Hardly has the ink dried on the right-wing Iemma administration’s attack on human rights, civil liberties, free speech and meaningful religious freedom in the name of Catholic-dominated “World Youth Day” when some dissident Catholics have announced that they don’t like the overkill involved either. Moreover, it has emerged that the institutional church negotiated with the […]

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In response to the New South Wales Iemma administration’s attack on civil liberties, human rights and free speech in the context of Catholic World Youth Day, potential protagonists remain defiant.
Predictably, the Chaser boys remain their usual irreverent and rowdy selves, and their spokesperson, Julian Morrow, agreed with those who wanted the legislation repealed, and urged […]

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In New South Wales, the ALP State Government has just engaged in an unprecedented attack on human rights, civil liberties and free speech. Why? Is it an international terrorist threat against a sensitive international target? Well, no. It’s July’s Catholic World Youth Day, due to be held in Sydney soon.
Sometimes, I wonder if LGBT New […]

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Serendipitously, Australia and New Zealand both have news items related to different sides of the faith/state separation barrier. Let’s begin with the good news.
Graham Capill isn’t going to be paroled. According to the Fairfax Stuff website portal, the Parole Board is unconvinced that he’s not still a risk to children. The article recounted the story […]

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I’ve often felt slightly queasy about the Christian Right’s apparent obsession with reddening rearends for righteousness, and found a rather nauseating little subculture. It’s all about “Traditional Christian Marriage,” or so say its practitioners.  Look, while I find their polarised gender role-playing to be rather quaint, this is going too far.
This, from one of their […]

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It seems to be the season for boundary testing across the Tasman, given the recent request from an Australian Muslim leader that Australia should contemplate legalisation of polygamous heterosexual marriages.
In Sydney’s Lakemba suburb, Sheikh Khalil Chami of the Islamic Welfare Centre clarified that while he didn’t perform polygamous marriages himself, he knew other Australian immigrant […]

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Who is that Masked Pope? No, not Joe Ratzinger aka Benedict XVI- I’m talking about the far more faaaaaaaabulous Pope Alice, a performance pontiff who landed on our planet several millenia ago, and will pope up at the forthcoming No to the Pope Coalition demo against her antithesis in Sydney during World Youth Day.
Pope Alice […]

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Courtesy of the GayTas website, I’ve now obtained a copy of the legal opinion that Tasmania may be able to legislate for same-sex marriage on its own- that is, if the ALP state government decides to let the Tasmanian Greens bill on the subject through the legislative process.
The proposed bill provides a procedure whereby two […]

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From the United Kingdom comes news that conservative Catholic Labour MPs are not happy about the way that their opinions were summarily dealt with, inside the Brown administration. “Anti-Catholicism” is the accusation, but is it valid?
Apparently, these conservative Catholic Labour MPs are up in arms about the ‘coercion’ of Catholic adoption agencies to assist prospective […]

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Ten years ago, Tasmania had just decriminalised male homosexuality (1997) after an epic struggle between the Tasmanian Lesbian/Gay Rights Group, the Tasmanian Greens and ALP on the one hand, and the hidebound Legislative Council and Tasmania’s Christian Right on the other. On July 1, the Tasmanian Greens are about to introduce same-sex marriage legislation in their […]

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