Stephanie Rice is NOT the problem

I don't really want to defend Stephanie Rice. What she wrote on her twitter account after the Wallabies beat South Africa was pretty much the equivalent of dropping the N-bomb. But it was absolutely not used in a way such that she intended it to be homophobic. It was the equivalent of calling someone, or something, 'gay' in the schoolyard, without giving second thought to its meaning. Doesn't mean it's alright in any sense, but after seeing the media gleefully pile on and refer to her tweet as 'homophobic' and 'anti-gay', I really feel like that's a little much. Ian Roberts, too. What, do you have another book coming out, Ian?

This is the same media that won't call someone like Tony Abbott a homophobe. It won't call the so-called Australian Family Association's strident opposition to gay marriage, adoption, IVF and pretty much the entire existence of anyone with same-sex attraction homophobic. I could go on. There are just so many examples of genuinely harmful anti-gay views in our society that I really resent the media using something like this as a distraction. Especially when the media is a big part of the problem. They treat views like those of Tony Abbott and the AFA as legitimate, their anti-gay sentiments as part of a 'debate'. It's bullshit. There is no 'debate'.

So, a little bit of understandable schadenfreude from the ordinary person aside, leave Steph Rice the hell alone. Once society is rid of genuine homophobia and anti-gay views, the little things like using the word 'faggot' in stupid schoolyard language will naturally follow. But something like this should never be allowed to divert peoples' attention from the real issues, especially when the diversion is created by people who bear a lot of responsibility for the climate that exists in the first place.

Update: Matthew Mitcham's defence of Stephanie Rice has hit the news. He essentially said the same thing yesterday on Facebook, but I suppose Ian Roberts' attention-seeking better fitted the media's desired narrative.

National Day of Action for Same-Sex Marriage

August 1 is a national day of action for same-sex marriage in Australia. Every capital city is hosting some kind of event or rally (including Brisbane, for once!), so everyone who's not a bigot should show up and lend their support.

Join the Facebook group, sign up to email updates or whatever- just find out where your nearest rally is being held and head on down on August 1 :)

Anti-gay bigots cop a serve in mainstream paper

Fairfax's Lisa Pryor, one of the only opinion writers worth reading, pwns the anti-gay-marriage bigots in her latest column. Pwns. It's so rare to see bigots served a big helping of dripping sarcasm like this in a mainstream paper. Go Lisa!

Isn't it heartening to see both sides of politics united in their determination to protect a vulnerable minority from the whims of the majority? Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull both oppose gay marriage against the wishes of the majority of Australians.

This week a poll was published showing 60 per cent of Australians supported the idea of equal marriage laws. Another 4 per cent were undecided, leaving just 36 per cent opposed to gay marriage. Among young voters, support rose to 74 per cent. The poll was commissioned by a lobby group, Australian Marriage Equality, and conducted by the pollster Galaxy.

The stance Rudd and Turnbull are taking may be unpopular, but not everything in politics is about popularity. Obviously they have decided in this case it is more important to protect the persecuted minority of Australians who identify as bigots, a minority whose lifestyle is under attack.

Read on...

Homosexuality for Christians in two sentences:

Nomnomnom or no no no?
Christians, don't be hypocrites.

The 'eternal truth' is that you should love your neighbour as yourself. The 'truth' is not to be found in the minor reaches of Leviticus, where eating prawns and sleeping with a man are matters of moral concern.

Actor Sir Ian McKellen, quoted in the Guardian.

Queensland fails gay teens

From the Brisbane Times:

A DISTURBING number of young Queenslanders have attempted suicide after being bullied about their sexual orientation, a new report shows.

The Open Doors Action Research Report, to be published on Friday, says 37 per cent of lesbian, gay or bisexual survey respondents attempted suicide in the past year.

Of the 164 respondents from across the state, 82 per cent had considered suicide in the past 12 months and 59 per cent had harmed themselves.

Open Doors is a Brisbane-based support service for lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender people aged 12 to 18 and their families.

When I saw this, I happened to remember this post that I wrote back in 2006. I quoted the following from the article it referred to:

A STATE school assignment that asked 13-year-olds to write about life in a gay community has been attacked by Education Minister Julie Bishop as an example of "a politically correct agenda masquerading as curriculum".

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie also criticised the school project, saying it was inappropriate and not part of the state curriculum.

Year Nine students at Windaroo Valley State High School in Brisbane were asked to write an assignment on living as a heterosexual in a mostly homosexual colony on the moon.

However, the school withdrew the assignment when a mother said her daughter would refuse to write it because it conflicted with her religious beliefs.

Mr Beattie said: "I don't think it's appropriate for a 13-year-old to be doing an assignment like this and I think the authority should withdraw it."

Julie Bishop and Peter Beattie, and anyone who agrees with their stance on this issue, hold a portion of personal responsibility for the suicide or self-harm of every teenager who is bullied for being gay. Peter Beattie and Julie Bishop obviously thought it was more important to prevent teenagers from being encouraged to develop empathy and understanding of their gay peers than to prevent suicide and depression in gay teens. Whether they adopted that stance for pure political expediency or based on their own personal beliefs, it's pretty fucked up.

Turnbull tries common sense on wingnuts

Oh dear... Malcolm Turnbull has, quite admirably, defended women's right to determine their own reproductive choices, and sorta sorta defended rights for gay couples (the old 'they can't have marriage because that's too special but they can have this second-rate civil union that gives them rights without allowing them to feel that their relationship is in any way equal to those of people who like to boink members of the opposite sex'). Good on him.

But, Malcolm, if it were possible to talk common sense to bigots, none of these things would be an issue in the first place, hence this-

If you think about it, if you discriminate ... against a gay couple, between two men living together, do you really think that they're going to say `oh well, that's no good, we'll go off and get married to a woman'?" he asked the audience.

- fine piece of logic simply isn't going to work.

Cory Bernardi- protecting Aussie marriage from teh gay

"My preoccupation with other peoples' love lives is ruining my relationship with my wife! It's all the fault of those damn homos!"

Cosmic Jester has a post up on Liberal fucktard and all-around rampaging bigot Cory Bernardi, who has recently made a name for himself for going beyond even the bounds of the Liberal party in terms of the anti-gay bigotry he espouses. Here's a quote that CJ pulled from one of Bernardi's speeches:

"We do not expect the RSL to broaden their membership to include bohemian peaceniks, we do not ask the Country Women's Association to include men and we do not ask the National Rugby League or the AFL to include women in their teams," Senator Bernardi said.

"Why is it then that we defy the same sort of logic when it comes to marriage?"

Fuck you, Cory Bernardi. Gam and I are married, but we didn't get married to join any club that would have you as a member. Marriage is about love, not bigotry, not about excluding other adults from enjoying the ability to publicly affirm their relationship. Our marriage isn't about other people- it's about us. I suppose we should all feel sorry for Bernardi if his entire married life is spent thinking about the kind of sex that same-sex couples have. As Cosmic Jester put it:

But Cory Bernardi has a sick and twisted sexual fetish really takes it toooo far. The sick degenerate fucker can only love his wife if gays and lesbians are continually discriminated against, pervert!

[...]

If you cant get a hard-on for your wife if heaven forbid gay couples were extended superannuation inheritance benefits then for fuck sake see someone about it, don't force your sick desires on an unwilling country. Get help now you disturbed individual.

If the small sampler of Bernardi's bigotry here hasn't been enough for you, go read the whole of CJ's post, and you're guaranteed to have a bad taste left in your mouth.

What's next for 'logic' in Bernardi's universe? "We do not expect public swimming pools to allow black children entry..." has thankfully been consigned to the dustbin of history. Hopefully this latest product in the same line of bigotry will meet the same fate.

Homophobia trumps poverty fight for Anglican church

From the BBC:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused the Anglican church of allowing its "obsession" with homosexuality to come before real action on world poverty.

"God is weeping" to see such a focus on sexuality and the Church is "quite rightly" seen by many as irrelevant on the issue of poverty, he said.

[...]

However, he said he sometimes felt ashamed of his fellow Anglicans as they focussed obsessively on trying to resolve their disagreement about homosexuality while 30,000 people died each day because of poverty.

"We really will not be able to win wars against so-called terror as long as there are conditions that make people desperate, and poverty, disease and ignorance are amongst the chief culprits," he said.

Amen.

Any self-professed Christian who even bothers to spend any time on the 'issue' of homosexuality is living a lie when they profess to be a Christian. Jesus himself, for whom the religion is named, had nothing whatsoever to say on the matter. He did, however, have quite a lot to say about issues of wealth and poverty and the socially marginalised. Hypocrites that they are, the rabidly anti-gay 'Christians' simply don't give a shit.

Today's anti-miscegenationists

Mildred and Richard Loving, of Loving vs. Virginia

Quite often, the bigots who oppose same-sex marriage will dispute any comparison between their own stance on the issue and the equally bigoted and stupid bans on interracial marriage that existed as recently as 1967.

It's very telling, then, that the very same law designed to stop interracial couples who were residents of other states from marrying in the US state of Massachusetts was up until now kept in place to prevent gay couples who weren't residents of the state from being legally married there. It looks like that law is about to be overturned. Not before time.

Here's an interesting section of a relevant article on a talk by Professor Kim Forde-Mazrui, taken from the Virginia Law website:

In response to a question about African-American clergy’s opposition to equating civil rights with gay rights, Forde-Mazrui noted the Bible includes many stories that approve of certain things we don’t approve of today, such as enslaving people from other nations. “Often religious beliefs support something that we emotionally already believe in, and when it doesn’t we tend to not be so literalist.”

Forde-Mazrui noted that believing homosexuality is wrong is increasingly being viewed as bigoted. The idea that marriage should be preserved for having children is incorrect since “we don’t make having children a condition of marriage.”

Not to mention the fact that the people who seek to ban same-sex marriage on the basis that it can't be used for procreation are the very same ones who lobby for and enact laws preventing same-sex couples from having children, either naturally through assisted conception or through adoption. It's like telling someone they need to walk a mere hundred metres to obtain a particular right, then using a chainsaw to cut off their legs before telling them that because they can't walk the hundred metres they're not entitled to that right. Sick and twisted, bordering on sadistic. I wonder why same sex marriage is portrayed by our media and politicians as being legitimately any business of the bigots in the first place?

If Gam and I had lived and married 50 years ago we would have heard the same arguments that gay couples hear today. That their union is a violation of the natural order, that it's against god, that there will be something wrong with their children. We would have heard it all. Today, they hear it all. Even if majority opinion at the time had been against us, majority opinion would have been wrong. Our society acknowledges that fact today, but continues to perpetrate the same abuses on same-sex couples that it once visited on couples who happened to be of different skin colours. The hypocrisy is plain, but still it goes unacknowledged.

Jeff Kennett on Ken Campagnolo

Kennett: As bigoted as any other Liberal

Oh my god. I had to read this piece in Defamer a couple of times in order to believe I was seeing what I thought I'd seen. No, I wasn't hallucinating: Jeff Kennett really did say that Ken Campagnolo, and gay people (or in Ken's case, bisexual) in general, are paedophiles and need to be kept away from our young people in case they molest them.

"The club felt that once this had been pointed out and you had this gentleman there who was obviously close to young men - massaging young men - it ran an unnecessary risk and that's why it decided it was best that he not perform those duties again. So the club was trying to do the right thing," Mr Kennett said.

"When you are in charge of a group of young boys, as this club was as I understand it, it's got to make sure."

"It's the same if you have a pedophile there as a masseur, right? And you might say the pedophile would do no damage, but once it was pointed out to you, you have a duty of care to those underage children not to put them in a situation of risk."

Now, given that most paedophiles are straight men, more often than not married with kids of their own, wouldn't it mean that heterosexual men should be banned from contact with underage children? Oh, but that would be completely ridiculous and unworkable! Oh...

Jeff Kennett, you are one sick fuck. I wonder what Beyond Blue have to say for themselves when their almost-ex-chairman makes a statement like this? Way to go supporting the anti-gay bigotry in the community, and the high levels of depression associated with it in gay teenagers, Jeff. Or are we supposed to believe that gay and bisexual people aren't quite human don't feel pain or get depressed?

Just. Wow.

Gays buy babies, create mutant monster horror children!!!!

Isn't this disgusting? The headline that some arsehole subeditor at The Australian has chosen for the story, I mean.

Maybe the focus of the article should have been on the horribly bigoted and discriminatory laws in Australia that prevent gay couples (predominantly, if not all male same-sex couples, I would imagine) from adopting children or using a donor egg and surrogate and then both being recognised as the resulting child's parents on the birth certificate. Those laws are despicable beyond description- the fact that they were actively promoted as a platform by the equally despicable John Howard should be enough to confirm that.

So what if gay couples want a family, just like most heterosexual couples? So bloody what? The only thing wrong with them going to the US in order to have a child is the fact that their circumstances here in Australia force them to take that step.

I hope the laws are changed here to allow adoption and altruistic surrogacy for gay couples as well as straight (I believe surrogacy in Queensland is currently illegal in all cases). If I had a gay friend who wanted to have a baby with their partner I would be more than happy to consider helping out in that regard after Gam and I had kids of our own. It's a right that gay couples should have- their decision to become parents involves jumping through a lot more hoops than your average straight breeders, and I think in the sense that the difficulty of the process would weed out the people who didn't particularly want kids, they make better parents (as opposed to the heterosexual couples who can't be bothered to use contraception and wind up squeezing out kids left, right and centre- as evidenced by all the child neglect cases in the media recently).

As for Professor Michael Chapman from Sydney IVF- what a moron. Who cares if community norms don't support gay people having access to surrogacy? What would he say if the majority of Australians didn't think interracial couples should have such access? Ban that too? And even if the prevailing community opinion was that infertile couples should just adopt and IVF shouldn't be supported by medicare he certainly wouldn't support that, because that's how he makes shitload of money. I doubt he would pack up his lucrative business and go home if a poll showed that infertile couples should just play the cards they've been dealt and their only option should be adoption. Ha.

Ken Campagnolo

A blog belonging to one of the commenters, Doug Pollard, in the previous post tells a story worthy of notice; indeed it appears to have had some attention in bnews and the local paper but only minimal coverage in the mainstream media. Ken Campagnolo, sacked, harrassed and discriminated against. Not for being gay but for being bisexual.

Take a look at the April entries to get up to speed with the story. The blog isn't very big and you can probably read through the entire thing in a few minutes, but Ken's story does look to be deserving of wider attention.

And I've just realised I probably need to create a more appropriate tag, given that Ken's experience of discrimination appears to stem from people taking issue with his bisexuality after discovering that he wasn't gay. Any suggestions?

To the man who shat all over human rights...

Commitment to social justice: Dorothy Hoddinott

So. On this Queen's Birthday holiday, Australians who receive honours are:

* A gay rights campaigner.

* A school principal who used her own money to enable an 18 year old asylum seeker finish her education.

And

The man who dedicated his entire working life to making the lives of gay Australians and asylum seekers as miserable as he could manage.

How does this not render the awards utterly meaningless? John Howard is a despicable human being who was paid vast sums of money by Australian taxpayers over several decades to screw over the poor and downtrodden. Other people who received the awards have dedicated their lives to making other peoples' lives better. The idea that John Howard is worthy of anything other than a World's Biggest Arsehole Award is just laughable.

Reacting to his Queen's birthday honour, Prof Altman questioned the structure of the awards, which he said didn't always award those who were deserving of recognition.

"Of course it's gratifying and I suppose a sort of mixture of pleasure and embarrassment," Prof Altman said.

"Part of me is delighted but I also feel somewhat ambivalent, the advantage of having been given one is that I can say that without having sour grapes."

A lesson on Loving in history

From the New York Times:

Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point in the early morning of July 11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bedroom and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, “Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?”

Mrs. Loving answered, “I’m his wife.”

Mr. Loving pointed to the couple’s marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, “That’s no good here.”

The certificate was from Washington, D.C., and under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 16 states that barred marriages between races.

After Mr. Loving spent a night in jail and his wife several more, the couple pleaded guilty to violating the Virginia law, the Racial Integrity Act. Under a plea bargain, their one-year prison sentences were suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together or at the same time for 25 years.

Judge Leon M. Bazile, in language Chief Justice Warren would recall, said that if God had meant for whites and blacks to mix, he would have not placed them on different continents. Judge Bazile reminded the defendants that “as long as you live you will be known as a felon.”

[...]

At one time or another, 38 states had miscegenation laws. State and federal courts consistently upheld the prohibitions, until 1948, when the California Supreme Court overturned California’s law.

Though the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in the Loving case struck down miscegenation laws, Southern states were sometimes slow to change their constitutions; Alabama became the last state to do so, in 2000.

Now remember it's only a decade or so since Australia's last laws criminalising homosexual sex were struck down (in Tasmania), and already we look upon such laws as backward, even barbaric. Just as any sane person looks upon the kind of law that made the marriage of Mildred and Richard Loving illegal in Virginia until 1967 as being inhuman and backward and a blatant breach of their human rights. My Dad was a teenager at the time- it's not a long time ago. But we still have laws that prevent same sex couples from getting married. The comparison is a very fair one. The fact is that within living memory of many Americans and Australians, interracial relationships drew the ire of the law and of many in mainstream society, but almost no-one bar the most deranged open racists will openly speak their disapproval of such relationships today. The same thing is going to happen with marriage between same-sex couples. And the people who supported the laws that oppress them, when the tide turns, will uniformly pretend that they had nothing to do with the legislated bigotry.

Just because something has support in the community doesn't make it right, and doesn't make it not a breach of someone else's rights. That was the case in the 1950s with interracial marriage, and it's the case today with gay marriage.

ACT capitulates on civil unions bid

Gay Australians will not accept proposals that mimic equal rights...

Our friend Niall sent us the link to the following story, which we'd missed thanks to the Logies taking pride of place on the web pages of all the commercial media outlets. From the ABC:

The ACT Government is to water down its civil partnerships scheme after failing to win support from the Commonwealth.

Making the announcement, ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell said he "regretted" the Federal Government's refusal to change its position.

"The ACT condemns in the strongest possible terms the Federal Government's resort to this undemocratic, 19th century colonial style power to override the decision of a democratically-elected ACT Legislative Assembly," he said.

The ACT had planned to introduce legislation that would recognise gay unions through a legal ceremony.

Instead, couples will be allowed to register their relationship, but any ceremony will have no recognition in law.

The Federal Government has welcomed the decision and Attorney-General Robert McClelland says he has made it clear to the ACT that he will not accept legislation that mimics marriage.

I think the best response to that last sentence is to refer everyone to the 7.30 Report interview where Kerry O'Brien bent Robert McClelland and the Labor Party's bigoted policy over a chair and had his way with them both. This is a moment of cowardice for Labor, and a missed opportunity for Australia to rid itself of state-sanctioned anti-gay bigotry. We have a Prime Minister, finally, who wasn't scared to say 'Sorry' to Australia's indigenous people, but doesn't have the guts to stand up to the 25% or so of Australians who believe that gay people shouldn't have the same rights as everyone who only have sex with people of the opposite gender. Maybe Kevin Rudd doesn't want to be a Gough Whitlam, but unless Labor grows some balls on this issue they risk becoming as irrelevant as John Howard, regardless of how many elections Kev goes on to win.

Kerry O'Brien roasts Robert McClelland over gay marriage

Phil sent me this exchange between Kerry O'Brien and Robert McClelland on the 7.30 Report last night. Really, by trying to walk both sides of the street at once, Labor are just asking for this kind of pwning:

KERRY O’BRIEN: ... decision to remove discriminatory practice from Commonwealth laws so de facto same sex relationships will now be legally recognised, but not formal same sex marriage. I’m just curious to know what the logic is in that discrimination, if you like, that difference, because surely it is fundamentally discriminatory?

ROBERT MCLELLAND: The logic is essentially Labor Party policy. We went to the election ..

KERRY O’BRIEN: That’s not necessarily logical.

ROBERT MCLELLAND: ... with a - but, we’re honouring the election commitment. We’re removing discrimination from some 100 pieces of legislation that have real practical significance to people in same sex relationships. In terms of the issue of recognition of relationships, we favour and positively favour and indeed encourage all states and territories to implement a uniform system of registration of relationships that are in existence whether they be same sex or close personal relationships. Indeed, the policy was based on the Tasmanian model. We positively encourage all states and territories to do that. But what we don’t support - and again, consistently with our policy - we don’t support a measure that mimics marriage. We ...

KERRY O’BRIEN: Well, just before you go on. I’m not asking you to defend party policy. I’m just asking to explain what to me seems, on the face of it, to be undeniably discriminatory. A male and female de facto couple has the right to choose to formally legally marry or not to marry; a same sex couple does not.

ROBERT MCLELLAND: The system of registration essentially recognises a relationship that is in existence. The system that is proposed or has been discussed as being proposed in the ACT would be a system that would, as a result of a ceremony, create a legal relationship which essentially is something akin to the traditional concept of a marriage.

KERRY O’BRIEN: But the mere fact that you use the word “mimic” to describe that could imply for some that you’re essentially looking down your nose at it.

ROBERT MCLELLAND: People in same sex relationships are entitled to - for too long they’ve been discriminated against. I think that’s accepted across the political spectrum happily today. In terms of the issue of marriage, both parties supported during the course of the last 18 months or so legislation that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. It was the policy of the Labor Party before the election ...

KERRY O’BRIEN: Yes, but I’m asking you why it’s not discriminatory to say that a same sex couple can’t engage in that ceremony legally but a man and a woman. Why isn’t that discriminatory under law?

ROBERT MCLELLAND: Well, we - what you are talking about is providing a positive system of recognising at law a relationship that is in existence as a result of the registration of that, as is occurring in Tasmania and as is occurring in Victoria. That is something that is appropriate because it actually recognises something that is in existence. What we don’t support is legal measures that create a relationship that is akin to marriage.

KERRY O’BRIEN: I’m still not sure why that’s not discriminatory, but I think that’s where we’re gonna have to leave it.

ROBERT MCLELLAND: Sure. [Thinking: "thank god, it's over!"-S]

Australian readership less homophobic than Courier Mail

The Australian has one of those little mini-polls running, asking the question "Should gay couples have the same legal and financial rights as de facto heterosexual couples?". I was curious to see how different it would be from the 44:55 yes/no split in the Courier Mail's poll on whether gay guys in year 12 should be allowed to take a same-sex partner to their formal.

The Australian shows a slightly more civilised readership, with only one third of poll respondents being rampaging bigots. And our federal electorate, Ryan, has bigots constituting only one quarter of respondents- right on the average for Queensland, 'the homophobic state'.


The 'your postcode' selection showed only 7 votes, all in favour of extending full legal and financial rights to same sex couples, but there are never enough respondents in this section to make a judgement about people in this suburb, other than perhaps that the socially 'liberal' ones read more. Still, in this day and age anyone who expressed the opinion that interracial couples shouldn't have the same rights as white couples would be labelled a racist, whereas 60 years ago it would have been a perfectly normal opinion. Still bigoted, just socially acceptable. Nowadays there are people still against it, but expressing that opinion publicly would invite derision. I hope that we see the same sort of societal shift towards giving acceptance and support to same-sex relationships so that by the time our kids are adults there won't be any issues with same-sex couples having to fight for basic rights that heterosexual couples are able to take for granted.

Singapore fights teh gay nuclear family

Another reminder of how lovely, civilised Singapore hides a dirty secret in that its government consists of a bunch of anti-democratic old bigots:

A Singapore television station has been fined for airing a show that featured a gay couple and their baby in a way that "promotes a gay lifestyle," the city-state's media regulator said.

The Media Development Authority fined MediaCorp TV Channel 5 some 15,000 Singapore dollars ($11,600), it said in a statement on its website.

The station aired an episode of a home and decor series called Find and Design that featured a gay couple wanting to transform their game room into a new nursery for their adopted baby.

The authority said the episode contained scenes of the gay couple with their baby and the presenter's congratulations and acknowledgment of them as a family unit "in a way which normalises their gay lifestyle and unconventional family setup".

The episode was in breach of rules on free-to-air television programming, which disallows content that promotes, justifies or glamourises gay lifestyles, the statement said.

Gay partners banned at religious school formals

Gay Churchie boys might need a 'Beard' for their formal.

The headmaster of Brisbane boys' high school 'Churchie', the Anglican Church Grammar School, has said that he is willing to 'debate' a rule that allows boys to take only a female partner to their year 12 formal, thus discriminating against any guy who wishes to take a male partner. What exactly there to debate?

Headmaster Jonathon Hensman claimed ""My attitude is these are minors, this is a very sensitive issue". Sensitive because they're minors? What the hell kind of excuse is that? The attitude expressed there is that someone can know they're straight and act as such before they turn 18, but 'teh gays' are somehow different and don't know their true sexuality until they wake up on the morning of their 18th birthday, therefore a 17 year old who identifies as gay may in fact just be a little confused and so he shouldn't be allowed to take his boyfriend to his school formal in case he wakes up in 12 months' time and realises it's all been a horrible mistake and if only he'd taken a girl to the formal his life wouldn't have been ruined. Ruined!

Or something. How very patronising.

What are these people on?

On the one hand, I'm glad to see that society and/or the school has come far enough that there are students who can say "I'm gay, I want to take my boyfriend as my partner to my formal and the stupid rules should be changed to allow me to do it", because when I was in school none of the gay guys in my year dared come out until after they'd safely escaped the place. But on the other hand, I feel that we should have come even further by now and that this shouldn't even be an issue. Schools are often awful enough places to be without rules in place that institutionalise bigotry.

Of course, it's not just Churchie- when approached for comment, the Queensland Catholic Education Commission confirmed that 'teh gay' were also banned from attending Catholic School formals. Institutionalised bigotry at its best. Maybe federal funding should be denied to schools who practise discrimination... see how quickly those bastards change their tune on the issue then.

UPDATE: For anyone who wants a look at the hard core of homophobic Queenslanders at their most disgusting, check out the despicable outpourings on the comments page.

NSW Police riddled with anti-gay bias

A story in the SMH of the disgraceful treatment of Dallas McCarthy, a young gay police officer who was forced to quit his job due to ongoing harassment from his colleagues.

It seems we're not that many years ahead of Jamaica- though the New York Times, whose article I linked to, clearly see no irony in describing Jamaica as a 'dire place for gays' only a few days after publishing a story of the hate-crime killing of a 15 year old gay boy by a 14 year old.