The Fundamental List 10/6/2009
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.
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.