A sobering reality-check, one would think, for all those doe-eyed and naive students who were under the impression that their country still values a free press.The editorial in question was Chase’s first-person appeal for tolerance and equal protections for gays and lesbians. She said she was inspired by a friend who told her he was gay.
“Would it be so hard to just accept (gays and lesbians) as human beings who have feelings just like everyone else?” she wrote. “Being homosexual doesn’t make a person inhuman, it makes them just a little bit different than the rest of the world. And for living in a society that tells you to always be yourself, it’s a hard price to pay.”
Beyond a dramatic shift in laws and attitudes, Tasmania has witnessed a demographic transformation with hundreds of same-sex couples moving to the state's regional and rural areas from interstate and overseas. Many of these couples have started small tourism and food production businesses, established strong links to their adopted districts and profoundly impacted on local attitudes to same-sex relationships.Read his full post here.
Sometimes there is a backlash to this impact. But just as often gay immigrants are embraced. Indeed the intensity of both responses often match. Of this, there is no better example than Penguin.
In short then, Penguin lies on the fault line in Tasmanian identity. Whenever the tectonic plates we call the old and new Tasmania shift Penguin quakes.
Kangaroo: "Like all modern animals, modern kangaroos originated in the
Middle East and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern
kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great
Flood."Scopes Trial: "Hollywood has little regard for the truth. Its movie version Inherit the Wind changed everyone's name, thereby preventing libel suits, and changed the facts in order to ridicule religious belief. Thanks to Bryan's victory in the Scopes trial, Tennessee voters have been educated without oppressive evolution theory for 75 years. Free from the liberal indoctrination, Tennessee voted against native son Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election - probably the only time a candidate has lost the Presidency due to losing his home state. If Tennessee had a high level of belief in evolution comparable to that of East Germany, then you can bet Gore would have won his state and the Presidency."
Theory of Relativity: "Nothing useful has even been built based on the theory of relativity.…'All things are relative' became popular as atheists and others used relativity to attack Christian values. There remains enormous political support for the theory of relativity that has nothing to do with physics, and Congress continues to spend billions of dollars unsuccessfully searching for particles predicted by the theory of relativity."
It's no use having a flag outside of the mosque and down the road outside the synagogue there's no flag.UPDATE: BrokenLeftLeg makes an excellent point in the comments:
But of course Muslims flying the aussie flag takes away the symbol of those nasty cronulla folk.I hadn't thought of it like that when I posted, but he's right.
it says, "hey whitey, we are muslims, and we are australians too".
kind of like the wogs from "wogs out of work" hijacking a term of abuse.
I think they should fly it, solely to piss hanson off.
There are no real particles or matter in the universe. Although we can see substance, and observe certain aspects of their phenomenon, this does not allow us to understand Reality, and has lead to the untold deaths of millions, even at present, because we ‘create new substances’ based on presently accepted science, and it is actually the disruptor of, and dissonant to Reality. This dissonance is the cause of all proliferation of ‘disease’ and ‘death’ in the universe.So we've finally cleared that up.
"Morals exist, a moral Law Giver is necessary to explain this, this Moral Law Giver is God. Therefore, God exists.". . . one Matty the Red had this to offer:
ok fine, let me try that logicGold.
God is infinite forgiveness
In order to forgive he must first pity
Folly is universal we are all fools
Mr. T pities all fools
Therefore, Mr. T is god
Since I'm banned from commenting further on this post at Joe the Troll's (which I pretty much consider a permanent ban--I don't have a lot of time for censorious bloggers), I'll share my thoughts here on his post concerning a Snickers commercial that was pulled from its scheduled broadcast during the SuperBowl.Is not wanting to be gay when you’re not gay suddenly an act of prejudicial hatred? Is it “anti-gay” of me, as a straight man, to not want to kiss another man? And exactly how does this commercial foster violence against gays? The only “violence” in the commercial was self-inflicted.This passage highlights a couple of problems I have with Joe's position. First, leaving aside the question of how it is possible to "be gay when you're not gay," it isn't simply the fact that the men depicted in the ad might not want to kiss other men; rather it is the fact that they react so violently (whether towards themselves or towards each other), and that they see male intimacy as something so beyond the pale of "normal" masculinity that they must engage in cartoonishly hypermasculine behaviour in order to reassure each other of their "manliness," that GLAAD & co. object to. Second, in remarking that "the only violence in the commercial was self-inflicted," Joe demonstrates an unwillingness to read the ad on anything more than a superficial, literal level. (Not that I think the ad actually promotes violence, but that's beside the point here.) Either the ad wears it's anti-gay sentiments on its sleeve--flashing GOD HATES FAGS!! across the screen in neon--or no such anti-gay messages exist. That's a false dichotomy.
Picture this: you're watching the Superbowl and an ad comes on. Two redneck men are going through a buffet line. One of them loads up his plate with fried chicken. The other looks at him, then the plate, and they both jump back. The other exclaims, "quick, do something white!" and they don KKK outfits and set a cross on fire. Horrific and racist, right? Even if the guys were meant to be dumb?
Dear I-Reporter,
On behalf of CNN, please accept our sincere thanks for your I-Report submission during our memorial coverage of the tragic death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. Thanks to the many submissions from our viewers, our coverage carried the personal touch that came from his vast and personal outreach to his many fans. Our programming effort was a huge success, and you are part of the reason for that.
Again, we sincerely thank you and hope you will continue to send relevant submissions to us at http://www.cnn.com/exchange/ireports/topics/
Best wishes,
CNN Public Information
" Whadda I got to, whadda I got to do to wake ya up?"The movie ran through meVia Dispatches From the Culture Wars
The glamour subdue me
The tabloid untie me
I'm empty please fill me
Mister anchor assure me
That Baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing
I need you my witness
To dress this up so bloodless
To numb me and purge me now
Of thoughts of blaming you
Yes the car is our wheelchair
My witness your coughing
Oily silence mocks the legless
Now traveling in coffins
But on the corner
The jury's sleepless
We found your weakness
And it's right outside our door
Now testify
The story of Atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair, for 30 notorious years, successfully challenged God in America and then in the summer of 1995 suddenly disappeared. The film uncovers the outrageous life of “The Most Hated Woman in America” and looks at her mysterious disappearance and death.A biography of O'Hair is available here. Her son William is a born-again Christian leader.
This documentary examines the struggle of the American Atheists group to be heard at a time when their President declares he is directed by God, and begins each day by leading his cabinet in prayer. They claim there are 30 million non-believers in the USA and they are determined to fight against the rising tide of fundamentalism.
Despite the clamour of Christian conservatives, veteran to young atheists in this film, show they are determined to fight back against what they see as the current power of religious importance in every area of public life.
"What's wrong with the Tooth Fairy?" asks Brian. "There's nothing wrong with something that most likely doesn't exist."
Nightline: Do you worry about going to Hell?To be fair to the interviewer, given the religious demographics of the United States, he was probably obliged to play the "Fundies' Advocate" and couch the odd question in Believer-ese. But what happens when God's spokespersons themselves chime in? Firstly, you get the strawman:
Rational Response Squad: [Laughing at what has to be one of the most inane questions one could ever put to an atheist] No. No, not at all.
NL: Is that because you think Hell's gonna be fun if you do go there?
Rational Response Squad: [More laughter, perhaps partly out of surprise that, as dumb as the previous question was, this guy has managed to top it with the current question] No, because there's no reason to believe that Hell exists.
"I think how sad it is that someone would be rejecting hope essentially," says the Reverend Kathleen Liles, an Episcopalian ministerFollowed by ad baculum reasoning:
"I think if people are courting blasphemy, going out of their way to cross that line, that is just dangerous," says Paul de Vries, the president of the non-denominational New York Divinity School which provides ministry training. "They might get themselves in eternal trouble."(Nice bit of editing there by the Nightline crew, by the way: with religion, you get hope and the fear of eternal damnation.) Back to Rev. Liles for a spot of projection:
"I can't say I'm really surprised by it. We live in a very difficult time. I think people have a lot of anger, people have a lot of anxiety. If you want to challenge something: if you're young and you feel like kicking out windows, saying something like this about God is one way to exercise that."And finally, circular reasoning:
"Faith is a gift, it is a mystery, as so many other gifts from God are,'" she says. "And when we open our hearts to God, then God will give us the faith to believe."In order to believe in God, first you must believe in God. Got that?
It is very obvious that all Atheist are the low life part of of society. Atheist lack moral values, they lack academic education and they lack all forms of consciouness. I feel sorry and pitty all the pathetic Atheist who try to use their so called knowledge to over throw christians. Surely Atheist can not articulate any meaningful sentence structures to describe their trailer trash ways. It is true God gave all men free will to call him a savior or to call him a liar. To bad Atheist choose to be ignorant filthy mental midget creatures who believe they know it all. To bad the God of the bible knows more then them. To bad my dog knows more then them. To bad hell is real and all atheist are going to hell. Atheist have no hope even God calls them fools.I laugh at all Atheist and their small minded uneducated monkey ways. Atheist are afraid to to take my challenge because they are not real atheist they are toilet paper. (Big laugh.) (Big Smile)
