ABC: Stop misrepresenting Martine Delaney’s complaint about the Tasmanian Catholic Church and Archbishop Julian Porteous

Between August 29 and September 4 2019 the ABC broadcast one misrepresentation and two unchallenged assertions about the complaint Martine Delaney’ lodged (and subsequently withdrew) about the Tasmanian Catholic Church and Archbishop Julian Porteous.

Martine Delaney’s complaint had nothing to do with preaching “church doctrine” and everything to do with the church claiming same-sex couples couldn’t be whole, healthy, raise healthy children, and were “messing with kids”.

The complaint is described here:

The Church argued that since every child had a biological mother and father, messing with marriage was “messing with kids”.

In Tasmania, it went out to churches and was sent home in sealed envelopes with children at Catholic schools.

Ms Delaney said the language used in the booklet that “messing with marriage is messing with kids”, implied criminal activity.

“In Australian society ‘messing with kids’ is generally used right across the country as virtually code for sexual abuse or paedophilia,” she said.

Anti-discrimination complaint ‘an attempt to silence’ the Church over same-sex marriage, Hobart Archbishop says (ABC News; Sep 28 2015)

and also here:

“A complaint was brought to the commissioner by Ms Delaney, who objected to the Tasmanian Catholic Church which had printed a pamphlet stating that same-sex parents ‘mess with kids’ and that same-sex partners were not ‘whole people’. ‘Messing with kids’ has a connotation that is extremely disturbing and alludes to practices which are a subject of the royal commission into institutionalised child abuse, a practice which up until very recently had been hidden deeply within some church-run facilities, widely throughout Australia”

Andrea DAWKINS (MP for Bass)
22 September 2016 at 4:48pm
Tasmanian House of Assembly Hansard [PDF]

Amongst everything else, it’s particularly disappointing the nation’s highest lawyer, the Attorney-General for Australia, can’t even get the facts right.

My transcripts of the relevant sections from the media are below.


Christian Porter

“Well, um, the archbishop, the Catholic archbishop of Tasmania Mr Porteous went through something you know quite awful I think, he distributed a pamphlet, which was distributed widely across Australia, um, devised and drafted by the Catholic Church which did little more than put the Catholic Church’s view about the virtues of the traditional definition of marriage, and he was the subject of a complaint under a very very broad section of the Tasmanian Discrimination Act.”

ABC RN Drive – Thursday 29 August 2019 – 6:06pm
Federal Government unveils religious discrimination legislation
Section: 6:08 – 6:39

Gerard Henderson

“I’ve looked at the Bill and I’ve looked at the minister’s, the Attorney-General’s speech. And it is a draft bill. So I think it’s, it’s in a pretty good position at the moment. There will be opposition from both sides. But I think it does cover two issues.  The Israel Folau issue and the Archbishop Porteous issue in Hobart. Now the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart put out a statement just stating Catholic position on marriage. [indistinct] actimist took him to a discrimination thing that caused… a discrimination commission in Tasmania that caused a huge issue…”

ABC Insiders – Sunday September 1 2019
Section: 44:57 – 45:08

Andrew West

“So those incidents that you’re talking about Renae, the most prominent of those included a Catholic bishop in Tasmania who was brought before an anti-discrimination commission because he published a church doctrine on family and marriage that some objected to…”

ABC Religion & Ethics Report
“Religious freedom for religious minorities”
Wednesday September 4 2019
Section: 2:20 – 2:35

Marriage Equality vs Catholic Bishop Christopher Prowse

Dear Catholic Bishop Christopher Prowse,

Your lies and untruths do you and your boy-raping paedophile-protecting Catholic Church no justice.

You have no credibility and you make no sense.

You perpetuate vile attitudes.

I dislike you because you are full of hate and intolerance.

Michael Barnett.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52h08RNB6_M]

Jewish Community Council of Victoria proud friends of evil Catholic Church

Richard Dawkins spoke out on the visit of the Pope to the UK.

The Pope personifies evil.

The Catholic Church he represents is the ultimate organisation of evil in existence.

And the Jewish Community Council of Victoria prides itself on its association with the Catholic Church [JCCV media release].

The people of the Jewish community deserve better.

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.