Challenging religious bigotry
On March 7, 2012, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delivered a historic speech asking countries around the world to decriminalize same sex relationships, and end discrimination of LGBT people.
The Easter Bunny died for your sins.
The first part of our experience! A photo shoot and an interview, here’s what went to air on the ABC 14 March 2012
[youtube:http://youtu.be/6VFtfQ3WFe8]
Apparently I’m getting married on TV and at tax-payer expense. 😉
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Photographer, blogger, popular Melbourne gay identity and significant Qmelb contributor, Michael Barnett, is to be featured in a mass gay wedding with his handsome partner. The wedding (and what has been advertised as a stag night / hens night) will be hosted on Australia’s national television network’s by comedian Adam Hills over the next two Wednesday evenings. This will clash with Melbourne’s Queer Film Festival. The wedding will be paid for by Australian taxpayers, a service the ABC has never offered to straight couples. At this stage it is not known whether the ABC or Barnett will be releasing a video of the post wedding celebrations.
Michael Glover
East Melbourne
(The Gordon St Mass Same-Sex TV Wedding Extravaganza is just around the corner! This inaugural event will happen on March 26 and airs Wednesday March 28 at 8:30pm.)
Peter Madden and Warwick Marsh would make excellent homosexual lovers, but which one would go top?
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I reckon Peter Madden and Warwick Marsh would make great homosexual lovers. Two wonderful role models of Australian masculinity. But which one would be the man and which one would be the woman in that relationship? Coz we all know that every relationship has male and female roles.
I also wonder which one would go top and which one bottom. Perhaps they’d take turns, one going for it first, then flipping and going the other way. I bet they’d both get down and dirty, squealing like stuck pigs, and there might even be some santorum being shared, coz I’m sure they’d be lapping up the post-coital love juices.
Well, that’s just my fantasy, a bit like their fantasy, that all homosexual relationships are disgusting and dangerous and that it’s ok to vilify homosexuals.
Oh, and if they don’t like that gays want to marry a same-sex partner, I’m of the opinion that their choice of life partner is pretty sucky too and that they could have done a lot better.
Yesterday I said AJN Watch had the bloggers equivalent of erectile dysfunction. In a post just up today they’ve confirmed it:
The simple reason that we have stayed away from this semi-annual “gay moan and gripe” festivities is because it has become boring. Boring for us and boring to our readers. Zehu! Nothing else.
I don’t for one minute believe this codswallop. Their masthead states quite clearly:
We spotlight errors, expose misrepresentations and vigorously advocate our community’s positions.
If they had an ounce of credibility they’d be vigorously advocating their community’s positions, but nope, they’re can’t be bothered.
Soft shmocks.
(P.S. AJN Watch accuses gays of being “half-naked, sexually-disturbed weirdos” and “pink-frilly underpants-wearers”. Their religious community is the one rife with the hideous child sex-abuse scandals, police investigations and cover-ups at Yeshivah College. Not to mention the men walking around the streets in hats made of possums, wearing funny white stockings and curly side-locks, and their women covered up, not unlike the burqa-clad Muslim women, simply because their lecherous men can’t control their sexual urges. They’re not in a position to be calling gays weirdos, especially with this sort of shmutz and weirdness in their community.)
AJN Watch has gone soft given their lack of response to the Australian Jewish News’ coverage of the homophobic bullying and the ECAJ’s spanking of Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen.
I’m really intrigued. AJN Watch has gone soft. Once they’d take on the Australian Jewish News with great gusto, and most especially when it was on the issue of homosexuality. But of late AJN Watch has remained silent on the major coverage that the AJN gave to the two most pressing issues of late, namely the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s spanking of the out-of-line Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen and the AJN‘s extensive coverage of the taboo topic of homosexuality (in the context of bullying in schools).
Has someone had a word in the ear of the editorial team at AJN Watch and told them it’s not ok to publish gay-hate any more? I suspect they’d be foaming at the mouth with these recent events, and barely able to contain their collective rage. I mean, the best they’ve been able to get outraged about lately is kosher cheese and Jon Faine (and of course a reminder about how to bypass the need to subscribe to the AJN).
I can’t say I’m at all disappointed that their vile hate has been silenced, but I’m curious as to what’s transpired behind the scenes. The silence is deafening.
Oh the irony.
Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen writes to Jarryd B:
Dear Jarryd,
I appreciate your consideration of questions of decency of behaviour. The internet seems to invite, unfortunately, a level of incivility, which would not be there were people talking to each other face to face.
…
Jarryd B writes of Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen in a comment on this blog:
LOL.
Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen’s contract as an Associate with the ACJC at Monash Uni ended in 2011. Monash Uni has no comment on his views.
https://twitter.com/#!/MonashUni/status/170308384107667456
The Jewish community is a funny animal. Two weeks ago, on February 10, I brought to the attention of senior community leadership news of a story that was going to break that would put a spotlight on the Jewish community. After some resistance, a statement was issued by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry distancing the Jewish community from the distasteful views of a certain ‘respected’ rabbi.
The following week saw the story get the front-cover on both the Melbourne commuter newspaper mX and gay community newspaper Star Observer. Sydney’s Gay News Network also comprehensively covered the story as it unfolded. GLBT community radio JOY 94.9FM and veteran journalist and broadcaster Doug Pollard was also swift on covering and helping to break the story both on air and online. Even bloggers Mike Stuchbery and Torrents of Scorn took a stance on the issue. The take-up and interest by these outlets was impressive.
This week’s edition of the Australian Jewish News sees a highly reactive cover-story response to the news that I brought to the attention of the Jewish community two weeks ago. I am of the firm belief that if I had not responded to a tip-off from Doug Pollard on this story and set into place a chain of events, including bringing the developing stories to the attention of the Jewish News, that the paper would not have given this story the high-profile status that it has received this week. Kudos to the AJN for the coverage of an important issue nevertheless.
The actual issue at play here is a deeply odious statement by Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen that challenges the ethics of an anti-bullying program that affirms homosexuality. So offensive is the stance of this academic that both the ECAJ, the Monash University Faculty of Education staff and the Monash University media office have distanced themselves from his views.
Adding an extra dimension to this story, Monash University has been found to have an adjunct/honorary association with Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen, ongoing to 2015. Monash University have advised that the academic is not an employee of the university and that they believe the association with him is meritorious.
I have petitioned the university to hold Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen to account for his homophobic views, such that he compares homosexuality to incest and bestiality, and put it to the university that they would not be so welcoming of an academic who’s speciality was Holocaust denial.
The issue of homophobia and bullying is firmly on the radar of the Australian Jewish community now. It will be interesting to see the response from the community to an issue that makes so much of it deeply uncomfortable. It will also be interesting to see how Monash University handles the uncomfortable situation they find themselves in.
