SPCS

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

NZ Aids Foundation position on ‘rights’ of HIV-positive sex partner is “unconscionable”

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Nothing but truth for HIV sex partners.  The Dominion Post Editorial. March 125, 2012

“[The NZAF] position is a cop out … It is irresponsible and does nothing to engender confidence that [this registered charity] has the community health as its highest priority”

THE NZ AIDS FOUNDATION [a registered charity with the Charities Commission] supports the right of HIV-positive partners to conceal their condition from their sexual partners provided they use proper protection. It could not be more wrong.”

Everybody who enters into a sexual relationship has a fundamental right to be fully informded about any risk they might be exposing themselves to. HIV might not be the near-cerrtain death sentence it once was, and the risk of transmitting it through sex might be small with the right protection, but there is still a risk. Condoms can be faulty, they can break and can be ineffective if not properly used. It is unconscionable to advocate the right for somebody to expose another person to that risk without them knowing.

The Court of Appeal ruling that awarded ACC cover to a woman who suffered mental trauma after discovering she had been having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive man sets an important precedent in that regard. It opens the door to sexual violation charges in cases where people who have the disease fail to tell their partners.

Justin Dalley, the man at the centre of the case, knew he was HIV-positive, but deliberately withheld that from his partner till she was told by a mutual acquaintance. She was lucky not to contract the disease herself, and the six-month wait to be cleared caused her serious distress.

The issue for the Court of Appeal was not whether Dalley infected his victim, but whether she gave fully informed consent to the unprotected sex. She says that had she known he was HIV-positive, she would have refused. The court has found that Dalley’s failure to disclose his [HIV-positive] status nullified consent, and so was a sexual violation for the purposes of ACC cover.

To what extent it can be applied to criminal cases is yet to be tested. So too is the issue of whether it applies to other sexually-transmitted diseases and cases where people fail to disclose their status, but use protection to limit the chances of infecting their partner.

There is legal precedent on the latter question, set in another case involving Dalley and a second woman. He did not tell her he had HIV, but the district court found that by using a condom he had met his legal duty to take reasonable precautions to avoid infecting her.

Whether the Court of Appeal ruling affects that decision is not clear. In any case, it is almost ceretsain that if it is used as the basis to charge someone with sexual violation in the future, it will be challenged.

The Aids Foundation claims that allowing sexual violation charges against people who know they have HIV but fail to tell their sexusal partners will increase discrimination and lead to a “significant decrease” in testing. That is a cop-out. The Court of Appeal case was not about the rights of people with HIV, but the rights of those with whom they wish to have sex to have a full understanding of the possible consequences.

The Aids Foundation disagrees. It is happy for those who have HIV to keep that secret from their sexual partners, provided they use condoms and lubricant. Its position is irresponsible and does nothing to engender confidence that it has the community’s health as its highest priority.

Source: The Dominion Post Editorial. Thursday, March 15, 2012, p. B4. [Emphasis added]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/editorials/6575163/Editorial-Nothing-but-truth-for-HIV-lovers

 

Ethicists advocating infanticide open way to horrors of Nazism

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Karl du Fresne, a regular columnist for The Dominion Post, has written today:

When I read recently that two medical ethicists had suggested it should be legal to kill newborn babies, my first thought was that they must be anti-abortion campaigners choosing an unusually dramatic way to make their point.

After all, what’s the difference, ethically speaking, between aborting a baby at 20 weeks’ gestation or waiting until it’s born, then quietly suffocating it or administering a lethal injection? None that I can see.

That’s exactly the point made by doctors Francesca Minerva and Alberto Giubilini in a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics. As it turns out, the two ethicists are not opposed to abortion. Far from it. They are simply advancing, in a clinically dispassionate way, the argument that it doesn’t make any difference whether babies’ lives are terminated in the womb or after birth.

Newborns aren’t actual persons, they suggest, merely potential persons. Neither the foetus nor the newborn baby is a person with a moral right to life. Only actual persons can be harmed by being killed.

It’s a proposition that would shock decent people. Yet it exposes the fundamental flaw, both logical and moral, behind abortion laws such as those that apply in New Zealand.

Most people who think it’s OK to abort babies in the womb would recoil in horror at the thought of snuffing their lives out once they’ve been born.

But I ask again, what’s the difference? Some babies that are legally aborted under present law (there were 16,630 in 2010) have reached a stage in their development when they are capable, with intensive medical care, of surviving outside the womb.

Newborn babies also need intervention to survive. So at what point do we decide a baby has a right to life – at six months old, one year, only when it’s capable of feeding itself and walking?

No civilised society would countenance the killing of babies at any of these stages. It would equal the worst horrors of Nazism.

Yet the Australian state of Victoria already allows babies to be aborted right up to the time of birth and pro-abortion lobbyists would like the same law adopted here. It’s only a short step from there to infanticide.

And why not? After all, Minerva and Giubilini make it clear there is no ethical difference between killing babies in the womb and murdering them after birth. Any point after conception at which society decides it’s legally permissable to end their lives is entirely artificial and arbitrary.

One chilling argument advanced by the ethicists is that parents whose babies are born disabled without warning, as often happens frequently, should be able to have them killed.

A society that considers itself humane would draw back in horror from such a proposal, but it’s simply a logical extensioin of what we’re doing now.

Source: The Dominion Post. Tuesday, March 13, 2012.

Note: The Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc. (SPCS) has as one of its seven objects in its constitution:

Section 2(b) “To promote recognition of the sanctity of human life and its preservation in all stages.”

This written purpose has been approved by the Charities Commission, headed by Trevor Garrett, as a “charitable purpose”. The publication of the opinion piece above by Karl du Fresne is relevant to this “charitable purpose”.

Update: The Pilgrim’s Progress Book donations to NZ Prisoners

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Society (SPCS) members donated $4,950 in 2010 towards the printing of multiple copies of John Bunyan’s classic work – The Pilgrim’s Progress, and donated $5,245 in 2011: – a total of $10,195 donated over two years (see advertisement for donations on homepage of website). In addition SPCS has raised thousands of dollars from non-members towards this Books in Prisons project via an effective advertising campaign through its newsletters. Donations were used just for printing costs.

The Society has arranged and paid for the distribution of hundreds of the books to prisoners in all 20 NZ prisons. Within the last two weeks it dispatched 26 copies to the Otago Corrections Facility and 20 copies for distribution to the Christchurch Mens Prision.

One prison chaplain recently reported that once word is out that the books are available within the prison, they “fly off the shelf” – snapped up by prisoners seeking spiritual answers found a book that chronicles in timeless allegory the journey of a man – Pilgrim – from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City of God (Heaven).

Pilgrim’s burden of guilt and shame for his sin is lifted from him at the Cross of Christ where he finds forgiveness, God-given faith and the new joy and hope that is the fruit of a true conversion to the Lord Jesus Christ – and is accompanied by genuine repentance.

Author John Bunyan wrote the book while serving time in prison himself and the work is a truly creative expression of his own spiritual journey. It is deeply and richly ingrained with the biblical insights and wisdon he gained after he became a committed believer and follower of Jesus Christ.

The Society executive wishes to thank all its members and others who have contributed so generously towards this Books for Prisoners Project. The work is ongoing and we are heartened by your support and the positive feedback we have received from those working with prisoners who have gained access to the books (Prison Fellowship, Chaplaincy Services etc).

This project in part serves to fulfill the Society’s primary charitable purpose: the promotion of the spiritual and moral welfare of society. In addition it constitutes a public benefit (i.e. it is beneficial to the community)  in a number of self-evident ways (e.g. education and/or rehabilitation of prisoners, relief and/or redemption of prisoners, and aiding the poor etc).

In order to be considered charitable as “any other matters beneficial to the community“, purposes must be beneficial to the community and must be within the spirit and intendment of the purposes set out in the Preamble to The Charitable Uses Act 1601 (the Statute of Elizabeth).

The purposes must benefit the community in a way that the law regards as charitable. The Books for Prisoners Project most definitely qualifies as such and has been positively commended by officials of the Charities Commission when they have met with SPCS executive members on two occasions at the Charities Commission Offices in Wellington.

 

Porn research awarded $790,000 by Marsden Fund

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Auckland researchers have been awarded almost $800,000 to study pornography. The $790,000 study by Auckland University staff will look at how it affects viewers and its impact on society. The research will include studies on young men and women, an art exhibition, an interactive website and a public symposium. The project is one of 88 nationwide to receive a slice of $53.8 million handed out in Marsden Fund Grants last month. Marsden Fund Council chairman Professor Peter Hunter said a scientific study of the impact of pornography on vulnerable members of society “in the age of easy availability” was extremely important.

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/12004926/porn-study-grant-worth-790-000/

Comment: One of the objects for which the Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc., (“SPCS”) was established was to focus public attention on the harmful nature of pornography. For the purposes of section 3 of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 (“the Act”), “a publication is objectionable if it descibes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters of sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availabliity of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good.”

The Act recognises that children and young persons, in particular, are vulnerable to the harmful effects of exposure to pornography – hence age restrictions are imposed by the censors on poronographic publications and others are banned. The “extent and degree to which, and the manner in which the publication depicts…  sexual conduct of a degrading or dehumanising or demeaning sexual conduct” is one criterion used to determine whether or not it is to be classified objectionable.

Family First NZ, a charity registered with the Charities Commission, has also been at the forefront of highlighting the offensive nature of hardcore pornograhy and documenting how it is injurious to the public good.

Denise Richie, director of Stop the Demand Foundation, another charity registered with the Charities Commission, put it this way, in her submission to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) , as part of  her complaint against a “mobile billboard” displayed prominently in a public place – promoting the Erotica Lifestyles Expo:

“The image is designed to simulate a woman with her fingers in her [******] It is standard Steve Crow fare, with its focus on dehumanising women and reducing them to their genitalia”. (ASA decision dated 14/09/2010 concerning complaint 10/448).

(Eden Digital Ltd, directed up until recently by John Malcolm Carr, which owned the license for Erotica Lifestyles Expo, was put into liquidation on 22 November 2011).

The Society (SPCS), as part of its objects, seeks “to support freedom of expression which does not injure the public good by degrading, dehumanising or demeaning individuals or classes of people.” Hardcore pornography has the effect degrading, dehumanising and demeaning women. Its negative impact on viewers of such material has been well-documented in the literature.

 

 

Abuse of alcohol at Toast Martinborough wine festival

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GROSSLY intoxicated young women, some incontinent and smeared in their own blood, are a symptom of  Toast Martinborough wine festival’s “feral” drinking culture, police warn.

“If their mothers could see them, they’d shut the festival down tomorrow,” the officer in charge of the event, Sergeant Kevin Basher, said.

Martinborough residents have joined him in warning that the once-civilised wine lovers’ event is now a mass booze-up that risks spilling into violence.

Mr Basher, who called Sunday’s event the worst in seven years, said yesterday that steel container “drunk tanks” might have to be used in future and that officers might need to carry batons to counter unruly drunks….

Festival organisers met police yesterday after reports of at least a dozen brawls. One man was admitted to hospital after being knocked unconscious.

A Martinborough local said The Square was full of drunks on Sunday night. “The atmosphere was getting quite nasty. It’s not the Toast it used to be.”

Police say some wineries appear to have breached liquor licencing laws by continuing to serve people who are clearly intoxicated. One vineyard encouraged festival-goers to scull full glases of wine.

“We’re still seeing people who are grossly intoxicated, especially young women falling all over the place in various states of disrepair [defecating] everywhere and covered in blood,” Mr Basher said.

A dompost.co.nz poll yesterday asked if drunken behaviour at Toast Martinborough was out of control.

Of more than 900 respondents, 55.3 per cent agreed, saying it was not pleasant when so many people were drunk. Another 36.9 per cent said it was just the actions of a few and everyone else had a great time. Nearly 8 per cent were undecided. The survey concluded that the event was “Out of Control”

Toast Martinborough chairman Richard Riddiford, who started the event 20 years ago, played down the alcohol problems. “We’re talking about a very, very, small percentage of [the 11,500] festival-goers.

[Clearly neither the police who attended nor 55.3% of the 900 responddents to the Dompost survey, attempted to “play down the alcohol problems”, as Mr Riddiford did].

Source: “Police warn of ‘feral’ festival, The Dominion Post, Tuesday, November 22, 2011, p. 1.