The Trouble with being Tory

For the conservatives in Australian politics and their voters, it must be one hell of a confusing time. Who do they believe?

Malcolm Turnbull? Definitely not. Do not let a man of principle (and large ego) stand up for anything. In fact, its better to have no policy than one that sounds like the government's; because we all know the point of opposition is to oppose anything that the government puts up. I'm looking forward to the Government opposing the ACT's new push to recognise Same-sex marriage. Oh, and he's a republican!

The Queen? Torn between two lovers and feeling like a fool? Yes, the Coalition is powering down a road that puts them squarely at odds with the QE2. How bitter sweet would it be for the Liberals to have to choose between a POLICY on climate change or a REPUBLIC. What a dilemma? What would a Liberal voter vote for? Maybe they should move to Saudi Arabia where they get the best of both worlds - a country that churns up fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow AND an autocratic monarchy!! What more could you ask for!

Penny Wong? Now, here is not only a test of a conservative's ability to emu-late an ostrich, but as I have observed, they pass witty comments in online forums like "Penny - I am not - Wong" on an ETS. Wow! Did they think that all up on their own? So, not only do they become masters of genuflection but clearly the White Australia Policy is still in force in their brains and an attack on the climate change minister is a thinly veiled racial slur! BRAVO!!! This helps allay some of their confusion, but not which decade they are living in.

The Hadley Centre? The UK's foremost climate change research centre. Tony Abbott, in an interview on Lateline with Tony Jones on 19 Nov 09, said this: "No, I don't claim to have immersed myself deeply in all of these documents. I'm a politician. I have to rely on briefings - I have to rely on what I pick up through the secondary sources." With one of the most significant issues of our generation, possibly ever to impact the planet, the now Leader of the Opposition chooses to rely on secondary sources to form his view about climate change. And you would stake your future on this?

The ABC? Well, this one's easy. All ABC journalists are left wing conspirators! Like Mark Colvin, for example, whose great uncle Stanley Bruce wore spats. Hurrah! Yes, let's accuse the ABC of bias when they say anything that we don't agree with. Because unlike cliimate science, its difficult to cherry pick a journalist's work when it seeks to unearth a simple truth.

Nick Minchin? This is easy and helps avoid any confusion over climate change. To avoid any cognitive dissonance, just recite these statements each night at prayer time

1. "For 10 years the left internationally have been very successful in exploiting peoples' innate fears about global warming and climate change to achieve their political ends." (But we don't. The Children overboard affair was not about that at all.)

2. "If the question is, do people believe or not believe that human beings are causing, are the main cause of the planet warming, then I'd say a majority don't accept that position." Like God.

3. "People won't listen to politicians necessarily; we don't have the credibility I guess." Oh no, scratch number 3….it leads to confusion.

Barnaby Joyce? The confusion here seems to be with understanding what the meaning of the word "no" is. "And you can go to Copenhagen, you can go to Disneyland, you can go wherever you like but the position of the National Party on this will be quite clear, to understand the word no."

Kevin Rudd? Also definitely not. Kevin is the Prime Minister of the Government and a member of the Australian Labor Party, which means he is the enemy, regardless of what he says. In fact everything he says is suspect and must be treated as left wing conspiracy. It was very confusing for conservatives to see politicans working together on a policy and negotiating the policy so as to be more representative for all Australians. Much better to oppose it, because that's what we simply must do. That Kevin is a nasty little man with beady little eyes and pigeon toes, and clearly on those grounds he can't be trusted with the future of his own footsteps let alone the future of the planet.

Where does that leave a conservative in these trying times?

MARGARET THATCHER!

Yes! From the doyenne of tory spiritual fulfillment comes this from the Baroness in 1990!

"The IPCC tells us that, on present trends, the earth will warm up faster than at any time since the last ice age. Weather patterns could change so that what is now wet would become dry, and what is now dry would become wet. Rising seas could threaten the livelihood of that substantial part of the world's population which lives on or near coasts. The character and behaviour of plants would change, some for the better, some for worse. Some species of animals and plants would migrate to different zones or disappear for ever. Forests would die or move. And deserts would advance as green fields retreated. "

So I can see how a conservative voter is just plan flummoxed right now, but they must be very happy with Tony Abbott, because they now have a leader who stakes all his beliefs on a simple concept; faith. His faith in God is what sets him apart and makes him a true moral barometer for our age. He helps us avoid the confusion that comes when overwhelming evidence is lined up against the bible so we can sleep easily at night knowing that all those left wing scientists just don't get it! The earth is 6000 years old and God will hold us in his hands! Why would he send climate change to ruin us all?

I know! All those sinners!

The bloody homosexuals caused climate change. Them and their dirty stinking sexual depravity! That's why god has sent climate change! We're all gonna die because of poofters!

TONY ABBOTT? "Ladies & gentleman, I would like to make an announcement. The Liberal - National Party Coalition has formulated its policy on climate change. We believe, and the evidence from the bible shows this to be the absolute truth, that homosexuals are the real cause of climate change. Therefore, at the next election, we the Liberal - National Party pledge to eradicate all homosexuals. We will do this by underatking something I have always been opposed to: Stem Cell research. This will enable us to identify all homosexuals alive and those that get conceived in the womb. This leads me to another personal crisis , but one that I know will save the planet: allowing women with gay babies to abort. But in the face of being able to get rid of the obvious scourge of our planet, I must make these exceptions and change my mind about what I had held firm on previously. It's a tough job politics and its tougher when you have to make the tough choices. But we believe this is the right choice and working families will be better off because of it. Thank you."

REPORTER: "Mr Abbott, does this mean that you now believe that climate change is man made?"

TONY ABBOTT: "Look, let's get this quite clear: gay man made, ok?"

Now I can sleep easy. I have someone to blame.

Is RFK's Spirit with Obama?

This week President Obama gave a speech at the Human Rights Campaign Dinner in Washington. The following morning it was being spread around the Net and I caught it on Facebook. Watching it moved me to tears. Never before had I been witness to a world leader of such stature stake such a claim on supporting change for the LGBT community.

Then I picked up the Sydney Morning Herald and on the front page a short item “Gay backlash for Obama.” The item carried a story about how his claims of support had no timeline for change and therefore he couldn’t be trusted. I thought, “Did these people witness the same speech?” Did they not see him announce that the Anti-Hate Bill had been signed into law and that it would be named after Matthew Shepard, the young man murdered in a gay hate crime in Wyoming in 1998?

That there, also, in the audience was Matthew’s mother and father, whose extraordinary battle to see hate fuelled violence against other humans be stopped. The Herald, rather than report on the quantum leap for LGBT people, picked up on the negative responses to Obama’s commitment and ran only with that. Precisely at the time that the Seymour Centre was running a special 10th anniversary reading of the Laramie Project. No mention anywhere.

What is more dispiriting is that some individuals in our community saw this as a time to launch a tirade at Obama. I understand the need to challenge him. Hell, even Obama said, “You need to keep up the pressure on your leaders, and that includes me”. What I don’t get is how they don’t see the courage Obama is demonstrating in being so bold.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton made what could have been the ultimate political faux pas of the Democratic Nomination process when she made a link between her decision to stay in the race with, not only her husband’s late securing of the democratic nomination in 1992, but in what has been described as macabre, Clinton’s reference to the tragic assassination of Robert F Kennedy on 5 June 1968, the inference being that Obama risked the same fate.

And while RFK’s own son dismissed the remark as innocent and did not take offense, symbolically Clinton slipped, some say irretrievably, and many regard it as the coup de grace of her campaign for the White House.

So has the spirit of RFK finally arrived with a Barack Obama?

I would argue it has and we need to embrace his vision. He has done something no US President has done before him, and that makes him a true herald for change. His administration is the harbinger of THINGS TO COME. We are ungracious if we as a community can believe he will make it happen in one term even, but he is chipping away at some very powerful resistance and THIS MUST BE ACKNOWLEDGED.

In June 1968, Robert “Bobby” Francis Kennedy was the juggernaut democratic candidate who entered into the race late – in March – but by June, his campaign was rolling towards the White House. When Kennedy announced his campaign, Nixon –standing for the Republican Party was said to have remarked, “Something bad is going to come of this.”

Kennedy had undergone a personal transformation since the death of his brother in November 1963. Overwhelmed with grief, he continued as Attorney-General under Lyndon Johnson but resigned 9 months later. Johnson and Kennedy’s relationship was strained with Johnson despising Kennedy’s background and writing him off as a spoilt kid with nothing original to contribute. He stood for the US Senate for the state of New York and was elected in November ’64.

What came to define his short campaign for President was his belief in another kind of world. The Vietnam War was now deeply unpopular and Kennedy, while initially supporting the War, gained credence by saying he was wrong and would bring the war to an end.

His now famous speech at the University of Kansas on 18 March, 1968 illustrates just what kind of leader Kennedy might have been, and of itself might provide sad clues as to the reason behind his untimely death:


“We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. For the Gross National Product includes air pollution, and ambulances to clear out highways from carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the Redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads. It includes the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children.

And if the GNP includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. The GNP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

The year after Kennedy died the Stonewall Riots took place ushering in a new battleground for social justice. It would appear that perhaps along with Kennedy’s assassination went the last hope America had of becoming something other than it has. The relentless drive for economic growth (Regeanomics) and the collapse of small communities in the quest for some capitalist nirvana has built an endless suburban desert of strip malls, giving birth to an epidemic of addictions and mental health issues.

Nixon was elected and with it came the energy crisis coinciding with America’s peak in oil production in 1970 and the corruption that would ultimately see him resign to avoid impeachment over the Watergate scandal in 1974.

Like Obama today, Kennedy represented a profound shift from earlier leadership, including his older brother who, in all likelihood, would’ve disagreed with parts of his younger brother’s vision for a better world. Kennedy was a huge supporter of the Civil Rights movement and its slain leader, Martin Luther King, who was gunned down outside a hotel in Memphis, Tennesee two months previously on April 4, 1968. Kennedy jumped up and said:


“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.”


With Obama having beaten McCain for the Presidency, his tenure will be as much about how successfully he defines how Americans see themselves and their future role in Global politics as it is about Christian fundamentalism, race, same sex marriage, Wal-Marts and an endless unsustainable consumer mentality. It could well be that Kennedy’s legacy is to imbue an Obama Presidency with a sense of decency in a world where the greedy corruption of human spirit, foisted on the petard of global capitalism, is awakened and the measure of things worthwhile to living become the very thing that we trade in every day.

It might be idealistic, but then the practical, rational world of global finance has left us bereft of a connection to the key elements that make us human: our connection with each other, our relationship to the earth and the surrender to a force greater than ourselves. It is ludicrous to suggest that all will change at the end of this year, but in our hearts we must remain conscious of that which we should be heading towards. Now, more than ever.

Barack Obama is a true leader. His speech to drive change for the LGBT community is historic. He risks a huge amount politically, but he also makes himself a target of the same hate that killed Shepard. To me that says: “I stand with you to show the world that this is not how it should be.” Let us give him our support and, by all means challenge inaction, but remember that change begins with a bold determination to go where none have gone before.

What is a "right"?

“Suppose we agree that he can’t have babies, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans; but we agree that he does have the right to have babies.”

Judith – Brian’s girlfriend

People’s Front of Judea

Monty Python’s Life of Brian – 1979

Even Monty Python had worked out that oppression and child birth go hand in hand way back in 1979. 

Neil Shepherd, Director General of DoCS noted in the 2006-07 annual report, “The statistical probability is now that one in every five children in NSW will be reported to DoCS at some point before they turn 18 years of age.”

It would seem that opposition to gay parenting isn’t about whether you are good parents – it’s just about fear of sexual orientation or whatever else self righteous damn reason people have to children being raised as decent, fair, generous, loving and honest individuals. It is, apparently, more important where mummy and daddy stick their bits than raising fine, upstanding children, adolescents and young people in a safe environment who will become the next generation and will, whether you like it or not, challenge the way you think.

But I do have to say, after that spat, that I still have a problem. 

We inhabit a planet in a vast universe. Der. At this time, as we measure it in 2007 there are 6 billion of us. According to the United Nations report, World Population to 2300, by 2050 there is estimated to be almost 9 billion people on the planet or put another way: this growth in population we will consume as much food in the next 50 years as humans have consumed for the last 10,000. Notice a problem?

And while we are running around being busy, worried about the bus being on time or if that delivery will arrive at work today for the really important meeting and you’d just die if it failed to turn up, consider this:

At the moment our whole lifestyle, everything we rely on from the food on our table at night when we get home from work, to the computer you switch on in your office in the morning, to the power that drives the lighting rig at ARQ, relies on oil. Nitrogen for the soil that grows the crops, the bag you freeze to put the kids lunch in for school this week, everything that comes to the supermarket by road, sea or air or anywhere for that matter, not to mention the car itself and, oh, the liquid you put in its tank. 

So what is the big problem?

We have peaked, are peaking or are about to peak in world oil production. This, in and of itself, is not remarkable because like any limited resource, it tends to follow a production bell curve. In 2007 we are at the top of the quite narrow apex to this curve. It is also known as Hubbert’s Peak, after the American scientist, Dr Marion King Hubbert, who in 1956 correctly predicted that US domestic oil production would peak around 1970 – which it did. 

The issue is not whether we are running out of oil, but what will happen to the cost of oil as demand keeps rising and supply begins to slip and then descend into an irreversible decline?

Collapse. Wholesale, unprecedented, economic collapse. Being described as the Second Great Depression, it will make the 1929 event seem like a stroll through a bank vault full of gold.

What about alternative energy? Well, yes, what about it? It’s available, we can produce it but haven’t you noticed car manufacturers selling yet more cars still of the combustion engine variety every day? See many electric cars spinning around or lots of individual windmills in the backyards of people’s homes or several on the roofs of apartment blocks? 

Alternative fuels are available but they are not sufficiently developed by way of output to drive the $65 trillion world economy at the rate it currently spins; nor will they be able to fill the void as a cheap resource. Oil has gone from $12 a barrel a decade ago to nearly $100 a barrel today.

The simple fact is that our economy is predicated on the reliable supply of cheap, effective energy. Without it every financial market around the world will convulse and collapse taking with them many human lives; and I don’t mean to the grave, although that will undoubtedly be an outcome eventually. No, these people will lose something more surprising: Their assumption about rights.

Every thing we imagine that we are entitled to will be challenged in a world where you can’t get milk at 3 in the morning; shit, you won’t be able to even get it at 9 in the morning. If you want milk, you’ll have to milk a fucking cow  In a world like this where human life is brought closer to the prevarications of the natural world, who will we stake our claim for the right to exist? There is no justice so complete, so utterly indisputable as the kind that exposes our true vulnerability to the influence of a natural world.

In this new world will be issues that will slide us down Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as aspirational notions of self actualisation are replaced by more basic requirements. Like, where the fuck is my next meal coming from?

The funny thing about this, and I think it’s valuable to hold on to a laugh or two, is that on the other side of vast economic devastation is the very thing we’re already quite aware of: climate change. 

Yes! Hard on the heels of omniscient oil, is the product of our flagrant and quite profligate abuse of this extraordinarily useful and precious resource: increasingly erratic weather patterns making the reliable production of basic food stuffs in the quantities we need, a challenge.

All up I think that’s what you might call a triptych. Whatever you call it, the fact is that adding to the population is not something that should be entered into lightly.

I was at a party at Gretel Pinniger’s, aka Madam Lash, recently and I met a neighbour of hers who was a profoundly heterosexual, self made, male. He said in response to my statement about not having children, “why not?”

“I’m gay.” I replied defensively.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Well, really”, I began in my most self righteous tone; “I don’t want to add to the planet’s overburdened population.”

He stopped and craned his neck, turning his head to look at me quizzically.

“Let me tell you one thing: we are heading into a future that is going to need a tenacious generation who will be able to face what’s coming. You blokes are usually bright, respectful and loving but, significantly, you also know how to survive.”

Ok, so are there are any lesbians out there looking for an involved father?

  HYPERLINK "http://www.community.nsw.gov.au/DOCSwr/_assets/annual_report07/dg_message.htm" http://www.community.nsw.gov.au/DOCSwr/_assets/annual_report07/dg_message.htm

  HYPERLINK "http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf" http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

  HYPERLINK "http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/" http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

  HYPERLINK "http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2007/HeinbergEat.html" http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2007/HeinbergEat.html

  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

  HYPERLINK "http://www.madamelash.com.au/" http://www.madamelash.com.au/

For Fight's Sake

Volumes fill halls in Libraries you know?

Cartons and boxes collecting and sorting.

Nothing is as real. Nothing feels better; 

Than songs on the wind, than words in a letter.

Brave little cherubs battle for more: 

More of material, more to fight for.

So it all syphons down in a pool of Fallujah;

And purpose is spent, democratically speaking.

In the service of good while goodness is leaking.

Half just see what there is to behold.

Fifty per cent scream till the world feels the sore

Guarantees slide over the Teflon TV

And we all scoop it up; gullible ice cream.

Oh, they say, as I do

That we’re being taken along;

Being ridden so hard,

Can’t hear what is wrong.

I caught the last breath

Water seeped into its bed.

The dust that was fought for

has to value its dead.

Wrecked and abandoned;

Gone like a comet.

Echoes of blustering, bulging good days

When life badged on chests and all beauty was saved.

Nothing is nothing is all that is left.

Garrisons splintered, broken, bereft.

Defending the last patch is my futile call;

Let me pick up my pumps and dance at the ball.

The Adventures of Puppy Jim & Raz the Wonder Dog

Chapter 1

 

What possible place could that be?

 

Now that Puppy Jim had emerged from his self induced daze brought on by way too much open space and finding himself in a state the size of Western Europe, he knocked on the door, only to find there was no one at home. He crept in by way of a dirt track. He was right in thinking that no one would notice, it was empty. But the trees and birds and other natural things that stand around doing natural things, stood around doing natural things and everything was good: Until the soft sand.

 

Puppy Jim was an experienced vehicle operator, but this tested even his mettle. Upon the Balladonia track not far from the entrance to the state he now found himself in was an unsuspecting pile of soft sand cunningly hidden amongst all the other sand laid out upon the track. Gallantly, Puppy Jim ploughed along the Balladonia Track, made famous by nobody, in his thoroughly unsuitable 2WD station wagon while Raz the Wonder Dog took it all in his stride acting like some kind of canine spirit level as they rounded corners and Puppy Jim (PJ) needed some commonsense input to correct speed in relation to conditions.

 

The sand was there, spread wide, ready to capture those without warning. PJ came upon the sand with the gusto of a chef chopping onion and in a loud operatic vocal style, declared his chagrin at having been duped so easily by some so sly and launched the anchors. With the natural air-conditioning in the vehicle open by way of its glass panels and the sudden change in velocity, dust that was following along behind filled the vehicle reducing vision in the vehicle to something similar to 600m below sea level.

PJ and Raz the Wonder Dog were the Jacques Cousteau team to rival. Extracting himself from the vehicle, PJ coughed and choked a moment. Raz the Wonder Dog followed suit, but his was merely a sneeze; a satisfied, "I told you so" kind of sneeze and PJ glared at Raz the Wonder Dog with a glare that glared glaringly. They now both stood on the non-famous Balladonia Track looking at their vehicle which resembled something of an hour glass. As the dust began to settle, the situation was evident: they would have to get back in the car and drive on. So was the day of their life.

 

Towards the end of the Balladonia Track, PJ and Raz the Wonder Dog had the hallmarks of intrepid travellers, or to the locals of Esperance: "There's another easterner gone got himself lost in the quest for inner peace." As they frolicked in the warm waters of the Southern Ocean at Great White Tea Time (GWTT has replaced GMT in this area to numb the effect that an actual attack has on locals. Don't ask me).

PJ remarked to Raz the Wonder Dog that dogs give off a good deal of splashing in the water and they should repair to the white, sparkling sand to avoid an inconvenient afternoon death. Raz the Wonder Dog was undeterred by PJ's trivial concerns and continued in his quest to put his head under water for about 20 seconds, bring up a rock, drop it and repeat the whole exercise.

 

Later that evening as PJ and Raz the Wonder Dog enjoyed a meal of copious individual portions all mixed together so that the portions were no longer the portions they had once been. The moon in a state of intoxication, began its ascent into the night sky. Big and square it was too, like moons are occasionally. This one was especially so. The man in it had obviously remembered to turn the yellow light on this time, because it was yellow and not white. PJ and Raz the Wonder Dog stared up at it. PJ then turned to Raz the Wonder Dog and announced confidently: "See! It is square." At which Raz the Wonder Dog cast a look at PJ and thought to himself: "I'm glad I'll be driving tomorrow."

 

The Adventures of Puppy Jim and Raz the Wonder Dog will continue..........eventually.

 

I wanna hold your hand...

Originally authored 4th August 2009

Walking down King Street, Newtown, the other night while holding my boyfriend's hand this woman unleashed a torrent of abuse at us. We were stunned; and not content with the diatribe she let fly at us as she passed by, she kept going in a seemingly unending rapid of violent vitriol designed to hurt her targets.

It worked; it did hurt. I can't pretend it didn't.

So what is this? Why does it matter to her who walks down the street with whom and holds their hand? Perhaps she is a fruit with not enough fibre in her diet and she's backed up? Whatever the reason, it calls into question a very simple idea: respect.

You don't have to like me; you don't have to agree with me; shit, you don't even have to talk to me, but how about a little respect? And if that is so difficult, try just minding your own business and not be so reckless in tearing others down with your judgements.

You see, for me, when the Federal Government carries on every government's legacy before it of not recognising same sex relationships, they are doing two things: one: they are telling me and everyone else that my relationship with my partner can NOT be considered as meaningful as one where the partners are of opposite sex.

And two: they give to those people in the community that agree with them tacit endorsement to mock, humiliate or ridicule my affection for my partner in public when I hold his hand.

When a man and a woman walk down the street holding hands, they are ignored, unimportant, insignificant. The nature of their relationship is also not assumed. They could be brother and sister, father and daughter, cousins, friends.

When a woman and a woman walk down the street, they are given cursory curious looks (oh well, they might be sisters or good friends!)

When a man and another man walk down the street holding hands, they are the wonderment of those they pass. derision, shock, surprise, disgust, revulsion, horror, contempt are some of the looks conveyed. How many male friends take each others hands as a mark of close friendship or even family members?

Well guess what? I want to be ignored and unimportant. I want the fact that I am holding another human being's hand to NOT MATTER.

Before we get to having our relationships recognised, perhaps we need to have our love for each other made visible? I don't mean out of control snogging, I just mean holding hands. Something so inoffensive, so simple, yet such a measure of the esteem and love you feel for someone special in your life.

Sadly, there are places where the mere action of taking my boyfriend's hand in public is so threatening that it is actually dangerous and one runs the risk of being verbally or physically assaulted for doing nothing but holding hands. So, we don't. Even though we might want to.

When you're straight, you never have to think about it; wherever you are.

I want to know why in our western Anglo-Saxon culture, we as teenagers, stop holding our father's hand. We stop any physical affection for our fathers around puberty; presumably because the blossoming of male energy in our children maybe misunderstood, and further it raises a false notion that affection between males is a show of weakness. Steve Biddulph in his book, Manhood, wrote that by demeaning or oppressing homosexuality we oppress our masculinity and this is especially apt here.

What are men, any men, so afraid of? Why on earth would they want to be able to express themselves ably to each other so that they might also form strong powerful and meaningful connections with women? Given the success rate of marriage (as an institution meaning to unite a man or woman, not a marriage of convenience or a marriage of ingredients or any other possible mixture of the word marriage); and given the high rate of alcoholism and domestic violence, gambling addictions, infidelity, and on and on; one might imagine that someone might stop and say: "I think things aren't really working the way they are and perhaps we need to take a good, hard, long look at how we raise and cultivate our men."

But we don't. We target the symptoms listed above and undertake stinging rebukes upon the men in our lives that have failed us or let us down. Yes, they have. But they have been singularly let down by a culture that gives them such false pretenses about how to be a strong, yet compassionate human being.

Matthew Fox is a theologian based on the west coast of the USA. A heterosexual, he has been ex-communicated from the Catholic Church because of his views on spirituality generally, but even more so, because of his notions of masculinity & sexuality. In his work: The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, he takes us on a journey to a more traditional notion of male strength and compassion; one that allows for the gamut of human emotion and not some contrived, put upon, dressed up notion of what it means to be a true blue aussie male. Or any male for that matter.

The interesting thing is that gay men are just as lost. For those unaware of some of the courting rituals of the modern gay male, one only needs to avail oneself of the internet and there you will discover a cornucopia of copulating possibility. Found all too frequently among these portals are descriptors such as "straight acting", "no fems", "girlie types move on" - usually accompanied by the disclaimer "no offense."

None taken.

The sad thing is that these poor deluded souls are engaged in a game of their own diminishment. We have carved such a powerful cultural idea of what being masculine really means, that it has been incorporated into what it can often mean to be sexually attractive for two men.

Does anyone see the irony in this? The very cultural norm that sets us up as victims of rampant persecution, also is the very cultural asset we, as gay men are trying to invest our souls into to ensure we uphold these created cultural assets, endorse them, and frame them as being right and proper.

100 years ago at the crossroads of the Victorian and Edwardian eras we were still a frigid society that frowned utterly on public displays of affection, usually being considered as in poor taste rather than any crime against civil society.

In 1950, photographer Robert Doisneau (1912-1994), captured a couple kissing on the street in Paris. The work is famous and has been replicated all over the world, but for its time it was wildly provocative and represented the new era of liberation and freedom found in post war Europe.

Since the 50s the world has undergone some profound social shifts. Today, same sex couples are at a precipice where the valley of acceptance and respect swirl beneath them in a deep haze of fear, loathing, religion, politics, courage and pride.

Change will come. It is as inevitable as tides (or princes). But perhaps, in seeking that change there needs to be a broader invitation sent up to all males in our society to see the fact that two men who are attracted to each other are not a threat, but a window to our own connection to compassion. Compassion for others and even more so, for ourselves; a lesson in how we see ourselves as men, how we relate to ourselves, how we relate to each other and then how do we relate to our wives, boyfriends, sisters, children, girlfriends, mates.

The biggest part of this answer lies not in Government approval of how you relate to another and whether the State can rubber stamp it, the biggest part of this actually relates to your relationship with self. The way you create the space to love yourself first, above all else, and in so doing emanate that love as compassion towards others.

Will i stop holding my boyfriend's hand? No. Will i continue to consider where i do this? Yes.

Should i have to?

THIS SUNDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2009, HEAR

Jeff and hosts
Susie Bonham-Craig & Craig Hannas will meet on the Wisdom Wide Open Radio Show and talk about the premises of this group: How do we heal generations of gender tensions? How do we heal the rifts? How do we soften male armor so that love has an easier time finding its way through? How do honor the divine feminine, and create the conditions where women everywhere can feel safe enough to honor their dreams and live fully from their hearts? What would accountability circles look like, where men are owning their past actions, and where women have a chance to give voice to their pain? What would a gender bridge look like- a bridge where both genders meet heartfully in the middle, where our focus is on our soulshaping journey first and foremost, rather than divisive considerations?


http://www.blogtalkradio.com/WisdomWideOpen