Breaking News: Turnbull has an opportunity to do the right thing.

Turnbull has an opportunity to do the right thing.

 As i am sure everyone is aware Turnbull has inherited Abbots homophobic plebiscite on equality. The policy delays marriage equality vote in Parliament until after a non-binding public vote. Even then we have seen that the promise to have this vote before the end of the year has been dropped. Despite the only reason the Lib/Nats can give for risking LGBT lives in this way is that it was an election promise. We know from there track record that the LIb/Nats don't actually care about keeping election promises.

 Most political commentators agree that Turnbull made a deal with the radical right of his party for the leadership after Abbots behavior became too bizarre to ignore. This deal with the devil seems to have included delaying marriage equality in Australia. 

 It should also be noted that the Lib/Nats plan for marriage equality would not give true equality to LGBT Australians. The documents show that anyone would be free to discriminate against gay people and pretend they were not in fact married. That is not equality,

So to sum all that up the Lib/Nat plan would:

It is no going to happen this year.
It is unnecessary.
It will be a hugely expensive waste of money.
It will provide funds for the hate groups to force channels to spread hate speech and vilify the LGBT community. 
It will provide funds for the hate groups to spread misinformation about the LGBT community.
It will include having a plebiscite that would not be binding.
Politicians have already said they will not abide by the plebiscite decision f it was for equality. 
Marriage equality would still then have to pass through Parliament at some unspecified date in the future.
True marriage equality would not be achieved because same-sex marriages would be subject to legal sanctioned discrimination.
It could cost lives.

 Turnbull has said that he believes the "debate" would be polite and civil. He has said that Australia has no place for homophobia. He has said homophobia wouldn't be tolerated in Australia. However he has failed to act when instances of homophobia have occurred. 

But the far-right within his party have done him a favor. They have proved him wrong. Before the official "debate" even started. They have released flyers that are misleading, inaccurate, and homophobic, they are in no way civil. 

 These disgusting flyers try to use Nelson Mandela in an attack on LGBT families and their children, which the Mandela foundation has declared was unauthorized and does not align with Nelson Mandalas views as he stood against homophobia. The flyers also attacked a school anti-bullying program and pretended that it was somehow linked to Australia's marriage laws.

A right wing newspaper that has previously printed racist comic in reaction to Aboriginal youth being tortured has now published a homophobic and anti-Semitic comic by the same "artist" that equates marriage equality with Nazis. As anyone with a passing knowledge of history or access to the internet should know, homosexual men were persecuted and killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
 It gets worse as the ACL hate group have made similar claims before, and it is all over the internet how disrespectful and inaccurate that was. I doubt the artist or the editors could have missed seeing this and how vicious this comic would be. Interestingly this my actually be covered under Australians anti-hate speech laws as it attacks not just gays but also gay Jews.

 This has given Turnbull an opportunity to announce with great disappointment that he was wrong and that the far-right can obviously not behave civilly, and so have proven they cant be given public funds to spread such dangerous lies. He can declare that they have forced his hand and that the plebiscite is off, he can then immediately vote in Parliament for true marriage equality. He can easily use the comic and the disgusting flyers as justification that overrides any promises he may have made behind closed doors. His first priority must be to the Australian people after all.

 At the very least he can concede that all material on the anti-marriage side must be fact checked, and that any applicantsfor the funding will have a background check, and any uncivil, untrue or discriminatory past conduct against the LGBT community will eliminate them from the process.

 The attack on LGBT Australians and their family's is so vile Turnbull could even use it as a legitimate reason to strengthen the laws protecting LGBT Australians from hate speech and discrimination.

Hate speech flyers

Reactions to the dondale chrisis.

Reactions to child abuse.

 Most Australians were appalled and disgusted by the horrible revelations made by the four corners program. This program exposed the government sanctioned abuse and torture of children in detention. 

 Some Australians however reacted in a very different way. They took to Parliament to try to water down our anti-discrimination laws. I am so ashamed that some Australians reaction to seeig Aboriginal children tortured was to try to remove the limited protections they have under the law.

 It should be noted that our anti-discrimination laws are only ever used in the most heinous and public of cases.

 We can see a few familiar faces behind this pro-racism push. 

 There is Cory, who made a name for himself with his homophobia, but he seems to be spreading his prejudice around. Cory has loudly attacked the freedom of speech of his victims, when those victims accurately describe his attacks as homophobia.
 It should be noted that he did not seek to change the fact that the big religions are exempt from most anti-discrimination laws.

And we cant forget Pauline ruler of One Nation, who has made racism and bigotry her platform as a professional politician. Pauline is well known for her attacks on freedom of speech and expression.

 Roberts of One Nation seems to be a conspiracy theorist. I think the fact someone voted for him means we need a re-think of our voting system, like at least making information on the candidates available to the voting public.

 I cant see much information on Brian Burston, being that he is pro-racism and willingly joined One Nation we can probably assume sadly, that he shares its other bigoted views.

 Rod Culleton is another One Nation member, i cant see much about him, other then he claims to have helped farmers against the banks, and has had a larceny conviction annulled. One wonders as he is with One Nation, if he would support farmers of another race, religion or sexuality?

 These people and their pro-racism reaction to the Dondale kids expose sicken me. If they are your government representatives please let them know we need to strength anti-discrimination laws, not weaken them.

Bigot Point: "Opposing gay marriage doesn't make me homophobic", debunked!

Bigot Point: 

"Opposing gay marriage doesn't make me homophobic"

 Debunked!

 There are some bigoted people who say and do extremely homophobic things, but then cry foul when they are rightly identified as homophobic. This is an easy one to debunk, frankly i don't even think the bigots saying this nonsense believe it.

 

 So lets get the definition out of the way first up, probably the easiest way to think of the definition of homophobe is to think of a racist, but instead of being prejudiced against a race the person is prejudiced against gay people.

 So with that out of the way, we can see that discriminating against gay people would be homophobic. We can see that not wanting gay people to have equal rights would definitely be homophobic. If you are against two same sex consenting adults having the right to marry you are homophobic.

 And no before you go there, it doesn't matter why you want to discriminate. Maybe you got drunk and hit on your gay same sex best friend in university and they turned you down, maybe your interpretation of your particular religion encourages your disgusting views, maybe you have repressed your own homosexuality and want to lash out at those brave enough to accept theirs, perhaps you believe that gays come from the moon to steal your socks,  it doesn't matter what the reason, how you try and justify your prejudice isn't important.

 If you don't want gay people to have equal rights, if you want to discriminate against gay people, your homophobic!

 By claiming otherwise you are trying to excuse homophobia. The problem isn't gay people wanting equal rights, the problem is the homophobes that are denying them.

 And please lets stop saying that describing someones homophobic behavior as homophobic is "name calling". Come on, that's as much "name calling" as calling a spade a spade is "name calling". If you have a problem with being labeled a homophobe you need to change your behavior, so you no longer accurately fit the definition, it is really that simple..

Review Hung Like An Argentine Duck

Hung Like An Argentine Duck

A journey  back in time to the origins of sexual intimacy.

Author:                             Dr John Long

Publisher:                         Fourth Estate

Type:                                 Soft Cover

Pages:                                249

Genre:                               non-fiction

Published:                         2011

ISBN:                                9780732292737

 This is a neat book, its novel sized coming in at, a little over eight inches tall, more than five inches wide and about an inch thick. It was a perfect holiday purchase. I noticed absolutely no editing errors within the books pages. There are a few black and white diagrams thorough that help demonstrate the subject being covered, and there are eight full colour pages in the center of the book. 

 The book beings with an interesting forward and continues on with an interesting preface. The preface begins with a loving poem, somehow ends up at auto erotic asphyxiation before eventually explaining what the book is and what it sets out to do.

  Chapters one through seven detail the authors fossil discovery. In chapter one we look at the penis of ducks, whales and the largest human penis, we examine the genital sizes of the other great apes and are taken to an Australian desert on a fossil hunt. We examine those fossils in chapter two. Chapter three is shark sex 101. In chapter four we see the procedure in writing and releasing a scientific paper.

 In chapter eight we explore the origin of sex. Chapter nine deals with the sometimes horrific sex lives of insects, spiders and crustaceans. From there we move on to chapter tens examination of the first sex on land with amphibians and lizards. Chapter eleven details the difficulties of dinosaur sex. We finally arrive at mammalian sex in chapter twelve. Chapter thirteen has a detailed look at sperm. And finally chapter fourteen ties it all together showing us how we humans are indeed related to that first fossil fish from chapter one.

 We end the book with an epilogue and extensive notes were all the books mentioned are referenced, we then find acknowledgements and an exhaustive index.

 The book does have a brief look at homosexuality but this isn't the books focus, homosexuality is covered as a natural part of animal, human and sexuality, which is as it should be.

 While the book does get a little 'sciencey' at times, everything is quickly explained in an easy to understand manner using common day terms. The author needs to be commended in his ability to do this so well.

  

 I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history, sexuality, science, sex, animals, paleontology, evolution, or anyone just wanting a good read.