Equal Rights » unsane

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

No pardon for Alan Turing

Equal Rights, Life, Morality 3 Responses »

Feb 072012

Alan Turing was one of the founding greats of computer science. He postulated concepts which are still in use today, and in fact in many circles is seen as the father of computer science.

He was also gay.

Sure, one might argue that if he had not been present, there might have been others to take his place. However, the British government (and indeed, the free Western World) should fully acknowledge that at that time and place, it was Alan Turing who was there. The war efforts were in no small part saved by a homosexual who headed the decryption team for German ciphers, and who saw those ciphers cracked.

That in 1952 he was prosecuted and found guilty for the ‘crime’ of being a homosexual, and had the ‘treatment’ of female hormones was an anachronistic tragedy; his subsequent suicide was a loss to the development of computer science. Like one might idly speculate where the world might be, from a technology perspective, had the dark ages not happened, one might equally wonder where computer science might have advanced to by now if this giant had not been taken from us; his suicide in 1954 by cyanide ingestion was a result of the severe depression he experienced not only on the hormone ‘treatment’ but also the public ridicule he experienced at the time.

In 2009 Gordon Brown offered a public apology from the British government for the treatment Turing received, and a campaign was started to grant him a posthumous pardon. That pardon may seem irrelevant, but it would be an acknowledgement that despite being legally acceptable at the time, the treatment of gays in that era was unacceptable from modern standards.

And the British House of Lords has denied that pardon.

This is a shameful act and sends entirely the wrong message – that we shouldn’t have to face our past on the basis of modern views of morality. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The world owes Alan Turing, and all the people still being persecuted for being same-sex attracted, this much at least.

Translating Margaret Court’s Opinion Piece in the Herald Sun

Equal Rights, Politics 3 Responses »

Jan 252012

Today in the Herald Sun, Margaret Court (yes, the same Margaret Court who has been complaining bitterly that she’s being stopped from talking) wrote an opinion piece entitled “Priority is to protect marriage“.

I thought I’d take a few minutes to translate what I’m reading in some of the key points she makes in the article.

“We live in a blessed nation but Australia is on a steep moral decline.”

Translation: Australia is refusing to stay locked into the moral code of Pleasantville, and I don’t like it.

“We are a country with a moral fabric and families and marriage are at its core.”

Translation: I am conveniently forgetting that one in three marriages in Australia end in divorce.

“We live in a world of moral values. Even those without faith know what is right and what is wrong.”

Translation: So long as they believe that I know is right and wrong, at least.

“Looking back, you can see that there has been a steep decline, especially when it comes to the issue of sexuality. There is so much scripture within the Bible that points to what we see happening now. We are losing that sense of discipline.”

Translation: Take, for instance, the discipline we lost when we started ignoring Timothy 2:12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” Look at all the crackpots that came out when we relaxed that stance, will you? Ahem. I don’t know where that came from. IGNORE TIMOTHY.

“Children need a mother and a faith – stability from a male and a female – and we are losing sight of this.”

Translation: Children with single parents should be adopted out to mixed-couple foster parents. Or at least, that’s the logical conclusion.

“The Book of Romans speak of the people of Earth trading in God.”

Translation: DON’T LOOK AT TIMOTHY! DON’T LOOK AT TIMOTHY. JUST ROMANS.

“we need to protect marriage because it has been God-ordained from the beginning.”

Translation: I’ll forget about all the historical evidence of same-sex marriages through the ages. AND YOU SHOULD TOO.

“God told man to be united with his wife and to multiply on earth.”

Translation: Please don’t think of the historical implications of this point of view. Otherwise, you’ll realise he must have also instructed Eve to have sex with her sons to continue to populate the earth, especially the son who killed his brother.

“People think it’s [the bible] a book of fear, but it’s not.”

Translation: There’s nothing more pleasant than reading children bedtime stories based on the bible. Such as that rainbow filled one about almost everyone on the planet being killed in a flood. Or that one about keeping slaves. Or that one about killing everyone who opposes god. Or that one about requiring the sacrifice of a son. No stuff of nightmares in that. And hell is really full of marshmellows for roasting.

“A nun at my primary school once gave me the cane”

Translation: Being beaten by a woman in a penguin suit didn’t affect my upbringing. See, I’m perfectly normal, aren’t I?

—

My only conclusion is that Margaret is now drunk on the attention she got from her original trolling and just can’t stop.

Please Margaret: get professional help.

What they say / what I hear

Equal Rights, Humour, Life No Responses »

Jan 172012

There are four really common rebuttals to homosexuality touted by various religions, and given that not only are homophobic men are very likely to be aroused by homosexual behaviour, but homophobic rebuttals tend to have minimal to no logic in them, I thought it worthwhile running through those four arguments – what they say, and what I hear when they say it.

Argument one:

Argument two:

Argument three:

Argument four:

So, be aware! If you try one of those arguments on me, you know now what I’ll be thinking.

Ratzinger vs Me

Equal Rights, Morality No Responses »

Jan 102012

Joseph Ratzinger has come out swinging again against homosexuality, claiming again that same-sex marriage is a threat to humanity.

I’ve put together a little table to compare the apparent threat I pose to humanity by wanting to get married to my partner, something a lot of people consider to be a threat to humanity – an institution known as the Catholic Church:

(Of course, I’m talking about the institution of the church here; I know many Catholics who are actually wonderful people.)

So, Ratzinger – do you really want to insist again that same sex marriage is a threat to humanity? I’m guessing yes. But don’t expect to sway me.

— finis —

References:

“Good Catholics Use Condoms“, stating that many in a position of power in the Catholic Church have promoted the idea that condoms cause AIDS.
“Galileo Affair“, Wikipedia.
“Rape: Weapon of war“, United Nations Human Rights.

Rampant WTFery

Equal Rights No Responses »

Jan 092012

In “Time for gay marriage to get the nod in Australia” (Herald Sun), Susie O’Brien argues:

We should encourage the bigoted, homophobic opponents of gay marriage to come forward and justify their desire to discriminate.

The vitriol levelled at Susie and gays in the comments exemplifies a lot of those attitudes:

Not only is it a sad inditement of the progress yet to be made on full rights for the GBLTIQ community, it really does make you pull back and ask … What The Fuck?

Sadly, it wasn’t the first time I’d read the “dinosaurs turned gay” argument, so I wasn’t surprised. That anyone could possibly in any logical or coherent way think that we understand enough of animals that died out tens of millions of years ago (or more popularly theorised now, evolved into birds) that we ‘know’ they all turned gay and stopped reproducing is staggering.

The “find a cure” argument is one that saddens me, since it assumes that homosexuality is a disease. As the old saying goes – homosexuality has been documented in hundreds of species, but homophobia has only been documented in one. In that scenario, what is natural, and what needs to be cured?

The continual notion of comparing same-sex marriage to marriage between humans and animals, or humans and corpses, or humans and iPods, etc., is just ridiculous. In each situation it tries to equate the decision entered into by two free thinking individuals with a “decision” made between one free-thinking individual and one inanimate object or animal. This is best countered with this excellent post over at Buzzfeed.

Susie is 100% right – it’s time to let the bigots to dish out all their arguments, so that they can be exposed to the harsh light of logic and compassion, so that we can organise help for these sad individuals and create a society where all people, regardless of sexuality, gender, race or belief (or atheism/agnosticism) can live freely and equally.

Older Entries

unsane

I will not be silenced

Baillieu MPs prove the need for a GLBTIQ advisory council

Privacy is dead, long live privacy

No cross on the ballot box

The hate truck

No pardon for Alan Turing

Translating Margaret Court’s Opinion Piece in the Herald Sun

What they say / what I hear

Ratzinger vs Me

Rampant WTFery

What I’m saying

Equal rights articles

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