Gay And Lesbian

There are some very odd bedfellows in the anti-gay-marriage camp. Like, for example, conservative Christians and gay libertarians. The former think that gays will wreck marriage, the latter that marriage will wreck gays.

The first argument goes like this: marriage was made by God to unite men and women. Gay marriage will debase that institution, stripping it of its sacred meaning.

The same argument, couched in more secular terms, is offered just as often by people who say they are against discrimination, except when it comes to marriage because… and then insert whatever spurious, depressingly legalistic, horribly thin argument you choose…

Continue reading "Those big fat gay weddings will be well worth crashing" »

Same-sex parents are no different than other parents in wanting the very best for their children.

We know that removing legislative inequality is a very significant step in lessening the discrimination and social exclusion experienced by these parents and their children. All children, irrespective of the family units into which they are born or live, deserve the full protection of the law.

That’s why I’m proud to have chaired a year-long Social Development Committee Inquiry into same sex parenting for the South Australian Parliament, and why I’m prouder still of the wide-ranging reforms aimed at providing greater legal protection for children of same-sex parents recommended to Parliament yesterday.

Continue reading "Kids with two Mums are Weet-Bix kids too" »

ANZAC Day is a day for commemoration and celebration of Australian identity, so long as we remember the gays and the Muslims were never a part of this.

Anzac Day has become much more than a day of commemorating a military campaign; it has become a national focal point through which we locate what it means to be “Australian.” While the notion of “Australian values” raises disparate and often romantic ideas of mateship, courage and loyalty, it is sometimes insidiously mobilised to express prejudices.

Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, made this point painfully clear when he lamented over Twitter  “that as we remember servicemen and women we remember [the] Australia they fought for - wasn’t gay marriage & Islamic!”

Continue reading "Christian lobby chief violates the true Anzac spirit" »

One of my favourite episodes of Will & Grace involves Jack stumbling across the “Welcome Back Home” conversion program.

It’s hilarious for two reasons: One, because Jack cunningly chooses to think of the group as “Welcome Back Homo” and two, as the episode amusingly shows, washing that gay right out of your hair isn’t all that simple. Or successful.

My interest in conversion programs is two-fold. I find them stupidly hilarious as Will & Grace and But I’m a Cheerleader and Saved and Boston Legal and Big Love and plenty of other examples testify.

Continue reading "Apple should have kept the anti-gay app" »

“Homosexual tendencies (are) one of many conditions that beset fallen humanity.”

According to Exodus International’s policy statements, those who embrace “homosexual behaviours” have lives that are “sinful” and “destructive”.

Rather than simply condemn non-heterosexual desire, Exodus International (A Christian organisation that condemns homosexuality) adopts what they refer to as a ‘redemptive’ approach – seeking to ‘reorient’ the ‘fallen’.

Continue reading "‘Pray away the gay’ app a sign of deeper bigotry" »

Bad TV. Naughty marital upheavals. Evil, self-centred friend-tionships.

This – give or take some neologistic hyperbole – is the view of British academic Frank Furedi who is upset that popular culture doesn’t depict more “functional” families.

Of particular concern to the man cited as being the UK’s most cited sociologist is the high-end American soap opera Brothers and Sisters which screens on Monday nights on the Seven Network

Starring Rachel Griffiths, Sally Field, Calista Flockhart and (up until recently) Rob Lowe, Brothers and Sisters revolves around an extended California-based clan called the Walkers.

Continue reading "The family values of Brothers and Sisters" »