PMdG

You know that moment…

Life No Responses »

May 212012

You know that moment…

…where you stand in the tea room and joke with your colleague about TV overnight?

…when you look at a colleague who walks into the office and you just know they didn’t get a wink of sleep?

…where you and your colleagues do a fire drill together and joke all the way down 9 flights of stairs?

…when you look at a colleague whose face tells you they’ve just got some bad news?

…where you and your colleagues go out for lunch on a Friday afternoon and unwind after a long week of work?

…when you think about asking a colleague to help, you see the over-stressed look on their face, and decide not to?

…where you say hello to your colleagues when they come into the office?

Your colleague who works from home doesn’t know those moments any more.

Think about it.

I will not be silenced

Equal Rights No Responses »

May 142012

To the conservatives who demand we stay in the shadows…

I refuse to be silenced.
I refuse to turn the other cheek.
I refuse to lie down and let you walk all over my rights.
I refuse to allow you to harm those I care about – my family, my friends, my lovers, my partner.

Because…

I don’t accept you’re “just sayin’”.
I don’t accept “there’s nothing personal”.
I don’t accept it’s how you were brought up.
I don’t accept you “believe what you believe”.
I don’t accept I’m the sinner and you’re the saint.
I don’t accept sophistic arguments about “tradition”.
I don’t accept you have the needs of children in mind.
I don’t accept the notion of “hate the sin, love the sinner”.
I don’t accept your actions come from a real concern about society.
I don’t accept you have to follow what your religious book tells you to.

Because…

You’re a bigot.
You’re a coward.
You’re a hypocrite.
You’re sick, and you need help.
You’re a sad failure of a human who uses religious ramblings to justify prejudice and phobias.

You can’t make a beard without a bear

Life No Responses »

May 082012

Look at the word “beard”.

Then look at the word “bear”.

Can you see the similarity? By some small coincidence, the words overlap substantially:

In The Age, May 6, 2012, “Thar she grows! A city awash with urban whalers“, Gary Tippet repeatedly states that hipsters have lead the way in the return of facial hair:

“The look is not just fashion-based. It’s part of the hipster subculture…”

“Adelaide band The Beards … – evoke hipster and even lumberjack in equal measure.”

“At the epicentre of Melbourne hipsterdom, facial fuzz has resprouted as a fashion statement…”

This paints a rather awkward picture of beards as having been on life support until fixie riding counter-trendies, all uniformly unique in their anti-mainstream approach to life, decided that Beards Are Good [tm].

I think Gary needs to do a bit of research on the first four letters of the word “beard”. If beards are part of the hipster subculture, then it just goes to show that hipsters are in themselves conformists to fashion. Fashion set by bears and the bear community.

Throughout all the sad metrosexual 00′s, where men were emasculated, denied facial hair, and had to ask their women-folk if they could take their balls out of their wives or girlfriend’s purses to scratch them, the bear community stood strong and denied that path. Furry men standing on a path and shouting in one voice, “This far, and no further!” to the Balrog Preeners who would strip facial hair (and body hair) from every man they could.

Don’t thank the hipsters for the return of the beard.

Thank the bear community for providing a sanctuary for it until society recovered from its collective madness.

Baillieu MPs prove the need for a GLBTIQ advisory council

Equal Rights No Responses »

May 062012

In today’s Age Article, “Baillieu cops flak from MPs over gay committee“, (Farrah Tomazin, May 6 2012), we’re told that LNP MPs aren’t happy with Ted Baillieu planning to create a gay and lesbian ministerial advisory committee. Anonymously, one “senior” MP is quoted saying to The Age:

“I don’t see what used to be known as ‘poofter bashing’ happening and I don’t see overt discrimination. It’s unnecessary. You don’t need a committee for everything.”

It would be really fantastic if this statement were a reflection of reality; instead, it’s just fantastical. (Call me a cynic, if you will, but I’d like to know the religious beliefs and personal attitude towards gays by such an MP.)

The truth of the matter is that if those are the criteria by which it is judged whether or not an advisory committee is needed, it sadly points to an urgent need to get the committee operational as soon as possible. Violence against the non-heterosexual community still occurs, whether some MPs would like to think otherwise or not. We also have to consider the simple fact that “poofter bashing” is just a penultimate aspect to bad behaviour towards the GLBTI community – other forms of intimidation or harassment are far more common, and cause commensurate levels of stress to victims.

As far for “overt discrimination”? Well an MP in the Baillieu government doesn’t have to look very far at all for signs of overt discrimination, with this Victorian government having explicitly enacted articles of legislation cementing discrimination against the GLBTIQ community:

“…it [the LNP Baillieu government] will expand the ‘permanent exclusions’ that give religious groups and entities – including those that provide public services using public money – a free license to discriminate against de facto couples, gays, lesbians and single mums, among others.”

(The Age, February 15, 2011, Rachel Ball, “Baillieu promised a fairer Victoria, but it looks like the opposite“)

Indeed, so determined was this government to discriminate that when one of their members, Mary Wooldridge, missed a vote in the lower house of the Victorian parliament to introduce said bill:

“In an unprecedented move, the government changed the rules of parliament to allow the bill to be resubmitted, on the grounds that Wooldridge’s absence had been an ‘accident’.”

(The Age, June 5 2011, Farrah Tomazin, “Baillieu: the discriminating progressive.”)

Sure, GLBTIQ rights within Victoria (and for that matter, Australia as a whole) have improved quite a bit. Our sexual orientation is now legal. It’s no longer considered something worthy of electro-shock treatment, and for the most part we’re awarded the same rights as de facto couples.

Yet “improved” doesn’t equate to “fixed”. Violence against the GBLTI community still exists; discrimination still exists – and in some cases, government sponsored. We are still considered by law in Australia to be second class citizens,without rights to marriage or freedom from religious discrimination. Our elderly are treated poorly in nursing homes, with bugger all consideration to their sexual orientation, and much media attention is given to those fools and bigots who hide behind a religious shield to issue vitriolic attacks against us.

Don’t just plan to form the committee. Form it – now.

Hidden pain

Life No Responses »

Apr 252012

“Wow, you broke your arm? That must hurt!”

“That cut looks serious. You should get to emergency.”

“Your eye looks completely blood shot. Is it sore?”

It’s easy to sympathise with, or understand someone, their pain is visibly obvious. If their arm is in a cast, or they’re bleeding, or some other palpable injury.

For many though there’s a reluctance to believe in or accept injury when it’s not visible. What can be seen is real, what can’t be isn’t, seems to be the attitude some people and businesses have towards injury.

Yet, in that photo above, I’m in pain. Sometimes, that’s as close as I can get to clenching a fist. Thanks to some recent extensive massage it’s diminished somewhat again at the moment, but when my RSI flares up, it can cause significant pain. Years ago, I lived on Nurofen+. Goodness knows what it may have done to my stomach, but I was going through a pack of 48 every 6-7 days for sometimes months at a time. Yet in such situations, pain killers don’t fix, they just hide, and allow the problem to get worse if you don’t work towards fixing it. My ultimate lesson in that was when my RSI reached a point where I literally couldn’t go to the toilet unassisted. That’s palpable pain.

Over time I took the decision to just try to put up with the pain more, and so developed higher pain thresholds, but that in itself doesn’t take the pain away.

Hidden pain: muscular, bone, mental or otherwise – it’s just as real as visible forms of pain, and just as painful if not more. I’ve never broken a limb, but I’d say that I’d willingly trade the short-term pain of the break and set over say, 6-12 months of a dull, nigh on continuous ache gnawing away at me from my arms. I suspect many people, having spent some time with strong RSI, would likely feel the same.

It enrages me when people dismiss those who suffer hidden pain. “You’re just trying to avoid work”, “Toughen up, princess”, or “Smile, there’s nothing really wrong” – however it’s said, it’s insulting, it’s mean spirited, and it’s uncharitable. If someone tells me they’re in pain, and I can’t see it, it doesn’t for one microsecond diminish my belief. Sure, some people may lie, but do we treat all people as liars just because a very small minority do? Do we refuse to accept that the pain experienced by others is less real because it’s not immediately visible?

Pain is an extremely dehumanising thing; it tells us when we’re in trouble, of course, but it eats away at our resolve and capacity. It shouldn’t be compounded by people refusing to believe it, or belittling it, just because it can’t be seen.

Privacy is dead, long live privacy

Equal Rights, Life, Morality 2 Responses »

Apr 102012

I firmly believe that privacy is an evolving concept, significantly altered by each new generation. The expectations of privacy experienced for instance by Baby Boomers is different to the expectations of privacy experienced by Generation-X, which in turn is different to the expectations of privacy experienced by Generation-Y.

Comparing the privacy expectations of each generation is a bit like trying to compare apples and oranges, since privacy is innately tied to three key factors. These are:

Personal boundaries;
Social justice – in particular, the merger of legally enshrined rights, universal human rights and moral rights;
Technology.

The first is an entirely subjective and relative delimiter; what I deem as necessarily private may not be deemed as necessarily private by another person, and so on. What’s more, those personal boundaries are constantly evolving – the boundaries I had as an 18 year old are so far removed from the boundaries I have now I may as well be a different person. I suspect this is similar for many people.

Further, both social justice and technology are themselves constantly evolving items; the social justice and technology of the silent generation was significantly less evolved than that of the baby boomers, which was again significantly less evolved than that of generation X, and so it continues. The enshrinement of rights in particular has been constantly evolving target; women have been granted the vote, interracial marriages are legal, even same-sex marriages are growing in legal recognition throughout the world.

Since the first factor is not only inherently personal, subject to all matter of stimuli, as well as the progression of time, and the other two are also constantly evolving, it would be foolish to assume that privacy in and of itself as a static, constant set of immutable boundaries.

In her address, “Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity“, Danah Boyd said:

No matter how many times a privileged straight white male technology executive pronounces the death of privacy, Privacy Is Not Dead. People of all ages care deeply about privacy. And they care just as much about privacy online as they do offline. But what privacy means may not be what you think.

Danah makes a very interesting distinction in her article, that being between two terms, PII and PEI:

First, you must differentiate between PII and PEI. If you’ve spent any time thinking about privacy, you’ve probably heard of PII – “Personally Identifiable Information.” All too often, we assume that when people make PII available publicly that they don’t care about privacy. While some folks are deeply concerned about PII, PII isn’t the whole privacy story. What many people are concerned about is PEI – “Personally Embarrassing Information.” This is what they’re brokering, battling over, and trying to make sense of.

In fact both PII and PEI are constantly evolving, and the evolution is actually more complex in relation to PEI. After all, personally identifiable information is easier to understand – my sense of privacy, despite all it has changed, remains unalterable in relation to the publication of say, my bank account details, tax file number and ABN. I may make these details available to departments and people on an as-needs basis, but I don’t just throw it out there on the net for anyone to see.

On the other hand, PEI is by its very nature bounded by what the individual will consider to be embarrassing, which comes down to personal levels of liberation and attitude. Some people I know won’t have a photo of them on the net that shows them pulling a funny face. Others will make publicly accessible (i.e,. sans-registration) highly graphic photos and details of their sexual exploits. If it’s not personally embarrassing for them, why should it matter to others? To be perfectly frank, so long as it’s legal and consensual, after all, a person’s sexual proclivities are totally unrelated to their ability to perform a professional function.

A decade ago I’d have found it deeply personally embarrassing to state in any publicly accessible forum that I’m in an open relationship. Yet now, having been in one for over 14 years, I find it such an irrelevant point that frankly I work on the basis of people knowing it. And let’s be frank: if someone goes looking for information that they’d find personally titillating about another person, it says everything about the person seeking the titillation and nothing about the person providing it.

Lately I’ve been accused of being both an optimist and an idealist, and perhaps that’s where my view of privacy, personal details and publicity have come from; I’m tired of seeing people being judged for invalid reasons, and in particular an evolving social justice will see significant leaps of improvement on this front over the coming decades.

Privacy is not something we should give up willingly or readily – we should always be cognisant of where our privacy may be at risk, and there should be substantial obligations set on companies who have access to our personal or private details, and considerable fines for a violation of those obligations. Yet, that being said, privacy is neither a static nor an immutable set of boundaries, and those who seek to keep it such fail to appreciate that the baton is passed with each new generation, with each new piece of technology, and with each evolution of human, moral or legal rights.

Reflections of image

Life, Mental health 1 Response »

Mar 282012

It’s a fair thing to say that the bear community features a lot of larger guys. I recently saw an acerbic post on Facebook from a rather well built and muscled bloke whining about fat guys calling themselves bears. In his mind, they weren’t entitled to the name just for being larger of frame. I found his attitude repugnant and contrary to the general inclusiveness I’ve found in the community, but it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d heard mention of the problem of highly muscled men trying to seize ownership of the bear name.

You’d think for the number of … portly … men in the bear community there’d be a strong acceptance of the joy that comes in a diverse range of body types – thin, svelte, solid, build, brick shit house muscled, chubby and well, quite frankly, obese.

If you think I’m being slightly rude for using that word, I’ll call a spade a spade here.

I am obese. By any stretch of the imagination, I’m a “fat cunt”.

And if you think I’m being harsh to myself here, you don’t know the half of it. That’s me being positively pleasant about my body shape compared to what I’ve said and thought about myself in my darkest hours of self analysis. The words aren’t pretty and the images aren’t pretty.

But I know one thing for sure – misery loves company, and I equally bet that there’s a lot of guys in the bear community who, like me, sometimes have that quiet moment of self reflection about their body size and aren’t too happy with what they realise. Yet, we go on, and we celebrate being in a community that allows us to be larger and not feel persecuted or picked on for our weight – something many of us have struggled with for most of our lives, often having been subject to torturous treatment during the sharp and tactless rigours of childhood. So, to be perfectly blunt, when I walk out my door in a t-shirt that doesn’t make any effort to hide my ample stomach underneath, I no longer care, since I know I’m a member of a group of people who also don’t care.

Humans can be pricks sometimes though, and I sincerely believe that at times when we’re frustrated with ourselves we lash out at others for one of two reasons:

-a- recognising they share a common trait, one which we don’t like, and equally don’t like to acknowledge in ourselves;

-b- jealousy they have something that we find difficult if not possible to attain.

So when I see bears making snarky and unpleasant body image smears against people who happen to be skinny, it pisses me off.

We’re meant to be inclusive.

We’re meant to be tolerant.

We’re meant to understand, more than any other group in the gay community, what it’s like to have body image problems. We don’t tolerate thin people making fat jokes about our brethren. So answer me this: why do we tolerate each other making thin jokes about other people? The “I’m too fat” body image problem is one we all understand, but when people make jokes about thin people, do they stop to consider that equally there are some people who can never put on weight, no matter what they do, and they, too, have body image problems?

Perhaps the greatest lie we’re ever told as children is:

Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.

Sharp comments about weight can be as equally harsh coming from large people about thin people as they are from thin people about larger people.

Isn’t it time we actually let everyone understand they can let go of body image problems?

But do me a favour: if you think it’s funny to make jokes about thin people, remember to call me the “fat cunt” every time you see me. At least that way I’ll know you’re not being a hypocrite.

No cross on the ballot box

Equal Rights, Life, Morality, Politics No Responses »

Mar 232012

Apparently, there’s a new christian political party in town, the “Australian Christian Party”, and they mean to become the new third force in Australian politics.

The Australian political system is historically comprised of two behemoths, the supposedly left-leaning Labor Party and the conservative Liberal/National coalition. Together at any given point these represent the vast majority of where voters will place a tick on a form. In the past, the Australian Democrats were the third political force, with the semi-official motto of “keeping the bastards honest”. That lasted until the Democrats sided with the LNP in the senate to allow passage of the GST, which saw them spectacularly implode, both in terms of leadership and in the eyes of the average Australian voter.

Since then the Greens have been growing considerably to fill that vacuum, and as issues caused by climate change, unsustainable population growth and corporate greed continue to plague the country I suspect their influence will continue to grow.

Then you’ve got the fringe parties. Some of these are socially left leaning, such as the Australian Sex Party, who defend the rights of everyday Australians to have sex. And the right leaning, such as One Nation, who practically exist to promote a return to the White Australia Policy.

Past that, things get very murky. Because then, you have the whackjob parties. The Australian Shooters Party for instance – bravely defending the rights of everyday Australians to own guns and shoot animals with them for ‘sport’. You’ve got Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party – bravely defending the rights of angry conservative white men born before World War II who want to Go Back To The Fifties. (Clearly they’ve never added a flux capacity to a Delorian.) More recently you’ve got Bob Katter’s Australia party, which despite the name seems curiously concerned with state issues, but unsurprisingly given the name, it’s mostly concerned with Bob Katter.

And now there’s a new whackjob party in the mix: the Australian Christian party, who, according to their website, have the following values:

Honesty and Integrity
Hope
Justice
Freedom
Moral Law
Respect
Sacrifice

Amongst other things, the purpose of this party is to ensure that marriage stays between one man and one woman, and to promote the traditional family.

When questioned by the Sydney Star Observer, a public candidate for this new political party, Frank Papfotiou, said he was still coming up with a position on same sex marriage and likened it to a discussion about football – is it soccer, AFL, etc.? And would cricket be called football?

Now, I’m no sporting person – in fact, I generally loathe the highly unhealthy attitude towards sport this nation has, but even I know that cricket can’t be called football due to the rather basic premise that you’re not allowed to kick the ball in cricket. So I’m a little unsure where Frank was going with that analogy. However, he did tell the Observer:

“What I support in theory is that the government doesn’t restrict the freedom of choice people have, so long as those freedoms don’t impact negatively or harm other people.”

(Sydney Star Observer, 22 March 2012, “New christian party launched“)

If that’s truly the case, then Frank has only option available on the front of same sex marriage based on the principles of the party – to fully support it. Otherwise, it would be a case of allowing a group to negatively restrict the public freedoms of another group based on their private belief systems.

Yet, given the proposed defence of marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman, it would seem that a more correct interpretation of the purported values of the party would be:

Honesty and Integrity – Don’t look behind the curtain!
Hope – That we don’t get in!
Justice – For people who believe exactly what we believe in with no variation!
Freedom – To oppress people we don’t like!
Moral Law – Because nothing’s more moral then executing people for eating shellfish!
Respect – Us! Respect Us!
Sacrifice – The Gays!

Any fringe or whackjob group is entitled to assemble its own political party, and given the trends towards growing levels of atheism and a rejection (particularly by younger generations) of attitudes that impact the freedoms of others, I fully expect the amount of votes this new party will get will be a very small percentage, and likely over the course of time a dwindling percentage.

The really sad thing about religion is that many of us grew up being taught a core premise of religion was social justice. The reality is like when we discover the truth about Santa.

Yet demonstrably that is often anything but the case. Based on their founding principles of denying basic human rights to all, I can only assume the Australian Christian party intends to uphold that basic christian practice which we see demonstrated time and time again – claiming to advocate justice for all, so long as that justice aligns with some prejudices written about in a book over a millennia ago by people who had barely a clue as to how the world worked.

Just as whackjob groups are entitled to form their own political parties, it’s the job of sensible voters to minimise the damage they can cause. The United States is a perfect example of what happens when insane people start making decisions – women getting medically raped before abortions, schools being forbidden to use the word ‘gay’, abstinence being taught to horny teenagers as the only valid path before marriage, and so on. Lately Tennessee, one of those American states that seems to pride itself on the evil repressions enacted by its legislatures, has started requiring schools to teach about the “controversy” of evolution. (Hint: it’s only controversial if you’re so stupid that you blindly adhere to a faith despite clearly documented evidence to the contrary. And the controversy is with you, not the science.)

We don’t want to end up like the United States, and so if you see the Australian Christian party appear on your ballot paper, it’s very important to not mark a cross anywhere near them.

Otherwise you may end up nailed to one.

Running on empty

Morality No Responses »

Mar 182012

The interesting thing about sex is that there’s a constant core of sanctimonious puerile obsession about it amongst conservative politicians (world-wide) and religious conservatives/fundamentalists. This obsession with it highlights the great irony of their position – that they’re truly running on empty when it comes to any tangible sense of moral values.

If you think I’m joking, the proof is there, staring everyone in the face:

They’re actively working to roll back the reproductive rights of women, in the most forceful and humiliating ways possible – The general message is “if you get pregnant, then, well, that’s your fault for having sex. Live with it, bitch.” States like Mississippi are actively working on life-begins-at-conception bills, which would make abortions at any point illegal – even, likely, in situations of rape or incest. Virginia attempted to enact laws which would require women to have intrusive vaginal ultrasounds prior to abortion. This has been partially rolled back, but the filthy stench of the bill still lingers.
Utah recently passed bills not only banning reference to contraception in sex education classes (i.e., making them pathetically “abstinence only”), as well as reference to homosexuality.
New Hampshire Republicans passed a law requiring doctors to lie to women, telling them that abortion causes breast cancer.
A proposed law in Arizona would allow employers to sack women who are taking birth control pills.
Opponents to same-sex marriage continually try to claim that allowing same-sex marriage will lead to allowing pedophiliac marriage, bestial marriage, or child molestation by gay couples.
Opponents to same-sex marriage insisting that it’ll lead to young children in school being taught about gay sex.
Hundreds of gay men being brutally murdered in Iraq by militias intent on enforcing their twisted and perverted versions of morality on the country.
Crazy fundamentalists picketing funerals. Hell, that doesn’t even need a link. We all know who I’m talking about there.

These are people who are so determined to force their view of morality on the world that they completely lose any connection to any moral compass. They are, quite frankly, running on ethical vapours, and the engine is about to stop all together. These people, so called exemplars of excellent behaviour, have in fact become exemplars of evil.

Religion has purported for millennia as being a guardian of human morality. Yet, morality must grow and evolve with the passing of time. To try to force everyone to remain in a particular, blinkered version of morality that impinges on the rights of others for the gratification of a select few is in itself a highly immoral act. If these people have a moral compass at all, it’s pointing due south. Of course, not all religions remain so lock-stepped in ancient self-serving approaches to morality – and those able to modernise are in fact starting to speak strongly against their causes being usurped by lost creatures.

I actually pity these lost creatures: their lives are so empty and lost that they seek to fill it with notions of morality and upstanding behaviour so far removed from reality that they stand isolated from real society, unable to partake in joy in any real tangible form. They lead hollow, meaningless lives – for how else can you describe a life spent trying to deny others their rights? There’s nothing positive or productive in what they do. When they’re gone, they’ll have not contributed to the world, other than as a demonstration of negative behaviour.

They’re running on empty.

The hate truck

Equal Rights, Morality No Responses »

Mar 182012

Normally when we think of truck based shipping in Australia we think of the contents as being such things as food, consumer goods, even household contents. There’s a new truck driving up the east coast of Australia at the moment, and it’s only got one thing in it: hate.

Organised by Peter Madden, who calls himself a “Christian Activist” on his website, the truck has signage on it strongly targeting gay rights, and specifically, gay marriage rights. It looks like this:

(That image comes from this Sydney Star Observer article.)

The immediately obvious thing from this hate truck is the simple truth: these activists are just obsessed with gay and lesbian sexual acts. They don’t perceive gay and lesbian relationships as being loving partnerships, they’re just mired in the sex.

So my first question on this is: who is the real pervert? The people in the loving relationships who happen to have sex, or the people who make it their business to think about what other people are doing for sex?

I’m as interested in sex as the next guy – perhaps even more so being gay, and a bear – but I don’t organise trucks to drive billboards up and down the east coast to talk about sex. That’s completely overboard.

This isn’t the first rabid anti-gay-rights message to come out of the Queensland election. Bob Katter’s laughable “Australia Party” also did a pathetic ad targeting a LNP candidate on the basis of his prior support for same sex civil unions. One of the interesting side-effects of the Bob Katter Australia Party anti-gay commercial is that it’s triggered a significant backlash. Even people who traditionally (perhaps without ever really considering the issue) supported an anti-gay marriage approach are looking at the ad askance and realising there’s traditionalist, and then there’s crazy.

I suspect that the hate truck will have a similar negative impact – negative not to the same-sex marriage campaign, but to the anti-same sex marriage campaign. Sure, the fringe nutters who practically rub their genitals with their religious texts in a messiah humping fervour as they gnash their teeth and froth at the mouth whilst thinking vividly of gay sex will cry, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” at the truck and fist-pump the air, but what about the undecided people?

Current polls consistently say now that more than 60% of the adult Australian population support same-sex marriage. (That number increases to 80%, by the way, when we look at 18-24 year olds.) That doesn’t however mean 40% are opposed to same-sex marriage. Even taking that 40% would represent a minority, it’s not really – there’s always the undecided ones. In fact, the latest poll shows 62% support for same-sex marriage, 33% opposed, and 5% undecided. Further, in that same poll, 75% of Australians felt that same-sex marriage was inevitable, with only 19% saying it wasn’t.

So, you have a dwindling minority of people opposed to same sex marriage (in 2004 for instance, it was 38% for, 44% against, and 18% undecided), who are continuing to ramp up their campaign, making it more and more outrageous. That’s why people who are writing submissions opposing same-sex marriage to the parliament at the moment are raving about their bestial pornography fantasies – same sex marriage will inevitably lead to man-beast marriages, apparently. Yet, it’s only the opponents to same-sex marriage who are blathering on about bestiality – so again, what sort of perverts are they?

The percentage of undecided people in each state varies quite a bit. Queensland is definitely a more conservative state, so it’s going to have more people who are wavering on the edge of a decision. They’re going to be standing there, on the side of the road, holding the hands of their small children, and seeing a truck flash past raving about sex. An increasing number of them will be starting to think, “get a life” or “but YOU just exposed my kid to the word sex”.

One of the reasons we push back against hate speech so strongly is that it forces the other side to escalate. This may seem initially like a bad thing, but think of the logical consequence – the other side ends up looking like complete and utter crazies. WestBoro is a classic example: their hate speech is foolishly allowed in the US under the notion of “freedom of speech”, but it serves a counter-purpose now too. The bible humping nutters will still masturbate about the sins of the world while reading their signs and chanting “Amen”, but the average person looking at them will think they’ve gone to far. Hell, when even the Klu Klux Klan plans to protest against WestBoro, you know they’ve reached a level of insanity previously undreamt of.

I’m against the Hate Truck, but I doubt very much it will serve the purpose that Peter Madden and his co-conspirators hopes it to.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Still, I’d have loved to have rented a ute and driven in front of the truck the entire way with a sign, “Caution Bigoted Load Ahead”.

Older Entries

unsane

PMdG

You know that moment…

I will not be silenced

You can’t make a beard without a bear

Baillieu MPs prove the need for a GLBTIQ advisory council

Hidden pain

Privacy is dead, long live privacy

Reflections of image

No cross on the ballot box

Running on empty

The hate truck

What I’m saying

Equal rights articles

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