A Way In A Manger

I’ve been thinking a bit about Christmas and what it means to me these days. The Christmas story is so well-known and so re-told that it has pretty well lost traction with most non-churchy Australians now. While they may know the bones of the story, we have probably come to a generation or even two, who don’t know much more than those bones and have never thought much about it. But rather than me fleshing out the skeletal remains of the Christmas story here – others can do that far better than me – I thought I might just say a word or two about some of the metaphors in the story that are there to be found without too much analysis and what they might say to us today.

First, notice how according to the account, Mary and Joseph are to give birth to this child who was conceived in a miraculous way. This is not the only story that has such a phenomenon and it goes to the notion that this boy will be special. That he will be a gift, maybe from God, to humanity. As a special boy, he is certainly one to be watched as he grows. As a boy born in a special way, he is to be watched to see what he will do and what he says. Even the heavens seem to bare witness, in the Star of Bethlehem, that this is a special birth and that we should take notice.

But second, despite the specialness of his birth, we notice how even at this neonatal stage of his life, goodness even while he’s still in the womb, he is rejected and no-one wants to know him. There is no room in the inn for the likes of Jesus. He doesn’t fit in. Never did. Still doesn’t. I felt like that growing up. In fact, lots of people do. Instead, he gets shoved out the back with the low-lifes and the animals and gets born in a barn. He doesn’t get born in a hotel or a palace, with comfort and trappings and honour. No, not for this one. His birth will be mired in dishonour and disapproval.

In this, this little baby would set up a life-long custom of associating with such people. The marginalised we call them today. Undesirables, like tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, Roman collaborators, unclean people, the sick, the lame, the demon-possessed. It’s not so difficult to translate that lot into modern language; the down and outs, the drug addicts, the alcoholics, people in and out of gaol, sex workers - but also the ordinary people who don’t fit in, like the gays and the trans people, the eccentric, the geeks, the ordinary looking, the uneducated, the selfish, the ego-centric, the poor, the HIV AIDS folk, the person of colour, the foreigner, the refugee. A little later, this boy and his family would become Middle Eastern refugees themselves and flee tyranny and persecution. Ring any bells for those who want to block the refugees and asylum seekers today?

I cannot also help but note the absence of religious figures from his own tradition at his birth; no rabbis, no priests and no religious piety or ritual – just some ratty-looking smelly shepherds and a couple of astrologers from another land and a different tradition who seem to recognise something in him. It was always going to be these people, the ones not in charge, whom this boy would associate with. And he would do it for the rest of his life. Even to the point where later on, the privileged would mock him for it.

It was these people that he would later say that to such belonged the Kingdom of Heaven. Apparently, he thought that God was somehow connected and concerned with such people in a special way. And because he himself associated solely with such folk, it really didn’t take too long before he became one of them. Or as I like to think of it; one of us. If incarnational theology has any truth to it, then it is that this boy was one of us. In other words, he was not an elite; he was like me.

As a gay man, I belong to a group which has traditionally been relegated to the ‘other’, to ‘less than’; a group of marginalised people who have been judged by the mainstream. Gay people have been discriminated against and oppressed for centuries by society and the Church, yet we are still here asserting our claim to our fair share of human dignity.

This boy, Jesus, came in a long line of prophets who acted this way and taught this stuff; that the essence of spirituality is looking out for the widow, the orphan, the poor person, the person in need, the destitute and the despairing. It’s about loving your neighbour. Any God stuff without this, is pretty vacuous. That’s what he taught later on when he grew into manhood. It seems that his brother James was one of the first to get this, and he tried to write about it and spell it out in his eponymous book.

Being a member of a minority group gives you a prophetic voice like Jesus. Minority groups don’t have the power. That’s why they’re the minority. The power rests in the mainstream and in the privileged, who protect it and resist change with all their might, sometimes even with violence of one kind or another. But you can say all kinds of stuff when you’re in a minority group. You can speak to your family, your friends, your society, your nation and offer something different. You can offer an alternative position to that of the mainstream and maybe even help to correct a great wrong You can show by your life an alternate way to live and see things. You can be prophetic, just like Jesus.

This Christmas, I welcome the birth of this boy in a shitty old barn with just his parents and a few no-bodies there to greet him, and appreciate more what the symbology around his birth, life, teaching and death mean for how we can live our lives and treat each other and make a better world. I think he really was a special boy.

Respect? Respect For What?

Aretha Franklin sang about it. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King spoke about it. We hear the word all the time. Respect. You are to show respect. You must respect your elders, respect your teachers, respect your pastor or priest, respect the Parliament, even respect your opponents.

This week has brought into stark relief the notion of respect again for me. Once again, it is over the marriage equality debate in Australia. That snail-paced item of social progress that it seems forever is just out of reach, just beyond our grasp. For the first time in history, Australia has full agreement and full support of the leaders of all our political parties. Even the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are feuding friends over marriage equality. They are in concert that Australia should allow its gay and lesbian citizens the right to marry our partners. But still, we cannot get there! It is incredibly frustrating!

We are faced now with the idiotic imbecilic situation that despite over two thirds majority of Australians consistently supporting the change, the leaders of the Parties in support of the change, the majority of Parliamentarians in support of the change, and the High Court of Australia saying that it is in the purview of the Parliament, and nowhere else, to make decisions concerning the Marriage Act, we are not able to have a free vote in the Parliament but must take the country to a monumentally expensive and divisive plebiscite on the matter, only to subsequently return to the Parliament to have the vote we're not having now.

It begs the question. Why?

It would appear that the price of the National Party's and conservative Liberal's support for Malcolm Turnbull in the recent Prime Ministerial dumping was that Turnbull inter alia hold the line on marriage equality. In other words, while he himself is totally supportive of the change and is local Member of an electorate that has one of the largest populations of LGBT people in the entire country, he has tied himself to Tony Abbott's backward and obstructionist policy; a policy that Turnbull himself spoke out against when he was still Minister of Communications before his ascension to the big office.

The plebiscite itself was Abbott's idea alone; an idea designed to impede progress of the issue while the opponents lined up and spent millions of dollars in order to attempt to stop this change from happening. For them, on the issue of marriage equality, they would wear it as a badge of honour to be the anomaly of major Western countries who have comfortably lived with their LGBT people marrying without civilisation or the Church falling into a chasm. They would comfortably and happily deprive gay and lesbian people of their right to be treated the same as everyone else and the happiness they would derive, against the clear will of the majority. These people will not hesitate.

In the Parliament yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull vomited out a whole lot sweet and saccharine statements about Australians having the ability to have a sensible conversation, to bring their collective wisdom to this, to have a respectful and open dialogue as we have the discussion over the lead up to the plebiscite. He placed much weight on the wisdom and grounded nature of Australians as the discourse would develop.

Not for me! From my experience, I've never heard so much rubbish and I think Turnbull is smart enough to know it. Have you seen the comments sections in newspaper articles and blog posts around marriage equality? Have you ever been in a Facebook thread where marriage equality is being discussed and some opponent lobs in one of the well-known hand grenades they are so fond of? Have you heard Eric Abetz talk about marriage equality? Have you heard Concetta Fierravanti-Wells tell us all that non-Anglo Australians are all opposed to marriage equality?

Have you heard what the Catholic Church still officially teaches and proffers by Australian Catholic apologists about gay people? That we are intrinsically disordered, we are  inclined to moral evil and are against the natural order. Have you heard what Lyle Shelton of the Australian Christian Lobby or Fred Nile from the Christian Democratic Party say of gay people? Here's a basic off the top of my head list of what Bible-believing [read: fundamentalist] evangelicals think about gay people. Being gay is a choice. Being gay can be changed. Being gay is not part of the identity. Being gay is a sin. It is a behaviour that can be stopped and should be repented of. It is an abomination. It is a rejection of God. It is base. It is disordered. It is anti-scriptural. Gay people will not see God nor enjoy eternity with God. God will punish gay people. Being gay itself is a punishment by God for godlessness. And if you happen to be Pentecostal, you will throw in that being gay is caused by a demon and that we are all possessed.

Now, let's go back to where I started. About respect. I understand and accept the maxim of  "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it". I understand why this is right. It is because the only logical alternative to this is epistemological coercion ie., I force you to think the way I do. Some have tried this: Fidel Castro, Lenin and Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, the Kim dynastic dictatorship of North Korea. All have attempted to coerce thinking and to enforce knowledge. A strong belief in the maxim above protects against the worst excesses of coercive thought. BUT, while I agree with the right to express thoughts freely, with the caveat that you are not expressing hate speech or inciting violence, it does not mean that I respect your views.

You can be racist. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be sexist. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be homophobic. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.
You can be a religiously motivated bigot. I can't stop you. But don't ask me to respect your view.
I don't respect you.

The fact of the matter is that a plebiscite on marriage equality gives equal and equivalent weight to those who are implacably opposed to my being married to my partner of fifteen years. Can you imagine the outrage if the situation were reversed; if Australians were being asked to evaluate straight relationships to see whether we would approve socially? A plebiscite gives equal weight and moral equivalence to those who are only too willing and eager to judge me according to unscientific standards that are outdated, unjust and harmful, to those who are conservative Christians who believe that intrinsically I am a sinner, a rejecter of all that is good and encumbered by a willful opposition to the natural order only to be judged by a God who will cast me into the fires of hell for eternity for my wickedness. A plebiscite allows such as them to evaluate the morality and praxis of my relationship.

Malcolm Turnbull could not be more wrong. A Government-funded No campaign in a plebiscite will draw out the opponents of marriage equality who are not only quiet and inoffensive, but will unleash a flood of derogation of gay people by the conservatives, the crazies, the nutters and the Christians who believe we're all filthy sinners and possessed. He is deluded if he thinks otherwise.

But the right thing to do is not a matter for the democratic voice. Sorry, but it's not. Discriminating against gay people because of our sexual orientation is just wrong; no matter whether one disagrees with me or one hundred million disagree with me. Treating gay people as second class citizens will never be right. We shouldn't vote on whether racism is okay or homophobia is okay within limits or sexism is okay. They're not. And they never will be. It' s not a matter for a vote.

We should have the right to marry our partners and Turnbull should use his undoubted oratorical skills, his numbers in the Parliament, his place in the polls and his stated personal position to stand up and do the right thing and to stop being so cowardly by being frightened of the Nationals. He is looking pathetic.

I will respect anyone's right to think however they damn well please within the caveat mention above, but don't ask me to respect clearly wrong discrimination and the bigoted ugly language that goes with it.

Prime Minister Turnbull, stop being such a wus and get this to the Parliament and bring the damn thing to a vote.

A Plebiscite for Marriage Equality is Wrong

Australia has a new Prime Minister, the fifth in five years. He is a moderate of the Right; intelligent, successful, charming, articulate and a very smooth operator. Being a member of the Liberal National Coalition, he does not espouse the same values as I do. He is not of the Left. Don’t be fooled.

At the first hurdle, not 24 hours in the job, he fell. He declared that he would continue on the exact same policies on climate change and marriage equality as his predecessor. Tony Abbott saw that he was losing the battle on marriage equality, so he used the considerable power of his position, and stated to his party room that there would be a plebiscite on marriage equality. Despite one week earlier declaring that the decision belonged to the Parliament, he ‘moved the goal posts’ in a hastily called, and many of his colleagues thought ambushing joint party room meeting, and declared the decision would be delayed until six to twelve months after the next election. At the time, that meant another two years from August 2015. Now, Malcolm Turnbull has stated to the Parliament today that he will continue in this vein, despite his being supportive of marriage equality and having a huge LGBTI population in his own electorate of Wentworth. Pretty silly move, I would have thought.

So let me lay it out again. This plebiscite business. For Abbott, it was a ruse; nothing more. A strategy to forestall progress. For Turnbull, it is a placation of the conservatives in his party; the very ones he is supposed to be pulling into the twenty first century. I am not in favour of a plebiscite. And here’s why.

1. A plebiscite is only a snapshot poll of the electorate; nothing more. We already have polls on marriage equality and over the last years, they have only been going one way, no matter who the pollsters are. Support has been growing and growing, increasing year by year. It is absolutely clear. The trend is unmistakeable. We now have the ironic situation of the Coalition’s favoured pollster Crosbie Textor polling results with 72% of Australians in support and the LNP ignoring them. It is over two thirds of Australians. Name one other single issue where there is more than two thirds support. Business supports, the media supports, health associations support, sport supports, even many of the churches support and there are a majority of Christians who support. The simple unadorned fact is: we don’t need a plebiscite - we already know.
2. Plebiscites are hideously expensive. The Australian Electoral Commission has stated that a plebiscite not held concurrently with an election would cost $158 million. Imagine what we could do with $158 million. I would much rather see twenty million go to early psychosis research, thirty million to go to indigenous health, twenty million to go to MS and autoimmune disease research, twenty million to go to dementia research, twenty million to homelessness, ten million to go to drug education, ten million to go to educational services for the bush, ten million to funding shelters for domestic violence, ten million to go to anxiety and depression research, and eight million to go to obesity research, just as an example. But not to a plebiscite to tell us that over two thirds of Australians support marriage equality. We got that already.
3. We do not have a history in Australia of deciding issues by plebiscite. We have a Westminster system of responsible government and a perfectly good working parliament with members and senators we all elect to make these decisions and to show leadership. And the High Court has strongly stated that it is in the purview of the Parliament to decide on questions of marriage. We have not called a plebiscite to take Australia to war in Iraq and Afghanistan or to bomb Syria. But apparently we need one to tell us that it is okay for gay and lesbian people to marry our partners. 
4. Plebiscites are not binding. After all that effort and all that money, no-one would have to take any notice of it. The decision would still then have to go before the Parliament for a vote.
5. Most worrying, a plebiscite would let loose the crazies and the bigots and the fundamentalists who would have this question decided based on the book of Leviticus and their unstated aversion to gay and lesbian sexuality. It would be acrimonious and very very hurtful to LGBTI people. Do not think for a moment that our better angels will be released as we gently discuss marriage equality over hot cocoa. The opponents of marriage equality are cashed up and belligerent. They fill the Comments sections of articles on the topic with judgement and vitriol. They are already out there at every opportunity to stop marriage equality.
6. Marriage equality is the right thing to do regardless of the vote count in a plebiscite. Every Australian in the country could hypothetically vote against it and it still wouldn’t make that decision right. It is discrimination that stops gay people from marrying. Gay people are treated differently to other people in this respect and are not equal with our straight fellow citizens before the law. Get that: as things stand, we gay people are second-class citizens. We keep the social contract and pay our taxes but are treated unequally. This sticks in our craw and will never ever be okay, which means that this issue is here for keeps. It will never ever go away until gay and lesbian people are not discriminated against in marriage. And the converse is true for me too. If every Australian voted in favour of marriage equality, although I would be hugely chuffed, that decision would not make it right. It is right, because it is the right thing to do. Jettisoning discriminations against people in our type of Western society is the right thing to do. Treating people equally is the right thing to do. Treating people unequally is immoral.
7. The LNP would have the opportunity of framing the question. When you frame the question, you can skew it one way or the other, as did John Howard in the Republic referendum. You can say something like, “Do you agree or disagree with the notion that marriage has always been throughout history between one man and one woman and that Australia should retain this time honoured definition”? It’s not hard to do. And if there is a plebiscite, conservatives in the Government will try to do it.
8. Talking up a plebiscite as being democratic is disingenuous. It is merely a cover statement for a poorly hatched idea that was essentially borne of one of Tony Abbott’s ‘captains’ calls’. The party itself did not decide. Under new leadership with a supportive Prime Minister, one would have thought that he could have pushed for this as a first salvo into bringing his party, taken over by conservatives, back to the liberal centre of Robert Menzies and into the twenty first century. But at this first hurdle, he fell.
9. No amount of Shakespearianesque rhetoric will ever take away the fact that my relationship and that of every other gay and lesbian person in the country would, by means of a plebiscite, be offered up for evaluation and appraisal by bigots, homophobes, rednecks, religious fundamentalists and opponents of every kind, people who are implacably opposed to marriage equality. A plebiscite invites everyone to discuss the gay and lesbian community as though we are objects. A plebiscite objectifies us and opponents will not hesitate to declare that our relationships are inferior and not worthy of being admitted to the halls of the married. These people do not have the right to evaluate our relationships. If the situation were reversed, there would be marching in the streets.

So we are left with a society at large that is absolutely supportive of marriage equality, a parliament which probably already has a majority of supporters were LNP Members given a free vote. There is plenty of will in the community for change. It is only a small group of people stopping this for the whole country: conservative Liberals and Nationals in the main, many of whom themselves will have a sizable support for marriage equality in their electorates but are just refusing to budge or ignoring their constituencies. Full credit to Nationals Member for Gippsland Darren Chester who has changed his position to support for marriage equality and has overwhelming support from his electorate. He cannot be the only one. So you have to ask in the face of clear and patent broad community support, what are these LNPers actually doing apart from just being bloody-minded? Is this new shiny Prime Minister, the darling of the moderates of the Right, going to pull his party back to the centre? Or not?

With Tony Abbott gone, we have the paradoxical situation of having both a supportive Prime Minister and a supportive Leader of the Opposition and yet we still cannot get this reform through. It really is just unbelievable. Is it any wonder that people are turned off politics in this country?

I still see the choice now as being stark: a party, the ALP, who will take marriage equality as its platform to the next election and present a bill to the Parliament within one hundred days of winning the election, and a party, the LNP, many of whose Members will oppose this reform to the death and who will make the country go through a very divisive and destructive costly plebiscite six to twelve months after the next election.

Bigots and Homophobes: Name-calling or Calling Out Prejudice?

The Australian Senate has recently held hearings from various parties on the subject of marriage equality as a forerunner to a public vote (or plebiscite) on the issue. This plebiscite is unnecessary, costly, divisive, and the result of a strategy by Tony Abbott to delay its adoption. One particular presentation is of particular interest here from Australia's most powerful conservative Christian group, the Australian Christian Lobby (the ACL). This group does not represent Australia's Christian population but they market themselves as such and have strong connections in Canberra. I watched their presentation recently in which they suggested that the real barrier to progress in the debate over gay rights is the fact that people keep 'name-calling' each other with the putative insults 'bigot' and 'homophobe'. According to the ACL, these words are unnecessary and are holding the debate back. One of my former Church colleagues recently promoted the ACL's speech on social media with the endorsement: “here here, don’t like the name-calling”.

So I want to ask this question: 

When is it okay to use the word bigot or homophobe or their derivatives?

Or are these words off limits?

Is using these words really the same thing as ‘name-calling’?

I think I will know what most LGBTI people will say. Almost all LGBTI people have suffered the effects of homophobia: rejection, humiliation, intimidation, harassment, threats of violence, and in many cases, actual violence. We also suffer micro-aggressions on a daily basis such as being made fun of, the butt of jokes, the whispered message behind the hand, the giggle after we pass by. The word 'gay' is still used as an insult and a derogatory term. Youth suicide in the LGBTI population is six times higher than in the general population for the same age-group. Further, most LGBTI people will know that the ACL believes our lives to be lives of sin, a rejection of God, against nature, decadent, self-centred, and that our relationships do not have the same existential equivalence as heterosexual relationships. They also know that the ACL and people of their ilk will do anything and everything they can to stop us from being able to legally marry our partners.

But I also wonder why it is that the ACL wants these two words to be inadmissible in the marriage equality debate. One of the things we know is that prejudiced people are supremely uncomfortable in owning up to their prejudice. They will turn mental and linguistic gymnastics to remove themselves from the idea they might be prejudiced in some way. "I'm not racist but - - - -" is the classic example. Following on from such a statement is invariably a racist statement. So with homophobia. "I'm not homophobic but - - - -". And thence follows a homophobic statement. It seems that even when people are being overtly prejudiced, they want to cover it over or hide it in some way. The last thing they want, is to be exposed. I would suggest that this is the very reason the ACL wants the words bigot and homophobe expunged from the Australian psyche while the marriage equality debate progresses its murky way up to Abbott's plebiscite. This way, they can say what they want and not have to answer the charge of bigotry and homophobia. They want total freedom to hurl insulting and offensive social comments and theological teachings at the gay community with total impunity; pure as the driven snow are they. And should we dare attempt to call them out on it, well then, aren't we a nasty and uncaring and insensitive group of irreligious people bent on wrecking society.

So, a couple of dictionary definitions suggest that this word 'bigot' is not as offensive as what the ACL would like us all to believe. 

A bigot is:

“a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance” Merriam-Webster Online

“a person who has very strong, unreasonable beliefs or opinions about race, religion or politics and who will not listen to or accept the opinions of anyone who disagrees” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Online.

Now Western society has generally moved on from the ACL/fundamentalist view of gay sexuality. And frankly, so have many people of faith. The Christian Church in many quarters has begun the journey of re-visiting its centuries old traditional teachings on human sexuality as I urged in my book Being Gay Being Christian. This shift in society is why so many countries have already legislated against discriminating against gay and lesbian people and celebrating the wonderful binding feeling that equality brings. Marriage has been extended to gay and lesbian couples and the devastation and mayhem predicted by the opponents has not come to pass.

So for me, there is an absolute. It is not okay, and by that I mean totally unacceptable, to not ever, not anywhere, not by anyone, no exception, by priest, prelate, prince, or pauper to denigrate, put down, discriminate or derogate LGBTI people, any more than it is okay to the same to women, people with non-white skin, non-Anglo ethnicities, the disabled, the indigenous or the poor. Such prejudice is bigotry. If you hear it, you will recognise it. And you will feel its ugliness.

If you do this on the basis of skin colour or ethnicity, you are racist. Calling someone out for racism is not the same as name-calling. I care more for the victim’s sensitivities than I do for the perpetrator’s. If a racist is offended by our calling them out, then bad luck. Wear the shame.

If you do this on the basis of opposition to gay and lesbian people, you are homophobic. Calling someone out for homophobia is not the same thing as name-calling. I care more for the victim’s sensitivities than I do for the perpetrator’s. If a homophobe is offended by our calling them out, then bad luck. Wear the shame.

Now attacking gay and lesbian people the way the Australian Christian Lobby does is bigotry, plain and simple. They tell untruths, they fear-monger, they predict the destruction of society, they predict the desolation of families, they predict devastation to children. And they do all this just because we are gay. They do not do this to single mums or single dads or divorced people marrying a second time, or the older generation marrying late in life after a life-spouse has passed away and love is rediscovered, or to the disabled who marry, or even young couples who choose not to have children; no. They only do it to gay people.

Sometimes they use social rationales; all bogus. Sometimes they use theological rationales; all weak, conservative and out-dated. They are evangelical and pentecostal fundamentalists who control this group and they promulgate the platform that gay sexuality is a choice, a sin and, for many of their adherents, a psychological sickness or caused by demonic oppression. They all believe that our relationships are inferior.

So I don’t really care how many Bible verses they quote.  And I don’t really care how softly spoken they are in Senate hearings and how utterly reasonable they sound when they suggest that name-calling should have no part in this debate. It is bigotry and it is homophobia. And it is not name-calling to call them out.

Name-calling is for kids. It’s juvenile behaviour. It’s to be found in the playground. The ACL’s pronouncements and the money they intend to spend on militant advocacy against marriage equality needs to be met with the same strength as they themselves put forth.

There is some resonance for me today as I listened to Anote Tong, the President of Kirabati, in answering Tony Abbott with regard to Pacific islands being inundated by the sea due to climate change and Australia’s refusal to have greater emissions targets thus effecting those same islands, where Abbott stated that Australia had to protect its economy. President Tong shaking his head said, ‘this is not our economy we are protecting; this is an existential threat, we have to protect our future’. Marriage equality is up for grabs in Australia at the moment. We are the last of the major developed countries in the world to legislate for this. We have a Prime Minister implacably opposed and who is working behind the scenes to ensure this never happens. The ACL is there right beside him, resolved to use fair means or foul, including bigoted and homophobic declarations. For gay and lesbian people, this is not about a nasty Christian fundamentalist group whom most sensible people ignore anyway, but an existential threat to our place in Australian society as equals.

Bigotry and homophobia both exist and they are equally ugly no matter whose mouth they come from.

PS. I have written three articles on homophobia in my BGBC Blog if you are interested: 

IDAHO Day 2012    http://beinggaybeingchristian.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/idaho-day-2012.html     

IDAHO Day 2013    http://beinggaybeingchristian.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/idaho-day-2013.html      

IDAHOT Day 2014  http://beinggaybeingchristian.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/idahot-day-2014.html      

Kim Davis and the Freedom of Religion

I haven’t said a single word about Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who started out illegally refusing marriage licences to gay and lesbian couples and then expanded it to all couples; 'because if I have to let gay and lesbian couples marry, then I won't let anyone get married - so there!' As you know, Federal Court judge David Bunning sentenced her to gaol time for contempt. Now, we have a whole bunch of moral crusaders, Christian fundies, opining stridently that freedom of religion is at stake. I call BS on that and here’s why.

The U.S., like Australia, has a separation of church and state. The statutes on which this convention relies have been there from the beginning: in the U. S. in the 1st Amendment, and in Oz, in s116 of the Constitution. These effectively bar any religion at all from being the ‘established’ or official religion of the state. Everyone’s free to worship as they wish, but no official favourite faith for the nation. As well, this convention makes sure that to hold a Government job, in either country, you don’t have to pass a religious test. There is no religious pre-requisite you have to attain before you can hold down a Government job. The State remains neutral or secular. This is as it should be.

Kim Davis, I suspect, is a simple woman who has not long ago had a conversion experience in a pentecostal type denomination. She will not have done the reading that say, an average gay person of faith would have done around issues of spirituality and sexuality. She will have been taught that homosexuality is a sin, and more likely, an abomination. She will not know any of the science around human sexuality. She will have been indoctrinated into conventional religious homophobia and LGBTI bigotry that have plagued the Christian Church and harmed so many millions of people for millennia. But she is in a position of power. This is her moment in the sun; her fifteen minutes of fame.

But her statutory power over these matters was curtailed, as was the power of Federal Courts and State Courts and lower district courts, once the Supreme Court of the U.S. decided that marriage between two people of the same gender cannot be banned by any State in the Union and that to do so would breach the anti-discrimination aspects of the U.S. Constitution; effectively saying that there is a Constitutional right for two people of the same gender to marry. Once that became law, there were consequences for every Government department and employee in the land. Now, whether you like it or not; it is the law. Whether you hate homosexuality or not; it is the law. Whether you believe that God will punish all homosexual people or not; it is the law. Whether you read the Bible literally and interpret its clearly historically contextualised passages as being absolutely pertinent to today (except for the bits about menstruation, barbering, agrarian practices, polyester and stoning people to death), or not; it is the law. It is the official legal understanding of what the Constitution means.

Given the historic and utterly clear mandated legal status that there is no established religion in America (or Australia) and that Government employees must do their jobs without fear or favour to ALL citizens and bring no discriminatory practice to the workplace at all – no exception – then Kim Davis must either begin to issue marriage licences to gay and lesbian couples or, if she is unable to do so, resign her office. What she cannot do, any more than anyone else in the United States can do, is discriminate in the administration of her statutory duties on the basis of her own personal beliefs. She cannot have it both ways. No Government employee in the entire U.S. nation is permitted to do that. No-one!

As I read the commentary of what happened in Judge Bunning's Federal Court, it is plain to see that Kim Davis was given more latitude to change her behaviour than most. The conservative judge, whose own views on gay marriage are understood to be non-supportive, was very accommodating of her, but she refused to co-operate and just stood dogged. He offered not to gaol her for contempt if she would go back out there and do her job lawfully. She refused. He even tried to help her understand that she was not being asked to agree with gay marriage or to support it, but to merely sign the appropriate documents as county clerk to say that the paperwork had been attended to properly, carefully, responsibly and legally; all i's dotted, all t's crossed. She refused. He then had no choice to but to gaol her as he had already made orders that the county clerk’s office perform its statutory duties according to law. Now, she was continuing to defy his existing orders to his face. And she had even tried to go over his head and sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court but the Justices of the Supreme Court wouldn’t touch it.

She now has no choice but to resign if she will not change her behaviour. Or, if she will not resign, be removed by whatever means is prescribed for such a removal.

Now as for this being a breach of freedom of religion; sorry, an emphatic no. Kim Davis is free to worship wherever she wants, to believe whatever she wants and to practise her faith in whatever way personally she sees fit. No-one is stopping her. And neither should they be able to. She has the same rights as all Americans in this regard. But like all other Americans, that right does not guarantee her immunity from the law should she discriminate in her statutory duties. Such discrimination is a crime. And defying Court orders is also a crime. No-one takes any joy in seeing a woman of her age being punished behind bars. From what I understand, Judge Bunning was none too thrilled at having to impose a custodial sentence on her. But don't forget: she didn't have to be there. She resolutely chose to continue to defy a Federal Court Judge. She is being characterised by the Christian Right figuratively as a martyr. But Kim Davis is clearly NOT a martyr.

Mike Thompson 2015 Detroit Free Press

The U.S. and Australia live by the rule of law. Each of us is a nation of laws. They are carefully calibrated. Our rights have limits and we all understand this. We have a right to a free press and free speech and free movement and a right to associate with various groups. But the press cannot knowingly write falsehoods about people and free speech is curtailed at the point of hate speech or the inciting of others to violence. Freedom of association is curtailed at the point of joining proscribed or criminal groups. Freedom of movement is curtailed at defence base and gaol perimeters, for example. Freedom of religion is also curtailed when your rights to worship impinge upon my rights as a citizen. All rights have delimitations. People’s mainstream or wacky idiosyncratic belief systems get trumped by our constitutions and conventions and our laws when it comes to established religion and no religious discrimination by the State. This situation in the U.S. is not remotely a freedom of religion issue. It is a rule of law issue. Imagine if strict orthodox Jews or strict Moslems in Government jobs decided by some stricture of their food or dress codes to no longer assist people who did not adhere to their belief. There would be an enormous hue and cry. So too for the likes of Kim Davis. The Bible belt is still bleating that America is no longer living that ‘ole time Gospel’ type Christianity; or they do when it suits them. They are just going to have evolve.

Kim Davis has in one sense, done America a favour. She has reminded the whole nation of the 1^st Amendment to their Constitution and how rights have culturally-imposed limits. She has reminded us all why the separation of church and state is so important.

PS. If you're interested, I did write another piece with a similar theme, called Of Church and State and Marriage Equality on this blog.

Promoting the homosexual lifestyle

I heard that old dinosaur Rev Fred Nile today describe the screening of documentary Gayby Baby in NSW High Schools as “promoting the homosexual lifestyle”. You often hear Fred talk of “the homosexual lifestyle”. It is one of his major themes. In those three words, you can hear the complete ‘othering’ of gay people down through history, by patriarchy, by the Church, by religion. It is as if these ‘homosexuals’ who have this ‘lifestyle’ have come from another planet. To Fred, there is nothing recognisable in these people. There is no shared humanity. They are completely and totally foreign to him. These ‘homosexuals’ with their ‘lifestyle’ are as alien to Fred as a Mariana Trench electric deep sea creature. Under the withering judgement of Fred and his allies and their constant refrain of “the homosexual lifestyle”, we are barely human.

The notion that we are “promoting” this lifestyle bears some scrutiny. In some sick twisted religious unscientific model, Fred sees gay people, in fact, all LGBTI people, as being deranged unnatural sinners with an illness brought about by child molestation or an overbearing mother, and that our agenda is to make as many people in the world as possible, gay. Fred thinks we want to start this mission in the schools. That way, we can ‘turn’ as many kids gay as we possibly can, as if they are vampires in a modern horror show. For him, it is promoting being gay as being normal and healthy and lovely and acceptable. 'Aagghhhh', says Fred, 'that is totally unacceptable'. 

Showing Gayby Baby, a PG rated documentary about kids growing up happily in same-sex parented households is for Fred and his ilk, proof beyond doubt, of the nefarious gay agenda to, wait for it, “promote the homosexual lifestyle”, that we want to go about making “the homosexual lifestyle” normal. Instead, it is just a film depicting the everydayness of same-sex parented families as they navigate family life.

Gayby Baby 2015 Official Trailer

So, let me just offer a correction to Fred and all the other pastors who think his way. 

If you think that the LGBTI community wants to let kids know that it is okay to be gay or lesbian, then you are spot on; we do. If you think we want kids to know that being gay is not a sin or a sickness, then you are absolutely spot on again; we do. If you think we want to let kids and adults know that being gay is not unnatural or a rejection of God or a disappointment, then you are absolutely totally 100% right; we do. If you think that we want to teach kids and adults about homophobia and keeping safe, you're right; we do. If you think we want the world to know that our relationships are the equal of those in the straight world and in no way inferior, you are totally right; we do. If you think that the LGBTI community wants gay and lesbian kids and adults to know that they can lead happy, successful and fulfilled lives, then you could not be more right; we so do. 

These are definitely undoubtedly unequivocally our aims. That IS our agenda. To bring to public awareness the great gains we have made in understanding human sexuality and to assist society to cast off thousands of years of oppressive thinking and behaviour. And we'll tell the kids, the adults, the oldies and everyone in between. So that means we will need to let people know that your idiotic concept of “homosexual lifestyle” is not what you think it is at all, but is in fact the course and manner of our very human lives.

Your ‘othering’ of us is offensive. It is also harmful and hurtful. And it is so last century. We've moved on Fred. Younger people who are coming to terms with their sexuality do not need the confusion of the traditional teachings of the Church thrust upon them under the banner of ‘speaking the truth in love’. It’s not love at all. It is just plain ignorance. And if it persists in the face of evidence, then it’s plain bigotry as well. What they do need is support, love, acceptance, and sensible up-to-date information. So if by "promoting the homosexual lifestyle" you mean telling people that being gay is okay and educating society out of ignorance and prejudice, then I am more than happy to “promote the homosexual lifestyle”  and trust that those efforts will help not only the LGBTI community, but our families and friends and society in general, as we grow and evolve into a more informed and accepting modern society.

Of Church and State and Marriage Equality

The Australia of the last few years has seen religious fundamentalism attempt to show its might by pushing its way to the head of the pack in political and social issues. It’s not so much radical jihadism in Australia as it is rabid evangelical fundamentalism. We’ve seen this in issues such as religious education in schools, school chaplaincy programs, occasionally abortion, and perhaps no-where more prominently than in the debate over marriage equality for gay and lesbian people. We have even seen the unedifying spectacle of leaders of Government and Opposition making the three yearly pilgrimage to the Australian Christian Lobby’s conference and spruiking a sanitised message for them in the hope they will support them publicly and thus having to offer them a platform that they believe the ACL will support; as though the ACL is the repository of all things Christian and represent the faith across Australia – which they don’t!

Whatever happened to the idea of separation of church and state? Isn’t that supposed to be enshrined in Australian public life for the good of the nation? After all, haven’t we been able to avoid most of the ugly and dangerous religious squabbles of Europe and elsewhere precisely because of this separation?

Section 116 of the Australian Constitution specifically refers to religion and allows for four tenets:

“The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth”.

It’s pretty great, isn’t it. It draws on, and outdoes I think, America’s First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. While America’s is specific in denying the right of a religion to be the ‘established’ or official religion of the land and denying the right of a government to stop people exercising their right to religious freedom, it stops there. Australia’s on the other hand goes a little further explicitly:

•       No established religion
•       No government can legislate to impose any religious observance
•       No government can legislate to prohibit the free exercise of religious observance
•       No religious test or benchmark for holding any public office.

It is therefore not uncommon to hear some say that because of these mighty four, that the separation of church and state is enshrined in our Constitution. In fact, such separation is not enshrined in the Constitution and the High Court has explicitly said so in the State Aid or Defence of Government Schools case in 1981.

Justice Sir Ronald Wilson said:

The fact is that s.116 is a denial of legislative power to the Commonwealth and no more … The provision therefore cannot answer the description of a law which guarantees within Australia the separation of church and state.

Justice Sir Ninian Stephen said s.116:

... cannot readily be viewed as a repository of some broad statement of principle concerning the separation of church and state, from which may be distilled the detailed consequences of such separation.

So, s116 is merely a “denial of legislative power”, and a welcome one, don’t get me wrong, but not a “broad statement of principle”, a fleshed out doctrine of separation of church and state. But there is a loose convention of behaviour that has been followed in Australia because of this Constitutional general attitude. And it is essential that we keep such a convention in mind when tackling social issues. I want the clergy out of people’s bedrooms and out of people’s hearts. I want adults to be free to make their own decisions about their own lives and not have to worry about breaking the law. I am not a libertarian, but in this, yes, I want small government and small church.

So why do I think s116 is a welcome statement of delimitation? Simply this. I believe that both the church and the legislature work best when they do not have jurisdiction over the other. Allow me to refine that. I like the fact that people can go to church or the mosque or the temple without fear or interference from the Government. I like the fact they can do that without having to look over their shoulder to see who’s following them. I like the fact that our successive Governments have the freedom to legislate for the common good and do not have to do so from any religious premise or any sacred text. Thus, though Fred Nile insists on calling Australia a Christian country, and does so only because of our historical connections, in fact and in law, we are not. And we shouldn’t be. We are not a Christian country in law. And we are not a Christian country in the lived experience of this multi-cultural, multi-faith secular land. There is no established religion in Australia. While Fred Nile might be an antidisestablishmentarian, I certainly am not (and I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to use that word in a serious piece of prose)!

Australia has never wanted a theocracy, a country headed up by clerics and priests. In fact, ever since the days of Samuel Marsden ‘the flogging parson’ of early colonial NSW times, we have had a distinct mistrust of the clergy and the Church. We’ve seen theocracy at work in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Clerics running the show, telling everyone what is acceptable thought and behaviour and what is not and applying penalties and punishments for infringements. Of course, the dominant religion in such countries gets to wield the power. And such religious authority finds the personal lives of its citizenry by far and away the easiest thing to target: gender, sexuality, marriage, children, and relationships. Lots of rules around this stuff. And lots of punishments because of those rules.

So, for me, Government free to govern for the common good of the nation, with the Church (or mosque or temple) free to enrich the spiritual lives of people is the best way to go. That’s not to say that I think either are necessarily doing a great job. I don’t. Both government and church could really lift their game. However, there are two exceptions for me concerning this necessary separation; one where I think Government should step in to the religious life of a nation, and the other, where religion should step in and have a say about governance.

The first is in the matter of religious coercion. This can be either overt or covert. It can be socially approved and wrapped in sacralised language or it can be secretive and very nasty. I am thinking here of cults. I think there is a place for removing children from some of these groups, and maybe even some adults in certain cases. No ‘right’ of freedom of religious observance should protect adults indoctrinating kids into harmful belief and practice. Removals have been done, eg., in 1987, six children were removed from the cult The Family in Lake Eildon Victoria, and more recently in 2012, twelve children were removed from an incestuous religious cult in rural NSW. No religion, I don’t care what it is, should have the freedom to harm people or coerce people to remain observant for fear of leaving. If there is physical or psychological harm visited upon adherents, there is a place for Government and its law enforcement agencies. Such coercive behaviour is not even remotely authentic spirituality.

The second caveat I mentioned above is when Governments are out of step with ethical considerations, where people are glossed over or ignored and legislation with the bottom line becomes the dominating factor, eg., environmental concerns. Recently, we have seen religion speak truth to power: Pope Francis on the world stage calling for a halt to unfettered capitalism and industrialisation to the detriment of the planet in his call to world action on climate change, and more locally, we have seen here both Christian and Moslem clerics call for serious action on climate change to the present Federal Government in Australia. We have also heard the Churches speak up about indigenous rights and mental health programs for example. And so they should.

And so to the issue of the moment. Marriage equality in Australia is the big issue right now where the maintenance of separation of church and state is crucial. Perhaps no other factor has caused the LGBTI community so much distress and pain as the Christian Church. The Church in Australia is a diverse group. It is certainly not a homogeneous entity with one set of beliefs and praxis. Rather, it is a multitude of beliefs around the centrality of Christ as well as huge differences in style and structure of liturgy.

However, one section of this group is the loudest and the most strident, and for me as a result of what I see as arrogance, the most objectionable. In their everyday vernacular, they would call themselves ‘Bible-believing Christians’ but others would call them ‘evangelical* fundamentalists’, a group that represents for me now, all that is wrong with religion. With an emphasis on a sola scriptura model of Scripture that is virtually Bibliolatry and a model of interpretation that is essentially face-value, literalist, conservative, rejecting of scholarship that differs from their traditional view, with a focus on a few sacred cows, plus a willingness to use it as a weapon against dissenters, and all this favoured over any sense of human lived experience, this crowd in times past were the ‘holy rollers’, the ‘God-botherers’, the ‘Bible bashers’ and Australians have traditionally steered well clear of them.

There is absolutely no truth other than their truth about all matters and especially it would seem, about gay sexuality. They are not just oppositional to marriage equality but belligerently so. I have come to conclude after engaging them over the last few years on matters gay that they trichotomise the world, ie., they divide it into three groups: real Christians (them), false fake Christians (others who profess Christian spirituality but not according to their model) and the unsaved (ever other human being in the world that lives or who has ever lived or who will ever live who doesn’t have a particular kind of salvation experience). And there is no budging them from this. They will go down with the ship on this one. Jesus himself could appear before them and say, “hey guys, you haven’t quite got it right” and they wouldn’t listen. They are so rusted on to this model which has the Bible as their single and only argument that they appear to me to be totally lacking any insight as to how ridiculous, how absurd, how offensive, how rude, and how arrogant they usually sound.

So their view of gay marriage? Totally and completely against it and always will be. Hell will freeze over before they give a millimetre on this. They will never agree to marriage equality because they will never ever accept gay sexuality as being a valid life. Let me repeat what I have oft repeated elsewhere. For them, a gay sexuality is unequivocally and without the slightest shred of doubt: a sin, a rejection of God, a repudiation of all things Godly and holy, selfish, indulgent, against the order of nature and a punishment by God and deserving of eternal punishment, “for such as these will not inherit the Kingdom of God”, a choice and a reprehensible lifestyle. And because of this, they see our relationships as counterfeit, not real love, fake, based in lust or deviancy and therefore, totally inferior to straight relationhips. They will quote you chapter and verse to prove every word they say. They will also ignore every argument against this model because of their Bible and the way they see it. They will ignore all science, all psychology, all biology, all genetics, all anthropology, all sociology, all history, all scholarship. Its’ just the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible.

So when we talk about a plebiscite for all Australians to decide whether to continue discrimination or not over marriage equality, ie., to treat one group of Australians differently before the law compared to the rest of Australia, I don’t feel at all comfortable in knowing that evangelical fundamentalists get to have a say about the nature and quality of my relationship and those of every other gay person in the land. It’s like asking Kim Jong Un if he feels that South Koreans need a bit more support in their defence capabilities. Why would you ask a sworn enemy of LGBTI people to decide our fate? I think it is wrong. And unjust. And blurring the convention of separation of church and state.

The marriage equality debate in Australia is a fair debate and I don’t even mind having a robust argument with opponents. But let’s not do that on religious grounds. This is not a religious question, despite fundamentalists declaring that it is. Half of them believe it is a demonic force having its sway over the land and inviting the judgment of God. Seriously. I actually mean it. But no, we are not talking about religious ceremonies or religious observance being effected in any way. We are talking about gay people having the right to marry their partner in an authorised civil ceremony, as do 70% of heterosexual Australians right now, and having their duly solemnised relationship affirmed by society represented by their family and friends. That’s all. That’s it. It’s hardly the apocalypse.

The religionists can do what they like in their churches. But I do think that we will see the day when some churches, not all, will be happy to marry people in their beautiful buildings too in the future. Some will, some won’t. And some gay people would love that, and some gay people wouldn’t darken the doorway of a church after our treatment by traditional Christianity. And I wouldn’t blame them for a moment. But gays getting married in churches is not what is being proposed here.

I still think the Parliament is the place for this decision. A plebiscite will be an open invitation to the fundamentalists to pour all over this with their objections to gay people. It is just bigotry. And wow, have you noticed how much they don’t like being called bigots? They do not like being called out. But yes it is bigotry; nothing less. Religious bigotry. And it is homophobia too in many cases. As a society, we have realised that racism and sexism are to be deplored and we all as one work to ensure they do not occur. No religious person is tolerated offering religious rationales for racism or bigotry. That time is gone. It is totally unacceptable. I think it is high time we moved onto treating homophobia in the same manner. It is just not acceptable in the twenty first century with what we now know about human sexuality, and gay sexuality in particular, to tolerate homophobic ‘authoritative’ statements by anyone, be they pastor or priest.

The proposal for marriage equality in Australia is not a religious issue. It is a civil issue and a human rights issue, whose institution should be decided by the Parliament. We should adhere to the convention of the separation of church and state in this matter; a convention that has served us well, and not allow fundamentalist Christians to highjack the decision or to steer it in any meaningful way. Their myopic impoverished spirituality has its place in their churches and their study groups and in their own personal lives but has no place in deciding the outcome of how this nation decides to organise itself with regard to its gay and lesbian tax-paying citizens and how their relationships are to be recognised. I trust the good sense of the Australian people to continue to eschew such stupidity.

*I do not mean by this that all evangelicals are fundamentalists. Clearly, they are not. I know plenty of evangelical people with whom I may no longer hold the same model of scripture, but who I regard as kind and loving people and sophisticated thinkers. So this paper is not referring to such as them.

Some Levity

To lighten the tone after that, I include a Letter to The Editor of the Newcastle Herald by a former friend of mine who told me I was ‘a false teacher’ and that ‘better had there been a millstone tied around my neck and I be cast into the sea rather than I lead anyone astray’ which is precisely what he thought I was doing. Last week, Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy interviewed me about the local bishops’ response to marriage equality (surprisingly not bad for senior clerics) and he wrote the letter in response. It is the usual stuff, devoid of anything remotely sophisticated. I didn’t know that even ‘etc’ is sinful and wrong, but apparently it is. It also peddles out the fear mongering at the end (fundamentalists love ratcheting up the fear and retribution dial) with a vengeful angry God judging our nation ‘to its peril’ should we allow marriage equality. But it also had a hilarious response in the Comments section that I just could not ignore. Whoever you are Sarcastic Sam, thank you for your contribution.

JOANNE McCarthy declares she is annoyed that a marriage celebrant is required by our law to say, “marriage is the union of a man and a woman” (‘‘My wedding checklist’’ Herald 15/8). 

However, I believe God will be happy with these words, because this is how he designed marriage to be.   According to my beliefs, God invented sex.  He therefore has the right to write the rules under which we should enjoy it, and he has done. 

For one thing, he makes it abundantly clear in his book, the Bible, that he opposes homosexual acts.  

If our law allowed marriage of a man to a man, or a woman to a woman, it would be condoning homosexual acts and therefore be at conflict with God. 

Homosexual acts, along with adultery, gossip, greed, hate, lust, lying, pride, etc, are all wrong, primarily because God has decreed it to be so.  

I believe setting the rules is God’s exclusive right, not ours, and any nation that changes them does so at its peril.  

Sarcastic Sam 

Very well written Frank. This is easily the most lucid, compelling and sensible argument against same sex marriage I have read. There is simply no counter argument to the facts and sound logic you have presented. Let's see those crazy gay marriage advocates try and dismantle this substantial argument. I think it's game, set and match to you on this one. I can't think of any plausible debate against the opinion you have put forward. Well done.

Execution - Slaughter in the Jungle

Since the execution of eight people in Indonesia this week, including two Australians, all of whom I do not believe deserved to be killed, I have been torn as to how to respond. I have read almost everything that has been written by politicians and the commentariat and I have discussed the events with friends and family. I feel both angry and saddened, but I wanted to stay my hand for a day or two before I decided on my final position.

I think the dilemma here is a human rights dilemma. How far should a country like Australia be friends with, trade with, have cultural exchanges with, education arrangements with, tourism arrangements etc with a country which has less than a glowing human rights record? And we need to be careful here for Australia itself has been accused by the United Nations for being less than wonderful in our treatment of our indigenous, so we are not really in a position to throw too many stones. And yet, it is essential in my opinion to evaluate and make judgment upon other countries’ records. I do not see how we cannot, while we strive to be better ourselves.

Australia’s political class for the most part have, thank God, moved on from capital punishment. It is unlikely that capital punishment will ever be re-introduced into this country again in the future, so total has the move away from it been for us politically and socially. Most would see it as being immoral. Yes, there are people out there who still agree with it, but they are unlikely ever to agitate for it and were they to do so, they would never get it past the politicians and the bulk of the population who would nowadays have nothing to do with it.

And anyway, there is a simple and powerfully effective argument that not one of them can stand against. If it was their son or daughter or them themselves, would they still say, ‘well, they knew what they were getting into when they did this crime. Do the crime, pay the penalty’? No, when it’s their loved one or themselves, then there is every reason to believe in redemption, that people can change, that people can be remorseful and turn their lives around. Their argument for the death penalty is theoretical only and distinct from the human. When it touches them, they change their tune very quickly. They didn’t shoot through the heart the drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran this week, they shot the newly married Rev. Andrew Chan and the artist and prison counsellor Myuran Sukumaran; two very different men from the two who were imprisoned ten years ago. Of course there is rehabilitation and redemption. What a sorry species we would be if it were not so.

There is no need for me here to reiterate the many and sound reasons as to why capital punishment is abhorrent. I will just say that for all those reasons for me personally, I do not believe any individual or body or institution or state has the right to delete the existence of another human being. It is judicial or presidential or state murder, nothing less. When the theatrics are stripped away, it cannot be anything else. It is cold and calculated and in the case we have seen this week, also cruel and torturous.

No amount of rationalising by the Indonesians or the Americans or the Chinese or the Saudis can ever justify killing another. Do not get me wrong. I understand only too well that there are evil people in this world who are not fit to be part of a society. Societies cannot have these people meting out destruction and devastation in their wake. They are dangerous and they must be removed. That’s why we have the rule of law. If it costs the tax payer a considerable amount to have such people incarcerated, then so be it. I am happy to have my taxes go to keeping some people off the streets where they can do no harm, be they drug lords, murderers, rapists, terrorists or any other kind of evil personified, and forever if necessary. So, I did not agree with Saddam Hussein’s hanging or even Osama bin Laden’s summary execution. There can be no double standard. We cannot kill the ones we don’t like and save the ones we do. Killing is killing and killing is wrong. I think state initiated murder demeans the country that legislates it. Some of the Nazis imprisoned after WWII stayed in prison for life and died there. That’s how it should be.

I would like to see Australia stand tall and proud in its dealings with other nations and have a range of different levels of friendship. The highest level would only be offered to democratic countries with the rule of law, certain freedoms that are espoused by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and who have no truck with capital punishment. We should be able to say, ‘we cannot be as close a friend to you as what we would like to be while ever you have capital punishment. Given that, we limit our friendship and therefore our contact’. Idealistic dreaming, they would say. So, yes I would expect the comments, ‘what about trade, what about commerce, what about the economy’? And I guess I am saying, ‘what about it’? Do we want a better world or don’t we? Do we want to improve the lot of humanity or don’t we? When do we take these things seriously and not just pay lip service to them? I am talking about human rights. There are countries in the world today where I, just for being gay and being married to Chris, could be legally put to death. What happens if I were to be picked up in an airport transiting through in one of those countries and thrown in prison there to rot and eventually be killed by judicial process. Are we going to really say, ‘well he should have known better than to be gay in that country?’ The problem is that I am gay wherever I go.

From the moment we heard the news of the executions, we heard Government ministers and the Prime Minister qualifying everything they said with how important our friendship with Indonesia is. The friendship and the future is the most important thing to them, otherwise they would not be qualifying their remarks with such obsequiousness. We are already talking about everything going back to normal as quickly as possible. Everything will be forgotten for the sake of the relationship. But I am not so sure the ‘relationship’ is the most important consideration.

I don’t think it should be business as usual in a week or two or three. I think that even if it costs us some trade, we should start to stand up to such countries and we should start encouraging other like countries to stand up too. We shouldn’t just settle back and forget. If human rights are more than just a pretty phrase and a nice thought, we have to make them so. I do not agree with mass boycotts usually. They are a blunt instrument. However, I did endorse a boycott of the last Winter Olympics in Sochi after Russia’s blatant and cruel crackdown on LGBT people. I just thought, sport is not worth the propaganda coup that Putin wanted in the midst of widespread LGBT hate crimes. And I don’t think trade is worth it either. We eventually did boycott South Africa and while it did hurt ordinary people for a time, it was a powerful driver that isolated the country and moved her into the process of change. I personally boycotted Fiji when it was under military rule. I have a thing about military rule. I don’t like it. Soldiers with guns should not be running our societies. I have personally boycotted Singapore since 2005 after they murdered young Van Tuong Nguyen. As much as I would love to experience Singapore, I feel like they owe Australia an apology and I still remain unwilling to go. I have not forgiven them for killing a very young man who made a mistake on the grounds that his death would be a deterrence to drug smugglers. Please Singapore show the wonderful change in drug statistics since 2005 so that we can all see how effective killing people is. So too with Indonesia. I look forward to a massive diminution in their drug statistics now that Andrew and Myu and six others, one of whom was schizophrenic and didn’t even understand he was being executed, have been shot dead.  

I am afraid that though I have Indonesian friends and have had two Indonesian boarders many years ago, I have not yet forgiven the Indonesian President or Government for perpetrating this vile act on eight people who more than likely, deserved a prison sentence, but who did not deserve to be murdered in a clearing in a jungle in the dead of night. It’s not the kind of world I want. And I know that the only way to effect change is to be the change. I hope I do get to see Australia stand up for what’s right. I am going to try to personally. After this week’s callous events, I would like to see Australia lead the world and push bi-laterally and in the United Nations for global change, for the total and complete irrevocable abolition of the death penalty. At the end of this week, that’s how I feel.

The Great Waste 1914 – 1918

On the Centenary of the Gallipoli Landings 25 April 1915

Today is Anzac Day. And not just any Anzac Day. It is the centenary today of the Gallipoli landings in the Dardanelles. This centenary is a big moment in Australian history. But what it means is debatable. We have been told by certain voices in the military that Australia became a nation there, that we grew up there, that our blood spilled was the evidence of a proud adult nation in its own right. We have watched the RSL attempt to own the Anzac myth and to fashion it according to the image of its erstwhile President Bruce Ruxton. We have seen the glorification of war in some quarters, celebrating military life, its ranks, its ordinance and its uniforms. We have seen business and commerce try to have piece of the Anzac tradition, selling everything from tins of biscuits to tea-towels. We’ve seen right-wing nationalists try to appropriate the tradition conflating it with their myopic view of what it means to be Australian such that if you’re not wearing a flag around your shoulders on Australia Day, you’re un-Australian. We’ve seen it linked with gambling. The two-up tradition. Drinking. Parades. Bands. Laughter. Shouting. Pubs. Joy. ‘Anzacery’, it has been called.

But I think now that we have the perspective of one hundred years, we should be able to discuss the Anzac legend, this event that changed Australia, minus the myths, the glorification and the political spin that have attached themselves to the campaign ever since the early part of the twentieth century. These are my thoughts and I make no claim to expertise or rightness.

First, let me say that for me, talking about Gallipoli means talking about two groups of people:

•       The men who fought and died there on the beaches; and
•     The men who put them there.

I have enormous respect for the people in Group 1 for their unbelievable bravery and courage, their unmatched dedication to their mates and their willingness to ‘go over’ despite the utter futility and stupidity of the strategy and the certain knowledge that they would die. I cannot imagine how this must have felt. Eight thousand men died there in such circumstances in eight months. On average, that’s 1000 a month or 250 a week or almost 36 men every day for eight months. I shake my head in incredulity and anger at these figures.

I have little respect for the old men in Group 2 for their willingness to put young men into such a desperate situation and to go on sacrificing them when it was obvious that the strategy was a disastrous failure.

But first, the big picture. Gallipoli was only small fry compared to the main campaigns of the Western Front in WWI. So we have to contextualise the whole thing. Australians lost 46,000 young men on the Western Front, first, tortured by living in mud, and then death, along with 132,000 wounded. It was an unspeakable horror. A war of attrition on both sides. An abomination.

World War 1 was a waste. It was a waste of human life and it achieved little. It did not change the world to the same extent as did WWII, but merely hastened the demise of the old world empires, Ottoman, Habsburg, and Hohenzollern. It was not fought against a clear human evil such as Nazism in the WWII. It was a cross between an intentional war and an accidental war.

Australian historian Christopher Clark’s 2013 book, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, examines the way the alliances set up between the various powers saw the whole thing just run out of control. Serbia was upset with Austria because she thought Austria wanted to curb her independence. Austria was upset with Serbia for wanting greater influence. Germany thought Austria was the right horse to back as Germany was already a power in Europe but wanted to be a great power and her own sphere of influence to be increased and not contained, especially by France and Russia, who supported Serbia. France certainly didn’t want a powerful expansionist Germany on her doorstep, and Russia fully agreed with that sentiment, as Russia and France had been allies. Russia also didn’t want Austria to gain influence over Serbia. Britain didn’t want Germany to become the dominant nation in Europe especially since Kaiser Wilhelm II was becoming increasingly bellicose. What’s more, Britain had promised to protect Belgium, so when Germany attacked France and Belgium, Britain too, and her dominions, went to war on principle. None of these powers thought it would be a big war. None of them thought it would be a long war. None of them remotely contemplated that it would disintegrate into chaos and become a world war. The leaders of these nations were all wrong. That is exactly what it did. But it is more complex than even this and historians of the period to this day still debate the causes of the Great War.

World War I caused the deaths of over 16 million people with 20 million people wounded. Australia was a nation of five million people and we lost 62,081 lives, about 1.24% of our whole population. In today’s figures, 1.24% of our population of 23,800,000 people in 2015 would be 295,120 deaths. 1.24% is an enormous statistic for fatalities. Such a vast number changes a nation. And it did Australia. After WWI, Australia was in mourning. There is scarcely a town, city or hamlet anywhere in the country that does not have a WWI memorial that lists the names of the region’s fallen. No-where was left unaffected. The whole of Australia was in grief. So many lives lost. So much youth and beauty and promise wasted. Like Britain and her other dominions, not a drop of blood was spilled here in Australia. This war did not happen here. Our young men died in foreign fields and never came home.

The English poet Rupert Brooke, who himself died in 1915, rather romanticised this sentiment in his poem The Soldier.

“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England”.

But shot into pieces lying dead in a field on the other side of the world is not romantic. It is quintessentially tragic. This is the heaviness at the heart of visiting these battle fields; we identify ourselves and our loved ones with the young men who never came home and it cannot but bring tears. I felt it myself in the United Nations cemetery in Pusan in South Korea where I read the ages of twenty and twenty one year old Australians who never came home from the Korean War. Tears came. Awful. Heavy.

World War I was a waste. Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Dulce et decorum est’ more rightly captures the waste. Translated loosely, ‘it is a sweet and right or glorious thing to die for your country’. The final stinging lines:

“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest 

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori”.

Owen understood the lie about war. He understood the filth of the ‘war is glorious’ sentiment. His poem Futility speaks not only of the futility of this particular soldier lying in a field hospital, but also of the vast numbers of the dead, the hollow shells of men who survived and returned home and the futility of the whole war itself. It still affects me every time I read it. The wounded half dead soldier gets pushed out into the sun with the nurse saying:

“Move him into the sun—

Gently its touch awoke him once”.

Not any more.

The futility of the Great War is something that is inescapable. And it is in this chaos of mass homicide that Gallipoli occurs. It was Winston Churchill’s great plan to take the Dardanelles from Germany’s ally Turkey and force their way to Constantinople where it was believed the Turks would then surrender. The German commander’s uncle, Moltke the Elder, is quoted way back in the Prussian Wars as saying, “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy”. That aphorism could have been written about Gallipoli. It was an unmitigated calamitous disaster. You will recall that I divided the men into two groups. For Group 1 above, I have the utmost respect: for the men, the Anzacs and British and others, who were ordered into the middle of the hellfire that became Gallipoli. I lament their unspeakable tragedy. But I do not respect what was asked of them by their superiors; political and military alike.

Since then, we have been told by conservative politicians mostly and the military that Australia was born on the beaches of Gallipoli, or that Australia came of age on the beaches of Gallipoli. Neither of these propositions do I support. In 1914, Australia was a teen-ager and still part of an Empire. We still thought of England as home. We were still very much a British outpost. We were only at war because Britain was at war; no other reason. We were not being attacked. Britain wasn’t even being attacked. Britain had signed a European treaty ensuring Belgium’s neutrality and even German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, not expecting Britain to join the fight after Germany violated the neutrality, exclaimed mockingly that he couldn’t believe Britain would go to war “over a scrap of paper”.

Our young men were just young guys. They were 1914’s equivalent of young hipsters now. They were working, partying, getting into relationships, drinking, hanging out with their friends; no different to what young twenties do now. They ‘joined up’ with the AIF with fun, travel and maybe a bit of glory in their minds. They were products of their time. The rallying cry was “For God, King and Empire”. It wasn’t “For Australia”.

Young men to this day join the Armed Forces for fun and travel and comradeship and outdoorsy stuff where you get to play with little guns and big guns. It plays right into the model of masculinity that says boys are tough and love guns and fighting. They are easy picking for a willing military. We still see ads on tv for the Navy with great warships pounding through waves and young men and women doing their thing to ‘further their career’, firing off torpedoes and plotting courses on high tech maps. Very exciting stuff. Even I think so. The belief in personal invincibility that occasions youth is still strongly operative, but like the diggers in 1918 who were lucky enough to survive and come home, many young defence persons return from active duty deeply traumatised; all notions of fun and travel long dissolved.

Chris’ great grandfather survived and returned from WWI and never spoke of his experiences in the war to anyone nor would he go to Anzac Day marches. He was not alone. Not only was Australia awash in grief after this war, it was also awash in mental illness. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder can be one of the most debilitating of all mental illnesses, potentially robbing people of their ability to live and function back in society. Many diggers self-medicated with booze to try to anaesthetise the suffering, as the Army didn’t have a clue how to look after them.

I do not see that Australia was born at Gallipoli any more than I see her born on the Western Front. Such a model is a military model, a military way of looking at life; something I actively eschew. Such a model only makes sense in a military junta, not in a pluralistic democracy founded on responsible government. There is some notion that a nation is not a nation until it has been blooded; like a young greyhound getting the opportunity to chase a live rabbit and kill it so that it will be truly tested and its mettle seen to stand. Then and only then is it real. I find this notion obscene. It is not in ANY military operation that Australia imputes to itself nationhood or adulthood. We did that in peace. And we should be proud of that. It may not be as exciting to the young gung ho adversarialists, but it is in fact so much more adult in every way.

We have become a nation in increments. After an inglorious and bloody start with Australia’s indigenous people, a history we still have not owned fully, there came a peaceful growth of nationhood in a series of growth spurts that continues today. We federated the separate colonies, our states, into one commonwealth in 1901 only thirteen years before the Great War and we did it without a revolution, without blood being spilled; one of the few countries in the world to do so. We rejected conscription to the armed forces twice, in 1916 and 1917 in two referenda, after Britain started pressuring us to send 5,500 men per month in 1916 and 7000 men per month in 1917. Both referenda were defeated and put another nail in the coffin of Australian subservience to the British Empire and thus repudiating the belief of Empire devotees here in Australia that it was right and proper for us to continue to stock Britain’s armies with our youth.

The Statute of Westminster was enacted in 1931 establishing legislative independence from Britain for all her colonies and dominions and we signed our Statute of Westminster Adoption Act in 1942 making it law here and forever excluding the Parliament of Great Britain from having a say in our affairs. In 1986 we passed the Australia Act forever denying UK governments from having a say on any matter in Australian governance as well as denying Australians the right to appeal Australian court judgments in the UK. So no more appeals to the Privy Council in London. Our own High Court of Australia is our highest court, above which there is no other. We continue to untie the nursery strings from the mother with foreign policy as well, charting our own way, and no doubt making our own mistakes too. These days, we are so far from the old sentiments of Empire and England, that we favour our region for trade over the UK and eventually I think, we will become a republic throwing off an anachronistic monarchy and more than likely changing our ambiguous flag. The separation from parent continues even in 2015 as we witness the public reaction to Tony Abbott bringing back knights and dames and then awarding one of them on Australia Day to the Duke of Edinburgh; an act that most Australians found offensive to some degree.

Anzac Day is undoubtedly a special day. This is what I think it should be about. It reminds us all of the terrible price we paid for Europe’s great powers to have their squabble and then have it deteriorate into a world conflagration. We remember the unbelievable courage of the diggers and we mourn the loss of young life and the futures that they never got to live. We mourn too for the loved ones back here in Australia. Barely a family left untouched. My own grandfather was a Light Horseman, although he never saw active service, and one of my grandmother’s brothers, Will, went to the Western Front. We remember the lives destroyed left hollow as empty shells of those who survived and came home. We should remember to not be quick to get into violence. Let us not glory in the marches and the pomp and military pageantry and the stories of bravery, for this bravery need never have been forced upon these men. Anzac Day should also be about the lesson that comes out of fighting someone else’s wars. Australia should never again just sign up willy nilly to other people’s wars. It is a lesson we still have not learned, for we allowed John Howard to sign us up for America’s hasty invasion of Iraq, where other former British dominions, Canada and New Zealand, did not.

Some obscene blood sacrifice was not the birth of our nation. But I do acknowledge that such tragedy forges a bond and a solidarity among us without doubt. It is the bond of the ‘grief of death’, not the bond of ‘the joy of birth’. The plea of Australia's last Anzac, Alec Campbell, not long before his death in 2002 was: "For God's sake, don't glorify Gallipoli – it was a terrible fiasco, a total failure and best forgotten."

To finish this short essay, I want to post a wonderful piece by Professor Bruce Scates, who holds the Chair of History and Australian Studies at Monash University and is the director of the National Centre for Australian Studies. He is also the author of several books on Gallipoli. I think this is the most worthwhile newspaper article I have read on Gallipoli and the Great War. It is well worth your time. And if you bothered with my piece above, many thanks indeed. Best wishes on this important Anzac Day - Stuart

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/political-rhetoric-makes-a-parody-of-remembrance-20150422-1mqdc2.html