At first glance the idea of Fundamentalist relativism might seem strange. After all they believe in the inerrancy and literal truth of their holy book. They are right everyone else is wrong and because they believe so must you. Pretty absolutist so far, but watch what happens when the subject of creationism arises.

When seeking to get access to the classroom and thus the minds of the young creationists will start moaning about the tyranny scientific orthodoxy and insist that Darwinian evolution is “just a theory” and thus we can have alternative theories (Einstein’s theory of relativity is also “just a theory” but do they really doubt it?).

Epistemologically speaking this is relativism. Evolution is massively supported by the evidence and discoveries after Darwin died (most notably DNA) have only confirmed it. 150 years on from the publication of the Origin evolution has stood up to everything its opponents have thrown at it and come through with flying colours to be at the core of our understanding of biology, virology and so on – quite an achievement. The ideas proffered by creationists on the other hand are not tested and not testable (how does one prove that a god did anything without first proving that this god exists?) they fail to account for what evolution accounts for and we cannot make predictions based on it. Evolution can explain the emergence of new diseases, just in the last couple of decades Ebola, SARS, bird flu and swine flu have all come into existence where previously they did not exist; creationism cannot account for this fact. Evolution tells us that the emergence of new types of life is based on genetic mutations that are favourable to the organism thus we worry about whether bird flu will mutate so that human to human transmission is possible and attempt to make drugs to attack the virus. Creationism leaves us with an intellectually crippling ‘it must be God’s wrath’ non-explanation.

There are many other examples of the power of evolution’s explanations and predictions but the point is made. Creationism just can’t compete yet its proponents insist that it be given equal weighting in the science classroom with evolution. “There are other ways of knowing!” “Teach the controversy!” we hear. The assumption being that religion is just as good at explaining the natural world as science. Evidence be damned, equal time is the demand. Yet this is a call to set unproved and unprovable religious ideas alongside well tested and supported science as being equal as theories and thus equally true – the basis for this call is an a priori belief that the faithful are right and everyone else is wrong. You put in absolutism at one end and you get relativism at the other, the very thing Fundamentalists decry.

Strangely creationism has its secular defenders in the science studies area of the sociology departments of certain universities, their chief argument being the ‘imperialism of science’ in disproving alternative explanations. The most notable of these unusual people is Professor Steve Fuller of the University of Warwick. You can read more about these guys here.

As Richard Dawkins asked “if science is just a patriarchal western orthodoxy why is it that delegates going to a conference overseas on cultural relativism go by plane and not by magic carpet?”

I hasten to add most Christians are not creationists. However the ones who are are sufficient in number to be a problem, especially in the US where 40% of people claim to have been born again and a majority think the world is only about 6000 years old.

This week they have a stand-in host in the ACT Director Ben Williams. They rehash what he does and he tries to be more factual and less hyperbolic than the regular co-hosts.

Human Rights forum in Parliament House

Three days of consultations were held in Parliament House last week. They rehash what a Charter of Rights is and why they don’t like it. They mention Victoria and how it’s supposedly effecting their exemptions. This stuff has been discussed so many times before I won’t go into it further.

Jim Wallace’s talking points were that he was sceptical about whether a Charter would actually protect rights (mentioning that Victoria’s and the ACT’s Charter doesn’t give blastocytes a right to life is as much as he could muster on this point) and that it would be an activist’s Charter. He mentioned that some in the UK call their Charter a criminal’s Charter, his fear is that activist groups here like people who think that religion should not be able to impose its moral codes on others would be able to challenge unjust laws that are currently on the books.

No action.

Greens’ Marriage Equality Bill

A Galaxy poll last week found that 60% of Australians now support equal marriage (a fact that naturally they don’t mention) up from just 46% 5years ago. To give a bit of traction to the poll Senator Hanson-Young from South Australia as put up a private member’s Bill in the Senate to bring in marriage equality in Australia, similar to one that was put up a couple of years ago by then Senator Kerry Nettle (also from the Greens).

After a brief summary of the Bill they try to justify their position opposing it by a slippery slope argument asking why not allow polygamy after all people in polygamous relations might love each other too. The difference is of course there is a power imbalance in polygamous relationships that reinforces patriarchy and as numerous cases in the US show they are often very deleterious for both the women and the children in these relationships.

The will be a Senate enquiry about the Bill and they encourage people to make submissions where they start taking them.

Euthanasia Enquiry in Tasmania

There’s a Parliamentary enquiry in to euthanasia in Tasmania as a result of a Greens Bill seeking to legalise it. We get a snide comment from one of the regular presenters that the Greens seem to be less about trees and more about “undermining marriage and family” and “important issues of life” – not exactly a comment consistent with their claim to be partisan.

The deadline for submissions is 31st July and they want people to go to their website where they will have a campaign running on the issue. Non Tasmanians can also put in a submission.

A New Book on Girls’ Sexualisation

A new book called “Getting Real – Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls” is coming out in September on the sexualisation girls edited by a Director of the Christian Right lobby group the Women’s Forum of Australia, Melinda Tankard Reist.

After extolling Melinda they urge people to buy the book (cash for comment perhaps?). What they don’t mention is that the publisher of the book, Spinifex Press is run by Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein, the latter being one of the best-known and longest-established 'pro-life feminists' in Australia. Interestingly they often publish books by lesbians 'across fiction, non-fiction and poetry’; something that I’m sure would horrify most of the listeners to the podcast.

New Delhi's High Court has issued a ruling that said the section of India's Penal Code that criminalised homosexuality (S377) was a violation of fundamental rights and unconstitutional. The laws were drafted by the British 150 years ago. Law minister Veerappa Moily said that the government would have to “examine the verdict” in which the Court recommended the formal abolition of Section 377 as it is unconstitutional.

The joy on this man's face says it all:

This week’s show partially continues in the vein of trying to show they care about things besides abortion, stem cell research and gay rights.

Asylum Seekers Being Charged for Their Stay on Christmas Island

Like me and I dare say most other Australians the ACL had no idea that our government was charging people $120 a day to stay in detention camps while they are being processed and had been doing so for 17 years when Keating was Prime Minister. Like me and I dare say most other Australians they were shocked to hear about it especially since it can leave people with debts of up to $45,000 – debts most people simply couldn’t afford to pay. 97% of all debts were not paid and it was costing fortune to get the remaining 3%.

They quote Petro Georgiou when he said “we don’t change drug deals, paedophiles or the most sadistic of murderers for their time in gaol and make them pay for that out of their own pocket, so why are we imposing this draconian regime on asylum seekers?” They point out how and unjustified and punitive this is.

They try to walk a fine line by keeping their Liberal supporters on side by saying we do need strong boarder protection but we need to be compassionate to people in detention.

Then we get the Right Wing bullshit that presumes that if you are seeking asylum you have to be poor, if you arrive on a plane in Indonesia you can’t possibly be fleeing your country in fear of your life, noooooo you’re too rich. It just shows where these guys belong politically – however non-partisan they pretend to be.

No action.

Fallout from the Auscar Affair

Like they say, pretty much all of the time Parliament sat last week was devoted to this stupid issue and serious debates on climate change were postponed until the spring session because Malcolm Turnbull didn’t check his sources. They try to say everyone looked bad at the end of it, again showing themselves to be true blue Libs since there was universal agreement in the press, even amongst those commentators who are ardently pro-Liberal that Turnbull stuffed up big time.

No action.

New Homelessness Enquiry

The Federal Government commissioned a White Paper on homelessness in Australia last year. As a result of this, the relevant standing committee of the House of Reps has set up an enquiry that is seeking input on new homelessness legislation and supported accommodation. Submissions are due by 14^th August.

No action.

British Judge Calls for Action to Stop Family Breakdowns

A Judge in England has called for a national commission to tackle family breakdowns and a stigma to be attached to the break-up of relationships and they tie this in with claims by a British sociologist they had at their annual conference last year who said basically strong families equals happy, wealthy communities and weak ones equal poor, unhappy communities. This of course is an extremely Right Wing analysis because it then shifts the emphasis from where should be – on what action the state can take to fix the problem and privatises social ills in an extremely simplistic manner (‘get your marriage sorted out and all will be well’). Then we get the saccharine closing comment that ‘of course we’re not judging people whose relationships have broken down’…perish the thought!

No action.

Equality Bill in Britain

I knew it couldn’t last, they had to revert to form sooner of later. A new Bill in England proposes to comprehensively ban discrimination. They claim the Bill could ban the display of crucifixes and religious symbols in hospitals, given their previous lies about tobacco advertising in Canada I find myself rather sceptical about this claim. The Bill also would remove the exemptions from anti-discrimination legislation for faith schools. Faith schools can no longer discriminate against gay and lesbian Britons (which makes sense, not just on its merits but also when you consider that fully 1/3 of schools in Britain are faith schools thanks to the policies of Tony Blair) the Bill seeks to widen it so that they can’t discriminate on the basis of faith. Naturally they have a bit of whinge about this.

No action.

They close by telling us they’ve got 14,000 signatures against a Charter of Rights, it seems to be petering out.

40 years ago this week the Stonewall Riots gave birth to the gay liberation movement. The tremendous success of what has been accomplished by activists and allies all over the world truly can only be described as a revolution. I think it only fitting celebrate this anniversary by quoting the speech given by Michael Kirby, then a Justice of the High Court of Australia at the opening of the Gay Games in Sydney in 2002:

Under different stars, at the beginning of a new millennium, in an old land and a young nation, we join together in the hope and conviction that the future will be kinder and more just than the past.

At a time when there is so much fear and danger, anger and destruction, this event represents an alternative vision struggling for the soul of humanity. Acceptance. Diversity. Inclusiveness. Participation. Tolerance and joy. Ours is the world of love, questing to find the common links that bind all people. We are here because, whatever our sexuality, we believe that the days of exclusion are numbered. In our world, everyone can find their place, where their human rights and human dignity will be upheld.

This is a great night for Australia because we are a nation in the process of reinventing ourselves. We began our modern history by denying the existence of our indigenous peoples and their rights. We embraced White Australia. Women could play little part in public life: their place was in the kitchen. And as for gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities, they were an abomination. Lock them up. Throw away the key.

We have not corrected all these wrongs. But we are surely on the road to enlightenment. There will be no U-turns.

Little did my partner Johan and I think, thirty years ago, as we danced the night away at the Purple Onion, less than a mile from this place, that we would be at the opening of a Gay Games with the Queen's Representative and all of you to bear witness to such a social revolution. Never did we think we would be dancing together in a football stadium. And with the Governor. And that the Governor would be a woman! True, we rubbed shoulders on the dance floor with Knights of the Realm, such as Sir Robert Helpmann and with a future Premier, such as Don Dunstan. But if an angel had tapped us on our youthful shoulders and told us of tonight we would have said "Impossible". Well, nothing is impossible to the human spirit. Scientific truth always ultimately prevails. So here we are tonight, men and women, indigenous and newcomers, black and white, Australians and visitors, religious and atheist, young and not so young, straight and gay - together.

It is put best by Corey Czok, an Australian basketballer in these Games:
"It's good to be able to throw out the stereotypes - we're not all sissies, we don't all look the same and we're not all pretty!"

His last comment may be disputed. Real beauty lies in the fact that we are united not in the negatives of hate and exclusion, so common today, but in the positives of love and inclusion.

The changes over thirty years would not have happened if it had not been for people of courage who rejected the common ignorance about sexuality. Who taught that variations are a normal and universal aspect of the human species. That they are not going away. That they are no big deal. And that, between consenting adults, we all just have to get used to it and get on with life.

The people of courage certainly include Oscar Wilde. His suffering, his interpretation of it and the ordeal of many others have bought the changes for us. I would include Alfred Kinsey. In the midst of the McCarthyist era in the United States he, and those who followed him, dared to investigate the real facts about human sexual diversity. In Australia, I would also include, as heroes, politicians of every major party, most of them heterosexual. Over thirty years, they have dismantled many of the unequal laws. But the first of them was Don Dunstan. He proved, once again, the astonishing fact that good things sometimes occur when the dancing stops.

I would also add Rodney Croome and Nick Toonen. They took Australia to the United Nations to get rid of the last criminal laws against gay men in Tasmania. Now the decision in their case stands for the whole world. I would include Neal Blewett who led Australia's first battles against AIDS. Robyn Archer, Kerryn Phelps, Ian Roberts and many, many others.

But this is not just an Australian story. In every land a previously frightened and oppressed minority is awakening from a long sleep to assert its human dignity. We should honour those who looked into themselves and spoke the truth. Now they are legion. It is the truth that makes us free.

I think of Tom Waddell, the inspired founder of the Gay Games. His last words in this life were: "This should be interesting". Look around. What an under-statement. I think of Greg Louganis, twice Olympic gold medallist, who came out as gay and HIV positive and said that it was the Gay Games that emboldened him to tell it as it was. I think of Mark Bingham, a rowdy Rugby player. He would have been with us tonight. But he lost his life in one of the planes downed on 11 September 2001, struggling to save the lives of others. He was a real hero.

Je pense a Bertrand Delanoe, le maire ouvertement gay de Paris, poignarde a l'Hotel de Ville au course de la Nuit Blanche. Il a fait preuve d'un tres grand courage - et il est un homme exceptionnel. When the gay Mayor of Paris was stabbed by a homophobe he commanded the party at which it happened to "Dance Till Dawn". Do that in his honour tonight. And in honour of the Cairo 52; the Sister movement in Namibia; Al Fatiha - the organisation for Gay Moslems and many others struggling for their human rights.

And I think of all of you who come together on this magical night to affirm the fundamental unity of all human beings. To reject ignorance, hatred and error. And to embrace love, which is the ultimate foundation of all human rights.

Let the word go out from Sydney and the Gay Games of 2002 that the movement for equality is unstoppable. Its message will eventually reach the four corners of the world. These Games will be another catalyst to help make that happen. Be sure that, in the end, inclusion will replace exclusion. For the sake of the planet and of humanity it must be so.

Amusez-vous bien. Et par l'exemple de nos vies defendons les droits de l'humanite pour tous. Non seulement pour les gays. Pour tout le monde.
Enjoy yourselves. And by our lives let us be an example of respect for human rights. Not just for gays. For everyone.

We get a glimpse of the ideology behind the ACL, an ideology that has nothing to with the bible and everything to do with a Right-Wing agenda masquerading as religion.

Youth in Crisis – Department of Community Services

They comment on recent reports about youth homelessness and youth mental health problems and the high percentage of the homeless among the young.

What they don’t mention of course is the very high percentage of homeless youth that are GLBTI and the specific policies that are needed to tackle homelessness in this group after all we wouldn’t want to legitimise their ‘lifestyle’ would we?

They say that this all boils down to divorce rates – if everyone got married and stayed married we’d solve these problems thereby individualising collective problems and exculpating the government from having to act. This of course is in line with the Hobsian ‘you’re all on your own’ philosophy that many Fundamentalists espouse.

Also we’re told that even though neither of the presenters is a psychologist that they know the source of mental health problems is a sexualised society and substance abuse, once again we’re told that they’re not psychologists but too many kids are missing out on self esteem that apparently can only be built up by two parents who married to each other. After all it’s not like they need any evidence for these claims we just know don’t we?

It seems incongruous that they should suddenly be blaming the bureaucracy and looking to the state government to do something given that they think it’s all a matter for individual families.

No action.

Changes to Help Sex Slaves

Changes to the law will now mean that the approximately 1000 women who are trafficked as sex slaves to Australia each year will not be sent back to their countries if they don’t want to; an excellent thing. They use this to argue that brothels should not be legal (failing to mention that the vast majority of sex workers are Australians) and talk about the Swedish model.

No action.

Update on the Charter of Rights

The petition they have running against a Charter has garnered 13,500 signatures and they want it to be the biggest petition ever or at least the third biggest (last year a petition is support of equal marriage got 30,000 signatures so they’ve got a way to go yet).

This week’s program has to be one of the most egregious ones for quite a while.

St Peter the Great Retires

The hagiography given to Peter Costello is so nauseating even his most ardent admirer would dry reach. They spend about half of the program on it. They go on and on about how this “colossus of Australian politics” said Australia was a nation founded on Christian values, a statement that beggars belief to anyone acquainted with the history of this country, for starters just ten days after the planting of the Union Jack in what is now Sydney and establishing the penal colony, the male convicts set upon the female prisoners and raped them in an alcohol fuelled frenzy. The indigenous Gadigal people looked on in horror wondering what sort of barbarians had come to their country without their permission. The horrendous conditions the convicts endured and the savage treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by the British hardly reflect all that stuff about kindness, meekness or love.

Further to our supposed Christian foundation they tell us that if Muslims want to live here “they’re very very welcome” but they need to remember who’s the boss. We’re also told that Christian values were at the heart of the Howard government – an astounding claim when you compare children overboard and Howard’s treatment of refugees or the cuts to welfare for the poor and tax cuts for the rich with Matthew 25:34-45. Some Christians John Howard and his cohorts were!

This reveals the fundamental weakness of the ACL, for them Christianity is reduced to going to church, not having sex outside of marriage, opposing abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research and hating gays and Muslims. Everything else is basically values free even though their own holy book has quite a bit to say about other things, comparatively little to say about abortion, sex outside of marriage and homosexuality and nothing to say about euthanasia, stem cell research or Muslims. A large section of Christians in Australia will find this idea of Christianity totally alien and alienating to them.

They claim they’re not partisan even though eulogising Costello and the claiming the Howard government followed Christian values are about as partisan as you can get. I doubt Wayne Swan or Bob Brown will get such a nice send off when they leaves politics.

No action.

Euthanasia in Tasmania

There’s a move on to send the Bill off to an inquiry after the budget stuff is out of the way and they reckon the numbers are there to do it.

No action.

Cairns Abortion Case

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has tried to redefine this issue as being about the procuring of an abortifacient drug rather than the abortion itself, it remains to be seen whether this will work, given that the charge did not relate to importing a drug. Bligh is resisting moves to decriminalise abortion though they worry about a private member’s Bill as mentioned last week. Apparently there are moves on to do the same thing in New South Wales as well.

They reckon that pro-choice advocates are trying to sneak changes in before Australia’s massive pro-choice majority changes its mind, though we’re not told why people here would be inclined to follow the opinion of the Americans on the issue.

No action.

Scantily Clad Women Being Used to Advertise Clothes

This is a story that has made the mainstream press this week and they quote from the editorial in the Sunday Age and the criticism they level at the ads is not unreasonable, particularly since there were no equivalent images for men’s clothes. Then they pile it on when they tell us that “clinical psychologists will tell you that the pathway to paedophilia is through so called normal pornography” (“soft porn” the other presenter interjects) and “the advertising and the clothing industry is taking us to the logical extrapolation and now we’re seeing kids sexualised in this way to promote fashion and clothing.”

Well if adult porn leads to paedophilia someone better tell Hugh Heffner. The reality is a hell of a lot of adults look at porn and very few are paedophiles, this bizarre contention echoes the idea that playing violent video games make people violent. Both assertions are just plain wrong and the evidence proves it. How then do they account for paedophilia in places where pornography is illegal? Trying to hook sexist ads into a criticism of relaxed attitudes to sex hasn’t flown before and this latest attempt comes similarly crashing down to the ground as does the claim that they are somehow doing us a favour by trying.

No action.

Charter of Rights

Submissions to the committee have now closed but petitions are still being sent (12,000 thus far – they’ve exceeded their target) and they thank people who did put in a submission, I dare say they wouldn’t thank me for mine. :) At least there’s one wheelbarrow they won’t be pushing for a while.

No action.

Christian Kerr over at The Oz has started a stoush between bloggers and ‘real’ journalists, the basis for the latter’s self designation being content generation. Larvatus Prodeo beautifully explodes his rantings here.

The dying days of the campaign against a charter of rights aid money and support for homophobia in schools feature in this week’s broadcast.

Charter of Rights

Submissions are due to the Charter of Rights inquiry on Monday, Queensland’s Law Society has yet to make up its mind whether it’s for it or against it. This is being touted as a break from the Law Council of Australia’s position (saying we haven’t made up our minds can hardly be called a break) and we get the usual talking points and they want signatures for their petition and submissions.

Victorian Review of Exemptions from Anti-Discrimination Legislation

We get a rehashing the points from last week’s show. They claim that removing the exemptions would go against the right of parents who want a religious education for their children to get that religious education. This is used as a hook to say if this is happening in Victoria, think what would happen if we get a Charter nationally. One of the proposals in the review is that they keep their exemptions but loose public funding – not a bad idea I’d say, after all, if you don’t want to employ people you don’t like, why would you want their money either?

Whilst there undoubtedly are parents whose primary purpose in sending their girls to Presbyterian Ladies College for example is to give them a religious education, there are many more who are sending them their to give them access to networks amongst the future rich and powerful of society, thereby thinking that they will advance their own kids. They also have the perception that because a school has polo fields and old sandstone buildings, it must be better than their local public school down the road when often this isn’t so.

It’s also impossible to ignore the money factor here, whilst there are impoverished religious schools (mostly small Catholic ones) many religious schools are incredibly well resourced and pitched at elites. This is increasingly the case even in many Catholic schools which traditionally were pitched at children from low socio-economic backgrounds.

In claiming the freedom to discriminate as part of their faith they are hijacking the phrase ‘freedom of religion’ and turning it away from simply meaning the freedom to worship according to one’s own beliefs and changing it into meaning the freedom to claim certain privileges in society because of one’s own beliefs – like tax exemptions and exemptions from anti discrimination legislation. The implication being that if they loose these privileges, they somehow won’t be able to worship according to their own beliefs.

Submissions to the review are due by 10th July and they urge listeners in Victoria to put in a submission

Aid Money Being Used for Sex Selection against Baby Girls

The former leader of the National Party in the Senate Senator Ron Boswell has been asking questions about how much money is being spent and in what way on abortion. He was told the funds would be allocated in block grants to organisations working in several countries and it would be impossible to know how much money was being used specifically to fund abortions. Neither the Senator nor the ACL are particularly happy not knowing the exact Dollar figure and claim this means there’s no transparency in the system and how do we know that the money is not being spent to fund sex selection by abortion?

I would venture to say that organisations like Oxfam who receive this sort of funding are not in the habit of providing it for those purposes and there are guidelines that ensure funding isn’t going to any old guy who claims he’s going to put a well into some village. Moreover those guidelines would state that money is not to be used on things that are illegal here or in the country concerned. Sex selection by abortion is illegal in Australia so we’re hardly going to fund a clinic that helps women abort female foetuses so they can have a son. The thing is of course that the bureaucrats funding projects know what the projects being funded by these block quotes are so it’s not as if money could skimmed off by corrupt Australian officials. This is simply being used as another thing to rally the troops and perpetuate the impression that all is not well with the world.

The story of a young woman who is being charged with procuring an abortion in Queensland also gets a predictably slanted run and they fear a private member’s Bill decriminalising abortion being put forward as MPs are almost always given a conscience vote on similar issues. In practice this means such a Bill would pass because our politicians, like the public generally are overwhelmingly pro-choice, fact the ACL has acknowledged in the past and which they implicitly acknowledge again in fearing a private member’s Bill.

No action

Anti-Homophobic Bullying: a Lifestyle Promotion Measure

Q: When is bullying a kid a good thing?
A: When the kid being bullied is gay.

At least this seems to be what the fundies are saying. They’re worked up about campaigns in schools in the UK that target homophobic bullying. Similar measures are being put in place in schools in Tasmania and Victoria. A core part of this is showing kids that their gay classmates are normal human beings who deserve to be treated decently. To them this ‘promotes a homosexual lifestyle’ and they don’t want that and they link this in with “attacks on the ecology of marriage and the family and the best interests of the child” whatever that means. Surely it’s in the best interests of children not to be bullied for whatever reason!

Well what do they want? An anti bullying campaign that says ‘gays are going to hell but you shouldn’t beat little Johnny up for being, leave that to god’? Newsflash: that isn’t going to work. A core part of combating bigotry is showing the bigots the people they hate are human beings just like them; this is a concept that the ACL seems to have a problem with judging from what they are saying.

We know that where anti-homophobic bullying policies (and anti-racist ones as well) are put in place in schools and really enforced they have a tremendous effect in changing kids’ attitudes to other kids who are different to them. Contrary to what the ACL thinks, generalised anti-bullying messages do not get through when the bullying is specifically targeted and being told gay people are human beings is as likely to make a straight kid gay as being told black people are human beings will make a white kid black.

Johann Hari has a brilliant write up on the effects of homophobic bullying in schools and the effects of campaigns targeting it here and here.

No Action – just a rant.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal suppression of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It’s fascinating to see just how successful the successors of the Commissars who sent the army in to kill their own people have been in erasing the memory of their evil amongst the current generation of Chinese youth. Foreign media have been banned from the Square for today, gangs from local neighbourhood watch committees are being paid to patrol the Square, prominent dissidents have been sent on enforced ‘holidays’ outside Beijing, Twitter and other similar services on the internet have been shut down and the Great Firewall of China is vigorously censoring all sorts of key words like “June 4th”, “6/4”, “4/6” etc and any coverage of the events being staged around the world to commemorate the massacre or any report that shows footage from it.

I was amazed to hear that ‘Tank Man’ picture, famous around the world is practically unknown in China. I’ve even heard it claimed that the picture below is a fake! Odd how I can clearly remember watching it happen on the television at the time then.














Not so easy to dismiss is the footage of Zhao Ziyang, the then Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party apologising to the students for the Party’s sloth in loosening up society and asking them to disperse because he feared what his fellow Politburo members were about to do to them. The title of this post is a quotation from the opening part of his speech to the students in Tiananmen Square it means "students, we came too late. We are sorry."

Chinese people travel more now than ever, they study and live overseas, radio stations in Hong Kong broadcast directly to millions in the mainland and truth is not an easy thing to keep under wraps even if this posting gives them another site to block.

Messages have been circulating asking bloggers in China to turn their blogs grey on the anniversary to commemorate the crack down. I’ve done likewise as a gesture of solidarity.

民主自由万岁！

After a bit of argy bargy New Hampshire has legalised same-sex marriage. Marriage certificates will be obtainable regardless of whether a couple lives in New Hampshire or not. The legislation distinguishes between civil and religious marriage, a religious marriage being a civil one with additional mumbo jumbo for added effect that doesn’t have any legal impact.

The Governor sought to have the legislation clarify that Priests/Pastors/Rabbis/Imams etc don’t have to marry people if they have a theological objection to doing so, which was basically the situation anyway, it’s not like an Imams marry Catholics as it is now. The other aspect of what the Governor demanded is that religious bodies don’t have to make property they might own available to host a same-sex wedding if they object to it. This might be more contentious if the property or the body that runs it receives state funding for its upkeep or renovation. Nevertheless it is another step forward.

It comes just U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially recognised June as Pride Month and pledged to "advance a comprehensive human rights agenda that includes the elimination of violence and discrimination against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity." Now attention will shift to New York where the Bill to legalise same-sex marriage is before the state Senate. One Senator has said he already has the votes to get the Bill passed, something that opponents of the Bill have said amounts to a mind game, but since when were mind games off limits in politics? Watch this space…

Yes that’s right folks, every year the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association awards the JN Pierce Award for media excellence in favourable coverage of the oil industry and its views. This year’s winner of this highly prestigious award is the Chairman’s own Chris Mitchell, editor-in-chief of The Australian. He’s taken out the award for leading his august paper’s coverage of climate change policy. Well done young Chris, the Chairman smiles on you, service rendered gets its due reward.

A new voice on the show this week, namely the new ACL ACT Director Nick Jensen who has just finished his Bachelor of Theology & his BA (majoring in religious studies, politics and philosophy) and is a chaplain at a Christian school. I must say his voice sounds very young. He started a year ago at the ACL and now he’s the director of it in the ACT, somehow I think this is more a reflection of the size of the organisation rather than any sort of Napoleonic qualities on his part. We get the oft put platitudes about how this organisation with its reactionary agenda is supposedly non-partisan, although it’s pretty obvious why they feel the need to keep saying this. The talking points don’t vary much from last week (something of a motif with this bunch).

Euthanasia

They basically rehash last week’s points particularly the research (they don’t say where it’s from) claiming one thousand Dutch people are killed every year without their consent under that country’s euthanasia legislation, nor do they expand on what they mean by this, under what circumstances this happens is something we’re left to wonder. They conclude that no safeguards are possible to make the Tasmanian legislation workable.

No Action

Legalised Brothels in Tasmania

A few years ago Tasmania had a review of its prostitution legislation that legalised prostitution but not brothels, the follow up review required by the law has now suggested that brothels be legalised but it doesn’t make it one of its recommendations. Tasmanian politicians are now in the process of deciding whether brothels should be legalised or not, although no legislation has been put forward as yet. Unsurprisingly they don’t want to see this happen and they claim that where brothels have been legalised there have been massive numbers of new ones open up and the illegal trade goes up.

Funny that, Western Australia legalised brothels last year and I’m not aware of any new ones opening up, nor did the ban on them at the time mean that there were no brothels when the Liberals were last in power in WA, what I can remember at the time were quite a number of streetwalkers, a practice that is dangerous for the women involved and not especially nice for everyone else to have to put up with, particularly since they were concentrated in the CBD and nightlife parts of the city and most of the people there were not punters.

The new boy hasn’t quite learned his lines yet and says it is going to happen in every society on some level and the response is to call for the introduction of the Swedish model whereby the man paying for sex is criminalised, not the sex worker. Swedish stats show significantly a reduced number of brothels and the number of women being trafficked to Sweden has fallen. Which all sounds good, but...whilst there are many things I like about Sweden and social democracy is certainly preferable to the much more laissez-faire system of liberal democracy in the US however social democracy has a number of intrinsic flaws and one of them is its adherence to statism. Operating in a nationalist construct blinkers you to the wider ramifications of actions which might be good for your country.

In this case, the critical question is what impact have the (relatively) new laws had on the sex trade in Sweden’s neighbours? Has the number of women being trafficked to nearby countries with different legislation gone up? Has the safety of sex workers in other nearby countries improved or not? (Assuming there haven’t been changes in their laws.) Most importantly has the number of Swedes visiting places like Tallinn in Estonia (nicknamed the Bangkok of Europe and country with one of highest rates of HIV infection in Europe) for sex tourism gone up or not? In other words have the Swedish laws simply displaced the sex trade, especially its more unsavoury aspects to nearby countries? When the stats on Sweden are trotted out by proponents of its legislation we never hear this question being answered so there is plenty of scope to be sceptical about the Swedish approach.

When prostitution was legalised in Western Australia last year, the Swedish model was considered and rejected, despite its architect flying out from Stockholm to meet with then Attorney-General, it would interesting to know why that was.

No action.

Global Financial Crisis

Some stats on the socio-economic impacts of the global financial crisis get a brief mention and some sympathy, but no ideas are put forward on how to deal with these problems, I guess God will provide if they keep faith in capitalism.

Are government departments letting kids down?

They express some concerns about how children are being portrayed in advertising, specifically about sexualised ads of children that were allowed by the NSW Office of the Children’s’ Guardian.

They also complain that laws that are supposed to stop the sale of porn (extreme porn as they put it) in milk bars and service stations are not being enforced even though these magazines are not displayed in plain sight.

No action.

Once again they plug their Charter of Rights campaign briefly before signing off.

Bad news from California, Prop 8 stands but the 18,000 same-sex marriages entered into before the election remain valid. The ruling went 6-1. Demonstrations are already happening and it looks like this will be the launch of a movement to overturn the change at the next election. This time the campaign will focus on bringing people of faith as well as Blacks and Latinos. There’s also talk of a campaign to recall the six judges who voted for inequality (the Supreme Court is elected and can be recalled by the people). The momentum is with equality and hopefully they can build a strong campaign to undo this injustice.

I’ve noticed that very little action is requested in these spots, it’s mostly just slanted ramblings about things they don’t like. This week is mostly about a Charter of Rights with two filler items.

Euthanasia

Euthanasia legislation is being introduced in Tasmania by the Greens that will be debated by August and both major parties will have a conscience vote. We’re told the Greens just won’t give up on this issue, especially after Bob Brown moved to reintroduce euthanasia in the Northern Territory.

They then go through why they think the legislation should fail – life is scared, it’s a slippery slope and they claim a thousand Dutch people are killed without their consent under Holland’s euthanasia legislation. We’re told most people in the NT who availed themselves of euthanasia when it was briefly legal there were depressed and lonely and didn’t have a terminal illness. Turning to the legislation in Tasmania, they say the proposed safeguards won’t work (although we’re not told why). Apparently previous parliamentary inquiries in other jurisdictions internationally did not support euthanasia. Then we’re told that with greater emphasis on palliative care should mean that it’s extremely rare for someone to be in intolerable pain (sadly this just isn’t true) and they don’t want a situation where people feel themselves a burden and the take ‘soft’ option.

No action.

Charter of Rights

A book was launched in Sydney on Monday by the Menzies Research Centre (a think tank aligned with the Liberal Party) called “Don’t Leave Us With The Bill – The Case Against An Australian Bill of Rights.” One of the contributors, former High Court Justice Ian Callinan says a Bill of Rights risks politicising the court system and corrupting the judiciary. He also says judges are “not immune to the narcotic of power” and that they’re not in any better position to make moral and social decisions than anyone else. Again we’re told it’s “one of the most crucial issues facing Christians”. At the launch, Jim Wallace (ACL head and another contributor) says it would be legislating selfishness as it doesn’t balance individual rights with community rights (even though the document hasn’t even been written yet!)

Then we have the most egregious part of the broadcast, they actually say they wanted to put a tobacco billboard next to a school in Canada and that was validated by the courts – as I highlighted last week this is a total lie! It seems lying isn’t a sin if you’re doing it for Jesus.

Action: Same as last week. 3700 people have signed they want 10,000.

America turning pro-life?

A recent poll says a majority of Americans describe themselves as pro-life and they say this is a backlash against Obama’s moves even though the pro-life stance is mostly a hardening of the position on the Republican side of politics. They hope Australians change too, they say 67% of Australians were against late term abortions in polls in 2005 even though polling in the same year found 56% supported a woman’s right to choose, a figure which increased to 65% in 2006, with only 22% opposed. They still think it’s a winnable debate and the tide will turn.

No action.

I was fascinated to hear on the radio last week that the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act creates no rights that are enforceable in a court or tribunal nor does it empower the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission to do anything about a breach of human rights, it’s simply a compliance reporting tool for the government. It can only be hoped that any federal Charter doesn’t go down this path and actually creates rights that can be enforced against the government and others, otherwise what’s the point? It’d just be smoke and mirrors.

Occasionally, very occasionally, you get a thoughtful piece in the Murdoch press, one that actually tries to connect the dots and look below the surface at what might be going on in a story that has been fodder for those who love scandals on all sides. In his article, Ross Fitzgerald asks whether there could be a connection between the level of religiosity of the born-again Christian variety in a team and the sexual repression it fosters on the one hand and the group sex scandal doing the rounds in the media on the other; insightful reading and a question well worth asking. Especially in light of calls from some for consensual group sex to be criminalised. Also of note on the subject of religious hypocrisy is this piece in today’s Sydney Morning Herald telling us that either 40% or 80% of Catholic priests have broken their vows of celibacy, depending on whose numbers you go on.

It’d be quite interesting to see more discussion about what sort of role sexual repression fostered by many religions is playing in how their followers act out in ways others would not. One thing is indisputable and that is the link between self-righteousness, self-delusion and hypocrisy.

This week was a bit of a rerun of last week, most of the stuff is basically more of the same.

Charter of Rights – AGAIN

They really are going on about this. This week they go into more detail about their campaign around a Charter of Rights seeking mobilise the minions (or as they put it tens of thousands of Christians) into spamming MPs and the committee. They rather modestly is the Charter is one of “the biggest threats currently facing the Christian faith in Australia?” and continue their measured and balanced commentary telling us “at stake is freedom as we’ve known it”. One can only hope that they put such hyperbolae to the government and the people so they can exit stage right with the rest of us laughing.

They go through traditional arguments for their stance too much power to judges, alters political system blah, blah, blah; we get a bit more about their campaign site and apparently there are 1100 signatures on the online petition that’s been open a few days. They go through the talking points about what happened in Canada, (more on that in a moment) and tell us in the space of less than a minute that the Charter would be simultaneously “meaningless” and “powerful”. Nothing like a well reasoned argument!

They urge people to go to website, sign a petition, make a submission and show a propaganda video made especially by Jim Wallace in their church before closing by rehashing some of the stuff from last week from Victoria.

Spurious talking points

I want to deal with the talking points (in terms of their focus, one is major, one is minor) that they keep bringing up about a Charter.

Firstly they claim the Canadian courts have allowed cigarette advertising in schools. The general rule is if something sounds too ridiculous to be true, it probably is and in this case, it definitely is and really is nothing more than a scare campaign. It sounds as if a cigarette ad was put up near a school, challenged in court and found to be ok.

In fact the case (RJR MacDonald Inc. v Canada (Attorney General)) was about whether a total ban on advertising was necessary to prevent people taking up smoking, by a majority of one (i.e. it could just as easily gone the other way) the court said it was not and said commercial advertising was covered under the free speech provisions of the Canadian Charter. It is still lawful to restrict what forms this commercial speech may take – billboards are specifically prohibited and it is illegal to advertise around products and services targeted at young people and the tobacco industry itself specifically said they weren’t about to advertise around schools following the decision.

There’s a very simple lesson to learn from this, if we get a Charter, it should only apply to natural persons (i.e. flesh and blood human beings) and not legal persons – a term that includes both humans and corporations. There’s a contemporaneous write up on the case here and there's more on the current Canadian laws here. Also there’s nothing stopping us from saying that free speech doesn’t cover commercial speech in any Charter we might come up with.

The minor point they make – I suspect however it forms the crux of their opposition to the Charter even though they downplay it, is that equal marriage in Canada came about via the courts, specifically the cases of Egale Canada Inc. v Canada (Attorney General) and Halpern v Canada (Attorney General).

The key question here is would these guys be in favour of it if was introduced via legislation rather than by the courts? No. They’re opposed to it full stop. They reckon it’s less likely to come via parliaments than by the courts and that’s why they’re so opposed to courts having more power, the evidence for this proposition seems to be waning however, Sweden, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire (the Bill hasn’t been signed by the Governor yet but it looks likely that he will sign it) have all got equal marriage this year through their parliaments, not through their courts. The debate is not which is the right way to get something; after all do they oppose the desegregation of the schools in the US? That was done by the courts. Slavery was outlawed in the British Empire by a court, do they oppose that? No the debate is about whether equal marriage itself is a good or a bad thing, so let’s have the debate.

NRL

Another attack on Catherine Lumby. We’re told since the 60s we’ve had a laissez faire approach to sex and since she doesn’t see anything wrong with consenting adults having sex (yes the nerve of the woman, how dare she!) she has no idea why moral values are important. Again they link her scholarly book surveying attitudes of Australians to porn (The Porn Report) to the porn industry even though it was funded by the Federal Government. Again they call for her to be sacked and Jim Wallace has apparently said so on Sydney radio.

Then things get almost cartoonish as they turn into living stereotypes of Christian fundamentalists. We get ramblings about the supposed breakdown in morality and the “pornification” of our culture. We need breaks put on porn we’re told; men must not be complicit in the “pornification” of our culture. Then my personal favourite for the week – “men have a responsibility to protect women” – gold, sheer gold. We’re urged to “protect our daughters and young women” and told that Lumby’s not helping – another “won’t someone please think of the children” moment.

The Budget

There’s a little bit of commentary about the budget. They say (again) that the development funding good but we need more – I guess they have to try to sound positive about SOMETHING.

Equal marriage in New York

Jim Wallace went on Channel 7’s Sunrise this week debating two “homosexual activists” about equal marriage and we get a précis of their talking points. According to Jimmy, two human beings of the same sex expressing their love for and commitment to each other are:

• Selfish (now that really is out of left field, how can SHARING you life with someone be selfish?!);

• Making normal a minority ‘lifestyle’, because of course if you’re in a minority, you’re not normal. (The ABS figure of 1.2% is quoted as being the LGBTI population of Australia. The ABS doesn’t ask who you fancy on the census form, they ask if you’re in a relationship and even they acknowledge the figure given is an underestimate. The figure is meaningless and does even measure what they say it does.);

• Bad because children do best in a traditional family, not that they would ever quote research to show kids raised by same-sex couples do worse than kids who are raised by opposite-sex couples because there isn’t any, and;

• Weakening marriage although we’re not told why.

We’re told Christians need to be active on this issue lest Australia go down the path of New York where the Bill of equal marriage has passed the House and in that state’s Senate.

Sometimes there’s nothing like a farce to get your day off to a good start!

It amazes me what passes for political analysis in the Australian media these days. Ex DLP professional talking head and former Chief of Staff to John Howard Gerard Henderson has favoured us with his analysis of Saturday’s Fremantle by-election in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. The first thing that struck me was that this was being published in the Herald and not in his syndicated column in the West Australian. Given that he ignores some facts that are patently obvious to any Western Australian in his analysis, this might not be accidental.

For anyone who missed it, the Greens defeated the ALP in a seat that Labor had held for more than 80 years. Even better for the Greens/worse for the ALP, the Greens polled higher on the primary vote than the ALP did – a first anywhere in Australia. One’s things for sure, I wouldn’t want to be the WA State Secretary of the ALP at the moment.

The gist of his piece is this – the Libs have a policy of putting the Greens ahead of the Labor Party which helps the Greens in inner city seats where they are a serious challenge to the ALP (seats like Sydney, Melbourne, Grayndler get mentioned and I would add Kingsford-Smith to the list as well) – this is true. The Greens however do not return the favour in marginal seats in the suburbs, at best running spilt tickets which give equal amounts of preferences to Labor and the Liberals and then only in safe Liberal or Labor seats – also true. Therefore according to the man who was once the principal advisor to an opposition leader and hence someone who ought to know a thing or two about elections, the Libs should demand a preference swap in winnable seats or put the Greens below the ALP on their how to votes.

Several things stand out about this masterpiece of close reasoning:

Firstly and most importantly, what Gerard doesn’t seem to realise he’s calling for is for the Liberals to put the ALP ahead of the Greens in marginal seats, thereby giving their principal opponent a leg up on their preferences. I can almost hear the pundits at Liberal Party HQ laughing at him now. Take the seat of Swan in Perth for example, in many ways it typifies what a marginal seat looks like, it takes in the posh, yuppie filled riverside suburb of South Perth and also takes in some very working class areas in Belmont, Victoria Park and Bentley with a bit of a mortgage belt in places like Karawara thrown in. It’s not hard to guess which suburbs vote for which party. The balance of demographics makes it extremely marginal and it has flip-flopped between Labor and the Libs for ages, at the last election the Libs won it off Labor by only 164 votes out of 76,173 votes cast. For the Liberals to put Labor ahead of the Greens in such a contest, because the Greens wouldn’t put them ahead of the ALP elsewhere would spell electoral doom for the conservative candidate, the Labor candidate would effectively be elected off the back of their preferences. The preferences of other rightwing parties (i.e. the religious ones like the Christian Democratic Party and Family First) would not be strong enough to counteract the flow of Green preferences to Labor and in this case, the Liberal preferences to Labor. So there’s a key marginal seat that they would loose and have only themselves to blame for it. The Liberals don’t have much of a choice when it comes to preferences and the Greens know it, why should they play ball when they’ve got the Libs by the balls?

Secondly Gerard makes much of the Greens being “Australia's only left-wing party”/“Australia's only genuinely leftist party” (aside from the fact that there are lots of micro parties that are on the Left – the Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Equality Party all run candidates in various elections and even right wingers would concede that the ALP was centre-left at least some of the time) but then thinks preference swaps with the people who are the Greens’ main opponents in the political (as opposed to the electoral) process would seriously be entertained. These preference swaps would be for the Greens what putting Labor higher than them on their how to vote cards would be for the Libs – electoral suicide. Labor would have a field day showing how voting Green equates to supporting the Liberals. In Victoria furtive attempts were made at a Greens/Liberals deal at the state election in 2006 and it was a disaster. The Greens got into bed with the Liberals in a short lived coalition in Tasmania between 1996 to 1998 and are rumoured to be considering doing it again if Labor doesn’t win the next Tasmanian state election (due next year) because they’re mightily pissed off about Gunns' pulp mill. The last time they did it, the government was unstable (because chalk and cheese don’t mix too well) and it alienated much of the support base of the Greens. Doing these sort of preference swaps would not be a good idea if the Greens want votes.

Thirdly whilst the Greens would love to pick up seats in the lower houses, they’re perfectly happy to be a balance of power party in the upper houses around the country, what’s more, in Australian politics you don’t need many seats to become incredibly powerful. Then Senator Harradine had a one man veto over government legislation during the early years of the Howard government as long as the other parties opposed it, which was most of the time. He used this to great effect get reactionary policies and pieces of legislation in which have only just been rolled back. What Harradine could do for the right, the Greens can do for the left, who cares if they win lower house seats? Three quarters of their upper house vote comes from Labor preferences (the rest from the doctors’ wives crew who vote 1 Liberal and 2 Greens) so they’re potentially sitting pretty anyway, why alienate the base?

The great bonus for the Greens comes not from Liberal preferences but from when there is no Liberal candidate, at the Western Australian state election last year Jim McGinty, Labor’s long serving MLA for Freo got exactly the same primary vote that his would be successor got on Saturday, but the Liberals out polled the Greens on primary votes in 2008 and Labor got back in. This time round, the Libs didn’t field a candidate, some of the Liberal vote went to Liberal-leaning independents; virtually none of it went to the religious parties so most Liberal voters voted for the Greens to deny Labor the seat. As Gerard points out, this was what happened in the federal seat of Cunningham in 2002, although the seat went back to Labor at the next election in 2004 when the Libs did field a candidate.

What this says is not that the Libs should reconsider their preference deals; they should consider whether it’s worth fielding candidates in inner city seats with high a Greens vote. Fremantle and Cunningham tell us that there are seats that the Greens can win if there’s no conservative candidate (at least in a by-election, what would happen in a general election remains to be seen) so is the loss of funding from conservative voters in those seats not voting 1 Liberal (parties get funding based on how many primary votes they get) because there is no Liberal candidate offset by potentially fucking up the ALP in what would otherwise be a safe Labor seat? I don’t know, but you can bet that question is being chewed over right now by Liberal politicians and strategists across the land.

Then there’s his analysis of Fremantle itself. Gerard seems to think that because the Greens won the state seat of Fremantle at Saturday’s by-election, its federal member Melissa Parke should be sweating on it at the federal election due next year. Probably not actually, because what Gerard’s failed to notice is that the federal seat is much bigger than the state one. Redistributions over the years have seen the state seat become more and more focused on the city of Fremantle itself whereas the federal electorate still takes in large areas of suburban Fremantle that have large numbers of Italian and Portuguese immigrants and second generation Australians who as a demographic are solidly Labor. A pretty obvious fact to most Western Australians but presumably not known to your average Sydneysider.

Finally he ignores the local factors that were at play on Saturday, Labor preselected Fremantle’s Mayor Peter Tagliaferri the same day he joined the party, his campaign was in trouble from the start, with letters going out to ALP members across Perth asking for money and volunteers, the Australian Services Union pointed out that he had cut wages for council employees whilst he was mayor – that didn’t help him in the left-wing cred stakes and he supported the North Port Quay development of posh apartments on due to build on 6 artificial islands off the coast of Fremantle – that didn’t help his green cred. In Cunningham, ALP rank and filers (mostly on the party’s left) were massively that a Labor Right member was being parachuted in from head office in Sydney and so was the community.

Gerard might want to get some lessons in how to parse over the wash-up from elections from Anthony Greene.

Over the weekend something amazing happened in Singapore – there was gay rights rally! Singapore is an authoritarian effectively one-party state where gay sex is illegal (thanks to laws left over from colonial times). It has a history of clamping down on any moves to try to advocate for a progressive approach, so to see something like this happing in such a country is pretty special. For years gay life in Singapore was underground, there were a few discrete nights at discos, a few incredibly camp people on TV but that was pretty much it. The arrival of internet made finding other gay people much easier for Queer Singaporeans but it’s still quite a conservative place.

The event was organised by a group called Pink dot sg who themselves look pretty organised by the look of their website and the fact that they have ambassadors for their cause and it more or less coincided with the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) which was the day after.

Despite the rather bland reporting in the state media, this is quite an unprecedented event, Singapore had a sort of circuit party for a few years earlier in the decade but it was shut down because it went “against the moral values of a large majority of Singaporeans” according to the Police. It’s good to see such a big turnout for such a visible gay rights event and great to see the Police didn’t shut it down. Let’s hope it continues. Shiok one!

A busy week for me, but a quiet week for the god squad it would seem. Only one thing is on the Christian Right’s agenda this week and if you guessed it was to do with a Charter of Rights – you’d be right.

DYI Gender testing

A new product on the market allows for gender testing from eight weeks, they’re worried about gender selection occurring as a result of this. This would be fair enough if it wasn’t already illegal to select the sex of your baby by aborting a foetus just because it was of the ‘wrong’ (i.e. female) gender. Their solution to this is to call for more restrictive laws around abortion even though they don’t specifically say what these should be and how you’d prove someone was having an abortion because they wanted a boy and were having a girl. Their ‘solution’ does nothing to deal with what one would hope would be a very isolated problem and only serves their anti-choice authoritarian agenda; no call for action is made though.

Culture of group sex in rugby league

They’re concerned about the culture in NRL and how rugby league players treat women. Whilst there certainly are problems in rugby league’s culture, it would be unfair to tar all NRL players with the same brush, after all there a few devout Christians who are players and surely not all players are sexists.

Nevertheless, rather than offer their ideas as to how this culture can be changed they instead have a blast at one of the NRL's advisors in the area, Catherine Lumby who is an Associate Professor in Media and Communications at Sydney University. The reason for this tirade? Well apart from claiming she has links to the porn industry (probably because she wrote a book with Kath Albury and Alan McKee called “The Porn Report” looking at pornography – the models, the production companies and the users) she has said she doesn’t have a problem with group sex if the participants are all consenting adults (adults having consensual sex with other adults? The horror! One wonders if they’ll call for a ban!). They deliberately try to confuse consensual and non-consensual sex saying “what does consensual mean anyway?” I would have thought it was the difference between ‘yes’ and ‘no’. In any sort of of selective reading of a person’s opinions, it’s best to let them speak for themselves. Clearly she draws a very firm line between consensual and non-consensual sex and there is nuance in what she says about consensual sex but we don’t that getting the way of a spray do we?

They conclude by churlishly saying they hope the NRL sacks Catherine Lumby as an advisor but again there’s no call for action.

Autonomy for the ACT

A couple of days ago, Jon Stanhope used a ceremonial sitting of the ACT’s assembly to call for greater autonomy from the Commonwealth Parliament down the road and across the bridge.

As the most educated place in Australia, it’s also one of, probably the most progressive. It was the only state or territory to deliver a majority ‘yes’ vote (and a rather substantial one at that) on the republic referendum in 1999. It also lead the charge for civil unions only to be thwarted by the Commonwealth – twice under the previous government and once under the current one before it was forced to water down its legislation somewhat last year.

Given this you wouldn’t expect the ACL to be fans of the ACT and they’re not. They’re concerned that the ACT is calling for more autonomy. They think the Commonwealth’s power to override ACT legislation is a check/balance because the ACT has a unicameral parliament – so does Queensland but they’re not calling for the Commonwealth to have a plenary power over Queensland, or any other state.

If the ACT had more autonomy civil unions couldn’t have been overridden (memo to Jim Wallace: it’s called democracy when Parliaments pass laws the people the want). Somewhat bizarrely they claim civil unions contravened the federal Marriage Act because of the ceremony involved – a rather novel legal interpretation. They’re worried about a progressive ACT Assembly modelling progressive stuff for the rest of the country like same-sex couples adopting (even though WA had legislation to this effect long before the ACT). Nothing like the ‘radical social engineering’ coming out of Canberra to get other Australians to support crazy ideas like equality – you can practically hear the Maude Flanders’ “won’t someone please think of the children!” scream.

If the Commonwealth was interfering in more mundane matters that’d be different but it’s perfectly ok with them to override a policy that the government took to the electorate twice and which won majority government for the first time in the ACT’s history, but to hell with their mandate they say. Why? Because it suits their quixotic view of how things should be. They don’t think anything will come of it and aren’t calling on people to do anything – rather a motif this week!

Charter of Rights

Christian schools are having their exemptions under the discriminations acts reviewed in Victoria. (Hurrah, about time too I say!) They go on about how great these exemptions are and say the review was set up within weeks of the Victorian Charter of Rights coming in therefore Charters of Rights are baaaaaaaad. Ergo we don’t need a Charter of Rights federally and they go through (yet again) why they don’t like Charters of Rights canvassing all the usual talking points about things in Canada.

A new campaign has been set up called ‘charter rights no wrongs’ on their camapign website where supporters can sign a petition to the federal government. They also want people to make more submissions to the human rights enquiry.

The Budget

They go through the budget leaks and are pleased that stay-at-home mums will continue to get the baby bonus when paid maternity leave is introduced. They want our overseas aid funding maintained and ultimately increased to meet the Millennium Development Goals – at least there’s one thing we can agree on.

Maine's Governor signed the Bill into law not too long ago, with New Hampshire hopefully not far behind. They're coming thick and fast in the US at the moment.

I’ve decided to start a regular series based on the Australian Christian Lobby’s weekly podcast to let people know what the Christian Right is up to.

This week:

There’s a new book that is part of the Learn To Include (LTI) series called ‘Where did I really come from?’ apparently from the NSW Attorney General’s Department (even though the Attorney General has said he’s not connected with the book ) dealing with different family relationships and age appropriate sex ed and they’re not happy Jan! Chairman Rupert’s media outlets are displaying their customary considered, even handed reporting. They seem to just be having a spray that it’s been published but there’s not much they can do about it.

The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth have put out a report saying that current systems of dealing with child abuse are not adequate. They’re using this to say we should stop allowing marriages to break up and focus on the child, saying we tolerate anything and everything blah, blah, blah and we should extend the Northern Territory intervention to the white community. No real action, they’re just using it to push their own agenda that report’s authors would not subscribe to.

Alcohol advertising will possibly no longer be self-regulated. The proposal is for mandatory vetting of alcohol ads to make sure they’re not promoting binge drinking. They want Senator Fielding’s proposal to ban advertising during cricket matches to be taken up and for there to be health warnings on alcohol as there are on tobacco products but aren’t urging people to do anything

National “Thanksgiving Day” is on 30th May. No it's not the American holiday, this was dreamed up six years ago by the Australian Prayer Network and Brian Pickering. The Governor General and Prime Minister are on board, as they were under the last government. We’re all supposed go to our local fundy bookstore (Koorong Books) or their website and buy cards (nice little fundraiser that) to thank politicians and public servants for the job they do. This year they’re particularly urging people to thank Communications Minister Steven Conroy for his attempts to censor the internet at ISP level which have been massively unpopular. You can find out more about this day where we're supposed to acknowledge "the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our nation" here.

Yet again they’re bashing the human rights consultation and the proposed Charter of Rights as an attack on their religious freedom and urging people to write short submissions to the consultation as they say “this issue is far too important to let go so please do act on it.”

The Prime Minister announced on the weekend that Australia will be increasing its surface fleet by one third and doubling its submarine fleet. In addition we are to get 100 new fighter jets in a move widely seen as being about moving to counter the rise of China. Several problems arise with this idea; firstly under no circumstances could Australia take on and defeat the People's Republic of China on the battlefield. This is a country that can field an army of 5 million if it really needed to, and it has the bomb.

Secondly the notion is not so much about defending Australia, but defending its interests which sounds a lot like code for following the Americans around to the next war, that is, imperialist adventurism.

Thirdly, with an expanded military, you get a true military industrial complex and that has severe repercussions for democracy as President Eisenhower warned in 1961:

…yet we must not fail to comprehend its (the military industrial complex’s) grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.

America failed to heed this warning, these days war is big business and that in part drives its foreign policy. We would do well to give that kind of society a miss.

Fouthly, the fact is we can only put half our submarine fleet to sea on any given day as it is, where are we going to get the extra men and women to man these ships and planes from? Conscription? I dare say not. Most likely it will come from ramping up nationalist sentiment and viewing the military as something noble. In his speech making the announcement, Kevin Rudd called military service “our nation’s highest calling”. Expect more of this sort of thing if he gets his way.

Finally and most importantly, there are certain consequences for getting the nation into uniform, which Germaine Greer has spoken about.

In relation to the training that forms the building block of military life she says:

Armies are built on the premise that rage can be induced and manipulated, be careful what you wish for if you wish for the return of national service, I should know because I live near an English garrison town and there the squaddies regularly terrorise the civilian population using their training to inflict better and graver injuries on civilian boys and it’s quite interesting that when the police are called they almost never prosecute the squaddies, so there is a vein of poisonous rage that is exploited by civil society.

She points out that once the soldier has been high on rage chemicals, they can be triggered at will, but once triggered, they can’t be controlled, you can turn rage on but you can’t turn it off. She also notes the role alcohol and other stimulants play in warfare.

More generally an expansion of this kind cannot be done without militarism (or conscription) as Germaine says:

Militarism takes the vulnerability of human beings to both terror and rage and incorporates it into a system. Each year we encounter instances of the vileness of the procedures by which this transformation is effected. They include systematic humiliation and abuse of junior personnel, initiation ceremonies, bullying at all levels. At Deap Cut barracks in Surrey, four recruits have died of gunshot wounds, one of them who died in 1995 had been continually abused verbally and physically attacked by a gang wearing gas masks as he slept and thrown through a window after answering an officer back. His body exhibited five bullet wounds, only one from close range, yet the verdict remains suicide. The one woman among the four, who was shot through the forehead six months latter, was said to have been forced to have sex with an officer, the bullet that was in her head has since gone missing... The suicides or murders are all dots on the trajectory of rage as it is exploited by the military establishment.

And as to the well known effects of seeing service:

I don’t have to remind you I hope, of the psychological devastation that has driven Australian servicemen returning from Afghanistan it do away with themselves. In the United States, sixteen army recruiters have killed themselves since 2000; the usual explanation is post traumatic stress disorder, the soldiers were all being treated with anti depressants.

Depression is by far the commonest mental illness; very few of the vast number of depressed people in our societies will shoot or hang themselves. What is being overlooked in dealing with these cases is the pathology of rage itself. Rage is addictive, people dependant on rage body chemicals cannot settle down, they cannot just get over being poisoned for months on end by rage-cum-terror. Suicide has always been more common amongst soldiers than amongst the civilian population. As rage is engendered in them by a culture of systematic humiliation and then deployed in acts of extreme violence and cruelty in the field, we really can’t be surprised if they shoot or hang or drown themselves or cut their own throats. Though most of the recent army suicides had been on medication, none I think took the comfortable route of a drugs overdose. The level of violence involved in soldier self-destruction should treated as an important clue as to its aetiology, and the four letter word I use for that, is rage…if you treat people in a certain way rage is what you get and if you are tyrannical you can deploy it, you can use it, you can abuse it.

Closely allied to militarism is nationalism. Nationalism on the battlefield takes the form of the dehumanisation of the enemy. How else would any normal human being be persuaded to kill another than by seeing them as less than human? At home the philosophical idealism of nationalism fosters class collaboration which favours the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of us – after all, we’ve all got to do our bit haven’t we? More dangerously on the home front nationalism takes a xenophobic turn to newcomers and usually a racist attitude to ethnic minorities, particularly ones from the countries we might be fighting. As these bellicose postures depend on hyper masculine aggression, misogyny and homophobia are never far behind in such a culture. Do we really want this in our society? Do we really want this aggression and the broken men it produces? Is this in our 'national interest'?

The notion of the Defence Department’s hawks of an Australia armed to the teeth and ready to send people to their deaths to further nationalist vanity and imperialist expansion is repellent in the extreme and completely unnecessary. All this says nothing of the financial cost, not just of the planes and boats, but of the social consequences this policy will produce. Taking a razor to the Defence Department itself will only fund so much, surely there are far more pressing expenditures to fund in these difficult times.

The President of Burundi needs to whip up the masses to help him get re-elected and what better way to do it than by a good old fashioned bout of gay bashing with a mass rent-a-crowd rally thrown in for good measure. Commendably, the opposition controlled Senate stood up to this bigotry and tossed out the news laws that would have amended the country’s criminal law. However the lower house has the final say and the laws went through a few days ago as you can read about here.

One of the features of the internet is that anyone with the inclination to do so can set up a website that enables people of like minds to find each other, all well and good except when you get websites that purport to be one thing whilst actually being quite another. Take Mercatornet, a site I happened across a while back and which seems to glory in posting articles that are either pointless and dull or bigoted in the extreme and (generally) attract comments in keeping with the author's prejudices and which seem to vie with each other for the level of absurdness and extremity contained in them. It also routinely censors reader's comments that don't conform to its editorial line. It claims to be neither conservative nor liberal, strictly speaking this accurate, it's reactionary in its views on modern society and comes out of a hardline Catholic perspective that is alien to most Catholics; apparently its editor is a member of Opus Dei. Though it is based in Australia, practically none of its content is related to Australia.

There's a rather good write up on more about the site and its contributors here.

Billionaire industrialist Richard Pratt died late yesterday after a bout of prostate cancer and long succession of the rich and powerful coming to his bed (in the house formerly owned by Archbishop Mannix). As with Kerry Packer, the Australian media (both corporate and to a lesser extent the ABC & SBS) are out lionising him. I find it interesting how when one of these guys dies (I’ll be fascinated to see what paeans are lavished on Chairman Rupert when he goes) they get portrayed as some sort of national hero, even more strangely, a hero for the common man. This goes far beyond simply not mentioning the less savoury parts of their lives, but exults them into gracious gentlemen whilst misdealings simply fade to black.

Just as Kerry Packer’s very dodgy tax dealings dug up by the Costigan Royal Commission didn't stop the most appalling sycophancy from the media when he died (particularly from his very own Channel 9); so too Richard Pratt – a man convicted of price fixing (and whose company copped the biggest ever fine in Australian corporate history) and charged with perjury, a charge that was only dropped because of his impending death and a charge which Commonwealth Prosecutor Mark Dean SC told the Federal Court that the CDPP believed would have succeeded if it had been pursued. We were also treated to former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett telling us

“Stress and anxiety when you're crook are not good partners. It's hardly a benefit. He genuinely thought in making the admission he did (that he was guilty of price fixing), in the interest of his family and his business, that that was the end of it; they'd come to an arrangement. And all of a sudden, they fired a second arrow into the air, and that has hurt him.”

Yes the nerve of the ACCC, charging a man with perjury when he admitted lying to the Federal Court. Who do they think they are?

He also fathered a child with a woman he had an affair with and yet we saw the family man on the media reports.

Notwithstanding that people usually say nice things about someone who’s just died, the media could do better than just putting him up there as just a gentleman philanthropist, whose death really matters to people worried about losing their jobs and their homes.

For some reason watching this story play out on the news over the past few days reminded me of the death of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited. A rich old man dying in his grand house – reading the book and watching Lawrence Olivier in the TV series, I found I just couldn’t care, given that the rest of Britain was in the grip of the depression at the time. The parallel is rather apposite come to think of it.

Sometimes you happen across something that piques your interest because it's something you're familiar with. The Potter's House are a fundamentalist Christian mob who have a habit of gathering in the city on a Friday night, handing out flyers for some Christian rock concert or 'miracle' healing session, singing hymns in big group and haranguing passers by in very loud voices about how damned and abominable they are and how they're all going to hell if they don't convert to Christianity. Now this sort of thing gets done by various fundamentalist groups but there's more to these guys than meets the eye as you can see here.

I always notice two things about these guys - firstly their membership is young, often very young and secondly, having seen these guys in action over the last 10 years, the number of stalwarts in the crowd is very low, suggesting a high turnover as people get disillusioned with simplistic answers and inherent vacuousness of fundamentalism.

Meanwhile, there's a fascinating write up on tennis-champ-turned-fundy-pastor Margaret Court here.

Yesterday was the deadline for Americans to file their tax returns. Conservatives have been trying to organise a mass protest that would supposedly be reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party, the idea was to hold small get togethers over a cuppa and then send the used tea bags in the mail to members of Congress. The idea has been heavily promoted in an astro turfing campaign by right wing media outlets, especially by the Chairman’s Fox ‘News’. Being the clever people that they are, they decided to call the protest ‘teabagging’, seemingly unaware that word already had a completely different meaning that wasn’t quite what they had in mind. Aside from being a spectacular flop like all astro turfing campaigns are (because no one actually supports them) the failed campaign has provided much mirth for the rest of the American media, as can be seen here:

Let's see if the 'teabaggers' put their money where their mouths are (nothing like a good double entendre) and refuse to lodge their tax returns.

Incidentally, here's what a real protest about a real issue looks like. Massive respect for these brave women standing up for their rights against oppressive sexist laws enacted in the name of Islam.