"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Northwoods is a ministry dedicated to refreshing Christians and challenging them to search for the truth in Christianity, politics, sociology, and science
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"
Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Please note: All my writings and comments appear in bold italics in this colour
Kenyan doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie appeared in court in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa on Monday at the start of a high-profile trial over the starvation deaths of more than 400 of his followers. Mackenzie faces terrorism charges and is also accused of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, and torturing children, along with 94 other defendants.
The leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult went on trial on Monday on charges of terrorism over the deaths of more than 400 of his followers in a macabre case that shocked the world.
Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie appeared in court in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa along with 94 co-defendants, an AFP journalist said.
Journalists were removed from the courtroom shortly after the start of the hearing to enable a protected witness to take the stand.
Mackenzie, who was arrested in April last year, is alleged to have incited his acolytes to starve to death in order to "meet Jesus".
He and his co-accused all pleaded not guilty to the charges of terrorism at a hearing in January.
They also face charges of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, and child torture and cruelty in separate cases.
The remains of more than 440 people have been unearthed so far in a remote wilderness inland from the Indian Ocean coastal town of Malindi, in a case that has been dubbed the "Shakahola forest massacre".
Autopsies have found that while starvation appeared to be the main cause of death, some of the victims -- including children -- were strangled, beaten, or suffocated.
Previous court documents also said that some of the bodies had had their organs removed.
Police accused of laxity
Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, turned himself in on April 14 after police acting on a tip-off first entered Shakahola forest, where mass graves have been found.
In March, the authorities began releasing some victims' bodies to distraught relatives after months of painstaking work to identify them using DNA.
Questions have been raised about how Mackenzie, a self-styled pastor with a history of extremism, managed to evade law enforcement despite his prominent profile and previous legal cases.
Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki last year accused Kenyan police of laxity in investigating the initial reports of starvation.
"The Shakahola massacre is the worst breach of security in the history of our country," he told a senate committee hearing, vowing to "relentlessly push for legal reforms to tame rogue preachers".
The state-backed Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) in March criticised security officers in Malindi for "gross abdication of duty and negligence".
The horrific saga has seen President William Ruto vow to intervene in Kenya's homegrown religious movements.
In largely Christian Kenya, it has also thrown a spotlight on failed efforts to regulate unscrupulous churches and cults that have dabbled in criminality.
In the 15 years of doing this blog, I have documented some remarkably stupid decisions made by the Swedish government. This is probably the worst yet.
NATO has its minions in Sweden pressuring the government and the populace in an effort to rapidly increase the military budget. This is the purpose of NATO now, it is a weapons wholesaler. It has convinced some in the Swedish government that Russia will attack them next even though Russia, and even the USSR, honoured Sweden's neutrality for 200 years. Abandoning that neutrality to become part of the war-mongering NATO, is far more dangerous for Sweden than doing nothing.
The greatest threat to Sweden comes from Islam, not Russia. I had hoped the new right-wing government would see that, but apparently, they just see an opportunity to spend kazillions of dollars on military build-ups which will somehow provide significant benefits to individuals in the military and government.
Meanwhile, it causes panic and wasted spending among the population, and dramatically increases anxiety among children, as if they needed something else to worry about when they have Greta. This is literally a form of child abuse!
Sweden's call for population to prepare for war
sparks panic and criticism
It’s been described as a bombshell moment. The upper echelons of Sweden’s government and defence forces last week shocked the nation by explicitly warning that war might come to Sweden, and that each and every Swede should prepare themselves. While some have taken the warning seriously and flocked to the stores to stock up on fuel and survival kits, others have accused the country’s leaders of fear-mongering.
Gustav Wallbom, a 37-year-old entrepreneur and farmer who was conscripted into Sweden's compulsory military service before it was put on hold between 2010 and 2017, was not the least bit surprised by the call for Swedes to ready themselves for war.
“The fact that Russia, which is very near Sweden, is unreliable is not something new, and all the cases of espionage lately and Russia’s attempts to influence [public opinion] just add to that,” he said.
Heeding the call from officials, Wallbom, like many other Swedes, immediately headed to the hardware store to stock up on equipment for his and his family’s “crisis kit”.
“I bought fuel, lamp oil, matches and water tanks,” said Wallbom, who is a military reservist and who, as late as last week, received a letter announcing his new posting in the case of war.
“I’m more surprised that some feel that the dangers have been exaggerated," he said. "To me, that’s like burying your head in the sand.”
Wallbom was referring to what had happened at an annual security conference in Sälen in western Sweden a week ago.
Carl-Oscar Bohlin, the minister for civil defence, had told a stunned audience that “war could come to Sweden”, and that the tiny Nordic nation of 10.4 million needs to gear up. Fast.
Further fuel was added to the fire when Sweden’s commander-in-chief, Micael Bydén, then warned the same gathering that “Russia’s war against Ukraine is just a step, not an end game”. In a follow-up interview with national broadcaster TV4, he said that that all Swedes needed to prepare for war.
“We need to realise how serious the situation really is, and that everyone, individually, need to prepare themselves mentally,” he said.
Where are the bomb shelters?
Although this was not the first time the country’s officials had warned against the dangers of their increasingly aggressive neighbour Russia, it was the first time they explicitly said Sweden could potentially become its target – and a warzone.
Elin Bohman, a spokeswoman at the Swedish civil contingencies agency (MSB), which specialises in crisis management, said the comments had prompted a 3,500 percent increase in visits to the agency’s web-based map of bomb shelters, and a 900 percent increase in downloads of its information booklet “If crisis or war comes”.
“We haven’t experienced such demand since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine,” she said.
The booklet was first issued during World War II and was distributed to all Swedish households in waves throughout the Cold War until 1961. In 2018, it was revised and re-issued again on the back of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
"[The illegal annexation] was an awakening for the Swedish preparedness system,” Bohman explained. "All of a sudden the global situation changed, meaning we went from focusing only on peacetime crises to also include total defence planning in a bid to strengthen our total defence system. And a part of that was to ensure that we have a well-informed and prepared population."
In 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the booklet was sent out again. It contains information on how to prepare for and act in a crisis situation, ranging from everything from power cuts and forest fires to cyber attacks and war.
At the same time, MSB also encouraged Swedes to prepare “crisis kits” at home, containing necessities like a radio, food, water, a sleeping bag and a camping stove.
Some companies have since capitalised on this new “crisis kit” market, offering ready-made food kits that can last up to 25 years.
Multiple arrests, cyber-attacks and GPS-jamming
Since 2022, and in particular after Sweden defied Russian threats and launched a bid to join the NATO military alliance, the situation in the country has grown more and more tense. Prior to its NATO application, Sweden had not been aligned militarily for 200 years. Neither Turkey nor Hungary have green-lit the application yet, but the Turkish decision is now only a parliament vote away.
In the past year alone, Swedish police have arrested several people suspected of spying or carrying out information-gathering for Russia. Swedish authorities have also seen a surge in cyber-attacks, and in December, a large area over the Baltic Sea was subject to a number of GPS-jamming incidents, causing several airplanes to lose their satellite-derived navigation signals. In the same period, Russia carried out a military exercise in the area with the aim of “undermining enemy navigation and radio communications”.
“Some threats have intensified, [as has] the pure military threat, the threat of an armed attack, and the fact that we might be drawn into an escalation of the war in Ukraine. We’re seeing that very clearly when we study Russia,” Thomas Nilsson, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence and security service MUST told Swedish Radio in an interview on the sidelines of the security conference.
The TikTok backlash - A form of child abuse
But although last week’s comments may have been intended to place the Swedes on guard more than anything else, they also generated many negative reactions. Especially after making it onto the social media platform TikTok, whose main audience largely consists of children and teenagers.
“My children saw the TikTok and asked us about it,” said one Swedish mother of two who did not want to be named. "It's hard for kids to focus and watch full clips, so what they basically see is just the headline: "War could come to Sweden".
The child of one of her colleagues had seen the clip and come home in tears, she said.
Swedish child protection group BRIS said its hotline had been saturated with calls from worried children after the blunt comments on war had spread online, prompting its secretary general Magnus Jagerskog to plead with media to take more care in how they relay news to children.
“For many children who are easily anxious or who are already worried about war, it became [even more] difficult when they were faced with social media posts and adults talking on the news about war,” he wrote in a statement.
But the comments have also resulted in a political backlash. While the right-wing government has been accused of trying to win over supporters from the far right, the army has been accused of fear-mongering in a bid to up the annual defence spending budget.
"Playing with the threat of war as part of the political opinion campaign is immoral but who is surprised?" Carl Tham, a former minister and a member of the Social Democrat opposition, wrote in an opinion piece in daily tabloid Aftonbladet.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, whose right-wing party is in a government coalition with the far-right Sweden Democrat party, has defended the hardened war rhetoric.
“A government should of course speak clearly, anything else would be irresponsible,” he told Radio Sweden in an interview on Thursday, but noted that “there is nothing that suggests that war is at the door”.
Over the past few years I have had the privilege of writing Emma's Story with her even while she lives in Australia and I in Canada. It's a true story and a disturbing one on many levels. But it is also just one of millions of such stories that are not being told and are being largely ignored by governments, the press, and even churches around the world.
Gary Wm. Myers
Sheep-Skinned Wolves: The Emma Fretton Story
by Emma Joy Fretton (Author), Gary Wm Myers (Author)
Emma excitedly enters primary school anticipating good things, but almost immediately is physically, sexually, and emotionally abused by her paedophile teacher. She's courageous enough to report the horrible abuse, but the school administration's response was frustrating and infuriating, making promises that were never kept and even lying to her face. Inexplicably, the school, a Christian school, allows the deviate teacher to continue terrifying and torturing Emma for several years. What that does to Emma is devastating on so many levels. How could this have happened in a Christian school?
Child sexual abuse is far more prevalent than most people would believe, affecting as many as 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 6 boys. The effects are almost always life-long and very negative. In the Appendix, Gary, the co-author, describes these effects as well as signs to help identify when sexual abuse is occurring to your child. There is a wealth of other information on paedophilia learned from more than 6,500 blog posts over the past 12 years.
Toronto murder victim dodged earlier assassin's bullet with cocaine bribe
Police wiretaps reveal bounty hunter was paid to fake victim's death in 2013
By Sam Pazzano · CBC - Posted: Sep 16, 2020
Farogh Sadat was shot outside a bakery in Toronto's Corso Italia neighbourhood on June 23, 2020. Police wiretaps reveal there had been two previous attempts on his life. (Muslim Association of Hamilton)
In a plot twist worthy of a Hollywood crime thriller, the victim of a brazen execution in Toronto this summer escaped an earlier hit attempt by bribing a bounty hunter to fake the target's death.
The revelation came from a police wiretap of a phone conversation between the victim, Farogh Sadat, and another man on Jan. 15, 2015, which CBC learned about after recently obtaining a copy of a 2017 court decision about Sadat's bail conditions.
At the time of the wiretapped call, police were investigating the brutal kidnapping of a drug runner, allegedly by Sadat and others, in September 2014.
In the call, Sadat boasted that he bribed his would-be assassin with half a million dollars' worth of cocaine to stage Sadat's death in the Caribbean. Sadat said he then short-changed the bounty hunter by only giving him half of the promised amount.
Sadat, 37, was shot and killed in broad daylight on June 23, 2020, while he was sitting in his SUV with California licence plates at 1346 St. Clair Ave. W., in Toronto's Corso Italia neighbourhood.
It was the third known assassination attempt on his life.
Two previous murder attempts
In the 2017 judgment dismissing Sadat's bail application on the kidnapping allegations, Superior Court Justice Leonard Richetti noted that Sadat had bad blood with Mexican drug dealers in the Greater Toronto Area.
Police were called to the scene on St. Clair Avenue West near St. Clarens Avenue in June,
where they found Sadat in his car, having suffered fatal gunshot wounds. (Devin Keshavjee/CBC)
It started in 2013, when Sadat orchestrated a home invasion robbery. Sadat sent his henchmen to rob a suspected drug runner, H.G. (CBC is withholding his identity, as his life is likely at risk.) They grabbed $40,000 in cash and $20,000 worth of jewelry, and H.G. also gave them the keys and location of a stash house, where they stole several kilograms of low-quality cocaine.
That home invasion robbery was never reported to police.
A year later, on Sept. 6, 2014, Sadat and others allegedly kidnapped H.G., beat him and held him hostage for 12 hours, seeking information about another stash house. After that, the drug dealers put a bounty on Sadat's head, wrote Richetti.
On Sept. 23, 2014, shooters mistook Sadat's brother-in-law Ghorzang Zazai for Sadat, wounding Zazai and killing a friend, Gul Alakoozi, outside Sadat's parents' home in York region, north of Toronto. At the time, Sadat was living with his parents, who were his sureties for guns and drug possession charges in a Toronto hotel room in June 2014.
'We can't even fight these guys'
The wiretapped 2015 call was a conversation with Alakoozi's father. In it, Sadat told him he "knows" his son's killers, but York Regional Police say no one has been charged for the shooting and the investigation is ongoing.
Sadat admitted on the call that he had sold up to 20 pounds of cocaine and "bought a couple of houses" with the profits of his criminal activity, but that he wasn't wealthy enough to mount a battle against the heavily armed drug lords.
"We can't even fight these guys, because I don't have the money like these guys," he said. Sadat also said he had a "toy" – meaning a handgun – because he didn't trust anyone at the time.
Sadat also disclosed his first assassination escape, in 2013.
He said that a bounty hunter kidnapped him in the Dominican Republic, but that he bribed his would-be killer by offering him double the price of the hit — "10 bricks" (kilograms) of cocaine, worth $525,000.
The bounty hunter then staged Sadat's death by covering his "corpse" in fake blood as it lay in a Dominican ditch and photographing the "hit." But Sadat said he only gave him "half the bricks."
Sadat went into hiding on the West Coast and later tried to resolve the dispute with the drug barons.
'I hit a home run'
The drug dealers eventually discovered Sadat was still alive after he and others were busted and charged with possessing guns, drugs, a bulletproof vest and silencer after a maid spotted a man with a firearm inside a Toronto hotel room in June 2014.
Police found evidence on a laptop in the hotel room that Sadat and his partners had placed a tracking device on H.G.'s car, as well as details of a plot to pose as cops, abduct H.G. and force him to surrender the keys and location of a stash house.
Sadat's charges were stayed, however, after another man pleaded guilty. "I hit a home run," said Sadat on the wiretap.
Before H.G. was abducted in September 2014, a Peel Regional Police sergeant warned H.G. his life was in jeopardy and left her business card with him.
When the kidnappers took H.G. hostage that September, they discovered the officer's business card in his personal effects. Fearing H.G. might be under surveillance, the captors let him go after he agreed to give them some cash and the name of another potential kidnapping victim. He provided them $5,000 cash but not another name. Two days later, H.G. went to Peel Regional Police.
'Potential for further violence'
In a 2017 judgment dismissing Sadat's bail application on the kidnapping allegations, Justice Richetti wrote, "Any informed member of the public would be shocked that Mr. Sadat would be released into the public."
Sadat's vehicle at the scene in June.
Police continue to investigate Sadat's death.
(Paul Borkwood/CBC)
"Given the matters described by Sadat in the wiretaps involving shootings, bounty, faking deaths, retaliation and other criminal activity, the potential for further violence looms large," stated Richetti.
The judge quoted a "chilling" conversation between Sadat's wife and a co-accused's brother, in which Sadat's wife said, "If [the kidnapping victim] doesn't drop the charges, then they want to get rid of everyone involved permanently."
The kidnapping charges against Sadat were stayed in 2018 after Sadat's lawyer, Deepak Paradkar, undermined H.G.'s credibility during cross-examination at the preliminary hearing.
Toronto police continue to investigate Sadat's killing.
The father of six children who spent nine years in a farmhouse basement was a former Moonie “trying to create a cult of his own” and has been arrested for holding his brainwashed offspring against their will, Dutch media reported.
Gerrit-Jan van Dorsten, the bedridden patriarch of the basement-dwelling clan, is the second person to be arrested over the shocking discovery of the six adult siblings living in a farmhouse cellar in Drenthe province.
He and a friend, both former members of the Unification Church – commonly known as “Moonies” after its founder, Sun Myung Moon – were reportedly trying to start their own brainwashing cult.Josef Brunner, whom neighbors had believed to be the farmhouse’s sole occupant, was taken into custody earlier this week after the oldest son in the family escaped and raised the alarm about their plight.
The two men were trying to start their own cult, according to Unification Church members who spoke to Dutch media.After van Dorsten left the group, he moved to Germany and they “lost sight of him” – but rumor was that he’d set up a group of his own “with his family.”
The six adult van Dorsten children were moved to a holiday park after their basement prison – accessible only through a secret passage behind a kitchen cupboard – was discovered. But their cult rituals, including walking circles every half-hour, disturbed other guests, forcing authorities to move them elsewhere. The 25-year-old son who sought help from the pub owner has been moved to a separate location from his siblings, some of whom had been reduced to communicating in a "fantasy language" because of their isolation, authorities said.
Van Dorsten has been charged with “depriving people of their liberty, harming the health of others and money laundering,” police said in a statement on Thursday.
Authorities found tens of thousands of euros piled up at the farmhouse, believed to be donations from the Moonies. The sect confirmed van Dorsten was a member on Friday in a statement that noted he “suffered from mental health problems” and left in 1987. It claimed to have no records of Brunner’s involvement. A cousin of van Dorsten's still with the group claimed those mental health problems were what got him kicked out of the cult in the first place.
“At some point he got certain ideas in his head. Crazy ideas… He started talking and discussing that, but they immediately said, ‘no, we don’t want anything to do with it.’ At one point our church said: we cannot go any further with you,” he told Dutch outlet Algemeen Dagblad.
Apparently, it wasn't unanimous as it appears some were still supporting him for years.
Van Dorsten’s family had not heard from him in decades and feared he was dead when he did not attend his mother’s funeral.
Authorities are still investigating whether “a certain religion or philosophy” played a role in the family’s nine-year isolation, during which none of the children attended school or apparently understood there were other people in the world.Even the house’s owner said she had no idea there was anyone living there – least of all a cult “waiting for the end times.”
A family of six has been rescued from the hidden cellar of a Dutch farmhouse after the eldest son escaped and wandered into a local pub to seek help. They had lived in total isolation for nine years, ‘waiting for the end of time.’
Police descended upon the isolated farmhouse in Ruinerwold, Netherlands after the son, now 25, escaped on Sunday night and ran to a nearby pub for help. Explaining he had left at night because it was “not possible during the day,” the man – dirty, unkempt and confused, according to the pub owner – said he lived on the farm with his brothers and sisters and that he “wanted to end the way they were living.”
The children and a bedridden man, initially believed to be their father, had lived concealed in the basement of the farmhouse for nine years, waiting for the "end of time," according to Dutch media. One Josef B., 58, a handyman who was previously the only known tenant of the house, was arrested at the scene for refusing to cooperate with the investigation.
The siblings lived in the basement of the house, which was only accessible through a hidden staircase behind a cupboard in the living room, and were reportedly unaware there were other people in the world. The house itself was isolated by a canal, accessible by a single bridge, and secured by a locked gate. Neighbors who tried to investigate found that the property was dotted with surveillance cameras.
According to the eldest sibling, the children had never been to school, and they were not registered by any local authorities. The family was believed to be self-sufficient, with a vegetable plot and livestock to sustain them. Their mother is thought to have died before the family moved to the farmhouse – “a long time ago,” according to the mayor – though some reports suggest she is buried on the property.
The only one seen off the property was Josef B., whom neighbors witnessed driving in and out of the farm daily. He would also watch with binoculars to ward off intruders, neighbors reported.
Police are still investigating how the family lived for so long in isolation and the exact nature of the relationship between Josef B. and the family. The siblings have been removed from the home.
There can be no doubt that the children were uneducated and horribly deceived, thus mentally and emotionally abused. I wonder what other kind of abuse they might have been subjected to.
Swedish state schools may drop ancient and medieval history from the curriculum to make room for postmodernism and “democratic values,” according to a controversial new proposal that has enraged many Swedes, local media reports.
The history of “ancient civilizations, from prehistoric times to around 1700” is absent in a proposed new curriculum for Swedish state primary schools in favor of focus on modern history and social sciences, Anna Westerholm, the Swedish National Agency for Education’s curriculum department head, told Svenska Dagbladet on Thursday. Tight class schedules leave no room for it, she said.
History has already been de-prioritized through “extensive deletions,” according to SvD, and formative eras like the Roman Empire and the Viking Age will now be removed altogether in favor of subjects like immigration, the environment, climate, “norm-challenging,” critical theory, “democratic values,” and gender roles. The emphasis will be on a “postmodernist view” of society, rather than the classical philosophical tradition, SvD reports, and history classes will focus on Western colonialism, nationalism, and the slave trade.
Westerholm reasoned that trying to squeeze too much history into the school year often forces teachers to cut off instruction before they even make it to World War II – meaning they miss out on learning about the post-war period. Additionally, teachers and students have complained that grading criteria are “difficult to interpret” and “long and complicated.”
“It hurts us too,” she sympathized, insisting the agency had done a “fairly thorough examination of how content and hours match” and found that removing ancient and medieval history “hurts the least.”
The idea has incensed professors and educational professionals. History professor Dick Harrison, speaking to Aftonbladet, called the idea “bizarre and baffling,” while Dagens Nyheter literature critic Maria Schottenius called it “crazy” and warned it would deprive students of a connection to their heritage.
“If you have no knowledge of the ancient, you can have no respect for the future either,” social science and ancient culture scholar Jenny Wallensten, of the Swedish Institute in Athens, told SvD, calling the new proposal “absurd.”
“To erase antiquity from history teaching? Unfortunate,” former Minister of Education Jan Björklund tweeted, adding that “the same proposal came when I was a minister, but I stopped it.”
While students have the option of studying ancient history in high school, those enrolled in vocational programs get very little exposure to it, Westerholm admits.
The new curriculum also emphasizes the reading of Norwegian and Danish texts and includes discussion of honor killings in social studies. Vocational education is deemphasized and students are given fewer electives, according to Swedish outlet Bohusläningen, while more hours are devoted to mathematics and sports.
Discussing honour killings would be a good thing, as would discussing female genital mutilation. But to sacrifice the rich history and culture of Swedish people in an effort to transform the next generation into politically correct lunatics is sheer madness and yet another form of child abuse. It's always the children who have to pay for the madness of adults.
War on Christianity - NDP provincial governments keep trying
to prevent Christians from becoming adoptive or foster parents
Edmonton, AB
Alberta’s NDP wants to emulate the family laws of the late Wynne Liberal government of Ontario. As many Albertans already know, that’s not a good thing.
Far-left people do not learn very well. Kathleen Wynne, the most progressive premier in the history of Canada, found her party dropped from 48 seats to 7 in the Ontario Legislature in the 2018 spring elections. And, they were replaced by a well-to-the-right-of-center Conservative Party. That Alberta's Rachel Notley would decide to follow any Wynne leads is astonishing.
Alberta’s Bill 22 is similar to Ontario’s Bill 89 (2017), which inserted gender identity ideology into the law for child and family services, which governs child protection agencies, foster care, and adoption.
Kathleen Wynne
ARPA Canada has been informed of cases in Ontario in which a Children’s Aid Society interferes in a family because the parents of a child struggling with gender dysphoria are not dealing with it according to the new gender identity orthodoxy. Such cases are rare, of course, but every family and every child counts.
Alberta’s Bill 22 has already passed second reading. It is now heading to committee. This is the stage where MLAs get a chance to look at the bill closely. Let’s make sure that the problems with the bill don’t get glossed over! Please read and share this article and take action right away.
What are the implications of Bill 22? As the Ontario Minister who sponsored Bill 89 said, he would consider it abuse to tell a child that their gender identity is mistaken:
I would consider that a form of abuse, when a child identifies one way and a caregiver is saying no, you need to do this differently… If it’s abuse, and if it’s within the definition, a child can be removed from that environment and placed into protection where the abuse stops.
You would think such a statement would be huge news. It wasn’t. ARPA discovered this statement in an obscure publication mainly read by people who work in the Ontario legislature. So that means at least a few politicians should have noticed, but none brought it up. It took the grassroots to make Ontario politicians pay attention.
The same is true in Alberta. The UCP Opposition has yet to comment on this aspect of the bill. They need to know you care. The NDP needs to know that you will not let this bill pass uncontested. All parties need to hear our concerns. Families must be free from ideologically-driven state intervention. The position that actively supporting a transgender identity in a child, socially and medically, is the best path, is neither a neutral or scientific position. Rather, it is based on contentious beliefs about the nature of human beings.
Indeed, 80% of little children who are determined that they are of the opposite sex to what their body displays, will revert to their biological sex during or after puberty. To encourage such children in their belief is an horrific form of child abuse, perhaps even child sex abuse. To encourage such children to take hormone therapies and puberty blockers ought to be a very serious crime against humanity. The majority of such children will, at some point in their lives, attempt suicide. This is the real crime, not parents who refuse to give in to their children's gender dysphoria.
Rachel Notley
There is a difference between saying the family is the basic unit of society and saying merely that a family has primarily responsibility for the well-being of the child.
Adding gender identity ideology into child services legislation affects more than how child protection services deals with parents who don’t respond “properly” to gender identity disorder in their child.
Bill 22 also matters for foster parents and would-be foster or adoptive parents.In the worldview of Bill 22, every child has a “gender identity and gender expression” that may differ from the child’s sex. A child’s gender identity may not come to light when they are very young – a child might appear to be a boy, but come to identify as a girl later on. According to Bill 22, child services must consider how would-be foster or adoptive parents would respond.
This is where government agencies can deny Christians the right to adopt or foster children. There are cases where this has already happened in Ontario. It might be reasonable if the parents were attempting to adopt a child already presenting as the opposite sex, or gay. But if that is not happening, how can Christians be prevented from adopting or fostering on the very remote possibility that the child may suddenly decide that it is gay or trans?
Amazing! It was only a few years ago that gays and trans people would never be considered for adoptions. Now, they are considered by far-left governments to be preferable to Christians.
Also telling is a change that Bill 22 makes to the foundational principle of the current law. The current Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act states,as its first principle, that “the family is the basic unit of society and its well‑being should be supported and preserved.”
Bill 22 would delete that and say instead, “the child’s family has the primary responsibility for the safety and well-being of the child and the family’s well-being should be supported and preserved.”
Thereby diminishing the value of the nuclear family to society. This is another far-left strategy to bring the nuclear family down to the level of any kind of relationship. It is a condemnation of traditional society and a move toward a 'progressive' society with no set values or expectations.
Think carefully about this. One might argue that it does not change much. But a basic principle of interpreting a statute is that a change is not meaningless. If an amendment were meaningless, there is a presumption that it would not be made.
There is a difference between saying the family is the basic unit of society and saying merely that a family has primarily responsibility for the well-being of the child.
The first says something about what the family is, reflecting what has long been understood – it is the fundamental, natural institution that precedes the state, on which society is built. The latter says nothing about what the family is. Why does that matter? Well, the NDP is following the Wynne philosophy, and we have watched the Ontario government radically redefine family.
Bill 22 says the family merely has primary responsibility for children. If that responsibility is not being fulfilled as the state wishes, however, the family may be in trouble. This is a different philosophy than the Christian philosophy that parents have an authority that the state lacks.
These changes have not yet been made in Alberta, but they are well on their way, apparently with little or no opposition. Now is the time to act. We urge you to write to your MLA, and phone him or her to follow up. Maybe even set up a meeting. Ask your MLA to commit to opposing or changing the parts of the bill we have identified.
