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Relevant Links	The Iona Blog Opinions contained in The Iona Blog are not necessarily those of The Iona Institute. The Iona Blog is open to anyone who broadly shares the views of The Iona Institute. If you wish to post a comment on a relevant topic please email 200 – 400 words to info@ionainstitute.ie and it will be considered for inclusion in the blog. Natural law equals ‘bigotry’? Increasingly belief in the natural law is being equated by its critics with ‘bigotry’ because if you believe in the natural law it is very hard not to also believe in traditional marriage and to oppose other forms of marriage. George Weigel has written to very good effect about this and points out how calling natural law proponents ‘bigots’ is a crude attempt to bully them out of the public arena. 15/12/09 View full text Who’s your daddy? II (David Quinn) The other day I blogged about a programme on BBC3 presented by pop singer Alesha Dixon called ‘Who’s your daddy?’ The programme was excellent in terms of recording the pain felt by children who have never known their fathers. It was very poor in terms of analysis. 11/12/09 View full text Recession slowing down divorce rate, not strengthening marriage Last month, we carried a story about how the recession was leading to a drop in divorces, not so much because troubled marriages were suddenly fine again, but because couples couldn't afford the legal fees and couldn’t sell the house in the current market. 10/12/09 View full text Who’s your daddy? (David Quinn) Pop singer Alesha Dixon presented a documentary on BBC3 last night called ‘Who’s your daddy?’ Dixon herself is from a single parent family, barely knew her father, and has several half-brothers and sisters. 09/12/09 View full text Is marriage anything? (David Quinn) In the Dail yesterday Labour’s Brendan Howlin approvingly quoted Australian High Court judge, Michael Kirby, to the effect that marriage is “a civil status, created and defined by the law”. This was in the context of the ‘debate’ about the Civil Partnership Bill. 04/12/09 View full text Britain’s battle over marriage (Tom O’Gorman) Jill Kirby of UK think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, has a useful column in today's Daily Telegraph, reacting to suggestions by Dr Katherine Rake, the new head of the State-funded Family and Parenting Institute (FPI) that the two-parent family model is outmoded and that it’s ‘unrealistic’ to encourage it. 01/12/09 View full text “Modern culture is inconsistent with the needs of children”: left-of-centre think tank The Brookings Institute, a well-known US think-tank with something of a liberal reputation, has just released a report, Creating an Opportunity Society, which shows that getting an education, getting a job, and waiting to get married before having children are the keys to economic mobility. 24/11/09 View full text Waters column on former Taoiseach's address to Iona John Waters' column on Friday dealt focused on John Bruton's speech on Monday, hosted by the Iona Institute and Studies, the Jesuit quarterly review. 23/11/09 View full text Fathers, leave your children? (David Quinn) Last week I blogged about a new document called ‘Building Character’ from the left-of-centre think tank, Demos. It did its very best to explain away the beneficial effects of marriage and to suggest that family structure doesn’t really matter at all. But now we are led to believe that it does matter, and that the family structure which benefits children the most is not marriage, but a family led by a lesbian couple. 18/11/09 View full text Explaining away the positive effects of marriage (David Quinn) The left-of-centre UK think tank, Demos, has published a rather useful new report out called ‘Building Character’. Its thesis is that parents are the principle architects of a fairer society and that good character, and the habits associated with good character (thrift and so on), open up pathways out of poverty. However, its section on marriage is truly awful. 13/11/09 View full text Italian crucifix ruling European "Dred Scott"? Neil Addison, a barrister who specialises in the law relating to religious freedom, has written another blog relating to the European Court of Human Rights' decision to ban crucifixes from Italian classrooms. 10/11/09 View full text Some reaction to the ECHR Italian crucifix ruling Here's a quick taste of reaction European Court of Human Rights' ruling on crucifixes. Firstly, one of Ireland's most forthright anti-religious journalists, Ian O'Doherty, has said that the decision to ban crucifixes from Italian crucifixes as “too politicised”. 05/11/09 View full text Same-sex marriage and religious opt outs: what’s happening in the US An article in Sunday's Washington Post provides a useful overview of the issues surrounding same-sex civil unions and religious freedom. 03/11/09 View full text Conscience about to be ‘regulated’? The move by certain members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to “regulate conscience” illustrates neatly how far down the road of secular absolutism we have gone. 30/10/09 View full text Take State out of marriage, says top Obama adviser A key member of President Obama's Administration, Professor Cass Sunstein, has advocated removing State support for marriage. Sunstein argues that marriage is essentially, a private matter. 27/10/09 View full text Modern families on speed (David Quinn) There is a new show on TV called ‘Modern Family’. You’ve got your traditional family, your step-family and your homosexual couple with children, but if you want ‘modern’ the following case will take some beating. It’s complicated so bear with me. 27/10/09 View full text Same-sex marriage: not in the interests of children The pro-marriage Ruth Institute in the US has linked to an interesting article on the issue of same-sex marriage and children in which, among other things, the author dissects the studies purporting to show that children raised by gay and lesbian couples do just as well as those raised by mothers and fathers. 23/10/09 View full text Dept of Ed demands its pound of flesh (David Quinn) The Department of Education wasn’t slow in asking the Catholic bishops to list the schools it is willing to hand over to the State for reallocation to other patron bodies, such as the VEC or Educate Together. 20/10/09 View full text A victory for religious freedom (David Quinn) Churches in the Australian state of Victoria have scored a notable win for religious freedom. Such victories cannot be taken for granted in an age which is both absolutising and misapplying the doctrine of equality. 06/10/09 View full text Working mothers and the health of children (David Quinn) A new study from the UK involving no fewer than 12,000 children shows that kids raised by working mothers tend to be less healthy than kids raised by non-working, stay-at-home mothers. I’m going to make the very safe prediction that this study will be quickly buried and forgotten, never to see the light of day again. Why? Because the finding is too inconvenient. 29/09/09 View full text 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 © 2007 IONA Institute \| \| All Rights Reserved \| \| Charity No: 17347	Spotlight...
Institute for Marriage and Public Policy First Things Relationships Foundation National Fatherhood Initiative The Institute for the Study of Civil Society Studies Family Facts Family & Life The Christian Institute Veritas		"If I were asked to design a system for making sure that children's basic needs were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent ideal...The fact that both parents have a biological connection to the child would increase the likelihood that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to sacrifice for that child, and it would reduce the likelihood that either parent would abuse the child.." Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, "Growing up with a single parent: What hurts, what helps."