Breaking News: None of this is insulting...

Barnaby Joyce claims that no one has been insulted by the "debate" on equality.

 

 Barnaby Joyce who is unbelievably the deputy PM of Australia, has recently claimed that "I don't see anybody's been assaulted or killed, or even really insulted" as a result of the proposed plebiscite.

 Barnaby Joyce is the buffoon who threatened to kill Johnny Depp's puppys. The same person claimed that gay people shouldn't have equal rights because "everybody doesn't always get everything they want". He attacked the brave people who exposed the cruelty in the Australian wool industry for exposing the cruelty instead of addressing the actual cruelty.

 A bit of back story, the Plebiscite is a public vote on if gay people should have the same rights as straight people. The plebiscite isn't necessary and the current laws are unconstitutional. The vote would not be binding, the government will fund homophobia and hate speech in the lead up to the vote, and even if the vote passed the result wouldn't even grant equal marriage rights, it would entrench LGBT discrimination into law.

 Barnaby Joyce has said this dispute homophobes calling gay people Nazis knowing how offensive that is because the Nazis were persecuting gay men during the holocaust.

  This is despite homophobic flyers being distributed on car windshields and into innocent peoples letter boxes. These flyers were insulting to Nelsen Mandela, children, single parent families, foster families, blended families, and of course LGBT Australians, they were incredibly untruthful, off-topic and bigoted.

 He said this after people protesting an anti-bullying campaign have implied LGBT youth are pedophiles and called for them to be lynched. In addition to saying that supporters of equality should be killed.

 So there could be a few reasons for his demonstrably false comment.

1. He is incompetent, and has not followed the news, he did not check up on the facts before being interviewed. 

2.  He is aware of all this homophobic behavior but has such a low opinion of LGBT Australians that he doesn't consider any of this misinformation, threats of violence or vilification to be  insulting.

3. He is not being incompetent, he is putting his homophobia aside and he is choosing to lie the he Australian people.

 

 I don't think any of these possibility's are ideal for anyone holding a political position. We should expect more competence, respect and honesty from the leader of a political parry. That he is the deputy prime minister of Australia should be a concern to all decent Australians. He should apologise and resign immediately.

 Malcolm Turnbull who is also for the homophobic plebiscite but has falsely claimed the "debate" on equal rights would be civil and respectful. Mr. Turnbull has so far ignored all the hate speech and misinformation being spread by the anti-marriage homophobes. He has taken no action against those from within his party that re spreading this hate speech, even before the public funded gay vilification program officially begins.  

 Despite the fact that he has also said that Australia has no place for homophobia and that homophobia would not be tolerated in Australia, he has yet to stand up to the radical right in defense of Australians.
 Mr.Turnbull may be in a difficult position one one hand his party demands that they keep an election promise for once and vote on equality before the end of 2016, while on the other hand radical bigots within his party refuse to vote on marriage equality without the horrific plebiscite.
 At this stage it seems he ether needs to stand up to the rot within his party and vote for real marriage equality before the end of the year as promised or he needs to declare he has lost faith in his party's ability to govern and hand over the government. I am not sure how that would work in or system but he cant continue to do nothing.

 

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..

Response to the Orlando terrorism that targeted the gay community.

 First i want to express my heartfelt condolences to the victims and their family's of the Orlando hate crime massacre. I am in shock, as many Australians are, we can only watch on in horror as we learn more about this horrific event. I wasn't actually going to comment, but i felt i had no choice as my sadness turned to anger.

 I read in disgust as Trump tweeted without mentioning the fact this attack targeted gays, and reiterated his plan to ban Muslims, with no mention of banning homophobia or military grade weapons.
Trump hasn't been a champion in the fight against homophobia (or LGBT hate) to say the least. His party, the Republican Party had presidential candidates un-apologetically attending "kill the gays" rally's. I doubt he will address his parties homophobia.

 I watched in utter disappointment as our Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull used the tragedy to applaud his own "anti-terrorism" measures and somehow managed to not mention it being a hate crime against the LGBT community in a gay bar during pride month.
 He also failed to mention correcting his own parties homophobia; He didn't decide to protect safe schools, he didn't denounce his fellow Liberals homophobia,not even those who attended anti-gay hate rally's, and he didn't promise marriage equality.

UPDATE: Mr Turnbull has after some time made a new statement that does mention the gays. But still didn't substantially address the problem of homophobia that leads to violence. Lets hope his assurances are not empty.
 

 Make no mistake it is homophobia (transphobia, biphobia) that causes violent bigots to target LGBT people. It is the same homophobia we see in Australia perpetuated by anti-gay organizations.  We need to stop the hate.

  One could imagine these organization today, not even 24 hours after the tragedy, might release press releases condemning violence against gays, maybe some of them might make the connection that there particular brand of hate fuels this kind of violence. One could hope that some would apologise for there actions and maybe start working for peace and inclusion. 
 Maybe some of them did, maybe somewhere some bigots are realising there on the wrong side and are making plans to make amends for there past mistakes.

  Not Lyle Shelton of the Australian "christian" lobby (ACL) though, no not him. He took the opportunity to promote his and other bigots attacks of a safe schools program, designed to reduce bullying in schools and LGBT youth suicide. You know a program trying to prevent the kind of homophobia that leads to violent hate crimes. I shouldn't be surprised the ACL is a hate group and their leaders say and do a lot of deplorable things, but their really scraping the bottom of the barrel doing this today. 

 But he's not alone, Peter Madden of the Family First party, a gay hate group that actually has i think one person in our government, and no they don't really put family's first.
 That he could say such homophobic nonsense not just on the same day, but in the same tweet as he mentions the Orlando hate massacre is so mindbogglingly disgusting i am really struggling for words.

Support Victims of Pulse Shooting

 

If you want to help in another way then please contact your local government candidates, your churches, your schools, let them know you do not support homophobia. 

Consider supporting equality with your upcoming vote.

 At the very least please support your LGBT family and friends during this time and make a conscious decision to fight homophobia in all its forms.

 

 

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.