AFF Director, Jack Sonnemann, will join abstinence educators from around the globe at this week’s Voices of Abstinence Conference, as they gather in Nashville, Tennessee to receive the most current research, strategize effective programs and network with other world leaders in abstinence education.  With the recent focus on this issue in Washington, D.C., the timing of this meeting of educators is perfect. 

The eighth annual International Abstinence Leadership Conference features sixty of the world’s leading experts in sexual health and abstinence education.  With seventy-eight sponsoring organizations, the Exhibitor Showcase will offer products and services that keep abstinence education medically-accurate, cutting-edge, and effective.

Recorded sessions from the conference will be available through the (US) National Abstinence Clearinghouse.  Call (from Australia -13 hours) 0111 605 335 3643 for more information of go to their website  at www.abstinence.net.

Click here to go to the official media release from the Australian Attorney-General's Department which begins, "Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, has announced that the Government would act to protect the institution of marriage by legislating within the limits of its responsibility, to ensure that same sex relationships cannot be equated with marriage." Email link to thank Mr Ruddock.

Praise to our Lord, Jesus Christ and congratulations to your group’s efforts. Here in Canada the situation is desperate and calls for desperate prayer. Please join our brothers and sisters in prayer when our legislature tries to change the definition of marriage later this year (after the election next month). Please pray that many Members of Parliament will be replaced by those who care about true marriage!

Please visit our humble website and see that individuals do make a difference.

Blessings, Ian & Marg Ridpath,

Three Cord Ministries Milton, Ontario, Canada

http://www.threecordministries.org

The following statement was issued by the Northern Regional Council of the Uniting Aboriginal & Islander Christian Congress last September in response to the decisions of the Uniting Church over the issue of homosexuality in the Church.

Whilst many months have passed since the statement was issued we believe it is still relevant and of public interest to publish it now to allow the Aboriginal view on the subject to be heard and understood by the Church at large.

Preamble

We read and understand from Genesis chapter one verses 26 & 27 that man was made in the image of God, in the likeness of God, and that "male and female He created them". He created them to "be fruitful and increase in number". Also from chapter 2 verses 21 to 24 we understand woman was formed from man with the intention that man and woman be united and "they will become one flesh".

God has also revealed Himself to the indigenous peoples of this land through the creation beings. We understand from Djan'kawu, Barama , and Wagilag and the stories of creation that God brought forth from the earth bone/bundurr which is sacred and blood/wukundi which is life. Accompanying these was madayin/law. By God's breath of Spirit was life given to bundurr. This is the sacredness of life and the law which accompanies it, is to ensure peace, tranquility - a harmony with all of God's creation - magayamirr dhukarr. We are to be djungunymirr, to stop and think of the law and system, of life and it's sacredness before acting.

Leviticus 18 has much to say which mirrors our understanding of God's life giving way to live. At this time the ministers and leaders of NRCC are boyu gora i.e. ashamed - what is a possibility in the UCA is against everything we believe and are as a people. This is such a threat to us, it's like bringing something which will destroy us as a people. We are ashamed to be known as members and ministers of the UnitingChurch.

Our resolution

We the members of the NRCC can not accept the recognition of persons in same sex relationship within leadership of the Uniting Church. We are not comfortable being in a church which accepts as a valid sexual ethic 'right relationships' of the same sex. If the UnitingChurch continues to be open to persons who are in a same sex relationship being accepted into leadership, then there is no place for the indigenous members of the Northern Synod in the Uniting Church. We see same sex relationships as being against the very sacredness and holiness of the life and law God has given us as a people.

Northern Regional Council UAICC

27th September 2003

Source: Aboriginal & Islander Christian Congress

Please thank Mr Howard and Attorney General Philip Ruddock for proposals to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.