Coopers "debate" is homophobic

                         Coopers Fake Debate

 The Bible society is a right wing religious hate group that advocates for teaching the bibles in schools, is against the Australian constitution, and opposes equal rights for LGBT Australians, they even have a book "that celebrates impact of the Bible on Australia’s First Nations People!".

 THAT'S PROBLEMATIC

 This bible society has teamed up with Coopers (a brewery that is a heavy donator to the Coalition) as part of a "creative campaign" they have place bible verses on a light Coopers beer's labels and are hosting light discussions on heavy topics. 

 The campaign started with a "debate" on marriage equality. 

And oh my it is a disingenuous bit of rubbish. So we have two coalition politicians siting around a cafe table with the "debate moderator". We are told that one of the politicians is pro-equal rights and the other is for discrimination.
 But that's really where the problem begins they don't call it marriage equality they call it same-sex marriage, and they don't call it pro-discrimination they call it pro-traditional marriage. So right from the start they are phrasing the "debate" in a biased way. And lets just look at that claim of traditional marriage a little bit,

 It is a fact that same sex couples have been getting married since at least 3100 BCE, please observe that this is long before the invention of Christianity which was around 355CE.

  In Australia we see that our marriage laws were changed in the marriage act in 2004, marriage was re-defined to specifically and unconstitutionally to exclude same sex couples. 

 So which is more traditional? 

Being a radical christian group its possible The bible society meant biblical marriage instead of traditional marriage. But that would lead to more problems check out biblical marriage here.

 Firstly the Bible Society claims that "Australia's national conversation has become fraught with shallowness and contempt for those who have a differing opinion,". I would agree that the homophobes excuses for denying LGBT Australians equal rights are often shallow, i would also add nonsensical. I would also agree that homophobes including those using the religion of Christianity as an excuse for their bigotry  have shown contempt for innocent homosexuals for over 200 years and continue to do so. 

 But as to a differing opinion, well that putting it very mildly, the pro-equality side is simply asking that LGBT Australians are given the constitutional rights they should have while the other homophobic side is fighting to keep a 2004 law that actively discriminates against LGBT Australians, i think that's a bit more then a differing opinion. And the only real reason the bigots have for this pro-discrimination stance is they hate gay people, and i don't think that's a good enough excuse to deny equal rights.

Now that that's out of the way i will just correct some of the misinformation presented in the "debate".

 Anyone who opposes Homosexual people having equal rights is by definition homophobic. 

 Equal rights is not a "light" subject, Not when a hate group endorsed by Coalition politicians has recently praised ISIL for killing gay men. Not when homophobes protesting an anti-bullying school program call LGBT children pedophiles and incite others to hang them. Not when up to 17% of male suicides would be prevented by simply allowing marriage equality.

 To suggest the two positions one wanting their constitutional rights and the other wanting discrimination are equal is ridiculous. Whats next a "debate' about racial equality with racists where the two positions are treated as having equal merit?

   

 It is impossible to have a real debate with homophobes. The first thing the homophobe said was a lie.Marriage has not always and is not even currently between one man and one woman, to say otherwise means he is ill informed and therefore shouldn't be forwarding a position on the matter or he is active being actively deceitful. As marriage between same sex couples have been happening since around 3100 BCE then that too predates the Australian state, but look it also predates Christianity. The moderator should have corrected this misinformation, or a better pro-equality speaker should have been given the opportunity to do so. But as it stands now it might look to the uninformed viewer that the homophobes argument was accurate and had merit, while in reality it did not.

 Suggested Bible Verse 01:

 The simple fact is that there is no valid argument against marriage equality. The current laws which re-defined marriage in 2004 to specifically deny same-sex couples the right to marry is immoral, unconstitutional and discriminatory. It should also be noted that the marriage laws are not supposed to reflect one religions current definition of marriage, civil marriage and religious marriage are supposed to be two separate things. Correcting the legal definition of marriage will not effect any religions homophobic definition of marriage at all.

Suggested Bible Verse 02:

What you can do:

Fax your MP and demand they uphold the Australian constitution and embrace Marriage Equality.

A lot of decent people are also boycotting Coopers brewery for this homophobic act.

UPDATE: 

 Coopers brewery have responded to the outcry of disgust by decent Australians. Their first press release defended the "Debate" advertisement, and went so far as to falsely claim the "debate" in the advertisement was balanced! They went on to childishly claim that those offended by the fake debate advertisement were not mature, and that Australia needs to debate if innocent people should have equal rights or if we should continue to allow discrimination against them. 

 They also made the demonstrably false claim that by participating in this joint campaign with the bible society they were not trying to spread any religious messages, this despite the fact that that is the bible society stated purpose for the campaign.

 In this press release there was no apology to the LGBT community of Australia, and there wasn't even mention of the LGBT community. They also didn't commit to doing the Australian thing by standing up for the underdog and making sure LGBT Australians have a fair go at marriage.

                                Awkward Moments Children's Bible a great source for verses

After the backlash from that first obnoxious press release Coopers Brewery released another. This one also repeated the insulting falsehood that they were not pushing any religious message. 
 But remarkably they now claimed that they had nothing to do with the fake debate Coopers advertisement claiming further that their brand was used illegally without their permission. 
 Now if this is true they will obviously try to sever all ties with this horrible bible society and at the very least will sue them in order to protect the Coopers brand. If its true.
 Again no support of equality, LGBT Australians equal rights were mentioned. They didn't identify how they were going to try to mend the damage to the LGBT Australians, or there brand identity.

 #boycottcoopers

 Its not just decent individual Australians who are boycotting Coopers, many clubs and pubs have shown their support for human rights by boycotting Coopers! Careful or you might rekindle our faith in humanity. 
 And wouldn't this be another great opportunity for Prime Minister Trumble to show he has a backbone and actually give LGBT Australians their equal rights?

 VIDEO

* Our video guy is recovering from surgery, he will make a YouTube version of this story when he can, sorry for any inconvenience.

Terrorism in Australia

Terrorism in Australia

Melbourne CBD 

 In a recent terror attack in Australian city of Melbourne, 37 people were injured and 5 people tragically died. Pauline Hanson happened to be having one of her numerous media events at the time. You can see an advisor whispers in her ear and she looks stunned for a second and then turns and says smugly (note the look on her face!);

"Iv just been told there's a terorrister (sic) attack that's just happened in Melbourne."
"People don't look right! That their not going to assumeulate (sic) into our society, Have a different ideology, different beliefs, don't probide (sic) by our laws, our culture, our way of life, don't let them in!
Make this country safe for our future generations!"
She went on to falsely claim that 
"all terrorist attacks in this country have been by Muslims!"

 It should be noted that this was another homophobic terror attack, with the man having stabbed his gay brother and vowing 'I’m going to kill all gays and poofters and lesbians'.
Now if we ignore her targeting Muslims and pretend she had directed her comments against the homophobia of the terrorist we can actually see she would have been justified in making them. So lets fix that for her to make her comments relevant and factual, lets direct them at the proper targets.

'Homophobes are not going to assimilate into our society. Homophobes have a different ideology, different beliefs, they don't abide by our laws, our culture, and our way of life. Homophobia should not be tolerated! We need to make this country safe for our future generations.'

 Of course she will never admit her 'mistake', it doesn't further her political career to actually fight the causes of terror. She still has not apologised for trying to straight-wash the homophobic Orlando attack and she i cant find anywhere where she has corrected her misinformation about the Melbourne attack, she certainly hasn't changed her homophobic policies.

 Terror Organisation:

 Earlier in February the Q-society held a fund raising event. I hadn't previously heard of the Q-society but its apparently a right wing group that opposes freedom of religion and the Australian constitution. Larry Pickering (who may be trying to win Australia's most disgusting cartoonist award from Bill Leak) attended the event where he said;

 "I can't stand Muslims…[but] they are not all bad, they do chuck pillow-biters off buildings." 

 For those who don't know "pillow-biters" is a derogatory term for homosexuals, and Larry here is referring to the terrorist group ISIL policy of murdering gay men by throwing them off tall buildings. Obviously this support of terrorism should have been immediately condemned he should have been booed off the stage and escorted out of the building to a waiting police car, where he could receive a psychiatric evaluation before his trial on charges of hate crimes, advocating violence and supporting terrorism. But that didn't happen. instead we had right -wing, homophobic, science denying, anti-constitutional, pro-child bullying Cory Bernardi attended the event and thus provided his own support for this group. But he wasn't alone, George Christensen who shares many of Cory's reprehensible views and actually advocates for the death penalty for convicted terrorists. 
 None of us are layers specialising in anti-terrorism legislation, but it seems clear to us that praising the terrorism of terrorists is an act of terrorism as it creates a serious risk to the health and safety of the public. As this event was a fundraiser and this organisation appears to be a terrorist organisation all those in attendance have also funded terrorism which is a crime. The Q-society appears to be eligible for categorisation as a terrorist organisation as it seems to meet the criteria:

• is engaged in preparing, planning, assisting or fostering the doing of a terrorist act
  or
• advocates the doing of a terrorist act.

• counsels, promotes, encourages or urges the doing of a terrorist act
• gives instruction on the doing of a terrorist act
• directly praises the doing of a terrorist act, where there is a substantial risk that this praise might lead someone to engage in a terrorist act. 

 The enforcement of our anti-terrorism legislation seems unlikely as the perpetrators were white, non-Muslims, the proposed victims were gay men, also the categorisation as a terrorist organisation is at the discretion of the attorney general.
 But you can do something, if you remember Malcolm Trumble promised to protect us from homophobia and hate speech, lets at least ask him to do the bare minimum and condemn George Christensen for attending the Q Society's fundraiser!

One Nations* parade of clowns:

One nation* is a minor political party that relies on fear and misinformation to spread homophobia and racism. You will remember their candidates have shown and generally weird and often disgusting alternate views on reality. And I'm not just referencing the standard climate denial, anti-science, homophobic, anti-constitutional, racist, sexist, anti-worker, sexist, rubbish. One i missed was the outrageous alternate reality of Peter Rogers who claimed that poor Syrian refuge child on the beach was faked. Link to story here, but be warned it has that graphic photo, though it is slightly blurred.  

 So after all the other inappropriate candidates One Nation* gives us; Michelle Meyers, not to be confused with Michael Myers, who come to think of it might make a better candidate. Michelle Meyers claims to believe such insane things as "abortions create cannibals', 'gays are indoctrinating children, 'gays are confused', 'trans people are broken'. and that 'two dead Harvard graduated Norwegian homosexuals (who are also apparently somehow Nazi's) are using a well known mind control to make marriage equality and holographic (?) families more acceptable'.

 While this should alarm everyone, what is possibly more distressing is that the government is giving her its preferences!
 I am not going to comment on this further except to say that she is obviously unfit for government and i hope she receives the psychiatric help or education she evidently needs.

  
 *excepts apply. 
 

 

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

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..

The Liberals need to be a bit more liberal.

 Take a few steps to the left Malcolm.

 Just a quick bit of back ground. Tony Abbot outraged Australians with his far right opinions and his policy attacks on the poor, sick, refugees, and gays. He seemed to be set on breaking every one of his election promises. He made more and more ridiculous comments and was eventually ousted by Malcolm Turnbull. 

 Turnbull was believed by many to be more middle ground in his views, for instance he favored a marriage equality vote in Parliament rather than a costly and decisive plebiscite.
But when Malcom Turnbulll got in he continued on with Abbot like policy, he now wanted a plebiscite, he attacked medicare and leading up to the election he kowtowed to the radical right wing nuts in their attacks on children. 

 He ignored the fact gays were the victims when first commenting on Orlando. He later promised to have zero tolerance for homophobia but example after example saw him not speaking out against it. 
 It surfaced a few days before the election that the government was going to give taxpayers money to anti-gay hate groups so they could argue against equality, in the lead up to a plebiscite.

 So the election doesn't look good for the Turnbull government with the two major party's pretty much neck and neck, there has been a large swing against Turnbull's government but neither party look likely to have the numbers to form a majority government.

 Cory Bernardi is a far right wing homophobe, conspiracy theorist and member of Turnbull's government. Cory has come out calling on Turnbull, if he manages to form government, to ignore the voter backlash and stall the plebiscite. He went on to claim that equality, is just a 'trendy, fringe issue'. I totally disagree, i  think equal rights, preventing youth suicide, upholding our constitution,  and protecting children from bullying is an extremely important issue. 

 He seemed to be implying that the swing against Turnbull was because the Turnbull government wasn't far right enough... I maybe could understand this argument if the swing had been to further right partys, like the dreaded Fred Niles abomination party, or Family First* (*conditions apply) but it wasn't, the swing was towards Labor which is slightly left of Turnbull's party and is in favor of a parliamentary vote on equality and is against the homophobic plebiscite.

 Now Cory is one of those radical right wingers that try to turn the tables on their victims, you know the type, claiming that straight people would be personally harmed if gays had equal rights. I think this outburst from him is just along similar lines, the people showed in the election that they are against the costly, homophobic and non-binding plebiscite, that they are for marriage equality. 

 But Cory cant have that, so he tries to flip the table and claim that the voters moving to a (slightly) more left party is evidence that the voters want a more right wing government, i know it makes no sense but little he has said ever does.

 Personally i feel that both political partys in Australia need to shuffle to the left a bit. 
 When people like Cory Bernardi, and George Christensen are welcome in your party (Coalition) you know your teetering on the edge of the far right and need to run left a ways.
 Labor looks set to form a minority government but I do hope that Turnbull and his Coalition takes the election result as clear confirmation that we demand truth in politics and we demand equality. We need a leader that will stand up to homophobic insanity, we want our equal rights.

Update:

 It looks like a small percentage of this swing against Turnbull did go right wing, with Pauline Hansons racist One Nation getting a seat. 
 One could argue that this might still be in support of the LGBT community as much of Australia's news media in Australia, misrepresented the Orlando hate crime as a terror attack and failed to disclose its homophobic nature. 
 I can imagine some low information voters voting for the Islamophobic Hanson in misguided support of gay people, without realising how backwards and misinformed her views truly are.

Sources:

http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDefault-20499.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/04/marriage-equality-corey-bernardi-says-plebiscite-question-a-fifth-order-issue

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/03/marriage-equality-cory-bernardi-says-no-need-to-hurry-on-plebiscite

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-says-malcolm-turnbulls-future-is-up-for-debate-20160704-gpxuqe.html

 https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/17142

Abbott has been deposed.

Will there be a difference?

In a move that came far too late, the Liberal party has ousted their leader Tony Abbot, with Malcolm Turnbull becoming Australia new Prime Minister.

 In my opinion Mr Turnbul needs to do four things to prove to the australian people that the rot began and ended with Abbott, and isnt spread throught the Liberal party like skidmarks on speedos.

1. Immediately support marriage equality. The law should just be changed back, as Howard's changes were unconstitutional. If that cant be done then a free vote needs to happen, now.

2. Immediately cease offshore detention of refugees, close those refuge prison camps and hold a royal commission into the atrocities that the policy and the officials in charge oversaw.

3. Make good on the election promises that Mr Abbott broke; changes to the ABC, SBS, Pensions, The NBN, Gonski, GST etc. This not only disgraced the Liberal party but undermined our system of democracy. We cant have our political parties saying anything to get voted in, with no intention of keeping to what was said. 

4. Proper funding to indigenous community, cease plans to close them.

Obviously there are other things that need to be done before taking the Liberals to an election, such as getting real counselors back into schools, stop the attacks on the poor and sick, real action on climate change, having a minister for women who is actually a woman, having a minister for science, a minister for equality?

The ministers responsible for bad Liberal policy need to go, and some should just never be given portfolios; Morrison, Hunt, Joyce, Pyne, Hockey, Abetz, Andrews, Bernardi, Fierravanti-Wells, Dutton and Truss, are ministers i think he would avoid for various reasons.

It remains to be seen if we just witnessed a bucket swap.

Another broken promise

More changes to the GST

Abbot government breaks another election promise by applying more changes to the GST.
The GST was originally introduced in my understanding, as a replacement for all other taxes, while some taxes were abolished a lot still remained.  

Before the election Tony Abbot promised;

 "No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS,”

 If my memory is correct every one of those promises has now been broken.

Tony Abbot also said in relation to the GST;

"Let me be as categoric as I can. The GST won't change, full stop, end of story."

Recently the Abbot government announced it would remove the $1000 threshold for international GST charges and would like all purchases to include the GST. Though technically, only businesses with a $75,000 Australian turnover would need to comply.

This seems like another unfair attack on the poor, and I can only see this stifling Australia’s economy because it’s not just that we need to shop around in order to get the best price, but for us it is a matter of getting the item we need cheaply or simply not being able to afford it and having to go without.  Again the government’s policies show an uneven bias in favor of the rich. 

It also appears to be yet another backwards step, we had the delusion of the national broadband network, the mandatory retention of Meta data, the charging of GST on electronic purchases. It seems to show a government that is out of touch with current Australia’s needs and out of sync with the modern world.

And all those lies and broken promises, we seriously need a truth in election advertising law. I believe this behavior undermines the foundation of our democracy; we need to be able to trust our politicians won’t just say anything to get elected; they have to be legally held accountable to some extent.