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