Christian Advocacy Group Takes St. Catharines By-Law to Court
The Story: The Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA Canada) has announced that they are challenging a City of St. Catherines bylaw that prohibits the distribution of fetal images without an envelope displaying a graphic content warning. Although ARPA does not utilize graphic abortion victim photography, the group does display ultrasound images on some of its content. John Sikkema, ARPA’s legal counsel, stated that “the bylaw requires ARPA and its volunteers to mislead people about our message. Ultrasound photos are common and innocuous, not offensive or disturbing.” ARPA also argues that the by-law violates Charter protections for expression, conscience, and religion.
The Significance: ARPA’s challenge of this bylaw offers a good example of genuine Christian engagement with civil authorities. In their statements, the group demonstrates a submissive, humble attitude toward the rulers God has instituted in the City of St. Catherines, while simultaneously recognizing that the clear commands of God in Scripture are higher than every human authority and must not be disobeyed. Scriptural commandments such as “open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute” (Prov. 31:8) must be fulfilled and St. Catherines’ new by-law inhibits ARPA’s righteous attempt to obey the commandment. As a result, ARPA is challenging the law using lawful means and their example should be emulated.
Read More: Mark Penninga, Reformed Perspective, “St Catharines challenged for censoring pro-life messages”
Ontario Man Sues Government Over Effort to Create Double Genitalia
The Story: An Ontario man is taking an Ontario government agency to court over efforts to receive funding for a transgender surgery that would create an artificial vagina while preserving his penis. The man, who identifies as non-binary, sought to receive funding for the surgery under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) but was denied after OHIP administrators argued that the vaginal construction surgery is only covered under the plan if the penis is removed. However, the man’s doctor argued that, “it’s very important for K.S. to have a vagina for her personal interpretation of her gender identity but she also wishes to maintain her penis.” The surgery would have been performed in the United States, as the procedure is not available in Canada.
The Significance: This man’s attempt to conform his body to a gender identity that attempts to be man and woman, and yet neither, is a sad demonstration of the cultural lie of self-actualization—the lie that human beings are masters of their own destiny and have authority to shape nature according to their liking. This is contrary to God’s truth that a person’s identity does not precede their design. God’s determination of a person’s created identity is fixed and cannot be altered by a surgeon who may construct synthetic body parts but is unable to change nature itself, the ownership of which does not belong to man but to the all-knowing Creator who kindly bestowed his image on the men and women He made out of dust.
Read More: Sharon Kirkey, National Post, “Court to decide if Ontario must pay for surgery to make vagina if patient also wants to keep penis”
Quebec Doctors Amputate Fingers of “Trans-Abled” Man
The Story: A Quebec man is claiming he feels “whole” after having two healthy fingers amputated. The man claims to have had “incessant” thoughts that his fingers “weren’t his” since he was a child and that he considered trying to cut them off himself. He was able to find a surgeon willing to perform an elective amputation for what is being called “body integrity dysphoria,” the alleged first case of its kind. The man now claims he feels happy and “complete.”
The Significance: It should not surprise us at all that a society that is ok with children cutting off their body parts to “change genders” is ok with cutting off perfectly healthy fingers because someone feels like it.
If anything, it should make us ashamed that people are reacting with more shock to this story about a man cutting off his fingers than what amounts to the extreme genital mutilation of transgender surgery.
This story should break our hearts as we witness the continued decay of a society filled with people who reject the truth that they were made lovingly and purposely by the Creator of the universe who formed them in their mother’s womb.
The counter to the idea that we can mutilate ourselves into “wholeness” is not simply that God made our bodies perfect, for none of us on this side of eternity are perfect in our current state, but that there is a wholeness that is available to us. As Christian Canadians, let us be fervent in our proclamation that there is true wholeness found in the one whose body was broken for us.
Read More: Sharon Kirkey, National Post, “Quebec man has two healthy fingers amputated to relieve ‘body integrity dysphoria’”
Canadian Food Spending Drops Sharply
The Story: According to Dr. Sylvain Charlebois of Dalhousie University, Canadians are spending less on food even as prices increase. The Canada Food Price Report states that an individual should be spending $339 per month to maintain a healthy diet, but Statistics Canada shows Canadians are spending only $248 per month, compared to $282 in 2017. Dr. Charlebois notes that those figures are in real dollars and are not adjusted for inflation—making the drop far more significant. This is Canada’s lowest per-capita food expenditure on record.
The Significance: As Dr. Charlebois notes, the carbon tax is a key factor in the affordability crisis. Although it may be easy to view this tax as just another “big government” scheme, doing so misses the underlying reason for the tax and why the suffering of Canadians does not matter to its loudest proponents: warped spiritual priorities.
Christians have a responsibility to be good stewards of God’s natural world because He created it for all mankind to enjoy. Radical environmentalists, however, invert the order of importance and place love of “nature” above love of neighbour. Some have even argued that a “Cult of Gaia” or “Mother Nature” should be brought back to more effectively direct natural human spirituality toward environmental ends and to justify punishing people for the “sin” of emitting carbon. These kinds of radical environmentalists are, in many ways, spiritual successors of the Druidic paganism driven to extinction by Christianity centuries ago.
Christians must reject this kind of environmentalism, and instead remember that nature is good because it is an example of God’s love for all of us, not because it is god itself.
Read More: Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, La Presse (Translated), “Canada is getting poorer and our grocers know it”
Quick Hit
Ottawa has not blocked any Gaza visas: 986 Gazans – the majority men and boys – have applied to enter Canada, pending biometrics. None of them have so far been refused, despite a high level of support amongst Gazans for Hamas’ massacre of October 7th. Immigration Minister Marc Miller has already stated that the current cap of 1000 permits may be increased to an unspecified number of those with “family ties” to Canada.
Christians must never judge an entire people by the bad actions of some, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). However, Canada’s record of allowing Chinese military officers, Iranian government actors, and other bad actors, along with the shocking increase in antisemitic violence and protests, does not inspire confidence that our government is capable of determining who is a genuine innocent in need of escape and who is a Hamas sympathizer – or worse.
Read more: Blacklock’s Reporter, “Gaza Visas Mostly Men, Boys”
A Truth To Consider
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