The government in the Australian Capital Territory is about to pass legislation making it legal for same-sex couples to get married in the ACT.  It’s an interesting step for an Australian state to make, although the Federal Government may attempt to override the new laws through the courts.

Enter the ACL, those wacky christians issued a media release called “Statement by Abrahamic Faith Leaders of Canberra” – that’s a nice way of saying the Jews, Christians and the Muslims.

Below is a copy of a statement of faith by seven faith leaders here in Canberra that was released today ahead of the ACT Marriage Equality Bill that is expected to be debated tomorrow. Whilst not organised by the ACL, the ACL welcomes the statement by the group.

Goodness me, so the ACL wasn’t needed!  Shunned by their own faithful!

Seventy percent of Australians identify with an Abrahamic religion – Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Yes, 70% may identify, but that doesn’t mean that they all agree on everything.

As leaders of several of these faith traditions, we have gathered to share our concerns about the ACT Government’s proposed same sex marriage legislation.

These leaders do no represent the 70% by a long shot, trying to argue from authority that they simply don’t have.

We are concerned for the long-term risks of such a Bill for our society.

You are?  What are they?  Tell us what those long-term risks are?  I bet you can’t.

While affirming the inherent dignity of all human beings,

Except if you’re anything other than heterosexual.  You’d sooner sack anyone that isn’t just like you.  You’d sooner say that the love I have for my love llama is somehow second rate.  Some of you that have signed this media release think that gays should be stoned to death.  So much for dignity.

our faith traditions also affirm the traditional concept of marriage between a man and a woman as being for the good of the individual, the family and society.

Yes, I agree.  Marriage between a man and a woman is good for the individual, the family and society.  So is marriage between two people of the same sex.  Everyone should be able to get married. In your particular faith feel free to celebrate marriage in the way you want, and those that don’t believe as you can get married and celebrate in the way they like.

We invite the wider community to join with us in calling for the Bill to be subject to community consultation through the normal Legislative Assembly Committee process.

Oh yes, that’s it, it’s not enough that you think you represent 70%  of the population you now want the other 30% to join in and see the world your way.  Great way to show dignity to each human being.  And while you’re at it why don’t you call into question the legitimacy of the passage of the bill in the duly elected parliament of the ACT.  Find a way to delay it so you can start spreading more of your vile innuendo.

Imam Adama Konda, Canberra Islamic Centre

Islam – founded by a goat herder and child sex abuser.

Arnold Cummins, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Founded by a man who transcribed the holy book from brass tablets with magic glasses.  Both which then disappeared.

Pastor Sean Stanton, Australian Christian Churches, Canberra

Believe that the bible is accurate.

Bishop Trevor Edwards, Anglican Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn

Marriage is so important that the church was established so the King of England could have a divorce to marry another women.

Pastor BJ Hayes, Canberra National Adventist Church

Will throw you out of their church if you are gay.

Monsignor John Woods, Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn

Thinks that bread can turn into their god so you can eat him.

Rabbi Shmuel Feldman, Rabbi for Canberra and Region.

Should apologies for inflicting this bunch of nutters on the rest of the world.

Apparently they couldn’t find anyone from the Satanist Society.

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The Australian “We hate the Gays” Christian Lobby has re-published a whole article on the question of whether same-sex marriage is harmless.  They got the article from News Weekly. You can’t access the article on News Weekly unless you sign up for an account and they want money for that.  News Weekly is run by the National Civic Council who among their aims have this:

• Rigorous education which
  • Values the acquisition of knowledge as well as the processes of learning and promotes intellectual excellence and disciplines (such as history and philosophy) abandoned by influential educational theorists; and
  • Provides the base of knowledge necessary for every person to participate fully as a member of society.

They also have these rather silly statements:

• The integrity of the individual, including full legal protection of the right to life for all human beings from fertilisation to natural death.

• Judeo-Christian values which provide the cement to hold our society together in opposition to the prevailing view which rejects the concept of the common good and makes the difference between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, a matter of personal preference only rather than objective reality.

• Divorce. Opposition to easy divorce laws.

• The family. Support for policies which enhance intact families, rejection of lifestyles which undermine family values.

So it’s not hard to write them off as another bunch of christians fundamentalists.

Any way, on to the question of the day…

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: IS IT HARMLESS?

Good questions, lets see what

by Patrick J. Byrne (re-published with the permission of the author)

has to say on the subject.

Same-sex marriage fundamentally changes not only the legal definition of marriage, but all the social, educational, economic, legal and religious institutions that service and support marriage, family and children.

Really?  How do you figure that?  I’m pretty sure that couples wanting to get married and who are of the opposite sex will still be able to do that.  A fundamental change would mean that everyone would have to get married to something different, like a goat, or an alpaca.  Marriage Equality simply allows same-sex couples the right to marry.  You should really consider it a tweak.  I look forward to your reasoning as to how this ‘fundamental’ redefinition changes social, educational, economic, legal and religious institutions that ‘service’ and support marriage as it is.

Schools: If marriage is redefined in law, it would be legal to teach same-sex marriage, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual issues in schools. In fact, the courts may invoke anti-discrimination law to force these issues into schools.

I’m not at all sure what ‘legal to teach same-sex marriage’ is all about.  Just explain to me what teaching about same-sex marriage actually means, and why it would be a bad thing.  And believe it or not lots of places already have curriculums that include issues on sexuality and the sky is still in the sky.  Your claim that the courts may invoke a way to force the issues into schools is a bit of a furphy really.  I guess you really just mean into good christian schools.  And so what if schools do teach it?  Those schools no doubt have a gay population and their rights should surely be included and not excluded, after all your NCC actually wants rigorous education.

The Australian Education Union’s policy declares that “homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and intersex need to be normalised” in education.

You do know that being GLBTI is normal, right?  It’s not a surprise.  Refer to the rigorous eduction statement above.

In 2006, the NSW Attorney-General’s Department produced a Learn to Include: Teachers Manual for primary schools. It provides a range of resources for teaching about same-sex parents in primary schools.

Oh, I wonder if that’s legal.  I bet the AG knows a thing or two about the law.  There’s a certainly reality to the manual.  Whether you like it or not, same-sex couples have children and guess what, they send them to school.  So rather than have the teacher freeze in shock when discovering that one of  his students has two mums, a manual will show them the correct response.  You could always use the christian manual when dealing with gay parents and ask the child brings them into the playground during playtime so that they can be stoned to death.

Children: Same-sex marriage will greatly affect future children, denying many their birth right to their true biological identity.

Already many people go out of their way to discover who the donors are.  It’s utmost in the minds of many eager parents to actually keep track of the biological parents, and that’s just the straight people.  Sure, some parents like to hide this sort of facts, but they’re pretty rare.  I think most of us these days understand the need to know the history of our beginnings. As to the notion that some right is being denied, I’m not sure what right this is that you refer to or what it even means.

Not only will it result in more children being born of donor conception and surrogacy, but the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) lobby is campaigning to have the birth certificates of children adopted by same-sex couples to be changed to record the same-sex couple in place of the biological parents.

It won’t result in more children being born.  Gay people are already doing the children thing, they really are.  They achieve it in many ways, its true that it will make it easier, but I don’t expect to see a sudden burst of millions of children being born into same-sex families let alone somehow being denied something.

There’s no issue with a birth certificate reflecting the names of the parents, it prevents all sorts of misunderstandings.  There’s other ways to address the record keeping of the donors.  And seriously, names on a birth certificate is a reason to stop gay people from getting married?

The Australian Human Rights Commission has recommended — in the interest of same-sex parents — that birth certificates should be open to recording any of the “birth mother, birth father, lesbian co-mother or gay co-father”

There you go, a way to record the relevant information on the birth certificate.  Unless you really have no ability to change your thinking and think that somehow a birth certificate with more than a few lines of text on it is really too hard to handle what exactly is the issue here?

 This stands in contrast to Article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), which says: “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”

No it doesn’t contrast Article 7 at all, in fact it goes further to make sure that all the relevant information is recorded.  It’s also interesting to note that the word ‘parents’ doesn’t exclude same-sex couples.

While the GLBT lobby wants to replace biological parents’ names on birth certificates with the names of same-sex partners (“psychological” parents), there have been three inquiries into the rights of donor-conceived children to know their “biological” origins. These inquires were by: the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs inquiry (2011), the Victorian Law Reform Commission (2012) and the NSW Legislative Assembly (2012). 9, 10, 11.

All three inquiries recommended that donor-conceived children should have a right to access their biological mother/father.

Yes, that’s right.  It’s why we have inquiries.  You seem to be of the mistaken belief that somehow same-sex couples willingly want to hide the biological details of their children’s parentage.  I think you’re probably out of touch there.  In fact, lots of couples I know go to extraordinary lengths to include the biological parents in the lives of their children.  Sometimes the donor doesn’t want any involvement, sometimes they do.

Businesses will also be affected by same-sex marriage, particularly those associated with wedding services — photographers, caterers, function hire places — and bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Same-sex marriage law greatly increases the reach of anti-discrimination law.

In the U.S. state of New Mexico, where same-sex marriage is legal, the state’s supreme court last month found photographer Elaine Huguenin guilty under the New Mexico Human Rights Act of refusing to provide her services to a lesbian couple’s wedding.

Two weeks after legislators in the U.S. state of Oregon passed a same-sex marriage law, a local maker of old-fashioned wedding trolleys was forced to shut down his business after being hounded by the GLBT lobby for refusing to supply a lesbian wedding function, according to the Baltimore Sun (December 25, 2012).

The paper noted, “Wedding vendors elsewhere who refused to accommodate same-sex couples have faced discrimination lawsuits — and lost.”

In Europe, a draft piece of European Union law known as the Equal Treatment Directive will, if passed, drastically increase pressure on business, particularly in countries recognising same-sex marriage. It will force businesses to provide goods or services that contravene their consciences on threat of being hauled before the courts if they don’t.

So basically you’d be pleased if a business that thought black people should use the rear door to get into their shop is ok?  You would be happy for a business that believes a child with a disability is the result of the sins of her parents and therefore shouldn’t be served in a café?  It’s really easy, if businesses want to thrive they serve everyone.  It’s actually what they already do.  They don’t ask their customers if they’re divorced, a muslim, a jew, a christian or any other arbitrary system of discrimination, so why is it OK for a business to discriminate based on the sexuality of the customer?  Short answer, it isn’t.

Churches will gain only temporary exemptions from involvement in same-sex marriages, at best.

Churches already have a raft of ways of only marrying the people they want.  That won’t change.  The real question is how will a church refuse to marry a couple of their loyal members who are gay?  That will be interesting.  In any case, marriage is a civil right, not a religious right.  Maybe it’s time to take the act of marriage out of the churches.

The whole article is based on nothing at all.  It doesn’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny.  Doesn’t matter how many footnotes you can stick in, a bit of common sense shows your article to be nothing more than more christian clap-trap that is still driven by the fear that the whole world will turn gay if you even consider that people like me are normal.

So after all that, to answer your question, is it harmless?  The answer is yes, you homophobic bigoted fuckwit.

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George Hell, his grub of the most high in the catholic church has been crowing like  a chook that needs its head cut off as it’s stopped laying.  He likes that some French folk are against marriage equality.

France is different, known for its food and wines, beautiful countryside, and the French Revolution (1789) with its principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, which changed the world. The French think differently. They love ideas.

Really?  That’s an opening line?  The French think differently?  To what, dolphins?  Last time I checked Australians loved ideas too.  Australia also has food, wines, beautiful country side and the Eureka Stockade.  Ok, I’ll give you the French Revolution, but only because people lost their heads.

The Minister for Justice let the cat out of the bag when she told the cardinal that “what is at stake is a reform of civilisation”. He agreed, saying the change would redefine humanity, the roles of men and women and procreation.

You want us to take you seriously. Nice Frock

How will it redefine humanity?  How would the redefinition of marriage to include all couples change the role of heterosexual couples having babies?  It simply won’t.  Gay couples already live together, have families and generally get on with everyone else.  Most of them already call themselves married.  Simply changing marriage rites to include them will not bring the world to an end.  What it will do is call into question the authority of men in fancy dress living in luxurious accommodation while spouting bullshit.

He made no appeal to Bible teaching, saying the issue touched the nature of human life. Unlike us, who concentrate on the small number of couples who would enter homosexual marriages, or the short-term practical consequences, many of the French from both sides of the fence realise basic issues are at stake. They know ideas are powerful and will be taught in schools to the next generation.

Does Hell think only the French teach powerful ideas to the next generation?  I guess what he’s saying is that schools will probably include in their classes information about people being diverse.  That rather reflects reality.

 On November 17 hundreds of thousands marched through the streets of Paris and a dozen other cities supporting traditional marriage.

As is their right.  But rights are not determined by the size of crowds.  My rights, and your rights are not up for the popular vote.  Most Australians are not catholic, therefore we should legislate that catholics are not entitled to get married.

The uprising was led by a gossip columnist Frigide Barjot, the socialist Laurence Tcheng from a movement called The Left For The Republican Marriage, and an atheist homosexual Xavier Bongibault, founder of a movement called More Gay Without Marriage.

Not everybody wants to get married, and that’s ok.  But why would anyone stand in the way of others getting married?  That simply makes no sense.  Then there is the ‘uprising’ issue.  It’s a bit of an insult to the many millions of people who do rise up against their government and suffer for it.  Think of the middle east as the latest example.  In this case people marched to protest, the government was not overthrown, and the army was not dispatched to quell the masses.  It isn’t an uprising.

The feminist philosopher Sylviane Agacinski, wife of a former socialist prime minister, strongly criticised those who claim sexual differences are not founded in nature, but simply ways of thinking, cultural constructs.

There’s a call to authority.  Not happy with allowing a woman to be able to stand in her own right, Hell has to mention that she is married to a former French PM.  It’s very important to him.  She’s a philosopher and everything!  How impressive.  But she was also married to a man who was the PM.  And look, she strongly criticises sexual differences, probably doesn’t support marriage equality!

The Chief Rabbi of France, the mufti and even the foreign spokesman of the Russian Orthodox Church joined the fray to defend marriage.

There’s a line for you.  The rabbi is capitalised, the Russian is, but the mufti isn’t.  Not even a mention of his mosque. And now it’s a fray.  I love a good fraying.

All the parties know what is at stake.

When are you going to articulate exactly what is at stake?  Grand words, but nothing at all about how things will change if gay couples can get married.  In fact, apart from filling space, just what was the point of the article?

Must be a quiet news day.

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Senator Barnaby Joyce represents Queensland, and recently stood up in the Senate and delivered this speech to show how backwards Queenslanders are the reasons why he voted against marriage equality.

I’m amazed people like Joyce get re-elected.

Let me pick this apart for you

Senator JOYCE (Queensland—Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (20:25): This issue around the Marriage Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2012 is extremely pertinent to the structure of everything that our nation is and has been built on. If you go to the core of the issue, a child has the right to know who their biological parents are. They have the right to know who both their mother and their father are: who the people were who were the component parts of the initial stages of their life.

Really, he should have stopped right there.  Our nation is built on the back of invading the land, killing the locals, bringing in criminals from England and establishing a nation.  It’s built on the hard work of millions of people who cleared the bush and built cities.  It’s built on the men and women who worked for a living, fought in wars and died.  Yes, the family is important and knowing who your parents are is important. There is no connection between the structure of everything and children knowing who their parents are, not forgetting of course is that very few children know.

Marriage is an institution, a custom, that surrounds itself with trying to reinforce the reality of nature. It is a process that has been created in so many cultures and in so many religions over so much time. Some say it is merely a construct of legislation, but it is not. It is actually a construct of the reality of who each one of us is. Family is the most effective policy that any government can stand behind. The family is the greatest aged-care policy. The family is the greatest law and order policy. The family is the greatest housing policy. The family is the greatest education policy. The family is the greatest health policy. The ramifications of going into that institution of marriage, which is at the centre of what the family is, are way beyond merely a statement of what a person wants and desires.

It is also really important to understand that it is just another reality of the world that you cannot have everything just because you want it. Everybody has to make sacrifices. We all want so much, but marriage itself is a statement. It is not the gaining of rights but the acquiescing of rights. It is basically about stepping away from rights. If you want to keep all your rights then the best way to do it is to not get married, because then you have all the rights. It might not be the ideal set-up. You can have children if you want. You can do whatever you want; there are no real bounds. But the statement of marriage is a statement that you are prepared to acquiesce your rights and to go into a situation where all those rights that you had formerly are not there.

In trying to get to the centre of this issue, it is also important to try not to offend or belittle other people. We live in a time now where there is no novelty in knowing people who are gay. They are around everywhere; they are in everybody’s family. That is the reality of the world. But it takes courage to say, ‘Just because there is a familiarity and there are so many people I know who are gay, that does not mean I have to agree with everything that everybody wants.’ That is another reality. In trying to draw a picture, without trying to belittle it, I might be a Buddhist who wants to call myself a Christian. Well, I cannot. If you are a Buddhist, you are a Buddhist; if you are a Christian, you are a Christian. You cannot say, ‘I demand my right as a Buddhist to call myself a Christian.’ It is just ridiculous. It is not what you are. It is a terminology that does accept that you can be both.

If you want to be married, because of the requirements of nature, it involves a male and a female connection for the hope and possibility of having children. You cannot do it with a male and a male. You cannot do it with a female and a female. It is just not possible. The institution of marriage stands ultimately behind the reality of nature. It does not matter what piece of legislation we pass; you cannot change nature. You cannot change that reality.

But what we can do is go down a path of a new form of social engineering—about which really have no idea of the consequences. If you believe in conservation, then conservation of the structure of society that has sustained us for so long would be a pretty good place to start.

This is the slippery slope argument I think.  Joyce seems to forget that we already have a mix of families, allowing people to marry regardless of gender won’t change the structure of marriage.  To try to paint two mums and their kids living together as some sort of social engineering is just rude.  To suggest we have no idea of the consequences is to ignore the fact that plenty of kids have already grown up with same-sex parents and have gone on to lead full lives, some of them even getting married and having children.  It’s a furphy to suggest something bad will happen to the kiddies because their gay parents got married.

If we redefine the institution of marriage by legislation we must remember that we are not only redefining it for those of us who are here now but also redefining it for those who were here before us. We are redefining it for our parents, for our grandparents and for all those who have gone before us. We are redefining the relationships that they went into and the sacrifices that they made with some legislative recalibration of the process from this point forward. I think most people whose parents are married would say, ‘I know what that was and I know what it wasn’t.’ We do not want to diminish the relevance of our history and the legacy of who we are.

I understand the concerns that are held by other people who say, ‘I feel that if I do not have the capacity to call myself married I will feel diminished.’ There is not much that we can do about that. The reality in life is that there are always things that you cannot have. There are things that I cannot have. I think it is really important that in this debate we try to respect everybody’s views.

Stacy Aronson and Aletha Huston, in their article, ‘The Mother-Infant Relationship in Single, Cohabiting, and Married Families: A Case for Marriage?’ in the Journal of Family Psychology, found that children in married homes demonstrated more positive behaviour and scored better on a range of demographic variables. In this study, attitudes about child-rearing, income and social support failed to explain variations in living arrangements, suggesting that the make-up of the family before conception and birth was vitally important.

A growing number of studies have found that children who experience changes in their living arrangements suffer worst development outcomes on average. A study in 2006 by Shannon Cavanagh and Aletha Huston found that:

Children who experienced instability had higher teacher and observer reports of problem behaviors than those from stable family structures.

That is not to say that every marriage works out—we know that about 40 per cent of marriages do not—but it is the aspiration of what people go into. Nobody goes into the act of marriage hoping to get divorced; they go into the act of marriage hoping to stay married. To be honest, I have never seen any person who is happy with the fact that they have had an unsuccessful marriage. I have always seen people who wished that their marriage had worked out, who wished it had been better, who wished that they could have had their time again.

So there is a huge weight on the institution of marriage and what goes into it. To say, ‘I’m going to compare a dysfunctional marriage with a successful relationship between same-sex people,’ is not a fair comparison. Anyone can go to any anecdotal analysis and find same-sex people who are cohabitating happily and you can find lots and lots of families who are very, very happy. And you can certainly go to lots and lots of gay relationships which become bitterly unhappy and you can go to lots of marriages that become bitterly unhappy. But the undisputed reality is that children who have been brought up in a stable relationship with a mum and dad have the best chance—not a perfect chance, but the best chance—to get their best development environment surrounding them.

Other studies show the importance of children, particularly male children, having a positive relationship with their father. In 2006 an article in the Journal of Family Studies used a nationally representative sample of adolescents in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. This article found:

Consistent with our initial hypothesis, a more positive father-child relationship is associated with a reduced risk of delinquency and substance abuse above and beyond the effects of the mother-child relationship. These results remain consistent even after using controls for various aspects of mother-child relationships, maternal monitoring and other maternal characteristics, family and household-level characteristics and child-level characteristics.

We interpret this as meaning that fathers matter. Likewise, a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2006 found that living in a broken home at age eight increases the chances of children committing criminal offences in late adolescence. These findings are confirmed by a study in the Journal of Pediatrics, which found that children and families without a father are more likely to be in fair or poor health.

Once more, this is not a statement that every child who is in a broken home ends up in poor health or ends up with a criminal record. It is not saying that at all. It is just talking about the realities of the probabilities. Stability in structure that confirms and reaffirms both a mother and father figure is the best environment for a child to grow up in—and, the closer that mother and father figure is to the genetic make-up of the child, the better it is.

Behind all this stands the nature that underpins the reality of what a marriage is. Cultures in so many different areas have reaffirmed this. Cultures with no interconnectivity between each other, which have come up with their ideas independently of each other, have all come to the same conclusion, that a marriage is between a man and a woman, and they have always signified the importance of it with ceremony, with commitment and with a whole range of laws that surround it. Some are backed by law, some are backed by religion and some are backed by custom, but they are all there. And we cannot now just say that we are going to deny the reality of thousands of years of human custom because we choose to, because we are desirous of it, because we want to, because it is our wont—and, because it is our wont, we demand that we ignore all that goes before us because we are desirous of this outcome.

You cannot do that. You have to basically take the unselfish position that you cannot have everything you want in the world just because you want it. The statement of marriage itself is not a statement of getting what you want; it is a statement of giving up what you want, and it is a statement of commitment to the purpose.

What is this almost overwhelming political movement to go into every form of tradition and corner and change it, just because there is some group, or some section of a group that is desirous of that? Don’t we have to also take into account the possible greater offence to the larger number of people who also stand behind the statement that they are married? Don’t their views have some weight in this debate? What about every person who says, ‘What about my parents? They were married.’ Doesn’t that memory, and that legacy, have some weight in this debate? What about the people who say, ‘My grandparents were married’? Doesn’t that have some weight or legacy in this debate? Why are we always in such a rush to diminish everything else rather than to simply say, ‘In this instance I am prepared to make the sacrifice. I can’t have everything I want. I am prepared to make the sacrifices.’ It is one of those sacrifices that you make in life and that is it. There does seem to be a desire of selfishness that says, ‘For me to attain every desire I want, I am prepared to sacrifice the legacy, the aspiration and the structure of what so many more people, and other people, want to keep.

All of the studies that I have referred to have clearly confirmed that there are great risks if we re-engineer marriage away from being about the family. There are grave risks to the children’s developmental outcomes, and surely such outcomes are just as important as anything else. I hope that this debate shows that in Australia, when we need certain things to be evident, to draw us together, when we see the disturbances that have happened on television and we want some communal values, something that basically draws different faiths together, that draws different groups together, that draws different societies together, if there is one linking principle when there are so many other things that divide people, then marriage is it. Marriage is one of those commonalities that reach out across so many ethnic and religious divides. We say that we are a multicultural nation and it is absolutely imperative that there be some linking ethos, something that links all these disparate groups together. If we are going to say, ‘No, we won’t even acknowledge that,’ we will go into that space as well and destroy it, and remove it. What is a linking principle? Has it just become the vibe, the hope—the hope that there is some connection? Or will we make up some grandiose, flowery statement of what links people together, but the statement will have to say that it means absolutely nothing because it might offend some group or somebody? But there is one area which has the potential to draw so many people together because there is a common view across religions, across faiths and across ethnic groups, and that is marriage.

This is a piece of legislation that says, ‘Because we have found our way into this building, we can now redetermine the path of history because we are desirous of it. We can now put aside the cultural clique that has been formulated in so many different areas but has done so in a parallel manner. Whether you are in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, or in Renaissance Rome, or on the plains of America, or in Ireland, or in Africa, all these groups have all come to one conclusion. They have all basically found that one of the key structures of society is the family; and the ceremony that underpins the family, that is the inception of the family, is marriage, under a whole range of different names, and despite all of that we are going to say, ‘No, because we are now so modern, so clever, that we can put all of that aside, even though we really do not know what the ramifications are.’ That is the other thing: we do not really know. You want to tear down the structure that underpins society, but you really have no clue what the ramifications are. It is unwarranted.

In closing, it is not a statement about trying to offend anybody. As I said before, every person in every walk of life has to make sacrifices and has to make choices. You make the choice. If you want to get married, then you have to find someone of the opposite sex for that ceremony called ‘marriage’. If you want to be in a relationship with someone of the same sex, that is fine, but it is just not marriage. It is something that you may determine and it may have worth, it may have depth, but it is not marriage. I think that if everybody thinks about it logically, it is yet another sacrifice you make which you can put aside and say, ‘If you’re not prepared to make that sacrifice, then that in itself is a statement that the sacrifice that you would have to make of marriage is probably something that you are not prepared to accept.

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I love it when somebody else writes a blog on something, saves me the time! Check this blog out from FLOURISH&BLOGGS.  Be sure to read it!

Pretty lame effort from Lyle Shelton today in The Punch on gay marriage. In all probability it’s better not to waste the two or three minutes that it would take to respond to every outright lie, but I’m really bothered by the shameless and repeated falsehoods and distortions this group comes out with on a routine basis.

Be sure to read the rest of it!

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Last night’s announcement on overturning surrogacy for same-sex couples and singles in Queensland is because of a grassroots movement of people fed up with a minority agenda driving social policy in Australia.

Oh Wally, going straight for the gloat.  Nothing grassroots about it, there has been no mass protest, this came completely out of the blue.  The LNP knew that advance notice would lead to a mass grassroots outcry.

Australian Christian Lobby Managing Director Jim Wallace said people were tired of this agenda putting the rights of adults ahead of the rights of children, truth and biology.

What a crock of shit. In Wally’s eyes anyone who can’t have children by putting one thing inside another and thrusting isn’t entitled to have a child.  He seems to forget the many millions of children that are conceived by the thrusting thing and then abandoned or abused by their parents.  At least when a gay couple has decided they would like children it’s because they actually want them.

“What we saw in the Queensland Parliament last night was the response to a groundswell of concern for marriage and putting the rights of children first in public policy,” Mr Wallace said.

No you didn’t, what you saw was a government whose first concern wasn’t to clean up the mess that they perceive is left from the previous government, but to target a minority group and treat them like shit and like second class citizens.

“While most people are tolerant and supportive of removing discrimination from same-sex couples, something already achieved at State and Commonwealth level, the selfish agenda of some activists has been given too much prominence in public policy.

While most people are tolerant?  Most people would not include the likes of you Wally.  Selfish activists?  What are you?  You want all rights for people wiped away just so you can have your own ‘christian values’ forced on the rest of us, and yet we have a selfish agenda?   You actually believe that the only way to be an Australian is your way.  Fuck that for a joke.

“Ordinary people are repulsed by the sort of behaviour witnessed in the Queensland Parliament’s public gallery last night where MPs were abused, demonised and called bigots because they supported marriage remaining between a man and a woman – a daily ordeal for those advocating for marriage in the public arena.

Ordinary people?  Are you seriously suggesting that those who don’t agree with the decisions made by the Queensland Parliament are not ‘ordinary’? That they should just shut the fuck up because what parliament says goes?  This didn’t stop your christian friends from shutting the fuck up when the laws where passed by the previous government.  You think revoking the rights of a section of the community because some of them might like to enjoy the notion of celebrating their partnership is wrong?  All because it ‘mimics marriage’.  The motivation for the renaming and watering down of the ‘marriage like’ civil partnerships is nothing short of discrimination and vilification of gay people.  It’s a repulsive and petty agenda from a small faction of christians.

“Millions of Australians, including Prime Minister Julia Gillard, do not support redefining marriage and they are distressed at being labelled bigots and haters because of their view,” Mr Wallace said.

Millions of Australians do support the redefining of marriage, and we are distressed at being labelled faggots and evil because of our view.

“The strength of resolve within the LNP last night is evidence that the democratic process, which has delivered many first time MPs into the Queensland Parliament, is representative of community values on marriage and the best interests of children.”

No it’s not.  The LNP party did not sweep into power because the gays could get married or have babies.  They swept into power because a long-standing Labor government was on the nose for a thousand other reasons.

The LNP’s rank and file, one of the largest of any political party in the nation, has overwhelmingly passed policy motions in support of marriage and against allowing surrogacy arrangements for singles and same-sex couples.

“It would be great if there was more media attention on what was happening in majority grassroots politics than on minority activists,” Mr Wallace said.

Minority activists?  Remind us again Wally, just who does the ACL represent?  Oh, that’s right, rich white folk.  Hardly majority grassroots.

In November 2009, ACL led a large grassroots campaign against the then Bligh Government’s surrogacy laws which saw a massive public response and 2034 actual Queenslanders signing a petition in the days before the vote.

Wait – there are 2034 actual Queenslanders who can sign petitions?  Who would have thought! That’s such a massive response I can see why you’re all boned up Wally!  I’d bet you that a massive public response is more likely to be “We don’t give a fuck, why don’t you find my child a job?”

Mr Wallace said former Deputy Premier Andrew Fraser, who champioed the activists’ agenda in the dying days of the government, was unable to save his city seat despite the clear intent of Bligh’s rush of pro same sex legislation to deliver it.

Are you really suggesting that Fraser lost his seat because of the civil partnership laws?  That and that alone saw him swept from office.  I call bullshit on your bullshit you bullshitter.

“I hope MPs in Canberra will discern between noisy activists and the wishes of grassroots Australians as they consider the up-coming debate on same-sex marriage.”

You, Wally, and your rich white folk backers are the noisy activists, wanting to shove your minority view onto the rest of the population.   You dare to threaten the Australian Government with your little snide attempt to say that if they don’t listen to you you’ll make sure they’re run out of office.  To the credit of the previous Queensland Labor Government they didn’t listen to you.  We can only hope that those in Canberra see your position for what it is.  Vile poison.

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Earlier in the week our mate Wally was on Sunrise, comparing Kerryn Phelps and the marriage equality campaign to the Nazis.  Read up about this with my bear friend Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear, gay rights activist Michael Barnett on the support website, Aleph and of course the wonderfully delightful Gregory Storer.

Then time warp yourself to Weekend Sunrise if you can bear it, watch the video at source link above.  The panel discussion, called “Same Sex Marriage, Why are so many christians opposed?” has two priests and our mate Wally.  The blokes from the catholic and anglican churches are fairly boring religious types.  I didn’t think much of either of them.

I want to focus on Wally, coz I like to focus on him, he seems to attract a lot of attention.

At the top of the segment, the host, Andrew O’Keefe starts with this introduction:

The ACL asked their members to complain to the Seven Network and its sponsors, as of yesterday Sunrise had received more than 15,000 emails about 90% of which where negative, i.e. opposed to Same Sex Marriage, in contrast the I Do campaign did received more than 40,000 message of support for the show.

Yes, indeed, people did complain to Channel Seven and to the sponsors, compare this with the response from the ACL in February 2011 when some people complained about the ANZ bank and IBM supporting Online Opinion that got some bad press because of their comments moderation policy:

“Anyone involved in trying to defend marriage and the natural structures of family against this lobby, is used to the stream of vitriol and abuse that greets any view contrary to their agenda,” said ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace, “but the silencing of alternate views through On Line Opinion, and who knows what other social and conventional media, is beyond the pail in a democratic society.”

“But we should be especially appalled that ANZ and IBM would submit to the clear tactic of this very aggressive Lobby to close down debate on a very important issue,” said Mr Wallace “and especially when the public at large had no way of knowing that the debate was being censored and would not have expected it to be on a forum for debate of as high standing as On Line Opinion,”.

Correct me if I’m wrong here Wally, but didn’t you try to shut down the debate on this very important issue by asking your aggressive supporters to lobby the TV station and their sponsors?  Aren’t you trying the same tactics to censor those who oppose your view?

But, wait, he’s got more:

“If we are to have a full debate on this issue it must be that,” said Mr Wallace, “not one closed down by abuse and deceptive tactics or corporate pressure and collusion to limit free speech, as we have seen used here by homosexual activists and their apparent allies.“

Feel free to roll your eyes.

Back to the show on Saturday.

O’Keefe:

Now Jim as I’ve mentioned at the top of the segment, we’ve had a lot of response about this over the course of the week. many of the responses are pretty much cut and paste variants of the email that you have sent from your lobby. There are some that have been extremely vitriolic I have to say, what do you say to those who want to make their views known about this?

See that, the fact is that the ACL have asked people to send emails to Sunrise, some of those are vitriolic. What do you say Wally?

Well certainly I’d be very surprised if those are coming from christians, I’d be very disappointed,

You must be disappointed then.  You call for christians to send the emails and then you want to distance yourself from them?  So anyone sending a vitriolic email must be from the other side?

I mean we have people on our websites all the time that come on and pose as christians and then end up proving themselves not, usually by the language.

Oh, so now you’re the victim are you Wally?  Over 15,000 emails are sent to Sunrise, 90% negative and you have people attacking you on your website!  Anybody that uses bad language can’t possibly be christian.  They are all just pretending to be christian. You fuckwit.

We have had to trash in the last week around 100 emails that have just been vitriolic, vile language, so I very much doubt that those are coming from christians,

100 emails!  Fuck me!  Only 100 emails that can’t be christian because they use vitriolic language.  O’Keefe said that 90% of their emails were negative and some of them quite vitriolic.  You claim that they’re not christians and suggest that they are probably gay people pretending to be christian just to make a point.

and there’s a lot of deception around this debate, but I would certainly encourage christians to stand up, we’ve certainly encouraged them to do that,

Yes, there’s a lot of deception.  Mostly from the ACL – you guys want the world to be dictated by your values and everyone else can go stick their head up a dead bears bum (not Gladly)

we don’t agree with Sunrise taking on the role of a n activist organisation, partnering itself so visibly and publicly with Getup! in particular, which is constantly issuing emails which only this week for instance said that those that oppossed gay marriage were propergaters of hate, know there’s no place for this in the public square, from either side of the debate.

That’s right Wally, there’s no place for hate, and yet you willingly bring into the debate the chief propagator of Nazi propagander machine and compare the gay rights campaign to his campaign.  You arsehole.

You say there is no room for hate in the public square, but you allow comments like this on your blog:

The problem is that when society turns away from God evil thrives. The Bible states that in the end evil will be seen as good and good will be seen as evil. We are arriving at this truth.

That’s right, anyone who doesn’t believe in your god is evil.  Because I don’t believe in your god I’m evil thriving.   Or perhaps this is one of those people who aren’t really a christian Wally?  Maybe you forgot to ditch this comment?

Wally, you may not say that you think gay people are evil, you may pretend to be all christian and nice, but at the end of the day Wally, your brand of christianity thinks that gay people are evil.  You think that evil people go to hell for all eternity, then you make believe that it’s the fault of the person, they deserve to burn forever.   You think being gay, wanting marriage equality is the work of the devil and must be stopped.

Your hate for anything ‘gay’ is just below the surface Wally.

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Consider this headline: ‎“An equal opportunity commission board member who signed a submission against same-sex marriage has resigned.” A respected doctor and community leader has been forced to resign for a horrific crime: yes, he dared to say marriage was between a man and a woman, and children deserve to be raised by their own biological mother and father.

He seems to have no respect for all citizens in Victoria, just the straight ones.  He wasn’t forced to resign either, the Government came out in support of him, as did his boss the chief psychiatrist.

The homosexual mafia have once again got their way and shown their true colours. They are destroying freedom and democracy slowly but surely. Every day we witness another example of the pink jackboots in operation. It is getting uglier by the day, and shows no signs of letting up.

WTF is the homosexual mafia? I mean really.  And pink jackboots?  It’s really these appalling statements that continue to vilify people based only on their desire to enjoy freedom and democracy.  I think it’s pretty clear just who wants to limit freedom, and stop people from participating fully in the society in which they live.

For years now I have been documenting the constant war which is being waged against those who value marriage and family, those who value freedom, and those who are people of faith. All three have been heavily hammered by homosexual activists and their supporters in high places.

It’s amusing that he spends his days documenting the ‘constant war’ even more amusing that he thinks a war is being waged by gay people against him.  Pretty sure most of the world doesn’t give a toss about him or gay people.  Hardly even a blip on the radar.  I would have thought that plenty of us value marriage and family, that’s why we want equal rights.  I would have thought that plenty of gay people value freedom, that’s why we want the freedom to marry.  I would have though that people of faith understand that everyone has a different idea about faith.

Here I offer just some recent examples of this. They are only the tip of the iceberg, but they very nicely demonstrate the battle we are in, and how special rights for homosexuals in general, and homosexual marriage in particular, will change everything. With so many examples to choose from, and so little space here, let me just offer the headline, date, and perhaps the opening paragraph of each recent news item. I will begin with last year and move up to more recent times:

OK, so lets look at the tip of the iceberg.  Let’s have a quick glance to see just how special these rights are.  Let’s see just how much this will change everything.

“Canadian Court: Marriage officials must marry homosexuals”

January 10, 2011
“The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal declared this morning that proposed legislative amendments that would have allowed Saskatchewan’s marriage commissioners to refuse to perform same-sex ‘marriages’ on religious grounds are unconstitutional.”

[Bills Source]

Yes, and rightly so.  They’re not being asked to marry people in a church.  Marriage commissioners are appointed by the government, they are public servants.  It’s their job.  Changes everything?  No. [SOURCE]

“Army: court-martial Chaplains for ‘religious, conscience’ objection to homosexuality”
March 24, 2011
“The U.S. Army has officially threatened military chaplains they must either embrace the new openly homosexual military, resign from service, or face court-martial for their ‘religious, conscience’ objections.”

[Bills Source]

Just a fully fabricated story that’s out and out wrong.  For someone who claims to fully research everything he seems to stop short of finding out the truth. Changes everything?  No. [SOURCE]

“Tory MP calls for churches to be banned from holding marriages if they refuse gay couples”
PinkNews, September 2, 2011

It seems to be a call to make sure that gay people can be married in churches.  I don’t think any new laws have been passed.  Doesn’t seem to be too serious at all.  Bit like Abbott calling for an election, just making noise with minimal impact.

“MPs vote to stop civil servants refusing to carry out gay weddings”
November 15, 2011
“Dutch MPs voted on Tuesday afternoon for a change in the law to prevent civil servants refusing to conduct gay marriages.”

Yes, civil servants should carry out the law as directed by the government, that’s what we expect.

“Lesbian couple mulls action against Christian wedding cake baker”
November 16, 2011
“An Iowa baker who politely declined to provide a wedding cake for two lesbians based on her Christian values may face legal action from the couple.”

Really?  Fancy that, a customer wants to sue a shop because they refused to serve them.  Changes the world?  No.  Pisses off the shop owner.  Yes.

“Gay rights activist calls for boycott of Salvation Army Christmas fundraiser”
November 28, 2011
“Gay rights activists who object to the Salvation Army’s biblical stance on homosexuality are launching their annual call to shut down the organization’s Christmas fundraiser.”

Yeah, that’s right, the Salvos are pricks.  What’s wrong with calling for a boycott?  Not like the christians never attempt that sort of thing.  Changes the world?  Nah.  The Salvos don’t seem to be suffering from a lack of public support.

“Case of counseling student forced to undergo pro-homosexual ‘sensitivity training’ goes to court”
December 2, 2011
“After losing at a lower court, a counseling student at a public university in Georgia who was threatened with expulsion because she expressed discomfort with counseling homosexuals, is pleading her case before an Appeals Court this week.”

And rightly so, we expect a counsellor should always have the best intentions for their clients, not judge the issues based on their own personal beliefs.  How would it be if professional counsellors allowed their own personal belief dictate the way the treated their clients?  Changes the world?  Yes – it stops self-centred christians from counselling people against what’s best for them.

“Macy’s fires woman for refusing ‘transgender’ man access to women’s fitting room”
December 8, 2011
“A woman has been fired from a Macy’s department store for denying a man dressed as a woman access to the women’s fitting room. ‘I had to either comply with Macy’s or comply with God,’ said Natalie Johnson.”

That’s right – Macy’s have a policy, staff need to follow it.  And where does this god thing call for transgender people to be denied access to a fitting room?  A fucking fitting room?  You know, where you go in and lock the fucking door to keep everyone else out.

“All Ontario teachers will be forced to undergo ‘diversity’ training by 2013: minister”
December 22, 2011
“By 2013 prospective teachers in Ontario will be required to undergo focused training in ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender diversity,’ says a cabinet minister in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government.”

Why would that even be an issue?

“A New Jersey judge ruled against a Christian retreat house that refused to allow a same-sex civil union ceremony to be conducted on its premises, ruling the Constitution allows ‘some intrusion into religious freedom to balance other important societal goals’.”
January 12, 2012

Well, it’s debatable whether the ‘premises’ is private.  It’s in a public park and the retreat house (code for christian church) receives public money to maintain it.  Everyone climbs all over the pavilion. [SOURCE]

“Gay activists attack church over same-sex marriage message”

15 February 2012
“Same Sex Marriage supporters attacked Wallsend, NSW Presbyterian Church last night in response to a message criticising same-sex marriage displayed on the building’s outside notice board.”

Yep, out and out vandalism.  Shouldn’t be allowed.  Changes everything?  No.  Perpetrators who break the law will be treated as criminals, charged, jailed or fined.

Homosexual marriage changes everything. Who will be the next one to be fired, fined or kicked out of a job?

And on and on he goes with article after article.

For Bill, having a few civil servants being asked to do their job, or some teachers being trained to ensure they treat all children fairly is wrong.  He wants christians to have a special status in the world.  They have to be allowed to follow their faith, regardless of where they work.  It doesn’t matter to him that what they are doing may cause great harm to those they come in contact with.

Marriage equality won’t change everything.  It will make the work a better place.  He won’t even notice any difference.

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Billy the Mule’s latest attempt at preventing marriage equality is among the most offensive he’s ever written. Even the title is a language that needs to be shunned, or at the very least snipped from the internet, rolled up in a copy of the bible and force fed to  him.  To suggest that allowing marriage equality will lead to social suicide is really reprehensible as a turn of phrase.

Only rarely in human history are people allowed to take part in, or at least observe, transformations and revolutions which are far-reaching and earth-shattering.

He really believes that allowing two gay people to get married will be earth-shattering.  You know what’s earth shattering?  Flying planes into buildings.  How our lives have changed since then.  Tsunamis in Japan and the Indian Ocean, that’s earth shattering.  Earth quakes in Haiti.  The Cuban missile crisis, the overthrow of dictators, the slaughtering of millions of people, the destruction of rain forests, the financial crisis, the Mabo decision, the sacking of Gough… and on and on.  All these events in our world have far-reaching effects that have resounded through the lives of many in Australia and around the world.

Let’s look at what Billy is on about.  Marriage Equality.  He thinks that allowing everyone to get married is the end of the world.

We are in fact involved in one of the great cataclysmic events of our time. Never before in human history has parts of mankind declared war on something so fundamental and as pivotal as the institutions of marriage and family.

Cataclysmic?  A few gays getting hitched?  And where’s the war? I don’t see anyone out on the street, taking sides and killing others.  There’s no war going on here.  Nobody is talking about destroying anything, at all.  Nobody is saying that marriage as we know it must stop, men and women will continue to marry.

But in the West today militant minority groups… are doing all they can to obliterate marriage and family. And the even more incredible thing is that they are being aided and abetted by so many in high places.

Militant minority groups – that is, the ones that aren’t the ACL or the AFA, are not trying to obliterate marriage and family.  Marriage equality will not bring destruction down upon us.  It really won’t.

So many have simply remained silent, pretending none of this was taking place. In the same way the majority of church leaders did nothing and said nothing as the Nazis were climbing the political ladder in Germany. They refused to speak out, and when they may have wanted to do so later, it was then of course far too late.

Well no, it’s not that so many have ‘simply remained silent’, nor are they pretending it’s not taking place.  I rather suspect it’s a non issue.  It’s nothing like the Nazis in Germany, and shame on you, I mean really Muehlenberg, shame on you for even equating the current political debate about marriage equality with Hitler.  Hitler and the Nazis were rounding up Jews, gays, Romani and others that they considered undesirable and killing them.  This is not the same thing at all. Nobody is rounding up catholics and evangelical christians to kill them because they want marriage to stay the same.  That is an arsehole of a comparison.

Throughout human history heterosexual marriage and family have been the norm. Sure, there have been plenty of minor variations of the theme, but the basic fundamental structure of heterosexual marriage has always existed. Yet here we are, trying to redefine it out of existence.

Nobody is redefining marriage out of existence.  Nobody is saying that marriage between a man and a woman must stop.  Allowing another ‘minor variation’ will not stop people from marrying, and it certainly won’t stop them from breeding.

And I made it quite clear to the committee that destruction would indeed be the case. Sure, it will not happen overnight; such radical social changes may take many decades before we see the full effects and the very real negative fallout from all this.

Let me get this right, you made it clear to a Senate committee that allowing marriage equality will lead to the destruction of society as we know it, but not straight away… it will take decades…  based on what?

The evidence is overwhelmingly clear: whenever these radical laws are passed, everything changes. Everyone is impacted. Freedoms will be taken away, and the coercive power of the state will be used to get a resistant population to comply fully with the new world order.

Where has this happened?  Canada?  Nope, still a democracy, and one that’s moved back to the right.  Spain?  Nope, still a democracy, but they too have return a conservative government.  South Africa?  New Zealand?  Nowhere has marriage equality made the slightest bit of difference to the society in which it exists.

But you see, Bill has over forty newspaper articles that proves his point.  I haven’t seen the document where he lists those articles, but his blog has plenty of stories of oddity that he uses as if to say that this is the way the world is.  It would be a bit like me taking the story about the Austrian father and husband that kept his daughter locked in the basement for over twenty years.  From the story it should be clear to everyone that allowing men to marry women will lead to the sexual and physical abuse of the children and must be stopped.

To have to go into a government meeting to defend the most basic, the most natural, the most fundamental, the most universal, and the most historic social institutions of all time – marriage and family – demonstrates that we are just about kaput as a civilisation.

Defend what?  Marriage as you know and love it Billy boy, isn’t going anywhere.  It will remain the most fundamental and most universal institution of our time, it will just include men marrying men and women marrying women.  Even that slight tweak won’t change that those same men and women already live together and raise families.  Mostly those families turn out really well.  Just sometimes, like all relationships, they go ‘kaput’.

I feel compelled to leave you with a Douglas Adams quote from the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Barman: Did you say the world is coming to an end? Shouldn’t we all lie on the floor or put paper bags over our heads?
Ford: If you like.
Barman: Will it help?
Ford: Not at all.

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Just because you can wear a silly hat, dress in ridiculous robes and carry a stick with a hook on it doesn’t mean you have any idea about reality.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the leader of the catholics in Scotland reckons that David Cameron the UK PM is trying to ‘redefine reality’.

I’m surprised a cardinal has any idea of what it’s like in the real world.

Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child. It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father.

How?  Reality says that every child will have a mother and father, and the vast majority of children will know their mother and father.  The cardinal seems to think that somehow, perhaps by magic, everyone will only have two mothers or two fathers.  Nobody is being deprived of anything you silly person, maybe your biretta is a bit tight

He adds: ‘In Article 16 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, marriage is defined as a relationship between men and women. But when our politicians suggest jettisoning the established understanding of marriage and subverting its meaning they aren’t derided.

Oh?  Article 16:

Article 16
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

O'Brien offers the pope his hand in marriage

It says that men and women have the right to marry and found a family.  It doesn’t say that only one man and one woman can get married.  You might also note it says without limitation due to religion – shove that in your thurible and burn it baby.

It was nice to see the pope and the cardinal in a touching moment, perhaps the cardinal proposed to the pope?  Or at least offered him a blow job?

What was the bit about bearing false witness again?

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