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Rudd tries to use “poofter power” to save labor’s bacon
Imagine my surprise when my mate Kevin sent me this email overnight.
To: Iain Hall
Iain —
If I am re-elected Prime Minister, I will support marriage equality legislation in the first 100 days of Parliament.
At this evening’s debate, I made that commitment to the Australian people.
If you think it’s time for marriage equality, I’d like you to stand with me and show the country that we think it’s time:
I’ve been thinking about the meaning of marriage for a long time – and I won’t hide the fact that this has been a journey for me. It is a difficult discussion, and I won’t force this on anyone. It will be a free vote for members of the Labor Party.
But here is what I know: we are at our best when we give all Australians the same dignity, the same opportunity for happiness.
I believe that no matter who we love, we all should be able to make that same promise I was able to make to Therese over 30 years ago. That all of us should be allowed to marry the one we love.
I am the first Prime Minister of this country going into an election promising to support marriage equality. So if you support equal marriage, I will need your support.
This is an issue that is very personal to people. What moves us to take a stand on this issue can move others too. If you think it’s time for marriage equality, share your story telling the country why.
http://www.itstimeformarriageequality.org/
It’s time.
Kevin
What it says to me is that there is no fringe issue that the New Again Dear Leader won’t try to exploit in his quest for re election. However if we give this brain fart even the most cursory inspection it will become obvious that it won’t save Rudd’s bacon because most of those who are hot to trot for gay marriage are Greens supporters or other minions of the left who would not vote for the coalition anyway. So the best that this could do is make a few votes that now only come to Labor as second preferences go directly to Labor which in real terms makes it a zero sum game, that is only if we can assume that those same progressives can get over their disgust for Labor’s PNG solution. Nah this whole grab for poofter power to save Rudd from political oblivion is bound to be as fecund as the gay couples that Rudd is seeking to exploit here. It may well come to pass that as a society we decide to broaden the definition of marriage to include same sex pairings but at present its invocations buy Rudd is just another example of the old bait and switch which Rudd hopes will shift the debate into the esoteric world of interpersonal domestic issues rather than the focus being upon Labor’s woeful record of mismanagement , overreach and wacky ideas that don’t work like the carbon tax.
Cheers Comrades
Related articles
- Kevin Rudd’s message: it’s time for marriage equality (cafewhispers.wordpress.com)
- Australian PM Promises Equal Marriage Bill if Re-Elected (bilerico.com)
- Australia: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd pledges to introduce equal marriage if reelected (pinknews.co.uk)
- Australian PM Kevin Rudd Promises Marriage Equality in 100 Days if Elected: VIDEO (towleroad.com)
- Australia’s Kevin Rudd Promises Gay Marriage Bill In First 100 Days (ontopmag.com)
- Australia Election: Kevin Rudd reads from notes in first debate (telegraph.co.uk)
- Rudd pledges same-sex marriage bill (updatednews.ca)
Janet Albrechtsen, Gay Marriage and making gravy
If you have listened to this song before then it should not have escaped your attention that the process of making good gravy is just as important as the nature of the the ingredients I hear the song on the radio this morning as I read Janet Albrechtsen this morning.
Janet Albrechtsen click for source
Gay marriage is not akin to securing the vote for women or ending apartheid. After all, civil unions are commonplace. Gay couples enjoy the same substantive rights as heterosexual couples. If they don’t they should. But the political battle to claim the word “marriage” for homosexuals is an elite agenda of the political classes for reasons not always honest.
Take the disingenuous claim that traditional marriage is an evil form of discrimination against gays. As Chief Justice John Roberts said in Hollingsworth last week, “when the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn’t get around and say let’s have this institution, but let’s keep out homosexuals. The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn’t include homosexual couples.”
Yet, those who oppose gay marriage for legitimate reasons are too often treated as morally inferior, out-of-date, and worse, bigoted.
Whether it’s a snooty editorial from The New York Times ridiculing the “incoherence” of opposing gay marriage in Hollingsworth or mocking grumbles from the audience on ABC1’s Q&A, too many gay marriage advocates have chosen the wrong way to advance their cause.
Redefining marriage in a way that promotes social cohesion means winning people over with reasoned arguments rather than trying to guilt them into agreeing.
What our activist friends seem to forget is that for the sort of social changes they desire they have to convince rather than coerce a change from those of us who want to see marriage remain as a heterosexual institution.
Patience is a virtue that seems far too removed from the activist mindset, maybe it shouldn’t be so if they want the changes they desire to be enduring accepted and effective.
Cheers Comrades
Darren Hayes,and the Gay marriage need for political Viagra
What is it with the single minded bigotry of Gay marriage advocates? It seems to me that they have totalitarian hearts that ell them that anyone who does not buy into the the entire gay agenda then they are the enemy. Usually I cite our learned friend as a prime example of this but on occasion I think that Darren Hayes has let loose his inner fascist.
click for source
As unbeliever I am like a lot of people rather indifferent to the doctrines of most religious faiths and when it comes to the Salvos their good works far out weigh their rather uptight attitude to sex in general. Frankly if Mr Hayes really wants to have a go at God-botherers for their attitude to homosexuality why is he not utterly outraged by Islam? Instead of just objecting to Gay marriage the followers of Islam are instructed that homosexuality is a capital offence and Gays in Iran are regularly hung for just following their nature.
Oh hang on, all of this rancour is rather pointless and its sad that such talented people are deluded enough to think that there will be any change to the marriage act under this or the next government and really what the only reason that this issue gets any kind of a run is to distract the public’s attention from the rather woeful performance of the Gillard Government. But its not just the Gay marriage lobby who have been sucked in by this deliberate strategy, the Greens have been running their campaign on this issue as if it actaully has a chance of getting up. Frankly it would take a shit load political Viagra to harden up enough support to consummate the Gay marriage dream of those like Hayes or our learned friend.
Cheers Comrades
Related articles
Brendan O’Neill speaks sense on Gay marriage in the OZ
A great piece today in the Oz from my favourite Marxist Brendan O’Neil where he succinctly explains why some otherwise sensible conservatives are taking the plunge to support this seemingly innocuous err, cough, splutter, “reform”.
click for source
Of course I expect that our learned friend will be onto this piece like a starving hound would be onto the fox, with a great deal sound a fury (signifying nothing) but we only have to look to Canada to see just how bad the repercussions will be if this so called reform is ever to be made manifest if the activists and fag hags ever get their way.
So lets leave the marriage well enough alone and if homosexual relationships need any sort of legal recognition and social acknowledgement then lets do it through other legal and social instruments like some sort of civil union or relationship register.
Cheers Comrades
Update:
I have just read the revelation in the Oz that Tony Abbott’s sister is herself both Gay and in a committed relationship and more importantly that this has not meant that she has become persona non grata at the Abbott household where she has been welcome with her partner on numerous occasions.
Isn’t this a perfect example of just how wrong it is to insist that those who oppose the concept of gay marriage do so because they hate or fear homosexuals?
Cheers again Comrades
Update the second
As predicted our learned friend has produced a rant about Brendan’s piece in the OZ and also as predicted he is very hound like in his he desire to attack and maul the fox here but I think that he has just ended up with a mouth full of straw and dead air:
click for source
Now I am actually a student of our learned friend’s rhetoric and usually he tries to at least find something in the text which he can twist and turn to his purposes but on this occasion he goes one step further and totality invents and argument that O’Neill is not even making:
O’Neill actually argues that – get this – the government stopping trying to encourage gay people to marry straight people (which seems cruel to the straight people who marry them, to be honest) is “an invitation to yet more state interference” in our lives.
Yes, there’s less state control of our lives when the government arbitrarily tells us whether we can marry that man or that woman, purely on the grounds of our gender.
It’s the most bizarre black-is-white up-is-down argument I can remember ever seeing.
I may be wrong, but after reading the O’Neill piece in question five times I can’t find where he argues this at all. of course Our leaned friends fans uncritically accept his argument without question
Worse still our learned friend totally misrepresents O’Neill’s actual argument as well by a mixture of selective misquoting and derision:
Brendan goes on to give us some even sillier stereotyping and false assertions (“A gay relationship is fundamentally one of romantic love, far more so than traditional marriage is”), absurd claims (“In Canada… the words husband and wife, even mother and father, have been airbrushed from official life”) and dishonest strawmen (“Collapsing together every human relationship under a mushy and meaningless redefinition of ‘marriage’”), but that backwards freedom-is-slavery line appears to be his main point, and, unlike the above common furphies, a line I’ve never seen before.
If our learned friend had actaully done some research about the situation in Canada he would discover that there is nothing made of straw or dishonest about the way that official nomenclature has been altered in reference to family and parental roles in the wake of gay marriage there. Unlike our learned friend Brendan O’Neill actaully knows what he is talking about when it comes to the situation in Canada.
The rest of Sear’s rant is just his typical foaming at the mouth wild hound dog raving he is desperately trying to get a mouthful of that O’Neill fox but all he has managed to get is teeth around is a few handfuls of rather rank straw. In typical totalitarian style he declares himself winner as if asserting something will make it so and all the while the fox is sitting there doing a bit of indifferent grooming and leading the chorus of laughter at our learned friend’s foolishness. What a lovely way to wake up to a beautiful day!
Cheers times three Comrades
Related articles
- CLE on Same Sex Marriage and Civil Unions (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
- The U.K.’s Marriage Equality Debate Heats Up (newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com)
- Homosexual Partnership. (iangardnerdotcom.wordpress.com)
- “Why gay marriage is a very bad idea” (ebougis.wordpress.com)
- What Effect Will Gay Marriage Have? (queerlandia.com)
- Gay marriage: The fight is on, but who is calling the shots? (independent.co.uk)
The misplaced wedding bouquet blues, or our learned friend keeps flogging that poor dead gay marriage nag
What is it about Gay marriage that so rings the bell of our learned friend?
The nub of the issue that drives him to write post after post about it?
It can’t be anything practical because one of the few things that Brother Number One did while in office, that I fully endorse, was to remove 180 or so instances where federal law discriminates against same sex couples. Perhaps its the rather desperate prospects for the Labor governemnt and the inability of the Greens to force Gillard to move on the issue no matter how close such a change is to the heart of Bob Brown.
So having worn out all of his arguments based upon any sort of logic he resorts to a sort of dark sarcasm which of course in his usual style does not quite hit its mark:
click for the source if you must
You would have thought that a Sensitive New Age Lefty would think twice about using the quite sweet story of two people in their twilight years finding love for his own political agenda, Ah no, not our Jezza, he will grind the bones of any story if it helps further the cause of same sex marriage.
There is an irony here though insofar as our learned friend has been twice married and has not as yet produced any offspring (well some of us should be thankful for that 😉 )so were his sarcastic scenario to be real he himself would be denied the joys of state sanctioned nuptials, maybe that is why he feels such empathy for those who now can dare to speak the name of their love?
Cheers Comrades
Related articles
- Archbishop warns clergy gay marriage is a ‘radical step’ (independent.co.uk)
- ‘Gay marriage is madness’: Catholic cardinal slams government’s plans for same-sex weddings (mirror.co.uk)
- Gay marriage is now the issue through which the elite advertises its superiority over the redneck masses (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
- Kirk Cameron Tells Piers Morgan Homosexuality is ‘Unnatural,’ ‘Destructive’ (inquisitr.com)
- Cardinal Keith O’Brien: Same Sex Marriage Is A Grotesque Subversion, A Great Wrong! (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
With a foundation of truth
The confirmation yesterday that two of my regular commentators here are officially “an item” was in my mind as I did my morning blog crawl and this story made its way onto my screen. It got me thinking about honesty within a marriage (or a relationship). Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that my friends have any honesty issues to contend with at all. It is just a simple case of one thing free associating with another.
Paternity shock: Elspeth Chapman discovered her real father is Allen Mottram, after reading her mother's diary
Mrs Chapman, who denies deceiving her ex-husband, allegedly told Mr Webb in 2002 that he was not the girl’s father and filed for divorce the following year.
Mr Webb’s barrister, Nicholas Mostyn, QC, told the court it was not until 2004 – by which time the girl was 18 – that a DNA test confirmed that he was not the girl’s father.
Mr Mostyn argued the case raised ‘profound questions’ about a spouse’s ‘duty of candour’ to their partner. He told the court: ‘Honesty and good faith lie at the very heart of the contract of marriage.’
Describing 45-year-old Mrs Chapman as an ‘inveterate liar’, he claimed she had ‘a fixed and certain knowledge’ that Mr Webb was not the girl’s father.
Mr Mostyn said Mr Webb’s ‘sense of injustice’ meant he wanted to pursue his case to the House of Lords if necessary, but the Appeal Court judges denied him that opportunity yesterday.
They refused him permission to appeal against a Bournemouth County Court judge’s dismissal of his damages claim.
Who would not be most horribly hurt to discover that the girl that you had nurtured as your own was in fact another man’s daughter? To know that the very foundations of your marriage was a lie? It is no wonder that Mark Webb was so keen to pursue this matter to the highest court.
No amount of money is going to really fix this matter though is it? This really is a “no winner” game (except for the lawyers who will have their pound of flesh no matter what) so perhaps the judges were right to halt these proceedings now, before all participants in this matter are reduced to absolute penury.
The availability of DNA technology certainly makes paternity cases so much more decisive. You either are the biological parent or you are not. Since the beginning of time some women have been duping their husbands about the paternity of their children and the poor chaps so deceived have been unable to do a thing about it. Already we have cases that pertain to issues of child support for children that have not reached the age of majority and I don’t doubt that eventually a case like Mark Webb’s will succeed through the courts and it will create a very large precedent when it does. Taking on someone else’s child as your own is one thing when you know that you are doing However when you raise a child thinking it is your own, and she is not, well there is a world of pain and internal conflict there.
As to my friends? Well they are both people of high principles (although I disagree with much of their politics) and I hope that they make a good go it remembering that it is a partnership of the journey and not just a sharing of the destination that matters.
Cheers Comrades
8)
Update from the daughters perspective here
Family matters, revisited
When I posted about this topic before there were no examples of just how this affects the individuals involved the latest article puts a very human face on the situation.
Minutes later, the boy finally enters the living room. Imran is a handsome lad and seems perfectly normal. He has just spent the day at his school in Bradford, where he is often top of the class.
Look a little closer, though, and you can see hearing aids tucked behind each of his ears. Imran is profoundly deaf because a vital nerve which carries sounds to his brain has failed to develop.
Medically, there is nothing that can be done to cure his disability. It is the same affliction that has struck his teenage cousin, a girl called Myra. Two of the children’s uncles also suffer severe deafness. Is this a tragic coincidence and are the family just unlucky?
According to Imran’s mother, the answer is an emphatic “No”.
Union: A Muslim couple marry in traditional dress
“I married my first cousin, which is why Imran is deaf,” she says. “Myra’s parents are also first cousins, which is why she is also deaf.
“When I started my family I was just a young girl. I had no idea that marrying a close relative would be medically dangerous for any children I had. My parents did not know either. Now our son is paying the price for our ignorance.”
The mother (whom we will call Zuhra) agreed to talk to the Mail only on condition of anonymity.
She is terrified of being identified and condemned by her extended family of 100 members, spread across Northern England, for speaking out about one of the most controversial – and taboo – subjects in multi-cultural Britain: inter-marriage between cousins which has left hundreds of children damaged or dead.
“My parents would think I had betrayed them,” she says. “They were born in Pakistan and are stuck in the past. They are good people, but they can’t accept that my son’s deafness has been caused by my husband and myself being so closely related.
“My father would like my oldest daughter, who is 18 and at college, to marry her cousin. He already has a male relative in mind. But I will do everything to avoid it happening.”
This week, Government Minister Phil Woolas provoked a furore by warning of the health risks of cousin marriages among British Pakistanis. He claimed the practice was sending the number of birth defects among children in these communities soaring.
The extent of the problem is made very clear by this statistic quoted in the article
Although British Pakistanis account for three per cent of the births in this country, they are responsible for 33 per cent of the 15 to 20,000 children born each year with genetic defects.
A medieval mindset is clearly the problem here and a tendency to see the role of marriage as a market place where children are used as pawns in a never ending quest to increase or maintain family prestige which tends to stifle the natural instinct to seek genetic diversity is also in play here.A religious faith that sees women and girls as beings who are less autonomous than men has also been a factor that can not be ignored. Clearly women like “Zuhra” have to be supported in her desire to end this cultural practice and no amount “cultural sensitivity” or multicultural political correctness should stand in the way of that.
Cheers Comrades
8)
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 