On same-sex civil unions

A few weeks back, Brokenleg posted about an independent parliamentarianism's attempt to introduce a bill recognising same-sex civil unions in Victoria, which was promptly knocked on the head by the Bracks government. Now it emerges that the ACT government is proposing to introduce legislation recognising same-sex civil unions there.

On principle, and as a supporter of same-sex marriage, I don't agree with civil unions. If they won't grant couples the same rights and privileges that marriage couples enjoy, then how is this any less discriminatory than the current situation. If they will grant couples the same rights and privileges that are granted to married couples, then you would simply end up with unnecessary duplication. There would really, in the latter case, be no qualitative difference between (state-sanctioned) marriage and (state-sanctioned) civil unions, except for the trifling matter that the one would be limited to heterosexual unions and the other would not--a situation as plainly ridiculous as having heterosexuals and homosexuals fill out different income tax forms each year.

But that's on principle. In practice, as a supporter of same-sex marriage*, I can't shake the feeling that the ACT moves are a good start.

UPDATE: It looks as if the Federal Government, staunch defender of individual sovereignty and choice that it is, is going to override the Bill--or at least force the ACT Government into watering down the proposed civil union legislation.

* By "marriage," I'm referring strictly to the legal apparatus--the marriage that the state recognises and that involves as a marker of this recognition the signing of a legal document known as a marriage certificate. I believe that denying this particular legal document to same-sex couples is just as discriminatory as it would be to deny them any other legal document. Basically, this is an issue of equality before the law: and the current situation is, therefore, unjust.

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They Say It's Your Blogday

Well, my Blogday has arrived at last. I would like to thank my small but prestigious circle of visitors for their input. Couldn't have done it without you. There's cake in the staff room. ;)

P.S. a belated Happy Blogday must go out to Sammy Jankis, who first aroused my interest in blogging.

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Dispatches From the War on Jezebels and Unwomen

While fundies across America are marching towards the state of South Carolina in order to plunge it into the Dark Ages, over in South Dakota a Sioux leader is planning to transform her reservation into an oasis of modernity:

Oglala Sioux Tribe President Cecelia Fire Thunder says a clinic on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation could provide abortions if South Dakota’s new abortion ban goes into effect.

And get this:

The new South Dakota law bans all abortions except to save the life of the mother — with no exceptions for rape or incest.

(Emphasis added, obviously.)

The irony is delicious. According to the self-legitimating narratives of colonialism, the European settlers brought "civilisation" to Native Americans; today, in South Dakota at least, the Native Americans themselves are the defenders of "civilisation," while the rest of the country lurches towards Gilead.

UPDATE: (With a nod to David Heidelberg) Bill Napoli, the Republican State Senator pushing this issue, and who thinks most abortions are carried out for "convenience", is charitable enough to allow one exception:

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

So there you go. You can't just be any old rape victim: you have to be religious, a virgin who plans to remain a virgin until marriage, and the rape has to be especially brutal, and it has to involve sodomy. For the rest of you: tough. You baby-killing sluts.

As you might imagine, this isn't really about humanitarianism at all. It's about the culture wars. Sen. Napoli believes that outlawing abortion will return South Dakotans to a Golden Age of shotgun weddings and backyard abortions:

When I was growing up here in the wild west, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married, and the whole darned neighborhood was involved in that wedding. I mean, you just didn't allow that sort of thing to happen, you know? I mean, they wanted that child to be brought up in a home with two parents, you know, that whole story. And so I happen to believe that can happen again.

Hick.

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Atheists in America: the new pariahs

The US blog Secular Left refers to a recent poll indicating that

"Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in 'sharing their vision of American society.' Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry."

Significantly:

Atheists are viewed as outsiders, "others," who do not share a common community vision. "What matters for public acceptance of atheists -- and figures strongly into private acceptance as well -- are beliefs about the appropriate relationship between church and state and about religion's role in underpinning society's moral order, as measured by our item on whether society's standards of right and wrong should be based on God's laws." The study found that conservative Protestants especially rejected the "possibility of a secular basis for a good society." This, more than anything else, may be the driving factor placing Atheists outside the cultural mainstream in the minds of nearly a majority of Americans.

Some dislike atheists because they associate atheism with illegality and immorality--according to the fallacy that people will see no reason to behave ethically if they don't believe in God. Others view atheists as "cultural elites who think they know better than everyone else."This, I gather, stems from the popular association of atheism with the natural sciences or with the possession of a certain level of education--not exactly an asset in these increasingly anti-intellectual times.

Leaving aside the mind-boggling proposition that most Americans are willing to dictate to their children who they can and cannot marry, I wonder--being an atheist myself--if the low esteem in which atheists are held in the US is replicated to the same degree in Australia. I also wonder if this antipathy towards atheism bespeaks something deeper than the reasons offered above. A lingering doubt, perhaps, about one's own religious convictions that the atheist is able to prick more easily than any other theist or believer--simply by virtue of the fact that the atheist's very existence negates one's belief in God in a way that a follower of a different theistic religion never could.

They hate us, in other words, because they take our atheism personally.

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The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Via Panda's Thumb and Larvatus Prodeo, Pastafarianism has entered the Gutenberg Age with today's launch of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as dictated to mild-mannered Arizona physics graduate Bobby Henderson.

The unbelieving world, alas, has not been kind or welcoming to Henderson who--like many a sage and visionary of ages past--has been made to suffer much calumny and persecution. "YOU NEED TO FIND JESUS YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER. IF I WERE YOU I WOULD TAKE MY ASS IN TO ON COMMING TRAFFIC AND LET EVERYBODY KILL YOUR ASS. AND YOU BETTER PRAY TO YOUR GOD THAT I DON'T FIND BECAUSE IF I DO I'M GOING TO JAM AN OAR UP YOUR ASS NEVER MIND I'M SURE YOUR HOMO BOYFRIEND DOES THAT ANYWAY YOU FUCKING DICK," suggests Charles McMurrey. "Just a concerned viewer. And Yes, I am very pissed off. If you don't like what I have said, just let me know where to find you. We
can work it out. I have a feeling I will feel much better afterward," offers George Esser of headhunting.net. "I would suggest growing up alittle and/or blowing your fucking face off with a shotgun," opines Andiar Rohnds.

But what is Pastafarianism all about? As the USA TODAY reports, here are a few of its central tenets:

• A "Flying Spaghetti Monster" created the universe, Earth and its creatures, making a few mistakes on the way after drinking heavily from heaven's beer volcano.

• The FSM hid dinosaur fossils underground to "dupe mankind" about Earth's true age and is the secret force behind gravity, pushing everything downward with its "noodly appendage."

• The FSM wants everyone to talk and dress like pirates. Global warming is considered a punishment for the relative scarcity of pirates these days.

• Every Friday is a sloth-filled holy day. Instead of "amen," devotees end missives with "R'amen," in honor of the college student's favorite noodle fare.

Even hard scientists--those who know the difference between science and religion--can't resist putting the boot into Bobby Henderson's faith. William of Occam-o-phile Rob Crowther, of America's (nay, the world's) most august scientific body the Discovery Institute, complains:"It's too bad that they'll get attention for this sort of drivel when we have a robust scientific research program that the media doesn't seem to want to write much about." Meanwhile, the devotees of the scientific method at Uncommon Descent point out that Henderson is "making a mockery of the religion of 8 of 10 Americans," and compare Pastafarianism with torching churches.

Oh well, you know what they say. "Some are born pasthumously."

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Workchoices (Or, I Sucked a Lot of Cock to Get Where I Am)

A sign of things to come in the Brave New Workplace? Auto parts firm Dana has been accused of bugging a union delegate's office:

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union says it discovered the listening device at automotive parts manufacturer Dana Australia, which was the target of a union campaign last month for threatening to cut workers' wages by 5 per cent, and new employees' wages by 20 per cent.

The bug, which fits into the palm of a hand, is believed to broadcast on an FM frequency and has a range of up to 60 metres.

It was found last Wednesday on the window sill of a shop steward's office, where union members met to consider a wage offer made by management.

Dana apparently has been an enthusiastic backer of the Workchoices legislation, and this kind of chicanery certainly foreshadows the Hobbesian industrial landscape--where even a "personality clash" is enough to get you fired (!!)--which the new laws will help create.

One thing is certain: every sacking and every reduction in wages and conditions that transpires henceforth is bad publicity for Workchoices (whether or not the connection is merited). The ACTU clearly knows this, which explains its current strategy of publicising every sacking and every reduction in wages and conditions. And I believe this opens up a golden opportunity for Labor (and the labour movement generally)--if only it could get its shit together enough to seize it. Because while the Government will accuse it of scaremongering--and not without some justification--the Government itself doesn't really have any answers beyond a meek "Trust us." Or, rather, "trust them"--"them" being the employers whose goodwill and capacity to behave ethically towards employees can no longer be vouchsafed to the same extent that it could under the old regime. We are entering an industrial world that is even more insecure--and that insecurity is precisely what makes Workchoices so unpopular.

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Religious tolerance in the new Afghanistan

Wingnuttery, of course, is by no means limited to the US or the Western world. In "post-Taliban" Afghanistan, 41-year old Abdul Rahman is facing execution for converting from Islam to Christianity. It appears that Rahman, who converted 15 years ago during his tenure as an aid worker in Pakistan, was reported to authorities by members of his estranged family, with whom he is involved in a custody dispute.

Rahman has apparently been charged under Article 130 of Afghanistan's post-Taliban constitution, approved by the Loya Jirga in 2004, and based on sharia law. According to Amnesty International:

Article 130 enables prosecutors to bring forward cases of alleged crimes about which there is no codified law “in accordance with the Hanafi jurisprudence”. The same article, however, calls on courts to rule “within the limits of the constitution” and “in a way to serve justice in the best possible manner”.

And Article 7 of the same constitution, as Amnesty points out, declares that "the state shall abide by the UN Charter, international treaties, international conventions that Afghanistan has signed, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Furthermore,

As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the government of Afghanistan is bound to uphold Article 18, which provides that “everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and that “this right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice”. In its General Comment on this Article, the Human Rights Committee, the panel of independent UN experts which examine states’ implementation to the ICCPR, has stated* that “the freedom to ‘have or to adopt’ a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views, as well as the right to retain one's religion or belief”. It further stated that “the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers to adhere to their religious beliefs […], to recant their religion or belief or to convert” is prohibited.

The case has given rise to an interesting discussion on Ed Brayton's blog regarding the tension between liberty and democracy, and the perils of imposing democracy on hitherto non-democratic states. Brayton forcefully argues that "liberty is infinitely more important than democracy"; some of his interlocutors maintain that you can't have liberty without democracy. This then translates into a debate over whether the occupying forces should have intervened in the shaping of the Afghan constitution to a greater degree in order to safeguard human rights, or whether they should step back and allow Afghanis to--as one commenter puts it--"learn how to be free" (with the occupiers' role being to "put pressure on them to steer them in the right direction"). Perhaps Rahman finds himself in such an unfortunate situation because the latter view has prevailed among US policymakers.

(It should be noted that the debate on Brayton's blog also canvassed Iraq: where, as Brayton indicates in his initial post, Shi-ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has declared that gays and lesbians "should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing." The constitution of Iraq, Brayton points out, declares that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.")

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