition not to discriminate between mothers. A uniform allowance to all mothers, means-tested if need be, would save money in administrative costs which could be used to help disadvantaged families.

Endeavour Forum supporters and friends are all invited to join our Birthday celebration and hear some great speakers.