Magic Statistics

The highest court in France has upheld lower-court rejections of the legality of gay “marriage” and confirmed the legal annulment of a union of two men performed by a city mayor.

Stephane Charpin and Bertrand Charpentier were married in a civil ceremony on June 5, 2004, in Begles, a town in the southwest Bordeaux region. The government immediately said the union was outside the law, and a series of court decisions unfavorable to the couple followed.

In the latest decision, the court ruled that "under French law, marriage is a union between a man and a woman," backing a 2005 decision by an appeals court in Bordeaux.

The prosecutor argued that the decision to change marriage law should rest with parliament, not the judiciary.

Noel Mamere, the mayor who officiated at the “wedding”, is non-plussed.

"It is a part of a conservative conception of marriage", Noel Mamere said.

"I have no regrets. I subscribe to this cause and I will persist."

The leaders in the presidential race have staked out their positions.  Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal has pledged to legalise homosexual “marriage” and adoption.  François Bayrou, who is viewed as a centrist, favours gay adoption but rejects same-sex marriages.  Nicolas Sarkozy affirms current law forbidding homosexuals to marry each other or to adopt.

In 1999, France enacted civil partnership legislation for homosexual couples, so they already enjoy many of the privileges formerly accorded heterosexual couples, including employment, tax, and welfare benefits.

The text of the court decision is posted here.

h/t: LifeSite and Marriage Debate Blog

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Binks, the mighty, mighty webelf of Classical Anglican Net News and, latterly, The WebElf Report, has launched another blog.  CaNN: General Synod 2007 will focus on the Anglican Church of Canada's upcoming self-immolation General Synod meeting, to be held in Winnipeg between 19-25 June.

Recent evidence indicates that ACC leaders are intent on charging blindly over the abyss.  No doubt they expect lowly pew-warmers to follow right behind.  But this pre-dead minion, for one, will not go down without a fight whimper!

Those with strong stomachs can follow the action at the new CaNN: General Synod 2007 blog.

Please consider supporting CaNN financially and in prayer.  Click here to donate.

Previous related post: Council of General Synod tries to pull a fast one

Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, used to be called Frobisher Bay, but its name was officially changed on 1 January 1987.  Notice that the name, an English transcription from the Inuit language Inuktitut, violates a cardinal rule of English usage because it contains the letter “q” not followed by a “u”.

Today, in conversation with a Nunavut resident, I found out how important it is to spell Iqaluit correctly.

“Iqaluit” is Inuktitut for “many fish”.  “Iqualuit” is Inuktitut for “dirty bum”.

Previous related post: Iqaluit drivers to be burdened with rules of the road

The French government funds a huge bureaucracy and an ongoing public indoctrination education campaign in hopes of preserving the purity of the French language, but to no avail.  More English words entered everyday French vocabulary during the past ten years than during the previous century.

“We have not stopped borrowing massively from English for the past 10 years," said Xavier North, whose task is to promote, protect and apply the French language at home and abroad.

His words came as the country celebrated French language week.

"Le weekend", or "fast food", are now common in French, but a plethora of other terms, many linked to new technology have arrived.

"We are even taking English words without giving them a French pronunciation, like 'standing ovation' or 'stock options'," said Mr North.
. . .
Mr North said that every month, 18 government "terminology commissions" send a list of "official" new words deemed acceptable for use by public sector workers in order to "make French a productive language apt at expressing modernity".

Eighteen government departments issue a list every month?  They must meet every working day to hammer out the official record of satisfactory neologisms.  How many millions of Euros does that activity cost French taxpayers annually?

Not only are millions expended, French citizens ignore the lists.

In an attempt to halt this perfidious influx, the government has an army of Franglais-busters on call.

But their attempts to turn airbag into "sac gonflable," post-it note into "papillon" and bulldozer into "bouteur", have failed miserably.

Wait a minute.  “Papillon”?  That’s French for “butterfly”.  And the brains trust at Franglais-busters© wants to use the same word for “post-it note”?  No wonder their lists are disregarded.

Previous related posts:

• English changing too fast for French language police
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Philosopher Charles Taylor has become the first Canadian to win the world’s richest prize awarded to an individual, the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities.  Dr Taylor, professor emeritus of philosophy and political science at McGill University, will receive the prize from the Duke of Edinburgh during a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 2 May.

Taylor was born in Montreal in 1931 to an English-speaking father and a French-speaking mother.  He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, studying under Isaiah Berlin and G.E.M. Anscombe and earning a DPhil in philosophy in 1961.  Upon returning to Canada, he began teaching political science at McGill and philosophy at the Université de Montreal.  He also became involved in politics, running four times as a candidate for the New Democratic Party.  Most famously, he finished second to Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1965.

As a political philosopher, he has written extensive critiques of liberalism, which he argues is excessively focused on individual rights to the detriment of accepted social arrangements and the common good.  Although he is uncomfortable with the label, he is generally associated with philosophical communitarianism, along with such thinkers as Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre.

Taylor has also made his views accessible to the public.  He has been the subject of programs on CBC Radio’s Ideas series, and his 1991 Massey Lectures were published as The Malaise of Modernity.

From the brief biography posted at The Templeton Prize website:

Charles Taylor is engaged in contemporary, important, cross-cultural questions such as "What role does spiritual thinking have in the 21st Century?"  For more than 45 years, Taylor, 75, has argued that wholly depending on secularized viewpoints only leads to fragmented, faulty results.  He has described such an approach as crippling, preventing crucial insights that might help a global community increasingly exposed to clashes of culture, morality, nationalities, and religions.

Key to Taylor’s investigations of the secular and the spiritual is a determination to show that one without the other only leads to peril, a point he outlined in his news conference remarks.  "The divorce of natural science and religion has been damaging to both," he said, "but it is equally true that the culture of the humanities and social sciences has often been surprisingly blind and deaf to the spiritual."

Dr Taylor’s statement at today’s news conference announcing the award is posted here.

His latest book, A Secular Age, is scheduled to be released this fall.

Previous Templeton Prize winners include John D. Barrow, Michael Novak, Charles Colson, Billy Graham, and Mother Teresa.