The Senate, pink Aussie flags and 5000 bums
Last Monday morning (1 March 2010), on the fabled steps of the Sydney Opera House, photographer Spencer Tunick – world renown for his photos of mass nudity – snapped a five-thousand strong contingent of butt-naked nudites under the House’s white sails.
Said Mr Tunick of the event, “Gay men and women lay naked next to their straight neighbours and this delivered a very strong message to the world that Australians embrace a free and equal society.”
Australians have been demonstrating “a free and equal society” for pretty much most of its recent history (yes, ok – many could state that that statement has a fair bit of contention, but by and large I hold it… Continue reading ...
“Gay marriage like incest” or “how to take quotations completely out of context”
In the wake of the repeal of same-sex marriage legislation by the constituents in Maine last month, the Australian Senate was presented with a private members bill to amend the traditional definition of marriage. The Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009, seeking to replace the words “a man and a woman” with “any two persons”, attracted the largest number of submissions from the public – in excess of 28,000, a record number for any Bill.
Australian Senate rejects Marriage Equality Bill
The amendment was rejected by the Senate with a 2/3 majority of the submissions opposing the Bill.
These facts and figures would be amazing by themselves if it were not for the comments made by Family First Senator… Continue reading ...
Record high submissions received by Senate Inquiry indicate 67% oppose the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill
Lodged as a private members Bill by Greens Senator Sarah-Hanson Young, the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009 expressly seeks to alter the legal definition of marriage from “one man and one woman” to “any two people”.
Reported in a recent AAP article, the Bill had received a number of submissions in excess of 26,000 – a record for any Senate inquiry, indicating that the definition of marriage is of a key concern to many in the Australian constituency.
Approximately 67% of the submissions received were opposed to the Bill.
The report implies that the one-sided opposition may in fact be due to two factors: duplicate submissions and a large number of “formula emails sent by Christian groups”… Continue reading ...
Voters in Maine repeal same-sex marriage law
Democracy has its fine points and no finer point can be made when, in every state in America that had legislated same-sex marriage through the courts, the voters have turned out to repeal the law. If anything should be learned by gay marriage advocates it should be that they ought to go through the electoral processes only and not sneak through the backdoors of the legal system to circumvent the essence of democracy by influencing a state’s courts of law.
You can read the New York Time’s article (for what it’s worth) on the Yes on One in Maine vote here: Maine Voters Repeal Law Allowing Gay Marriage
Some interesting quotes from the article, which is very biased towards gay marriage and had nothing glowing to say… Continue reading ...
Meet the Mayor with a Pair
There’s a new Mayor in town and it seems his agenda is clear: abolish the political correctness rubbish that needlessly spends taxpayer money. And one of the first few items on his hit-list: cut funding for gay pride events.
No sooner had Mayor Peter Davies been elected by popular vote in June 2009 – a rarity in itself and a fact that speaks volumes that the Mayor’s approach to local politics is aligned with his constituents – than he solicited the group Campaign Against Political Correctness to survey what it is that people are fed up with. Mayor Davies promptly acted on the group’s findings, which concluded that 80 per cent of Britons were tired of the incessant political correctness… Continue reading ...
“It’s not fair: homosexuals can’t marry who they love”
Without a doubt, the most common objection to marriage remaining as the union between one man and one woman, for life, is that current marriage law “unfairly” discriminates against homosexuals who desire – and cannot help but desire – those of the same-sex (second to this is the claim that current marriage laws offer unequal protection / rights to homosexuals – that’s the subject of a different discussion).
Often, the objection is phrased in such terms as: “Heterosexuals are free to marry who they love, but homosexuals can’t – that’s unfair”, or “Banning same-sex marriage discriminates against homosexuals because it prevents them from marrying who they want”.
In almost all variances of this particular objection… Continue reading ...
There’s no inequality for the Greens’s Marriage Equality Amendment Bill to address
On 25 June 2009, Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young lodged the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill in the Australian Senate.
This Bill seeks to repeal the definition outlined in the Marriage Act 1961, redefining the definition of “marriage” as meaning:
the union of two people, regardless of their sex, sexuality or gender identity, voluntarily entered into for life.
The current definition of “marriage” reads, and ought to remain, as meaning:
the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.
All Australians concerned about retaining the natural definition of marriage ought to consider writing a brief letter to the Senate, requesting them… Continue reading ...
Carrie Prejean: beauty queen ursurped
No sooner than a month after Donald Trump, owner of the Miss USA Organization, declared that Carrie Prejean would retain her crown as Miss California, Ms Prejean last week had her crown wrested away from her – with the blessing of Mr Trump.
There is no doubt that the majority of the gay and lesbian community would have celebrated the issuance of the pinkslip to Ms Prejean following her comments in support of opposite-sex marriage in last April’s Miss USA beauty pageant. At the pageant, Ms Prejean fielded a question from gay celebrity personality Perez Hilton on what she thought about gay marriage; her response, though far from eloquent, was simple, respectful and to the point: she believes… Continue reading ...
Was Ethan McNamee manipulated by pro-GLBT lobbyists?
While researching my earlier article on the pro-gay marriage rally speech performed by nine year-old Ethan McNamee, one thing I noticed on the various GLBT blogs were comments that conservatives claimed Ethan was manipulated.
I don’t really know if this claim is substantiated; I couldn’t even find a conservative blog or news article that covered the event in which this view was apparently put forward. Perhaps I didn’t delve deep enough into the Google search results? Or I just didn’t read through the many comments left by people on the news sites and blogs that had articles on the subject?
While I don’t personally ascribed to the notion that Ethan was manipulated, I believe it is… Continue reading ...
Ethan McNamee – nine year-old gay-marriage advocate
Young Ethan McNamee – just nine years old and a third grade student at Montclaire Elementary School in Denver, Colorado – has done what most third graders wouldn’t even conceive of doing: organising a public rally on the steps of the Colorado state capitol building. His topic was two-fold, and not what you would normally expect of a nine-year old: marriage equality and equal protection for the gay and lesbian community.
As the reports go, young Ethan is the neighbour of a lesbian couple who had first given him the idea of organising such a rally. Having been told by his neighbours that they were not allowed to marry because they were of the same sex, Ethan took it upon himself to speak out for the gay and lesbian… Continue reading ...
Third grader organises and speaks at pro-gay marriage rally
This is a video taken of Ethan McNamee’s speech, which he delivered at a pro-gay marriage rally that he organised for a school project last Saturday, May 16. Ethan, a nine year old third grader from Montclaire Elementary School in Denver, Colorado, showed amazing poise for his age in front of the crowd that had gathered outside of the steps of the Denver state capitol building.
Below the video, I have also transcribed Ethan’s speech (as best I could. Please let me know if you believe I’ve transcribed anything incorrectly.
I will follow up with some remarks on this event in a separate post.
(This is now published: Ethan McNamee – 9yo gay-marriage advocate.)
While I definitely applaud Ethan’s spirit, courage and confidence to organise such… Continue reading ...
Carrie Prejean: nude pics, hypocrisy, intolerance and … irrelevancy 101
Since Carrie Prejean became an American household name on April 19 during the Miss USA beauty pageant for her “politically incorrect” response to a question on same-sex marriage, there has been no end of malicious attacks on her name – in the media and the blogosphere.
To recap, Ms Prejean answered that she believed marriage was to be between one man and one woman. When she completed her answer, two things occurred: 1) the crowd at the pageant erupted in applause in support of her answer; 2) the blogosphere began lighting up with livid, pro-homosexual rants denouncing her “bigotry” and proceeded to drag out the shovels from their sheds to see what dirt they could dig up.
Now irrespective… Continue reading ...
Why the Pope is right about condoms … still!
Well, I don’t believe much has changed since my last post on this topic: Pope disses condoms as Saviour from HIV / AIDS – the Pope is still very much right: condoms do very little to fight and reduce the spread of HIV and AIDS.
In the editorial of Family Voice Australia‘s May 2009 VoxPoint publication, David and Rosyln Phillips lay down yet more startling facts about why the promotion of condoms does very little. Conversely, some of what they have to say also lends support to the American Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) stance on why practicing homosexuals should still be prohibited from donating blood to organisations like the Red Cross. (Re-read my article, Blood on the boil: Homosexuals see red over discrimination, on why… Continue reading ...
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