According to the Sydney Morning Herald, NSW Christian Democratic Party Member of the Legislative Council Fred Nile has fallen afoul of the NSW Audit Office. According to them, Nile’s office was accessing a quite considerable number of Internet smut sites for research purposes. Nile has said he doesn’t have a computer in his office and the audit has encompassed everyone in the NSW State Parliament.  According to Nile, three CDP employees had been following links online to see what the Australian Sex Party and other pro-sex and social liberal organisations were linking to, with the aid of parliamentary information technology services. He doubted that any of his staff were accessing the sites to deliberately view smut. He argues that the operation was purely ’strategic’ in focus.

In NSW, former ALP State Cabinet Minister Paul McLeay resigned after being nabbed for doing the deed.

Recommended:

Nadia Jamal: “Fred Nile caught in web porn scandal” Sydney Morning Herald: 02.09.10: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/fred-nile-caught-in-web-porn-scandal-20100902-14nuc.html

It’s unfortunately not all that uncommon to spot exhibitionist fundamentalists spouting their drivel on New Zealandpublic streets, although in most major cities they’re totally ignored by pedestrians. Thank goodness for portable musical devices these days.

Such was not the case in an east Toronto neighbourhood, when a group of local fundamentalists made a nuisance of themselves. Granted, the right to religious freedom involves free speech, freedom of worship, freedom of assembly etc, but there are such things as civility and civic pluralism. The targets of the fundamentalist rancor were reportedly a Leslieville gay couple, who’d lived quietly on the Leslieville street for the last few years.

Or were they? According to the Highfield Road Gospel Hall parishioners, they were just holding an open air prayer service that wasn’t particularly ‘targeting’ anyone. One of the neighbours complained that at one point in the past, she was belittled by one of the parishioners because she was unmarried but cohabiting at the time. The neighbours haven’t complained formally, but the fundamentalists have said they’ll be back…

Recommended:

Anna Paperny: “Residents confront evangelists preaching outside gay couples home” Globe and Mail: 24.08.10: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/residents-confront-evangelists-preaching-outside-gay-couples-home/article1683855/

Summary: Ned the gay zombie has a small feline pet. This is his story…

Disclaimer: Toby Whithouse and the BBC own Being Human. I just set quirky nonprofit fanfiction in it. Incidentally, this takes place in a post S2 AU. Ned the gay zombie and the kitten are my own idea…

Rating: PG. After all, it does have  a kitten in it. However, there are gore scenes.

————————————-

“Niaowwww! Neowwwwwwwwww! Yrrowwwl!!!”

Ordinarily, Ned MacAllister would have been quite oblivious to the distant sounds of distress on the moor, concerned as he was about his own existential predicament as (a) a newly minted zombie, who (b) was trying to work things out and avoid detection by anyone who got too close and realised that (c) he didn’t sweat or have to breathe and that there was no heartbeat involved either. For whatever reason, though, he thought:

Oh, bugger it.

He ran forward, thankful that his body wasn’t necrotising and that he didn’t resemble a rotting corpse quite yet. As he rounded the corner, he saw it. There was a disembowelled cat and a snarling mongrel dog above its kill. Cowering in the corner was a small black and white kitten, frantically mewing in panic and fear as the animal stalked closer. Ned didn’t particularly like this scenario and decided to have a late tea tonight. His flesh coarsened, his eyes yellowed and his teeth grew sharpened and he uttered a loud inhuman roar of his own. It was the Deadside and he didn’t like it. It meant he lost control and turned into something wild and primal. The dog turned and instinctual creature that it was, growled its defiance at the interloper. Then it turned, ran forward and tried to leap on Ned, who moved lightning fast, grabbing it by its neck in midair, snapping it. An instant later, he threw himself on the startled, choking beast, tearing into its entrails, stomach, the succulent fare within.

(All right, not exactly succulent. However, zed digestive systems seemed to be infinitely more efficient than humans. He hadn’t had to go to the lav for ages, which was a minor benefit.)

He was startled to see the kitten inch forward and take a tentative bite itself. Then it looked up at him and mewed plaintively. It was too late, the moglet had imprinted itself on him, and he couldn’t escape. And anyway, the little fellow needed a square meal. And so it was that when Ned shouldered his backpack slightly later on, there was a diminutive feline passenger tucked securely in one of its fur-lined pockets.

SIX MONTHS LATER

Cardiff. As he headed uphill, the kitten poked its head out again:
“Prrrt?”

“Behave yourself, Criswell.” Ned said. Okay, so he was a fan of crap fifties movies. And the kitten was an adaptable little sod. He put down his pack and knocked. George Sands came to the door:

“Mate.”

“How’s it going, George?”

“Romantic problems. Hello, who’s this then?” At that moment, Criswell squirmed out of the backpack and looked up at the new human. He noticed something strange about the newcomer’s scent, but could fix that. Larger animals seemed to be frightened of him when he hung around big Ned, and if he absorbed the scents of this other person, he’d be even better off. He mewed and rubbed himself against George’s jeans leg:

“Criswell the kitten, meet George Sands, werewolf. Ah, you must be Annie. Hi. Ned MacAllister. Gentleman zombie and new flatmate, given that your rent’s gone up after the shift.”

“Oh, he’s absolutely gorgeous!!!” Criswell could see the transparent Annie person quite well, but she didn’t give off any smells. He concluded that this must a ‘ghost’. Like most animals, he had no difficulty perceiving her, and was reassured by the kindly sound of her voice. It was a little bewildering being hoisted up in the air, but he really liked her stroking and attention. He sensed that she was more solitary than the others, which might mean he was onto a very good thing indeed. Abruptly, there was an earsplitting scream from the alleyway opposite, leading the others to turn and run toward its source. Annie deposited Criswell on a comfortable sofa opposite. While he quite liked the lambswool cover on it, Criswell padded toward the source of the disturbance.

“Kemp? Leave him alone, you bastard!!” George said, as Annie added:

“No, it’s impossible. I pulled you through the Door. You can’t be back…”

Kemp sneered at them: “Ah, a Type Four. I wondered how long it’d take to attract one of your sort to their domicile.”

“Who’s the creep? Whatever he is, I don’t really like being categorised.”

“He’s an alleged supernatural events specialist. Actually, he tortures and destroys anything he doesn’t understand. Pompous git. Mitchell. You must be Ned.” Instinctively, Ned’s skin began to coarsen and his teeth sharpened and he Deadsided. Annie gasped, as their new flatmate said in a low level voice:

“Try to shoot me, Kemp. If you’ve met other zeds before, you’ll know that there’s only one way to get rid of us. I don’t eat humans. I’m seriously tempted to break that rule in your case. And  I can’t smell silver on your body. Now, get away from Mitchell there. Or else.”

“What the hell are you doing back here, anyway?” Annie added. She was gathering herself for a telekinetic onslaught at the other, while George hung back. High above them, Criswell didn’t like what he saw. He had hopped onto an adjacent wall and although Annie’s gathering storm was prickling his fur somewhat, he was now directly above this unpleasant Kemp person. He leapt down, digging his claws into the intruder’s hand, hard. The intruder abruptly dropped the gun, causing Ned to step forward and crush it under his foot. George removed the silver-tipped anaesthetic dart from the vicinity of Mitch’s heart, as Annie caught the outflung Criswell. He licked her in thanks and she seemed to wipe something away from her face. Ghosts can’t cry. At least, not in theory.

“Am I to take it you have nothing against animals?”

Mitchell shrugged: “Ah, he can stay. Lucky wee eejit, an’ he did save me life. As for you, Neddy, Kemp might have been familiar with you, but I’m only vaguely so. What, you mean there are more of you? So why haven’t we come across you before?”

Ned rolled his eyes: “Don’t ask. During the time I’ve been undead, I found out a few things. Like the fact that there’s a zed subculture in large urban centres, feeding on humans who fall from the top of the food chain. Which is bloody disgusting. I’m a non-hominitarian. I only eat stray animals. Not friends.”

“Tea, boys?”

“Annie, you’re a miracle.” Criswell snuggled on George’s lap and went to sleep. This had been a more than usually adventurous day, even by his standards.

At a time when New Zealanders are debating the merits or otherwise of more stringent alcohol regulation, one is reminded of the mystique, mythology and moral panic that surrounded that mixture of anise-flavoured herbs, flowers and leaves from the wormwood plant known collectively as absinthe.

Absinthe is a potent, high-proof spirit, which is usually diluted through administration of three to five parts ice cold water and gradual administration of sugar through ornately carved slotted spoons to dilute the bitterness. It was initially popular amongst the French soldiery during the political and social upheavals of the 1840s, and later became highly favoured amongst the Parisian literary and artistic elite of the 1880s. However, it also became controversial, due to the amount of thujone, an alleged psychoactive chemical, leading to its prohibition, until a recent revival in the 1990s. Degas publicised contemporary fears about absinthe consumption in his painting L’Absinthe (1876), while Zola did likewise in his novel L’Assomoir.

Why was thujone content controversial? In its undiluted form, thujone is an epileptic and can cause kidney failure in high doses. However, proper distillation procedures usually dilutes that potency, usually producing “lucid” alcoholic inebriation and may impair reaction time. Because of those precautions, France relaxed its former absolute prohibition in 1988, reliant on the regulation of thujone content, followed by Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

In the case of gay communities, the most notorious absinthe imbibers were the French poets Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) and Paul Verlaine (1844-1896).  The couple conducted an intense, tempestous but brief relationship in 1871-3, much to the dismay of  Mathilde, Verlaine’s long-suffering wife. It ended when a deranged Verlaine tried to kill Rimbaud. In later life, Rimbaud became a gunrunner in France’s African colonies before he died from a cancerous lesion on his leg in 1891. In 1896, a sodden Verlaine died from pneumonia and serial inebriation. Verlaine seems to have had many other problems in his life and while poorly distilled absinthe may have played a role, it may not have been as great as contemporary nineteenth century panics about the fee verte (green fairy) might lead one to assume.

Recommended:

Edmund White: Rimbaud: Double Life of a Rebel: London: Atlantic Books: 2009.

Barnaby Conrad III: Absinthe: History in a Bottle: San Francisco: Chronicle Books: 1988.

Jad Adams: Hideous Absinthe: History of A Devil in a Bottle: London: IB Tauris: 2003.

Charles Chadwick: Verlaine: London: Athlone: 1974.

It may be amusing to the time-polluted earlier millenia of human existence that the denizens of otherwise liberal 51st Century Earth and its colonies passed legislation against “self-marriage.” To examine this, let’s see what was at stake, and what wasn’t.

Neonarcissism wasn’t about simple manual self-pleasure. Nor was it about archaic anti-cloning prejudices, as clones had been accepted as enfranchised and autonomous human beings since the perfection of the technique millenia beforehand. Nor was it about the possible meeting and relationships of alternate world iterations of a human. Instead, it was about earlier and later incarnations or iterations of the same self meeting and associating with one another. Although the Church was not particularly happy about it, only backwater worlds like Newamerica and Confederalitie actually banned the practice.

(Much of that had to do with the Bethesalem Tomb and Scroll discoveries in CE 2048, which had forced considerable rationalisation on the premises of Christianity as a whole.)

In any case, the self-marriage debate can be distilled into two opposing factional worldviews. One is entitled “Natural Causality,” and holds that there is only one “normative” timeline, which renders it a moral aberration when an adult future iteration of a given entity forms a relationship or sexual congress with a past iteration or incarnation. Given that the Time Lords of Gallifrey had non-continuous and dissimilar sequential morphologies, amongst other such species, the “Natural Causality” school of thought and religious dogma raised some serious misgivings. Against this, the “Heisenbergian” school argued that temporal sequence was malleable and that the former view was overtly determinist and left no room for free will or an open future. Moreover, citing the Time Lords as an example, “Natural Causality” was viewed as an example of  ‘panspecies imperialism’ from some quarters…

Encyclopedia Galactica (Trantor: Seldon Press: CE 5198)

Why is there a sudden burst of enthusiasm amongst some straight women for gay male romantic and erotic fiction? And is it all that sudden?

In Out, Cintra Wilson interviewed “Erastes” and Alex Beecroft, two straight thirtysomething and fortysomething straight British women who write M/M erotic and romantic fiction for Philadelphia’s Running Press. Even Harlequin, that doyenne of romantic fiction, has gotten into the act, with its own Carina Press M/M imprint now available. Alex and Eraste’s novels consist of gay romantic and historical fiction set from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. So, how did two married straight women start writing about sex and romance between men?

The answer is ’slash’ fanfiction, that time-honoured bootleg genre of SF and fantasy television and movie fan fictional renderings of same-sex relationships between ostensibly straight male characters onscreen- Harry Potter, Star Wars, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Carribean, Star Trek, Buffy and Angel. Some ask why M/M romance authors are so committed to writing original homoerotic romance as a consequence. In the case of one author, there are gender identity conflicts to express and work through, while another referred to religious conflicts that led to her departure from evangelical Christianity and embracing liberal Christian LGBT-affirmative values.

So, what should we think about all this? One’s actual gender and sexual identity don’t neccessarily match the gender of identification in one’s fiction or media of choice. I prefer reading about strong, independent and assertive female characters and watching them onscreen, and I’m sure I’m not the only gay man who likes divas. Part of the lure of Doctor Who is the strength of Dr Who’s female companions these days- Ace, Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and River Song.  And hey, surely it’s politically sound to assist straight women’s sexual and creative freedom?

Right on, Erastes and Alex!!! You go, grrls!!!

Recommended:

Cintra Wilson: “W4M4M” Out: Sept. 2010: 98-103.

In New Zealand, we’re wary enough to monitor the US Christian Right and its malignant effects on its New Zealand satellites. Meanwhile, in Uganda, things have not improved significantly, despite the stalemate over David Bahati’s infamous and murderous “Anti-Homosexuality Bill.”

Like Box Turtle Bulletin, Jeffrey Sharlet has been interested in the relationship that exists between a shadowy US Christian Right pressure group, “The Family”, and Uganda’s Christian Right. One might think this is sadly familiar terrain, given the intensive coverage and condemnation that Bahati’s bill has received in liberal and LGBT media, as well as governmental and NGO condemnation. Disturbingly, Sharlet informs us that this hasn’t stopped Ugandan and US homophobes from outreach to neighbouring Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and Congo. These figures aren’t fringe Pentecostal missionaries either- they’re political insiders, business interests and Ugandan MPs.

Moreover, according to James Buturo, Uganda’s misnamed “Minister of Ethics and Integrity”,  “gays” are “threatening” Uganda through our “control of western media” and political institutions. However, if anyone is in control of the antigay agenda in Uganda, it is US Christian Right activist Lou Engle, an opponent of Obama’s healthcare reforms and a Republican lackey who tried to downplay Republican Congressional sex and financial scandals during the latter stages of the Bush presidency. According to Sharlet and “Bishop” Julius Oyet of “Lifeline Ministries”, Engle supports Bahati’s bill and its death penalty provisions. As well as controlling the media, lesbians and gays are also ‘engaging’ in an ‘epidemic’ of ‘witchcraft-fuelled’ gay rape, or so says Moses Solomon Male of Uganda’s National Coalition Against Homosexuality and Sexual Abuses. And then there’s apparently an underwater city of gay witches beneath Lake Victoria!

Enough. If New Zealand still supplies foreign aid to Uganda, then why is this the case? It’s time that we considered campaigning to cut it off altogether until the National Resistance Movement regime in Kampala sees reason and votes down Bahati’s murderous attack on LGBT human rights and civil liberties. Below, note some Ugandan and African LGBT rights groups that assist their embattled communities:

Ugandan Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law: http://www.Ugandans4Rights.org

Freedom and Roam Uganda (Lesbian and Bisexual Women): http://www.Faruganda.org

Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya: http://www.GALCK.org

Recommended:

Jeff Sharlet: “Dangerous Liaisons” Advocate: September 2010: 29-37.

 Jamie Douglas-Hume: Stately Passions: London: Michael O’Mara: 2006.

Over this weekend, I’ve been reading Stately Passions (2006), a guide to the upper crust of British society and its shenanigans over the last three centuries or so.

At a time when male homosexuality was successively a capital offence (in Georgian England) and then a criminal offence (in Victorian England), there are some lesbian and gay stories here. I’ll skip the more well-known ones about Vita Sackville-West and Violet Trefusis at Sissinghurst, and Rictor Norton has already discussed the sagas of Lord John Hervey and William Beckford in his Georgian gay history volume, Mother Clap’s Molly House.

Still, there are some novel tales to tell here. Take Lorne, Duke of Argyll, a former Canadian Governor-General and married to Queen Victoria’s eighth daughter, Princess Louisa…who had to resort to bricking up the adjacent Hampton Court egress gate to avoid him cruising studly young guardsman on the game in Hyde Park! The aforementioned Duke of Argyll was also involved with the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels, which were tied to his relationship to Frank Shackleton, the ne’er-do-well gay brother to Ernest, the Antarctic explorer.

Madresfield is better known as the fictionalised “Brideshead” in Auberon Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. William Beauchamp was a former New South Wales Governor General and had some quite nice things to say about the robust masclunity of Sydney beach lifeguards. Unfortunately, he made an enemy of his vindictive, right-wing brother-in-law Bendor, Duke of Westminster, who set about destroying his brother-in-law’s marriage and reputation with the connivance of George V in the 1930s. Bendor prevented Beauchamp from attending his late wife’s funeral and tried to do so in the case of William’s son, at which decency intervened and the vindictive suit was quashed.  Beauchamp died in 1938.

One recent gay Lord Hervey was reportedly too fond of hard drugs, firearms and the liquidation of his estate’s prodigious assets and died aged only 44 in 1999. But the crowning story involved  the unfortunate Prince Albert Victor (Eddie), the eldest son of Edward VII and Queen Alexandria, who died before he could succeed to the throne. Although known primarily for his involvement in London’s Cleveland Street gay brothel scandal in the 1880s, Eddie also mixed at aristocratic gay circles at Cambridge University. As with most of his contemporaries, Eddie had sex with either willing or opportunist young working class men who had sex with men outside and inside the celebrated venue. Sadly, Eddie died young, and his brother George V bequeathed us the current dreary Windsor royal dynasty…

What happens when former Christian Rightists get tired of being reactionaries and decide to call it a day?

On a whim, I decided to update the antifeminist life stories of the conservative Christian women in Robyn Rowland’s collection, Women Who Do and Women Who Don’t Join the Womens Movement (RKP, 1984). In some cases, like that of Gwen Landolt (REAL Women Canada) and Babette Francis (Endeavour Forum- Australia), the subjects are still around and acting as nuisances, while in others, like those of Connie Purdue (Women for Life, NZ) and Laura MacArthur (Toronto Right to Life), they are deceased.

However, I want to comment on a third such category in this entry, which focuses on Teddi Holt, formerly of Georgia’s “Mothers on the March”, which was formed in the late seventies to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, which sought to add a constitutional amendment that would have eliminated gender discrimination within the US Constitution. The far right mobilised and defeated it in 1982. Holt sounded quite encapsulated initially, as the daughter of long-time Southern Baptists, a full-time housewife and wife of a soldier. After MOM, though, she gave up political activism for Pentecostal religious expression and became involved in “intercessory prayer” and Pentecostal music, as well as accquiring teaching qualifications.

What does “prayer” mean to Pentecostal Christians? No doubt they view it as direct communication with the divine, but it also serves discursive needs. Active public prayer means that the participant actively declares and performs their Pentecostal religious identity and identifies with other Pentecostals. It’s good to see that at least one of Rowland’s antifeminists moved on a fulfilled and happy life after the mid-eighties. In the case of some right-wing Christian women, like New Zealand’s Connie Purdue, that never happened. Despite Holt’s past political activism, I bear Holt no ill will. It does make me wonder about post-activist women when it comes to New Zealand’s own failed anti-feminist group, Women for Life, however…

For interest:

Teddi Holt: http://www.womenwhopray.net/new/teddi2.html

As I haven’t done a review on this blog for a while, I thought I’d compensate by incorporating three more concise ones into this entry.

Kevin Hickson (ed) The Political Thought of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats (Macmillan, 2010) provides some useful insights into the third party in British politics, and how it rose to the status of the current coalition partner that it is within the Cameron administration. Apparently, there are three main strands within the party- the communitarians, classical liberals and social liberals. All strands of the party seem to be inclusive and progressive insofar as LGBT rights, peace issues, green politics, civil liberties and women’s reproductive freedom are concerned, although the classical liberals seem to be more akin to similar elements within the Conservative Party. As well as that, it seems to have been the Iraqi War quagmire and Blair’s backdown over introduction over proportional representation that poisoned relationships between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, however compatible most might have been over social liberalism.  Can this ‘brokeback’ marriage survive…?

Fiona McGregor: Indelible Ink: Melbourne: Scribe: 2010:

Marie King is a fifty nine year old newly divorced upper middle class woman from Mossman, one of Sydney’s better-off suburbs. She’s trying to deal with life with a suddenly too large house, an ailing cat, property maintenance, real estate price crashes, the recession, and endemic Sydney drought. On the spur of the moment, she decides to have a tattoo and meets Rhys, a tattooist. She has three adult children- Blanche, a high-flying advertising executive; Leon, a gay florist and gardener; and divorced Clark, at work on a doctorate. This is a panoramic book, with vivid descriptions of inner city alternative Sydney and the breathtakingly beautiful beach area, as well as Marie’s transformation as she acquires more tattoos as time goes on. And then, there’s a tragic twist. Another spellbinding masterpiece from one of Australia’s most treasured LGBT authors.

Jenny Coleman: Mad or Bad? The Life and Exploits of Amy Bock: Dunedin: Otago University Press: 2010.

Was she or wasn’t she? Amy Bock has been a subject of perennial fascination to New Zealand lesbian historians, although this quicksilver figure is as elusive as the stories that she spun about her fabricated public personae in the wake of her persistent resort to petty criminality and financial fraud. At one stage (c1908), she posed as “Percy Redwood”, a man of means, and married publican’s daughter Agnes Ottway- whereupon she was exposed. However, this episode of male impersonation has led to some questions about ulterior motives for this gender dissidence.  As head of the Womens Studies Programme at Massey University and a former colleague of mine, it’s a pleasure to review this particular book, given Jenny Coleman’s abiding interest in nineteenth century feminism and women’s history.  And was she? Read the book and find out how secrets, lies and fabrications, media accounts and selective disclosure complicate our picture of this fascinating woman.

Ahem. Have I said that we really, really need a comprehensive New Zealand/Aotearoa lesbian history to match Chris Brickell’s volume on gay men recently? Well, I’ll say it again…