Family Integrity

Tag: Marriage

  • Marriage Website Launched

    This site is down at the moment
    Here is a post from their Facebook page:
    “Our web host just informed us that the Denial of Service attack our site sustained this morning was the largest in NZ history.
    Our tech team is in the process of moving the site to a more resilient offshore server.”
    Dear Barbara

    A website to protect the current definition of marriage as ‘one man one woman’ has been launched today. The website is www.protectmarriage.org.nz and has been launched in response to the private members bill of Labour MP Louisa Wall which seeks to redefine marriage.

    “The website will provide research, latest news, quotes of interest, free downloadable resources about the role and function of marriage, and will host an online petition which will be presented to Parliament,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “It also has the haveyoursay tool which enables people to easily contact their local MP, all MP’s, or a select group of MP’s to express their view.”

    “Politicians have been hammered recently with the reasons for taking the twink bottle to the dictionary and to redefine ‘marriage’. This website will help balance the debate. Ultimately, the state – which did not invent marriage – has no authority to re-invent it.”

    Family First also rejects the notion that NZ’ers are ready for same-sex marriage. In the US, polls have also shown support for same-sex marriage increasing, yet in every state where the issue has been on the ballet, voters have rejected it.

    “Equality does not mean we must redefine marriage. Same-sex couples have the option of civil unions to recognise their relationship so there is no need for redefining marriage. If the law was redefined to allow same-sex marriage, and only same-sex marriage, we would then be discriminating against those seeking, for example, polygamous, polyamorous, or adult incest unions,” says Mr McCoskrie. “If we are going to have a debate about same-sex marriage and liberalising adoption laws, it is essential that the politicians acknowledge just how far this is going to go.”

    “Almost every culture in every time and place has had some institution that resembles what we know as marriage, and it has always been associated with procreation. Every society needs natural marriage. Nature also discriminates against same-sex couples. Same-sex couples cannot have children. Only a man and a woman can produce children. This discloses something of the purposes and providence of nature, and the role and purpose of marriage,”

    “We would encourage politicians to spend their valuable time focussing on major issues such as family poverty, negotiating our way through the world recession, child abuse, and getting people employed – rather than taking to the dictionary with a twink bottle,” says Mr McCoskrie.
    ENDS

    CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE
    www.protectmarriage.org.nz
    Kind regards

    Bob McCoskrie
    National Director

  • Marriage Breakdown Costing Taxpayers At Least $1 Billion a Year

    MEDIA RELEASE – 20 October 2008

    Marriage Breakdown Costing Taxpayers At Least $1 Billion a Year

    In the first research of its kind in NZ, a new report estimates that the fiscal cost to the taxpayer of family breakdown and decreasing marriage rates is at least $1 billion per year and has cost approximately $8 billion over the past decade.

    The report “The Value of Family – Fiscal Benefits of Marriage and Reducing Family Breakdown in New Zealand” was commissioned by Family First NZ and prepared by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER).

    “The study shows that the decline of marriage, NZ’s high teenage fertility rate, and our rate of solo parenthood is not just a moral or social concern but should also be a concern of government and policymakers,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “The report states that even a small reduction in family breakdown and increases in marriage rates could provide significant savings for taxpayers.”

    The report says that family breakdown and decreasing marriage rates are seldom considered in debate on social policy issues.

    “The focus has been on ‘child poverty’ but this misses the real issue – that is, poverty among families with children, and the way that divorce, unwed childbearing, teenage pregnancy and sole parenting contributes to that poverty. For example, sole parents have the lowest average living standards of all economic family unit types.”

    The report also refers to International research which suggests that the private costs of divorce and unmarried childbearing include increased risks of poverty, mental illness, infant mortality, physical illness, juvenile delinquency and adult criminality, sexual abuse and other forms of family violence, economic hardship, substance abuse, and educational failure.

    “It is significant that this report comes during an Election period where the issue of family breakdown and decreasing marriage rates is barely registering a mention or a policy. Yet this report makes it quite clear that strengthening marriage and reducing family breakdown is a significant public concern, both in human costs and economically,” says Mr McCoskrie.

    The report suggests the use of a range of programmes and services to reduce unwed pregnancy among teen mothers and to help prepare couples for and support them during marriage.

    “We must do much more to strengthen marriages and help families succeed,” says Mr McCoskrie. “The investment will pay for itself.”

    The Full Report is available from 20 October at http://www.familyfirst.org.nz

    ENDS

  • Muriel Newman: Rich Country – Poor Families

    http://www.nzcpr.com/weekly25.htm

    1 April 06
    Rich Country – Poor Families

    In a sense, New Zealand is one of the richest countries on earth. We have a great climate, beautiful countryside, and a more leisurely pace of life. Our people are friendly, hard working and caring. We are close to each other in a way that comes from being a small country remote from the rest of the world.

    On top of that, we have a wealth of natural resources, we are great innovators and entrepreneurs, and we have established international recognition for our creativity and achievement in a multitude of fields of endeavour.

    So why is it that so many New Zealanders have a deep-seated sense of foreboding about the future? Sure, it could be the negative growth (no economic growth recorded in the second half of last year) or the rapidly falling dollar (the Minister of Finance sent officials to Japan last year to talk the dollar down). Maybe it’s the burgeoning balance of payments deficit (foreign debt grows as the dollar falls), or the rising price of petrol (adding in today’s 1c petrol tax increase, 91 octane is expected to rise to $1.62 a litre). But I suspect that the issues that are driving that sense of gloom are much more personal.

    At the heart of the problem appears to be a growing sense of despair about the state of the New Zealand family. As a country with a strong tradition of two-parent married families, many New Zealanders feel that Labour’s interference in family matters has been detrimental. In particular, law changes introduced as part of their social engineering agenda are manifesting themselves in negative ways.

    There is a new reticence for young people to commit themselves to marriage – why bother, when de-facto relationships have the same legal privilege as marriage? Yet common sense tells us that marriage signals a commitment for life, giving young women, in particular, the promise of stability and security they need in order to begin thinking about starting a family.

    There is also a new tendency for relationships to break up just before the three-year joint property claim thresh-hold is reached. Couples who are not quite sure whether things will work out between them, are not prepared to take the risk of staying together if it means signing over half of their assets.

    With the Domestic Purposes Benefit already incentivising the massive breakdown of the family, these more recent changes are making the situation worse by giving rise to more unstable, transient relationships. It is therefore little wonder we are seeing an escalation in child abuse and domestic violence as well as the fall-out from the breakdown of stable families – marginalized fathers, alienated children, and excluded grandparents.

    Just this week, New Zealand’s top Family Court judge said that violence in the home is blighting the country’s image as a good place to raise children. Yet I do not hear the Judge – or any of the other professionals who work in this field – calling for a change to the policies that are driving this social collapse.

    And, with Labour’s new family welfare package coming into effect today, resulting in 350,000 families receiving income support, we urgently need to review the wisdom of massive government interference in the family, before more lives are damaged or lost.

    A new publication released by the British think tank Civitas this week, examines the wisdom of state interference in the family from an international perspective. In her book Family Policy, Family Changes, Patricia Morgan compares the state of the family in Sweden, Italy and Britain, and concludes that families thrive in countries where there is less government interference.

    In Britain, where an anti-marriage agenda is being strongly promoted by the public service, universities and government funded social agencies, family problems are rife, with Britain topping the league tables in several of the most worrying indicators of breakdown, including divorce and teenage pregnancy. In Sweden, where a comprehensive social engineering programme has transferred many family responsibilities to the state – to a degree unseen outside of the Soviet bloc – thereare even higher rates of out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation than Britain.

    Italy, however, has effectively had no government intervention into the family, and is still the home of the traditional family unit. Divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births, including teenage pregnancies, are extremely low. Cohabitation is so rare as to be difficult to measure. Young people live with their parents until they get married, and, for most women, marriage will represent their first living-together relationship.

    While government interference in the family is a cause of major concern, there are many other matters that are driving that feeling of despondency felt by many New Zealanders. In particular, there is an overbearing sense that things could be so much better, especially in those important areas that the government is responsible for.

    With 12,000 hospital beds and 12,000 hospital managers and administrators is the growth in New Zealand’s hospital waiting lists being caused by too much bureaucracy? Are we confident that our welfare system is working properly when we all know fit and healthy young men and women who are languishing on benefits? Would primary and secondary school education improve if vouchers were introduced in order to give parents the same choice that they currently have at pre-school and tertiary level?

    And why don’t we take a common sense approach to the small business sector – the engine room of our economy – by freeing them up from the mountains of unnecessary cost and red tape that inhibits their growth and productivity? Why not lower taxes across the board not only to boost the economy and create a competitive advantage for Kiwi businesses, but also to establish New Zealand as an attractive destination for international business?

    There is so much that can be done to solve those problems that are holding us back – as a nation that responds quickly to positive incentives, with good leadership and sensible ideas, we could really fly!

    The NZCPD guest comment this week comes from Sir Roger Douglas who outlined to the ACT Party conference last week, the importance of creating a vision for a better New Zealand (View >>>).

    Printer friendly version (PDF) View >>>

    This weeks poll. The poll this week asks do you think that the family related policies that Labour has introduced are good for the country? To take part in our online poll >>>