MANCHESTER (CNS): The House of Lords in London, the United Kingdom (UK), voted 182 to 37 in favour of permitting abortions for Northern Irish women up to 28 weeks of pregnancy.
 
The July 17 vote came just two weeks after the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly in favour of an amendment to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill to permit both abortion and same-sex marriage in the province. The House passed the amendments July 18.
 

HONG KONG (SE): Several countries in the world today are currently involved in a public debate over same-sex marriage and, although in Asia the issue has not reached the crescendo of the United States of America, Europe, Ireland or Australia at this point, the time will surely come.
 
Already the issue has raised its head in Taiwan and the government has run a somewhat controversial straw vote through the post and social media which, predictably, showed strong support for a change in legislation to recognise same-sex marriages in law.

SYDNEY (SE): As Australia prepares for a postal survey on attitudes towards same-sex marriage, a poll commissioned by the Equality Campaign conducted by Jim Reed from Newgate Research claims that more than half of the country’s Catholics are likely vote in favour of it.
 
The poll discovered that approximately 66 per cent of the overall population is inclined to express a favourable opinion on the question, but among those who adhere to a religion only 58 per cent said they would favour the idea.
 

MUNICH (SE): The archbishop of Munich, Reinhard Cardinal Marx, told Augsburger Allgemeine that the Church should not get too excited over a new law passed by the Bundestag on June 30 recognising same-sex marriage, but rather review with disgust its own record on not opposing the prosecution of homosexuals.
 
He said during the July 14 interview with the German magazine that the law in Germany, which made homosexuality a crime, was not rescinded until 1994 and that Catholic people as a Church, did not concern themselves with it.

TAIPEI (UCAN): The Chinese Regional Bishops’ Conference in Taiwan issued a statement expressing the opposition of the Church to a bill that would allow same-sex marriage and asked the people of the island state to pray and fast for the cause.

TAIPEI (UCAN): Being a high-profile Catholic and favoured candidate for vice president in the upcoming January 16 elections in Taiwan, Philip Chen Chien-jen has become something of an intrigue in public life in the island nation.

Mainstream media in Taiwan have focussed attention on Chen, a former public health official and academic, since it was announced on November 16 he would run alongside presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, as her second-in-command.