Posted: November 14, 2012 at 10:47 pm | Tags: equal marriage, exclusion, identity, Language, lgbtiq, media, minority rights
Whenever I read the term “gay marriage” I get annoyed. The word “gay” has a specific meaning, it is a sexual orientation in this context, so therefore “gay marriage” would be wedding between two gay people. Macquarie dictionary (the Australian dictionary of choice) states that gay is especially of male homosexuals, though also states that it relates to homosexuals in a broader sense, so that may include those who identify as lesbian. The groups that the term “gay” describes does not include bisexuals, trans* and intersex individuals.
So if you decide to use the term “gay marriage”, then you are excluding bisexuals, trans* and intersex individuals from your definition of marriage – which is why I prefer (and argue for) the terms “marriage equality”, “equal marriage” or “same-sex marriage”. If you’re happy excluding the bisexuals, trans* and intersex members of the LGBTIQ community, then I don’t want to be part of your group.
I know I’ve written about this before, but it keeps happening and so I keep pointing it out. It happens in places who should really know better, such as in the Fairfax media, or the Huffington Post, or even at my own workplace. Recently at work, when I called out the person on it, I told them that they should be using inclusive language, and not exclusive language. The guy I addressed my issue to started to argue with me, but then listened to what I was saying, apologised and agreed to correct the language in the presentation pack.
Fairfax and the Huffington Post completely ignore my requests to them to change their language use. Fairfax hasn’t been on my radar much recently, but the Huffington Post has been making me growl regularly. For starters, the section in HuffPo that covers LGBTIQ issues is called “Gay Voices” which really seems quite odd when they have bisexual and trans* content (I don’t know if they have any intersex content). I have asked that they change it to “Queer Voices”, but have not received any response from them. Clearly I am a lone (ish) voice in Australia, it is possible that a concerted campaign might get through to whoever manages that site.
HuffPos’ twitter account regularly refers to “gay marriage” and doesn’t use inclusive terms. Tonight they tweeted about a wedding that had to be moved due to Hurricane Sandy, but they called it a “gay wedding” despite no one in the article using the term. I then argued with people on twitter about orientation – always a fun activity.
All I want, and I don’t think it’s really that hard, is that when referring to issues that affect the entire LGBTIQ community, that attempts are made to use inclusive language. Using umbrella terms like “gay and lesbian” alienates entire sections of the LGBTIQ community, and that’s not cool. Making us invisible because saying gay or lesbian is easier is not cool. We want to be included, we don’t want to be invisible because keeping us invisible makes it harder for us to participate in the wider community, being invisible leads to worse health outcomes for us, being invisible leads to higher rates of violence against us, and generally weakens the community overall. So next time you hear someone refer to “gay marriage” or the “gay and lesbian [insert group here]” ask them if they intend to exclude bisexuals, trans* and intersex people.
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Posted: August 26, 2012 at 10:12 pm | Tags: body, Christianity, Feminism, gender, gender roles, identity, media, minority rights, politics, review, violence
Now back from holidays, and a final post on Cologne is yet to be written, but is percolating around my head, I have much linkspam to share. And as always, this is a fraction of the cool stuff I’ve read this month.
Clem Bastow (who I adore), wrote a great piece on periods in Daily Life:
Back in the good old-bad old days of being fully immersed in social networking, I became known for my propensity to talk about periods: mine, my friends’, my family members’, other people’s, periods on television, periods and advertising, periods, periods, PERIODS.
(It reached a crescendo when some dude on Twitter whined that it was “gross” and I drew this smily face for them in response in mother nature’s own brick-red ink.)
The reason for such menses-mad tweeting was, in part, because I think the continued taboo about menstruation is one of the most depressing aspects of our allegedly enlightened society.
Chloe Papas writes “Speak Up About Partner Abuse” in New Matilda *trigger warning for discussion of partner abuse*:
Partner abuse has become a disturbingly normalised aspect of everyday life in Australia and internationally. There’s no doubt that we’ve come a long way from the hush-hush ignorance of decades prior to the 50s and 60s, but it’s still something that we often choose to not discuss, to sweep under the rug. Many see it as a private family matter, as something that should be dealt with within the home and not talked about publicly. But if it is never discussed, never acknowledged, how can the cycle ever be broken?
Rebecca Solnit writes a great piece, “The Problem With Men Explaining Things” in Mother Jones:
Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.
I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the trajectory of American politics since 2001 was shaped by, say, the inability to hear Coleen Rowley, the FBI woman who issued those early warnings about Al Qaeda, and it was certainly shaped by a Bush administration to which you couldn’t tell anything, including that Iraq had no links to Al Qaeda and no WMD, or that the war was not going to be a “cakewalk.” (Even male experts couldn’t penetrate the fortress of their smugness.)
Arrogance might have had something to do with the war, but this syndrome is a war that nearly every woman faces every day, a war within herself too, a belief in her superfluity, an invitation to silence, one from which a fairly nice career as a writer (with a lot of research and facts correctly deployed) has not entirely freed me. After all, there was a moment there when I was willing to let Mr. Important and his overweening confidence bowl over my more shaky certainty.
Corinne Grant at The Hoopla writes about how Tony Abbott is in fact “A Hootin’, Tootin’ Good Ole Boy“:
Tony Abbott is a good bloke. He’s a good Aussie bloke. He’s a good Aussie bloke who is fair dinkum on a bike.
He’s exactly like John Wayne if you replace the twelve gallon Stetson and six shooter with lycra tights and a Consumer Safety Standards approved bike helmet. He’s a hootin’, tootin’, rootin’, good ole boy who knows what he knows and knows it’s right because he knows it. (And by rootin’ I mean he thoroughly enjoys barracking at the cricket – not doing dirty grown-up things that would make the baby Jesus cry.)
Libby Anne writes at Love, Joy, Feminism “Christian Patriarchy to Men: You don’t have to grow up!“:
What are the qualities we generally associate with maturity? The ability to see things from others’ perspectives? The ability to accept that the world doesn’t revolve around you, and that things don’t always go the way you want them to, and that you just have to deal with that? The ability to cooperate with others, to communicate and find compromises that everyone can be happy with?
Yeah, under Christian Patriarchy, a man doesn’t have to do any of that. Because he’s the head of the family, dammit!
What he says goes! God speaks to him, after all, and everyone else should listen and heed what God tells him! He’s the one who gets to make the decisions for the family, and for the children! Period! In other words, a man is allowed to act like a willful, spoiled child who always expects to get his own way. And if he doesn’t get his own way? Expect a reaction of confusion mixed with anger and righteous indignation.
N.K. Jemisin (who I love heaps) writes an excellent review of Dragon Age, and about how to write oppression and privilege well in, “Identity should always be part of the gameplay“:
So basically, the DA creators have had the sense to acknowledge that the non-optional demographics of a person’s background — her gender, her race, the class into which she was born, her sexual orientation — have as much of an impact on her life as her choices. Basically, privilege and oppression are built in as game mechanics. I can’t remember the last time I saw a game that so openly acknowledged the impact of privilege. Lots of games feature characters who have to deal with the consequences of being rich or poor, a privileged race or an oppressed one, but this is usually a linear, superficial thing. The title character in Nier, for example, is a poor single father who’s probably too old for the mercenary life (he looks about 50, but via the miracle of Japanese game traditions he’s probably only 30), but he keeps at it because otherwise his sick daughter will starve. His poverty is simply a motivation. No one refuses to hire him because they think poor people are lazy. He meets a well-dressed, well-groomed young man who lives in a mansion at one point, and the kid doesn’t snub him for being dirty and shirtless. (In fact the kid falls in love with him but that’s a digression.) His age and race and class don’t mean anything, even though in real life they would. So even though I love Nier — great music, fascinating and original world — I like the DA games better. Even in a fantasy world, realism has its place.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion in the SFF writing world about how to write “the other” — i.e., a character of a drastically different background from the writer’s own. It’s generally people of privileged backgrounds asking the question, because let’s face it: if you’re not a straight white able-bodied (etc.) male, you pretty much know how to write those guys already because that’s most of what’s out there. So right now I’m speaking to the white people. One technique that gets tossed around in these discussions is what I call the “Just Paint ‘Em Brown” technique: basically just write the non-white character the same as a white one, but mention somewhere in the text, briefly, that she’s not white. Lots of well-known SFF writers — Heinlein in Starship Troopers, Clarke in Childhood’s End, Card in Ender’s Game — have employed this technique. I’ve seen some books mention a character’s non-whiteness only as a belated “surprise” to the reader (near the end of the book in the Heinlein example). The idea, I guess, is that the reader will form impressions of the character sans racialized assumptions, and therefore still feel positively about the character even after he’s revealed to be one of “them.”
This technique is crap.
Chris Graham at Agenda Tracker has detailed a very damming piece regarding the ABC’s role in the creation of the Intervention in Indigenous communities, especially Lateline’s role in “BAD AUNTY: The truth about the NT intervention and the case for an independent media“.
An article about Courage to Care travelling exhibition (in Australia), featured in Australian Mosaic: the Magazine of the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia, “Have you got the Courage to Care?“:
Courage to Care aims to empower the people who are usually overlooked in situations involving prejudice and discrimination—the bystanders. Many social tolerance programs are directed towards the victims or the perpetrators. By contrast, Courage to Care focuses on the majority—the bystanders—encouraging them to take action and to confront incidents of discrimination, bullying and harm.
The program uses one of the most significant events of the 20th century to teach a universal concept: one person can make a difference. The Holocaust, the systematic murder during Second World War of 6 000 000 European Jews by Nazi Germany, is the most extreme example of how far racism and discrimination can go if left unchecked by ordinary citizens. Courage to Care uses living historians as well as text, objects, memorabilia and interactive discussion.
By exposing students to the personal experiences of Holocaust survivors and the remarkable stories of the people who rescued them, the program promotes learning and understanding. It does this through enquiry, discourse and critical reflection on personal values.
It does not seek to impose values, but rather encourages students to question instances of racism, intolerance and discrimination. It challenges the bystander who turns a blind eye, rather than stand up for what they instinctively know is right. It thereby challenges indifference.
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Posted: March 12, 2012 at 4:12 pm | Tags: lgbtiq, marriage, minority rights, politics, Religion
I wrote a submission to the Australian Senate on marriage equality (see below). You too can comment here or follow the steps on this website here.
An individual’s religious beliefs on the morality of a particular practice should in no way prevent someone else from undertaking that practice. As a pluralistic society we accept differences of belief and activity. We understand that some people enjoy soccer and others enjoy AFL. We understand that some religions have dietary restrictions and others don’t. We understand that some people dress in ways they believe are compatible with their religion, and others dress in ways that they feel comfortable in doing.
In none of these activities does one religion hold sway over other people’s actions and choices, except where it comes to equal marriage. For some reason, some religious people (thankfully a minority), believe that the strictures in their holy book apply to everyone, regardless of whether or not they are followers of that religion or that particular understanding of that religion.
An individual’s personal beliefs on what is right and wrong should not impact on the full recognition of human rights for others. A long time ago anyone who was not white was deemed to be sub-human – those views changed, despite some people protesting that it was against their understanding of their religious text. A long time ago women could not vote, and if working earned less than their male counterparts in many cases. Those views changed despite some people protesting that it was against their understanding of their religious text.
The world changes and moves, gradually everyone who is missing out on fundamental human rights will either have them granted to them by law, or by societal recognition.
In the end, to refuse a group the right to marriage because it is against some religious texts is not the fairness I expect living in Australia. If there are no non-religous reasons to allow equal marriage in Australia, we should allow it. Just as we have allowed changes in the past to things considered “traditional” (equality of women, humanity of non-white people), we can change “traditional” understandings of things now.
We haven’t let the bigots of the past hold back the future, it’s time to recognise that granting equal marriage to those in committed relationships who happen to be same sex is a step forward. In no country where this has happened has the world ended. We know it will be only good for equality here.
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Posted: February 4, 2012 at 3:10 pm | Tags: atheism, identity, media, minority rights, privilege, Religion, secularism
Frank Furedi posted another screed against atheism, well “so-called New [Atheism]” earlier this month. It’s not hard to demolish, so I’m not going to deconstruct it line by line, but seriously Mr Furedi, next time try actually providing some examples of what you are talking about instead of emotional arguments. It’s not like he’s your every-day pundit either, he’s a former Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent in Caterbury, so he should at the very least be able to quantify his arguments.
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Posted: July 18, 2011 at 10:36 pm | Tags: anthropology, Feminism, gender roles, identity, minority rights, privilege, racism
Prior to reading First in their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology (edited by Julie Marcus) I had almost no understanding of what anthropology actually was. I understood that it was a study of people, but since there was also sociology, which I took to be the understanding of people in modern society, so therefore anthropology was the study of people now gone.
And then I read First in their Field, and learnt about Australian women breaking major ground (mostly unrecognised) in anthropology, creating fieldwork and what anthropology, at least at the turn of the 1900s was. I was disgusted to find out what anthropology actually was and the harm that it has caused.
This was brought back to my mind when I started reading Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the academic industrial complex of feminism (edited by Jessica Yee). The second essay by Krysta Williams and Erin Konsmo has the following (pg 26 – 27):
First off, as has been well stated by many Indigenous Feminist before us, the idea of gender equality did not come from the suffragettes or other so-called “foremothers” of feminist theory. It should also be recognized that although we are still struggling for this thing called “gender equality”, it is not actually a framed issue within the feminist realm, but a continuation of the larger tackling of colonialism. So this idea in mainstream feminism that women of colour all of a sudden realized “we are women”, and magically joined the feminist fight actually re-colonizes people for who gender equality and other “feminist” notions is a remembered history and current reality since before Columbus. THe mainstream feminist movement is supposed to have started in the early 1900s with women fighting for the right to vote. However, these white women deliberately excluded the struggles of working class women of colour and participated in the policy of forced sterilization for Aboriginal women and women with disabilities. Furthermore, the idea that we all need to subscribe to the same theoretical understandings of history is marginalizing. We all have our own truths and histories to live.
and (pg 28)
All that the mainstream feminist movement is trying to claim today is merely a reflection of what an Indigenous person (including women, men, Two-Spirit, trans or different gender identifying people) sees when they look in the mirror. There is this feeling amongst “innovative thinkers” that we need to reach forward to build and/or discover a “new society” that includes gender equality. But we know that for us, as a community, this simply means a return to our Indigenous ways of life, a decolonization of our communities which will bring back gender equality. This is something that we have been fighting for and resisting since contact. However, being pushed forward by progressives while trying to hold onto and remember the past, honour our Elders and teachings – which being present – is a painful experience!
When reading First in their Field, the essayists wrote about the early female anthropologists living with various Indigenous tribes in remote Australia (well most of Australia at that time was remote). The essayists discussed how those female anthrpologists, with the exception of Daisy Bates who pretended to be a male spirit, accessed the spiritual realm of Indigenous women, learning about their ceremonies, their laws and how they fit into tribal society.
Prior to these female anthropologists living with the Indigenous inhabitants of Australia, white male anthropologists had determined that much like many white women at the time, Indigenous women occupied the domestic sphere, had no spiritual life and were much less than men, as they had been unable to access (and were not overly interested in) Indigenous women’s experience. The cut and paste of white society’s gender roles onto the gender roles of Indigenous Australians has no doubt caused the same level of harm as recounted by Williams and Konsmo.
The study of other societies as something less than white, European culture, as something you’d study as if looking at a collection of spores in a petri dish, thinking that you can study another society or culture without bringing in your own biases, issues and prejudices is just laughable and really wrong. There is no objectivity when studying another group of people, and no way to study another group of people without your presence making an impact on them (unless of course that society/culture doesn’t exist any more and you’re studying it from afar (such as Incan civilisations pre-Spanish invasion)).
The arrogance of my “ancestors” and the damage that they have caused Indigenous Australians makes me deeply ashamed and sorry that so much damage was done.
(Update: now with References)
One bit I left out of my blog post last night, or perhaps didn’t explain in the way I intended, is the direct harm that anthropology caused to Australia’s Indigenous inhabitants. Anthropologists were seen to be experts on Indigenous people and therefore were asked to provide advice to Governments and to fill roles such as “Protectors of Aboriginies” (First in their Field). If they did not come up with the idea of forcible removal of children from Indigenous communities, they certainly supported it. In Isobel White’s essay on Daisy Bates she states (pg 63 – 64):
By today’s standards many of Daisy Bate’s suggestions for the welfare of Aborigines seem impossible, absurd and an infringement of human rights. She believed that the Aborigines were on their way to extinction and her idea applied only to the declining number of those of full descent. She cared not at all what happened to the part-descent population, whose very existence she deplored. Consequently her suggestion for the full-descent population was to segregate them from all but minimum contact with Europeans so that there should be no more mixed unions. … Since she regarded them as incapable of governing themselves, they should be governed by a High Commissioner who, she insisted, must be a British, Anglican gentleman.
To no anthropologist would endorse a policy of taking children from their mothers and sending them to institutions where ‘civilised’ values and habits would be taught. But this was the policy in both Western Australia and South Australia where Mrs Bates was Honorary Protector of Aboriginies successively. The duties of these posts included reporting to the local police the birth or existence of so-called ‘half-caste’ children so that they might be seized, by force if necessary, and sent to an appropriate institution. Presumable Daisy Bates accepted this part of her duties and there is evidence that in at least one case she acted on it.
References
Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the academic industrial complex of feminism, edited by Jessica Yee, 2001, DLR International Printing, Canada
First in the Field: Women and Australian Anthropology, edited by Julie Marcus, 1993, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Australia
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Posted: July 4, 2011 at 4:00 am | Tags: bisexuality, Christianity, DUFC, fat, Feminism, gender roles, Language, lgbtiq, media, minority rights, politics, privilege, racism, rape, Religion, sexism, violence
Down Under Feminists' Carnival Logo
Hello everyone and welcome to the 38th Down Under Feminists’ Carnival. Thanks for all the fantastic submissions and to everyone who wrote all the fantastic articles I’m linking to.
If at any point I have misnamed, mislabled, or misgendered someone, please let me know immediately so that I can correct my error. If I have included a post of yours that you would not like included, please let me know and I will remove it. Should any of my links be broken, just let me know and I’ll attempt to fix it.
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Posted: June 6, 2011 at 10:38 pm | Tags: ACL, Christianity, equal marriage, lgbtiq, media, minority rights, privilege, Religion
I wasn’t going to blog about this, I really wasn’t. Of the three topics I had handed to me on Friday (swearing fines, Penny Wong being miaowed at, and Rip Roll), I decided to focus my efforts somewhere other than this topic – as it had been covered very nicely in the media as well as elsewhere. But then the ACL stuck their head up again today, and I can’t not smack them for it.
Lyle Shelton, an apologist for the ACL it seems, had a piece published on ABC’s The Drum, today called, “Abusive labels and slurs no substitute for real debate” (user comments afterwards really good). Excuse me while I take this apart.
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Posted: June 1, 2011 at 10:40 pm | Tags: abuse, Language, minority rights, politics, privilege, WTF
Fucking hell, the Victorian Liberal Party, in their grand “law and order” plan, have decided that instead of having people who are charged with using:
language deemed to be indecent, disorderly, offensive or threatening. (The Age)
go to court, a process which is time consuming and rarely successful (on the point of the prosecutors), that police will now be able to issue an on-the-spot fine of up to $240.
The Age article continues:
The crackdown — which extends the Baillieu government’s ever-growing law-and-order agenda — means police will be able to issue infringement notices for offensive behaviour and indecent language similar to parking and speeding fines.
Attorney-General Robert Clark said the idea was to lower the police workload by allowing them to issue fines instead of tackling bad language using the court system.
“It frees up police time for other law enforcement activities and enables them to more readily issue penalties against those offenders who deserve them,” Mr Clark said.
“By providing police with as many enforcement tools as possible, Parliament is sending a strong signal that people who engage in criminal behaviour can expect to be dealt with under the law.”
Offensive language has been an offence in Victoria since 1966. Swearing — if it is deemed serious enough — can carry a penalty of up to two years’ jail, and is even considered an offence if no one is present to hear it.
In truth, they’ve all been out of bounds since the Act was introduced in 1966, but until 2008 anyone thus charged had to have their case heard in court. That took time and effort and got in the way of more pressing cases. Frankly, who could blame the legal system if it collectively decided it really couldn’t be arsed to hear such matters – matters that Ross Garnaut might feasibly have described as “pissant”? (The Age -another article)
Because saying “FUCK” (and other swears) is clearly criminal behaviour. I didn’t know, until now, that “offensive language” was actually a real offence, and only had been since 1966. I’d also like to know what “offensive language” actually means. Sure it’s almost described with “indecent, disorderly, offensive or threatening” language, but what does that really mean?
How will police define “indecent, disorderly, offensive or threatening” language? Will some groups, as I suspect they will, receive far more leniency from police in relation to swearing than others? Will some groups who have threatening language used towards them (those who are not white, the homeless, the LBGTIQ community, etc) really have an effective response from the police if they report the language used against them?
It has been suggested that this is just an attempt at revenue raising by the Victorian State Government, and I’m inclined to agree. Instead of ensuring that minority groups who already have existing issues with police are protected adequately, this will be further power for some police to put the boot in even more.
Then there is the cultural impact – the fact that people can (and probably will) be fined for swearing at sporting events, live music concerts (Yeah, how is Cee-Lo (warning for NSFW swears) ever going to perform his song in Victoria?), comedy, or the theatre? The Melbourne International Comedy Festival (one of the biggest comedy festivals in Australia -possibly the third biggest in the English speaking world), is worried that the new laws will impact on the festival next year.
Comedian Wil Anderson yesterday tweeted in response to the news. “Victoria announced on-the-spot fines of $240 for indecent language. Suddenly my [comedy festival] show is going to cost me a lot more next year.”
…
Melbourne International Comedy Festival director Susan Provan said she was taking a wait-and-see approach. “We at the Comedy Festival will be waiting with bated breath for news on what does and does not constitute swearing,” she said. However, she added that the festival may need to consider hiring people “with bleepers in all areas of our activity”.
…
The Baillieu government is pitching this as part of its ever-expanding law-and-order agenda, but the cynically inclined might wonder if it is not also a blatant revenue-raising exercise. Given the difficulty of successfully prosecuting someone for swearing (or, more broadly, offensive language) in court, this is by and large money the government would not otherwise have had. (The Age)
The Age article the excerpt above is from also defines all the places in which it will be illegal to swear – and about the only place you will be able to swear will be in the privacy of your own home – provided that the public is not gathering there – so not when you’re having a party probably.
In fact, there is little agreement even on what constitutes “offensive” language in 2011, as distinct from 1966. One man’s meat is another man’s cruelly harvested animal flesh, as it were.
In a much-noted ruling in 2002, NSW magistrate David Heilpern observed of the F word that “one would have to live an excessively cloistered existence not to come into regular contact with the word, and not to have become somewhat immune to its suggested previously legally offensive status”. (The Age)
With no fucking clue as to what constitutes offensive language, the potential for this new police power to be massively misused is very high. Personally I’d take the fine to court and ask that the 2002 NSW ruling be taken into account, if I was fined by the police for swearing. I have that luxury and privilege. Those who have minimal incomes, minimal support, and/or an unfamiliarity with the Australian Justice System are going to struggle to have the fine waived, and in many cases struggle to pay the fine.
This is not a law which does anyone any favours if all the attention is put on “offensive” and none on “threatening”. I’d like to see “threatening” strengthened, and a real discussion about whether or not we need to be protected from swears when we’re out in public these days.
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Posted: May 10, 2011 at 10:43 pm | Tags: abuse, Christianity, lgbtiq, minority rights, politics, privilege, Religion, WTF
Dear Mr Shaw (and Mr Baillieu),
I am appalled that you responded to Mr Quilligan’s email with the following:
You state that you ” want to work, live and love freely during the course of my life, and I want to do that without thinking that I can’t”. What if I loved driving 150kms per hour in residential areas? What if there was a convicted sex offender who stated that, or a child molester? Can they still do what they want? Under your statement the answer is yes.
You equated a consensual adult relationships to two illegal activities. Last I checked (regardless of what you actually feel about the topic), same sex relationships were not illegal – however paedophilia and speeding are both illegal activities with a great deal of societal harm attached to them. So you suggested that Mr Quilligan’s desire to “love freely during the course of [his] life” was the equivalent to a paedophile or sex offender raping someone. Seriously? Were you thinking straight when you said that?
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Posted: January 3, 2011 at 12:45 am | Tags: catholic, Christianity, minority rights, privilege, Religion, WTF
I’m not claiming that the Catholic Pope actually ever had any credibility with me, but I know he does with some Catholics (still), and I wonder how they can let his latest two foot in mouth statements through without suggesting that he be sacked. It would be nice if the Catholic Church was a democratic institution wouldn’t it… let me enjoy that vision for a moment…. mmmm… ok, sadly back to reality.
Ok, first stupid statement was published before Christmas, and I know I’m late to the blogging party with this one, but I thought I’d blog on it anyway, as well as link to already fantastic commentary on his ludicrous claims. This claim being that “paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.” All I can think, when I read something like that is, “WTF? Have you no idea about the world you move in?”
Dispatches from the Culture Wars has an excellent deconstruction of the claims made by the Pope, as does Pharyngula here and here.
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