Family Watch Newswire

The Family Watch Newswire is a service of Family Watch International that highlights important news items and useful analysis on the family and family-related issues from around the world.

July 26, 2024

ARKANSAS SUPREME COURT ORDERS SECRETARY OF STATE TO COUNT ABORTION AMENDMENT. The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered the Secretary of State to perform an initial count of petition signatures that volunteers collected for the Arkansas Abortion Amendment of 2024. Read more here.

 

NEBRASKA SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS 12-WEEK ABORTION BAN AND LIMITS TO TRANSGENDER MEDICINE. The state Supreme Court said that abortion and transgender medicine are “distinct types of medical care,” but the law combining regulations on both does not violate the single-subject rule because they both fall under the topic of healthcare. Read more here.

NIH KICKS OUT SCHOLARS CRITICAL OF GENDER IDENTITY FROM ‘SEX AND GENDER’ EVENT. Colin Wright, a well-known biologist and Manhattan Institute fellow, and Tomás Bogardus, a philosophy professor at Pepperdine University and self-described “traditional Catholic,” were booted from a webinar that was part of a two-day “Exploring the many dimensions of sex and gender in the genomics era” symposium hosted by NIH. Read more here.

 

TOP TRANSGENDER HEALTH GROUP SAID HORMONES, SURGERIES WERE ‘MEDICALLY NECESSARY’ SO THAT INSURANCE WOULD COVER THEM. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) asserted that cross-sex hormones and surgeries were “medically necessary” so that insurance companies would pay for those procedures, allowing concerns about the treatments’ affordability to dictate claims about their effectiveness, newly unsealed court documents show. Read more here.

 

AUSTRALIAN ‘TRANS INCLUSIVE’ FOOTBALL CLUB WITH FIVE MALE PLAYERS DOMINATES WOMEN’S LEAGUES AFTER BEING ACCUSED OF INJURING FEMALE PLAYERS. The Flying Bats Football Club in North Sydney has at least five males who identify as transgender on the women’s team, and has previously been accused of causing career-changing injuries to female competitors. Read more here.

 

OLYMPIC TORCH RELAY THROUGH FRANCE INCLUDED THREE DRAG QUEENS. Makeup-clad, wig-wearing men in high heels were spotted carrying the flame on various parts of the journey between May and July of this year as the Olympic torch made its way around the country to Paris. Read more here.

 

BIDEN’S TITLE IX RULES ALLOWING MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS BLOCKED IN 21 STATES: WHERE THINGS STAND. In addition to the rules being blocked in 21 states, dozens of K-12 schools and universities across the country have been blocked from implementing the rules, which were issued on April 19, 2024. Read more here.

 

SCHOOL DISTRICT TAKES DOWN ‘LGBTQ RESOURCES’ LINK TO ORG WITH TRANSGENDER SURGERY INFORMATION AFTER DAILY SIGNAL EXPOSÉ. Newport Harbor High School in the Newport Mesa Unified School District had posters around its halls with scannable QR codes in its hallways that link students to a number of “LGBTQ+ Resources,” including the LGBTQ Center of Orange County’s website. Read more here.

SOUTH KOREA’S TOP COURT UPHOLDS LANDMARK RULING OVER SAME-SEX SPOUSAL STATE BENEFITS. South Korea’s supreme court upheld a 2023 ruling that the National Health Insurance Service should provide equal spousal coverage to a homosexual couple who filed a suit in 2021 against the agency that canceled their spousal benefits. Read more here.

CATHOLICS IN AFRICA WANT NIGERIA WITHDRAWN FROM ‘PRO-LGBT, PRO-ABORTION’ SAMOA AGREEMENT. Catholic activists under the umbrella organization CitizenGO Africa are calling on the Nigerian government to withdraw from the Samoa agreement, a contentious document they say seeks to promote abortion and LGBTQ ideologies in the West African nation, while undermining the fundamental cultural values of Nigerians. Read more here.

 

COLORADO BISHOPS TO VOTERS: OPPOSE ABORTION & LGBT RIGHTS; SUPPORT ANTI-TRANS INITIATIVES. Four Colorado bishops representing the Catholic Church have taken a stance on multiple upcoming ballot initiatives, vocally opposing measures promoting abortion, same-sex marriage and measures that would negatively impact parental rights. Read more here.

 

CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS WATER DOWN BILL AGAINST CHILD PROSTITUTION AFTER PRESSURE FROM LGBT ACTIVISTS. LGBT activists testified before the legislature that a bill making prostitution activities with a minor a felony would be “overly punitive,” would “disproportionately impact marginalized communities,” and would criminalize members of the so-called “LGBTQ community.” Read more here.

 

ONE MILLION MOMS CONDEMN DISNEY+ ‘STAR WARS’ SERIES FEATURING COVEN OF LESBIAN SPACE WITCHES PROCREATING. Disney+’s new series, “Star Wars: The Acolyte” promotes LGBT themes and witchcraft, and it sparked controversy for its portrayal of lesbian characters using supernatural elements to conceive children. Read more here.

FONTANA, CALIFORNIA EXTENDS BUILDING MORATORIUM, ANOTHER BLOW TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD. Planned Parenthood in Fontana has rented a building for two years, but has not been able to engage in aborting pre-born children because the city extended its building moratorium for another year. Read more here.

DIVERSE GROUPS RALLY TO SUPPORT INDIANA MUSIC TEACHER FORCED OUT OF JOB FOR HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. Seventeen states, multiple medical experts, children’s advocates, and a feminist group have joined together in support of former Indiana high school music teacher John Kluge whose employment was terminated because of his sincerely held religious beliefs on gender identity. Read more here.

CA SCHOOL DISTRICT SCRUBBED MENTION OF LGBTQ PEOPLE FROM ITS SEX-ED CURRICULUM, VIOLATING THE LAW, STATE SAYS. A California state investigation found that Cajon Valley Union School District’s sexual health curriculum discriminates against LGBTQ+ people because it leaves out legally required instruction about LGBTQ+ and gender topics. Read more here.

CATHOLIC BISHOPS URGE NIGERIA TO REJECT EU SEXUAL IMPERIALISM. “Catholic Bishops and Islamic leaders called on the government of Nigeria to amend or reject a binding European Union treaty that would extend beyond economic matters to human rights issues, sex education programs, gender ideology and abortion rights. Read more here.

 

PEW SURVEY ASKS WHY SO MANY U.S. ADULTS DON’T HAVE ANY CHILDREN. America’s fertility rate was lower in 2023 than it’s ever been, and a new analysis by Pew Research Center finds among U.S. adults who aren’t parents, the share who say they don’t expect to ever have kids has risen 10 percentage points between 2018 and 2023, to 47 percent. Read more here.

NEW BRAIN RESEARCH CONFIRMS THAT GENDER DIFFERENCES ARE HARDWIRED, by Leonard Sax, MD. “For much of recent history, many people have believed that … gender doesn’t matter, that there are no hardwired differences between male and female. … In 1990, Berkeley professor Judith Butler asserted that gender is entirely a social construction, a performance …In my visits to more than 500 schools over the past 23 years, I have found that many schools now embrace Butler’s view of gender-as-performance. These schools actively ‘problematize’ and ‘deconstruct’ the male/female dichotomy. Some school districts now even discourage the use of the words ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ on the grounds that those words reinforce the heteronormative binary. And the phrase ‘ladies and gentlemen’ is even more offensive to some. …The problem is that there are hardwired female/male differences, and those differences matter.” Read more here.

 

BILLION-DOLLAR FOUNDATION TARGETS PRO-LIFE GROUPS, by Austin Ruse. “A significant step in official silencing of opposing political and scientific speech is applying the label of misinformation. The billion-dollar non-profit, Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), has just launched a project to label certain speech as misinformation, and they have specifically targeted two well-known pro-life groups, Heartbeat International and Live Action. KFF’s Health Misinformation Monitor issued its first edition in recent days and is claiming that Heartbeat International is misinforming the public when the group says the abortion pill is reversible.” Read more here.

 

HOW SCHOOLS ARE SEXUALISING CHILDHOOD, by Joanna Williams. “Alarm about children being taught highly sexualised, politically loaded and age-inappropriate topics in school sex-education lessons has been growing for many years. Back in May, the UK’s then-Conservative government finally decided to tackle the problem. …But with Labour now in charge, all aspects of the school curriculum, including Relationships and Sex Education, are seemingly up for review. The Labour Party is under pressure to drop the recent guidance, which has barely yet been implemented, and bring back lessons teaching children that gender is multiple, fluid and for them to choose for themselves – and that knowledge of extreme sexual practices is somehow empowering (even if you are only eight years old).” Read more here.

 

LANDLORD AGAIN ATTEMPTS TO EVICT VIRGINIA ABORTION FACILITY OWNED BY ‘ABORTION QUEEN,’ by Cassy Fiano-Chesser. “The landlord of an abortion facility in Bristol, Virginia, is again attempting to evict the business, but the owner is vowing to stay. Diane Derzis owns Bristol Women’s Health Center, which leases a commercial property building from brothers Chase King and Chadwick King. From the very beginning, the King brothers have tried to evict the abortion facility, claiming in December of 2022 that Derzis was not truthful about the nature of her business when she signed the lease with them.” Read more here.

 

CHRISTOPHER WRAY SAYS FBI DOES NOT TARGET PEACEFUL PRO-LIFERS. THE STATS PROVE OTHERWISE, by Jordan Boyd. “FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has historically focused more on ‘abortion-related violent extremism’ than targeting pro-lifers under the unconstitutional Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. …Contrary to Wray’s claims, only five of the 60 cases brought under Biden’s watch focused on pro-abortion extremists. The other 55 targeted people who value life in the womb for praying, singing, and evangelizing at abortion facilities across the U.S.” Read more here.

 

NO, ABORTION IS NEVER MEDICALLY NECESSARY, by Ashley Bateman. “Recently the Association for American Physicians and Surgeons filed a suit after multiple doctors were targeted by credentialing boards and the U.S. government for their anti-abortion stance post-Dobbs. Public ignorance and confusion over a ‘necessary’ abortion continues to permeate political language and Biden’s rule is yet another coercive attempt to install national abortion ‘must-haves.’” Read more here.