Secular Gregory

Gregory Storer is running as a candidate for the Secular Party of Australia in the Division of Melbourne Ports in the 2010 Federal Election.

Read Gregory’s blog and find out how you can support him.  He’ll be glad to hear from you.

I’m really proud of Gregory.  He’s prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

Michael.

What sort of people don’t take youth suicide seriously?

I asked the question on my Facebook profile:

What sort of people don’t take youth suicide seriously?

The responses so far:

  • Luke: people who put their own self interests ahead of the safety and well-being of vulnerable, young Australians…evil, hateful people…
  • Leigh: The Victorian labor party! We campaigned for YEARS and they were not interested! 13 young people in our tiny area (6 country towns) died in one year and they didn’t think it was a problem.
  • Jason: The church
  • Elvira: People who don’t see youth suicide as having any correlation with glbti community. People stuck in the middle ages.
  • Tony: People who don’t take GLBT youth suicide, or any youth suicide seriously have their head in the sand, and it is just an ignorant, disgusting and narrow-minded stance to take.
  • Gregory: Amazing comments Michael – good to see some people have an idea about what’s going on!

I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine where the real problem is.

Islam is a fraud (but please, send chocolates, not a fatwah)

Apparently Allah can still hear your prayers, even when you have been facing the wrong direction.  Reuters reported it here.

Ridwan said Muslims need not fear that their prayers have been wasted because they were facing the wrong way.

“Their prayers will still be heard by Allah,” he said.

Nonsense.  Allah cannot be getting the clearest message if you’re not facing him when you are talking, otherwise what would be the point in having to face him.  He needs to hear it directly, with you facing the right direction, all the time, every time.  Otherwise he’ll be getting a garbled version of the prayers, muffled by the walls of the mosquitos (those little Spanish mosques), and everything else in his way.

This would precisely explain why when Muslims pray for world peace and harmony, love of all fellow humans, especially love of homosexuals (particularly those who engage in anal intercourse – but not love of heterosexuals who engage in anal intercourse because we know heterosexuals don’t engage in anal intercourse, don’t we?), and also the love of Jews, he hears it incorrectly and gets messages like “send planes into the World Trade Center towers”, “send suicide bombers to blow up bars in Bali”, “send suicide bombers into Israeli cities”, “send suicide bombers into hotels in India” and so on.  He really must be getting such mixed messages to be confusing love and acceptance with death and destruction.

You know what?  Islam is just as evil as the Catholic Church.  There is no validation for it’s existence.  No amount of praying in any direction will ever get a message out to a god or profit that doesn’t exist.

If I get a fatwah from this blog I’ll put it down to Allah having misheard a message of “Send Michael chocolates and love” because some deluded Muslim was facing the wrong direction when he was praying.

Insalata.

Michael.

Chris Meney – speaking through the anus of the Catholic Church

Chris Meney quotes in an opinion piece published in The Age from a United States Government report (see email below), that makes the claim:

Compared to children living with married biological parents, those whose single parent had a live-in partner had more than eight times the rate of maltreatment overall, over 10 times the rate of abuse, and nearly eight times the rate of neglect.

I live with my partner and his two teenage children.  They are not being abused, maltreated or neglected.  I see them receiving a whole lot of love, care, respect and a fairly decent deal overall.  I would say they are two fairly well-adjusted teenage children who have a father in a stable and happy relationship.

They also spend quality time with their mother, as time and circumstances permit.  They have unlimited access to both parents and get what they need from both of them as much as possible.

My partner and I met in November 2008.  Meeting Gregory changed my life in the most wonderful way.  I had been in a very lonely and dark place for some months and his presence uplifted me and brought me back to a stable and happy place.  I may even have succumbed to my suicidal thoughts if I had remained single for much longer back then.  Having each other in our lives makes us truly happy and it wasn’t too much longer after starting a relationship that we made it known to our friends and families.  We even registered our relationship with the Victorian Government on April 21 this year.  We did this for legal reasons as by default our relationship would only be recognised under law after two years.

Gregory’s children have grown up with their father having a male partner since they were very young and for them this was normal.  When I came into Gregory’s life I also came into their lives.  I had never been in a relationship with a parent before.  It was uncharted territory for me.  Yet it seemed very straightforward.  I have adapted to having a partner who has had to juggle his time between me and his children, and it works well.

Gregory has been his children’s primary care-giver for a number of years prior to his marriage breaking up, some 13 years ago.  Complicating the picture is that his ex-wife is not well and is no longer able to work.  He supports his children and the support sometimes has to stretch to supporting his ex-wife as well, so she can look after their children when they are with her.  This puts strains on the finances.  Despite that Gregory somehow makes ends meet, and makes sure his children are looked after.  He goes to pains to make sure they are not neglected.

Chris Meney has extrapolated American research to an Australian situation.  The two societies are not the same.  His assertions about Australian society are unfounded as the research he (ab)uses is not relevant here.  There may be parents in Australia who neglect or abuse their children, but it is not because they are unmarried or living in the types of relationships that he does not approve of.  I know of children who have been abused by one or both of their married parents while living in the family home and have sustained long-term psychological damage from it.

Heterosexual married parents may offer a stable environment for children but so do homosexual parents and single parents.  I can guarantee no child born into a same-sex relationship ever happened by accident.  The same cannot be said of all too many children of heterosexual couples, married or otherwise.  Further, I am yet to hear of a pregnant woman in a same-sex relationship who has had an abortion, despite the increasing numbers of women in same-sex relationships giving birth.

The Catholic Church, together with its ideology, is pure evil.  Chris Meney is no better for being its mouthpiece.  Actually it’s more of an anus than a mouthpiece.

Michael.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: jimwoulfe
Date: 16 July 2010 18:22
Subject: Meney article and the Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse
To: ausqueer@yahoogroups.com

The study referred to in the Meney article is here:

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/abuse_neglect/natl_incid/nis4_report_congress_full_pdf_jan2010.pdf

While the proportion of children raised outside marriage is going up, the study reports a 26% decrease in reported child abuse or neglect in the period 1994 – 2005/6, including a 38% decrease in sexual abuse cases (pages 6-7).

In the overwhelming majority of cases (81%) the perpetrator (both of abuse and neglect) was the child’s biological parent (page 14) and “68% of the maltreated children were maltreated by a female, whereas 48% were maltreated by a male”, though males were more highly represented in cases of abuse carried out by non-biological parents.

Children living with the non-biological partner of a parent were 8 times more likely to be maltreated than children living with two married biological parents (page 12). This statistic is the platform on which Meney builds his argument. Given the lower rates of co-habitation in the US, generalising this statistic to countries with high rates of cohabitation (like Australia) is highly questionable.

The overwhelming evidence from this study is that children in marginalised families are more likely to be abused or neglected. In the United States, to be born black, poor, or to a single parent is to be born more vulnerable to abuse.

With respect to families headed by same-sex couples, the only message you could infer this study is that they should be allowed (indeed encouraged) to marry. Instead Meney has dogwhistled rainbow families with “Vocal minority groups often assert a right to have children delivered to them on demand”.

It’s interesting that he departs from the usual arguments when he says, “At some point, however, the debate needs to move beyond paying mere lip-service to “the best interests of the child”.” Well, yes. Valued, well-respected parents have valued well-respected kids.

If only Meney could follow his own logic.

Shoshana Silcove: “I am against gay marriage”

Shoshana Silcove posted a comment on Mark Baker’s blog on Galus Australis telling the world she is against gay marriage.  That would make her a party pooper and a homophobic bigot, for starters.

Shoshana writes (her spelling errors are included):

I am against gay marriage but, that does not mean I would in any way supoort slaughtering people for being gay. One can see homsexuality as immoral yet, not be in any manner or form a proponent of persecution or genocide of gays. Persecuting or genociding any one group for any reason is horrifc and immoral too. I take umbrage with Mr. Baker’s implication (read between the lines) that those who do not want to see gay marriage legalised are inclined to be immoral persecutors or murderous beasts.

Let’s play a game here.  I think I’ll call it ‘swapsies’.  It goes like this.  Take a word out of a sentence and swap it with one or more other words.  It’s very simple.  We’ll play the game using Shoshana’s statement:

I am against gay inter-racial marriage
I am against gay Jewish marriage
I am against gay Progressive-Jewish-is-not-really-Jewish marriage
I am against gay Muslim marriage
I am against gay Christian marriage
I am against gay indigenous marriage
I am against gay secular marriage
I am against gay religious marriage
I am against gay fat-person marriage
I am against gay really-ugly-person marriage
I am against gay disabled-person marriage
I am against gay marriage-of-convenience marriage
I am against gay marriage

That was fun.  I’m sure I could play the game for hours on end.  Will they bring it our for Xbox or as an Android/iPhone App?  But what would Shoshana Silcove have to say about these?  Would she approve or disapprove of any of them?  Shoshana?   Do any of them appeal to you?  Send me your preferences.  I’d like to hear them.

Dear Shoshana, who gives you the authority to determine which two consenting adults can or can’t get married?  If same-sex marriage doesn’t please you, kindly refrain from commenting.  I don’t care who you marry.  It’s none of your business to make judgement calls about who I can marry.  I may disapprove of your choice in marital partner, if anyone would want to marry you, but to be honest, I don’t give a rats arse.

Michael.

Mark Baker: a Jewish perspective on gay equality

Mark Baker has written a particularly poignant piece for Galus Australis challenging discrimination against same-sex attracted people, from his Jewish perspective:

When a Kiss Means Death

We need more intelligent, compassionate and articulate people like Mark fighting for the dignity and equality of same-sex attracted people in the Jewish and wider community; people who are not scared of religious bigots.

On the contrary, John Searle, JCCV President, could learn a lesson from Mark Baker.  Searle should be ashamed of himself.  He claims to be looking after the best interests of the members of the Jewish community yet he is too spineless to speak out on this critical issue, preferring to pander to the traditonal intolerant and antiquated orthodox bloc.  Just what sort of a leader and man is he?

Thank you very much Mark.

Michael.