I was going to pen an entry on the San Francisco Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’s “Hunky Jesus” competition, but then I noticed a related subject was available. Lesbians, transwomen and gentlegays, I present the saga of “Him”- or, “Jesus Christ, (Erotic Film) Superstud” (?)
Surely not. Sadly, there seems to be compelling evidence against the existence […]

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Why does the Christian Right keep citing Paul Cameron, despite the fact that he has been discredited in most serious social scientific, medical and legal forms? I suspect that they’ve imported yet another premodern,
prescientific concept from remote history.
However, can this concept be used to boomerang back against them?
Aristotle theorised the existence of akrasia in his
Nicomachean […]

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For some reasons, there are relatively few depictions of religious dystopias. For that matter, many depict alternate worlds where Counter-Reformation Catholicism was triumphant. Fundamentalist Protestantism seems to have largely escaped.
As I noted earlier in this blog, while reviewing Stephen Fry’s Making History (1995), Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale (1986) is the sole current exception to the […]

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Warning: Contains graphic violence. More fiction, about an angry grieving sibling who takes revenge against the tormentors that drove his brother to degradation and death. Not for the faint-hearted.
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“Hey, you!!!” I closed the distance between the startled, grim-faced figure dragging the unwilling small boy along forcibly, and punched him in the stomach. His specs went […]

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Unless one doesn’t party too hard, it’s possible to overlook Hillsong Church’s meagre prescence in New Zealand, which appears largely limited to conference appearances from its frontline pastoral and entertainment teams, and music advertisements for the godbot market.
In Australia, that’s not quite as possible. This Assemblies of God Pentecostal megachurch promotes itself as the largest church in […]

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I know it’s slightly late for St Paddy’s Day, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to discuss the current situation of Irish LGBTs.
Apart from Oscar Wilde and Roger Casement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contemporary Irish LGBT history really began in the nineties. The delay was attributable to the stultifying rural-based conservative Catholic […]

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Peter Wells, Witi Ihimaera, Stuart Main, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Douglas Wright and Michael Parmenter have to carry an unenviable burden as our current LGBT literary establishment. So, where are the younger voices?
I pondered this as I noticed that Christos Tsiolkas was a participant at the recent Writers and Readers conclave, who was there primarily to […]

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Back in the days before the DPB and easily available abortion and contraception, young women were exiled to “Magdalen Homes,” often run by abusive and dysfunctional Catholic nuns, where their children were forcibly adopted out, and where they were used as virtual slave labour, physically and even sexually abused at times.
Today, we have fundamentalist Mercy […]

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While I was doing postgrad media studies at Massey, we fledgeling social scientists were repeatedly warned about the dangers of “moral panics” when it came to news media coverage. “Moral panics” go something like this- take one problematic social issue; blow it out of all proportion; get concerned experts (either professionals or self-styled “moral guardians” […]

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There has been much British LGBT media discussion concerned that we might lose sight of the work of seventies and eighties independent gay film maker Derek Jarman (1942-1994) In his memory, then, I present this brief filmography.
 Derek was born in Middlesex, and attended university at Kings College London, as well as the Slade School of […]

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