Gay Rights

#MarriageEquality and my stance.

equalityavatarEdit: As of 6:01pm AEDT on Thursday the 7th of December 2017, Australia now has Marriage Equality. What I wrote below in regards to marriage and its reasons, its purposes, no longer applies. I am leaving it for historical reasons, for context of what my thoughts were prior to Australia gaining equality. Love won.

With everyone going crazy on social networks right now about #MarriageEquality and the US Supreme Court looking into the rulings on it, I was going to re-iterate my thoughts and my stance on the topic.  Only, I realised I had never consolidated my thoughts in writing.  Well, at least not in a blog post.

It’s pretty clear I’m a supporter of equality.  Sexuality equality is what I talk most about, but also sexual, racial, and any other type I tend to argue in support of.  So let me explain why.

You see, I am a straight white male from Sydney Australia.  See?  Oh wait, that’s got nothing to do with it.  You see, I am right handed.  Wait, that’s got nothing either.  I have my car license?  I uhh … I uhh … I guess I don’t have any personal directly affecting reason to support equality… Continue reading →

Please help get science and reason in gossip mags. #equality #StopAVN

The ACL (Australian Christian Lobby) has recently started a campaign to get their followers and supporters to get Margaret Court nominated and voted in as a National Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia.  Women’s Day, one of the most popular gossip mags here in Australia, has a website with a short-list of 100 nominees where you can vote.

In an attempt to counter this, we’d like to try to get as many people as possible to vote instead for Professor Ian Frazer (#32 in the list), the inventor of the Gardasil vaccine.  Reasons why you should support him are given below the jump. Continue reading →

So much for “tradition”. #equality.

As of the 1st of February, the laws that restrict Australians from getting married overseas will be revoked.  These laws, introduced by lil johnny howard in 2004, not only made changes to the definition of marriage, specifically adding lines that would discriminate against homosexual, transgender, and nongendered people, but it also would not allow Certificate For Intent to be issues to GLBT Australians who were overseas.

The CFI is a sheet of paper that certifies that the person does not already have a legally recognised partner and is free to marry.  Since 2004, thanks to the changes added by phil ruddock and lil jonny howard, LGBT people cannot receive these.  Without these, they cannot marry.  Well, could not.  They will be able to once again after February 1st. Continue reading →

Blinkered views halting the equality.

I was on my way in to the office this morning when a friend of mine retweeted this from Mike Stuchbery. The article is from a Doctor in Toowoomba Queensland, and it’s his opinions of gay marriage. It sent me in to a rage, I responded but I’m not sure if any of my replies are going to be approved so I’ve decided to quote the article and my responses here as well. They’re short and designed to be comments on an article, so for the most part there’s no real references.

The article shows very clearly the blinkered views of life and reality that is stopping equality from happening. It is stopping people from seeing their own blindingly obvious bigotry and errors in ways of thinking. I know none of the people who need to read this will, which is a shame really. Continue reading →

Christians choosing hate over love.

Clover Moore has recently made changes to a same sex adoption bill that will allow religious adoption agencies to continue to discriminate against homosexual couples and refuse them service for no reason other than their sexuality.

At the moment in Australia, only the ACT and Western Australia allow same sex couples to adopt.  NSW is currently in the process of amending the state laws in an attempt to bring NSW in to that list as well.  Unfortunately, religious groups are showing their bigotry and “christian love” again in their forcing of certain exemptions as well as their opposition to the bill.  Continue reading →

Bigotry and homophobia in politics (@wendy4senate & @h2oaquarium). #ausvotes

I’ve made my position clear in the past where I stand on gay marriage and adoption, in that I’m in full support of both.  I’ve argued my view that the arguments against gay marriage are not about giving homosexual people special rights, but about removing special restrictions on them so they have the same rights.

In the last few days the twitter and blogosphere has gone crazy about some comments made by a Queensland Family First candidate, Wendy Francis on twitter and in her blog (both of which have now been removed as you can see from that story), but personally I feel those attacking her are attacking the wrong person. Continue reading →

Why you need to support gay marriage.

A good friend of mine, Riayn, posted a blog entry earlier today that left me flabbergasted.  An elderly gay couple in the US who had gone to extraordinary lengths to set up the best legal support of each other they could were totally used, abused, and destroyed by the local council.  They had it all, they had it all stolen from them, all because of bigotry and homophobia.  Treated worse than they would have been were they just single, separate people.

This kind of thing is atrocious and everyone involved deserves to have the book thrown at them.  It is a horrendous abuse of human rights, and EXACTLY the reason why we NEED equal rights for gay people when it comes to marriage. Continue reading →

Another day another homophobe.

marriage 1960 vs 2006Another day another homophobe.  Today’s is yet another followup to Lisa Pryor’s article in the Sydney Morning Herald.  This one comes from Chris Meney director, Life, Marriage and Family Centre, Catholic Archdiocese and it’s about as closet homophobe as one can get.  Not a single argument applies purely to homosexual couples, they can all be applied equally to heterosexual ones and in doing so the arguments are completely destroyed.

Lets analyze his response shall we?

Continue reading →

My friend, the persecution complex.

christianpersecutionLate last week Lisa Pryor wrote a brilliant opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on gay marriage and the bigotry of those who oppose it.  Most opponents to it behave rather offended and seem to argue as though they feel gay marriage would somehow affect them and their lives.  Lisa put this argument to rest very nicely and in a much more inoffensive manner than I could have ever achieved by proposing rather tongue-in-cheekily that gay marriage be voluntary so that it only affects those who opt-in to it.

Of course, the bigots couldn’t take this.  They had to be offended and so they scoured the article to find something to oppose.  What they found was a mention of one particular religious leaning in the final three paragraphs (out of 11 paragraphs), and responded as though those paragraphs were abusive to this religious leaning (which they weren’t).  This, is a very clear case of persecution complex.

Continue reading →