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98 names of shame
Its called democracy Jeremy and it works. in any event you and the other pro Gay marriage activists should have known that this whole campaign was nothing more than a smokescreen to help distract the public from the incompetence of the Gillard government.
Cheers Comrades
98 names on a list of shame that will embarrass not only all our descendants, but theirs in particular:
About exactly the reverse of how Australians, based on any recent polls on the issue, have asked their representatives to vote.
Shame to Ms Gillard, Mr Abbott, Mr Rudd – and my former local MP, Mike Symon, who repeatedly refused to meet with me to discuss marriage equality because he’s a gutless wonder who doesn’t deserve to hold the marginal seat he does.
Marriage equality will still happen within the next decade – it’s inevitable. The issue is simply not going away until there is full equality. There is no way now that people will settle for less. There is no victory for the discrimination side (short of Australia falling into a post-apocalyptic nightmarish theocratic state) that can last.
Enjoy your brief success in making gay people live under a couple…
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“Tony Abbott versus the Universe”, the remix
In the comments of this post Miglo was curious about my reaction to his critique of Tony Abbott’s position on a grab bag of social issues well I wrote out a long comment answering each point in turn only to have it disappear into the either when I tried to use it as a comment to a re-blog here at the Sandpit So this is “take two” and hopefully this one will not disappear…
So without further adieu I will go through the points in turn
Same-sex marriage: Mr Abbott has said marriage is between a man and a woman not just to fulfil their own personal happiness ”but because we have obligations to the children that come with families”.
I see no reason to fault Abbott on this position as marriage is much more about the children that it is about social affirmation for homosexuality
Homosexuality: Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott has defended comments he made about homosexuality on 60 Minutes, saying gays and lesbians “challenge” the order of things.
Mr Abbott said he felt “threatened” by homosexuality on Sunday night’s program, a comment that has angered the gay and lesbian community and something he tried to back track from during an interview on the ABC last night.
“There is no doubt that it (homosexuality) challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things” Mr Abbott told Lateline.
At the risk of being howled down as a homophobe I tend to think that homosexuality is against the natural order of things and it serves no biological purpose (given the simple fact that such pairings must be sterile) that said I am a realist who thinks that what consenting adults do in private is entirely their own business and the law and society should not penalise them for their choice of partner(s).
Abortion: Christians aren’t required to right every wrong in the political arena, but they can help change the nation’s culture, suggests Tony Abbott DESPITE the debt that political institutions owe to the West’s Christian heritage, there is the constant claim that Christians in politics are confused about the separation of church and state. There’s also a tendency among Christians in the community to think that Christians in politics have to sell out their principles in order to survive. Christian politicians are often warding off simultaneous accusations that they are zealots or fakes. Indeed, the public caricature of a Christian politician is hypocrite or wuss, in denial about the ruthlessness and expediency necessary to wield power, or too sanctimonious to be effective. Take the challenge of abortion. The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.
Abortion is the classic example of competing moral imperatives and the simple fact is that those competing imperatives each have different levels of validity depending upon the stage of gestation. Thus very early on its easier to argue that a women’s bodily integrity and autonomy should give her unfettered rights to terminate an unborn child the longer that the gestation endures the greater the argument for the protection of the unborn from arbitrary execution becomes. Anyone who does not realise this is essentially a sociopath who is ruled by a dark and vicious feminist ideology.
Boat people: Tony Abbott yesterday claimed boatpeople were acting in an un-Christian manner.
Given the fact atht most of these mendicants are not in fact Christian then what is contentious about this observation
Euthanasia: Legalising euthanasia in Australia would put elderly people at risk of being “bumped off”, federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has warned, after an Australian man travelled to Switzerland to legally end his life.
Killing oneself is not rocket science and you really don’t need much more than simple things that are common around the house, nor is suicide actually a crime. But there are lots of downsides to making it easy for doctors to assist. In extreme circumstances if there is a legal cost to “helping” some one end their lives then it is a small sacrifice that should be paid to prevent malicious pressure on the unwell.
The needy: “We can’t abolish poverty because poverty in part is a function of individual behaviour”.
Contrary to leftist ideology the reality is precisely as Tony Abbott observes here some people just can not be saved from themselves no matter how much money you throw at their problems.
Women’s rights: Tony Abbott warns women against sex before marriage. And how about this brain fart: “I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons”.
Is promiscuity really such a good thing for anyone in society? The left seem to believe that sexual intercourse is something akin to a contact sport that is little different to any other amateur sport. However this ignores its true purpose which is to propagate the species and to provide the glue that cement the pair bonds that are foundational to raising subsequent generations. As for the difference in aptitudes of men and women in different roles and professions only a fool denies that there are differences but the other side of that coin is to have a society that allows and appreciates those who want to step outside the usual gender expectations.
Recognition of Indigenous culture: ‘Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I’m proud of that . . . Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country’s British Heritage’.
Compare and contrast the sort of colonial experience that this country benefits from with the sort of colonial experience under different European colonial regimes and its clear that we would be a lesser nation under the French, the Dutch, Spanish or the Portuguese. So Abbott is spot on here.
Climate change: As a climate denier, Tony Abbott is most famous for his statement that climate science is “absolute crap“. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg – he actually has a long history of denying climate change science. “The fact that we have had if anything cooling global temperatures over the last decade, not withstanding continued dramatic increases of carbon dioxide emissions, suggests the role of CO2 is not nearly as clear as the climate catastrophists suggest.”
Does it matter what the man personally believes about the AGW proposition? I think not when it comes down to it. However if his scepticism about the millenarian cult of “climate change” leads this country to a more nuanced policy setting that eschews useless lip-service to AGW as a front for social engineering then the nation can only benefit. If AGW theory is correct which is the greater sin? To agree with the liturgy and preform pious acts of contrition that have no effect on the problem (like Gillard’s Carbon tax ) and cost our economy a Motza Or to disagree with the theory but to act in a prudent manner to improve the environment?
Technology: “There is no way on God’s earth that we need to be spending $50 billion plus of borrowed money on what is going to turn out to be a telecommunications white elephant – school halls on steroids.”
We would all love to have a Lamborghini or a Rolls Royce in the garage but when it comes down to it most of us would be happy with a Nissan or a Ford. lets consider just what people actually want out of the Internet rather than getting carried away by the dreams of the technophiles and the latte sippers
Foreign investment: Tony Abbott made headlines recently when during a visit to China, he declared that “it would rarely be in Australia’s national interest to allow a foreign government or its agencies to control an Australian business”.
In other words: foreign direct investment by such entities would not be welcome.
How is it a bad thing to be concerned that a totalitarian state owned corporations may not have Australian’s interests at heart when they try to buy the farm here?
Divorce: Liberal Party frontbencher Tony Abbott wants laws toughened up to make divorce harder. The opposition families and Aboriginal affairs spokesman has called for a return to the fault-based system of divorce discarded in 1975, which was replaced by a “no-fault” system. Mr Abbott’s plan, outlined in his soon-to-be released book Battlelines, would see a grounds for divorce reintroduced, including adultery, cruelty, habitual drunkenness and imprisonment.
It would be similar to the defunct Matrimonial Causes Act.
There is a great deal to recommend in our “no fault” divorce system but its not perfect and there are times when a judgement of fault would aid justice in adjudicating some of the issues associated with the dissolution of a marriage, its property and children that make divorce tough and the experience of our system shows it could do with some review and reconsideration at the very least.
So there you go Migs I have gone through your points and shown that none of them are the black marks that you seem to think they are, all are quite reasonable positions to take and most reasonable people will be able to see that.
Cheers Comrades
Why back all or nothing when you could have something?
While I don’t support the concept of same sex marriage I do endorse the idea of civil unions so I found the conclusion to Malcolm Turnbull’s Michael Kirby Lecture delivered at Southern Cross University last night is worthy of note:
Let me now turn to the politics of the matter. The Labor Party has resolved that there will be a conscience vote on this issue, although the party’s policy is to support gay marriage. The Liberal Party has resolved not to have a conscience vote on this issue, and the party’s policy is to oppose gay marriage.
Many argue that the Liberals’ lack of a conscience vote means the gay marriage bills will not pass. I don’t think they have the numbers to pass, but I am far from convinced that in the present Parliament they would have the numbers even if a conscience vote were permitted.
So what is to be done? In my judgement, while the numbers are not there for gay marriage in this Parliament, they are certainly there for civil unions. We should not miss the opportunity to legislate for civil unions for same-sex couples in this Parliament. I recognise that will be seen by many as not good enough. But it is better than nothing and, as I said in the House last week on another issue, it is a great mistake to allow your conception of the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
It is said by the ”marriage or nothing” advocates that if the Parliament were to legislate for civil unions there would never be a move to marriage. On the contrary, it appears that most jurisdictions which have legislated for gay marriage have first provided for civil unions, including the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Canada. The United Kingdom and France, which recognise civil unions, are both proposing to legislate for marriage.
Personally I think that civil unions should be enough in their own right rather than changing the marriage act but that is just my position. However I suspect that as the zealots for this cause who have been banging the “all or nothing drum” with unseemly vigour for the last few years will find that they will end up with nothing.
Cheers Comrades
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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.
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
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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”.
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:
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:
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)
Union of sameness versus union of difference
This is an essay by David Palmer posted to Online Opinion and I reproduce it here under the terms of its creative commons licence , oh yeah and because I think that its well argued 😉
Cue spluttering and fuming from our learned friend 😉
Cheers Comrades:
If a recent report in the Sydney Morning Herald is to be believed, the intensive lobbying of coalition MPs over the Summer months by same-sex marriage advocates has failed to secure their support for a conscience vote on the issue.
According to this report,
…the gay marriage debate in Parliament will be pushed back to later in the year to give advocates for change more time to garner enough support to have legislation for same-sex marriage passed.
Instead of the debate being held immediately – which would have seen the bill defeated – the gay marriage campaign has changed focus to increase pressure on Tony Abbott to change his mind and allow opposition MPs a conscience vote.
There are several things worth saying about this matter.
The first is that August 24 last year Adam Bandt and the homosexual lobby scored a spectacular own goal over the issue of just how well supported same-sex marriage is in the Australian community last year.
At the end of 2010, Parliament approved a motion proposed by Bandt calling on all parliamentarians, “consistent with their duties as representatives, to gauge their constituents’ views on ways to achieve equal treatment for same-sex couples including marriage”.
Well what happened on August 24, 2011?
When thirty members of Parliament stood to give an account of their constituents views on same-sex marriage, it was discovered opinion in Coalition and Labor seats was overwhelmingly against legalising same-sex marriage, with only 6 out of 30 MP’s indicating their members were in favour of change. Most of the numbers being reported were very lopsidedly against same-sex marriage. Especially striking was the failure of the progressive left organisation, Get Up!, which likes to describe itself as a movement of almost 600,000 members, to get its members to sign their petition in favour of same-sex marriage. In fact on the morning that MPs were reporting their findings it was found that the Get Up! numbers had been trumped by the Australian Christian Lobby numbers – less than 10% of Get Up members had signed the petition. Next day, Matt Akersten on the gay and lesbian lifestyle website, samesame, wrote “We’re not going to sugarcoat this – yesterday’s MP feedback session in Parliament on the gay marriage issue was a tough setback for marriage equality”.
Given the far reaching nature of a decision to extend in law marriage to same-sex couples, a reasonable question to ask is, “what principled reason has been advanced for such a change in the law of marriage?”
We get arguments like, “it’s time” or “my homosexual daughter (or son) wants to marry her (or his) partner” or “they can do it in Massachusetts or Holland or Spain, why not here?”.
But what’s the principle? What is the rational, logical argument that carries sufficient weight for such a significant change in the law of marriage?
Last year former NSW premier Nick Greiner reportedly said, ”(s)elf-evidently (it is) a matter of natural justice”.
It is no such thing.
It is simply wrong and misleading to depict the case for same-sex marriage as a case for ending discrimination or for equal legal recognition of relationships. The Federal Parliament amended 84 pieces of legislation after the 2010 election to place homosexual rights and entitlements on the same basis as others. The push for same-sex marriage is therefore largely ideological, because there is clearly no intention in any jurisdiction that they be subjected to any substantial discrimination on entitlement.
Peter van Onselen shortly before Adam Bandt’s show and tell argument in Parliament, like Greiner, argued for same-sex marriage as a human right but as is always the case with this assertion never actually demonstrated why it was a human right, choosing instead, typically, to construct a series of pejorative straw men and ‘stacking the deck’ arguments to hopefully convince us that same-sex marriage was the natural consequence of a long evolutionary development in marriage. Of course, having gone down this path he might have considered a further evolutionary development – the Greens’ bill for same-sex marriage still limits marriage to two persons, itself arguably discriminatory to those favouring polygamy or group marriage. How long would we have to wait for that example of discrimination to be addressed?
If a human rights basis is to be developed for same-sex marriage then it is first necessary to determine whether same-sex couples actually qualify for marriage. What is it about marriage that determines who may enter into marriage?
What we can say about marriage is that despite varying cultural expressions, it is seen as the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other, of the type that is fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together. This concept of marriage, allowing for variations in customs and ritual, is consistently found across cultures throughout history. Marriage involves a comprehensive union of spouses, with norms of permanence and exclusivity. These combine to create a special link to children, for their sake, that protects their identity and nurture by a mother and father.
It is the link to children that gives marriage its special character.
But why a man and a woman, and not two men or two women?
With one exception a person is complete within themselves as to bodily organs and their functions: heart, lungs, stomach and so on. In other words, to fulfil any of these functions a person does not require a contribution from anyone else. The one biological function for which individual adults are naturally incomplete is sexual reproduction. In sexual intercourse, and no other form of sexual contact, a man’s and a woman’s bodies are joined by way of their sexual organs for the common biological purpose of reproduction. Their bodies become one, thereby securing future generations at the same time as they are giving unique expression to their love for each other.
Marriage is deeply and uniquely orientated to bearing and nurturing children. Marriage ensures children access to both their mother and father and the security of the love between the parents. It provides for them a role model of human love of the parents relating as man and as woman, and its complementarity also ensures the unilateral love of each parent to the child and the necessary differences between motherly and fatherly love.
The fact that divorce happens, or one spouse dies early, or some couples are infertile and perhaps circumvent that lack to conceive through artificial reproductive technologies, including the use of donor gametes and surrogate mothers, or a couple beyond the years of child bearing marry, does nothing to change the reality of marriage. Same-sex couples simply do not qualify.
At its deepest level, marriage is the union of difference, the combining of a man and a woman to make one flesh, a union that is physical, emotional and as well, mystical.
To the contrary, same-sex marriage would be the union of sameness, with the distinctive and historical orientation towards the bearing and nurture of children dissolved. In its stead is to be offered a view of marriage which places sexual choice and emotional commitment at the centre.
So, let’s be clear on this: extending marriage to same-sex couples would represent a radical revision of the public understanding of marriage as a social institution. To go down this path would be for the law to teach that marriage is fundamentally about adults’ emotional unions, not complementary bodily union or children. Because there is no reason that primarily emotional unions (any more than ordinary friendships in general) should be permanent, exclusive, or limited to two, these norms of marriage would make less and less sense. Less able to understand the rationale for these marital norms, people would feel less bound to live by them, to their own detriment, and especially to the detriment of children.
According to the newspaper report I began with, the supporters of same-sex marriage claim through the national convener of Australian Marriage Equality, Mr Greenwich, the existence of “an unstoppable momentum for a reform that continues to win hearts and minds in the wider community and the parliament”. Well this remains to be seen. To be sure, their efforts will not go unchallenged. Same-sex marriage in law is by no means inevitable.