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Keywords: Gender Issues

  • RELIGION

    Religious freedom and the law

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 September 2012

    'The common law leaves a gap between the mandates of the law and the conduct that we choose to engage in according to our individual moral standards. We call that gap 'freedom'. The challenge is determining the width of that gap for groups bound by religious faith which differs from the Australian majority.' Frank Brennan launches Carolyn Evans' Legal Protection of Religious Freedom in Australia. Full text

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Historical perspectives on Slutwalk

    • Madeleine Hamilton
    • 31 August 2012
    15 Comments

    The post-war migration policy favoured single men as labour for the burgeoning heavy industries. By the mid-1950s thousands of lonely male migrants populated the cities, and many local women found them threatening. Like those women, Slutwalk participants defend their right to walk the streets wearing what they want without being harassed.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Euthanasing the disabled

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 29 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Earlier this month a Canadian Supreme Court effectively legalised physician-assisted euthanasia. While there is a general perception that those opposed to euthanasia do so on religious grounds, many people with disabilities oppose euthanasia because they believe it is bad policy that denies their right to live. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    An uneasy conversation with Michael Kirby

    • Gordon Preece
    • 25 June 2012
    71 Comments

    The homosexuality debate in church and society is an uneasy and often destructive conversation that should not be entered into lightly. Both sides thus need to beware: ‘Conservatives’ if they slip from opposing homosexual acts to opposing homosexual people. The ‘liberals’ for frankly writing, as Michael Kirby admits, ‘very easy pieces’. Well before Malcolm Fraser, Jesus said (Christian) ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’. Kirby, and the FUP authors, in Bonhoeffer’s terms, are cheapening grace.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Australia's child abuse parable

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 October 2011
    4 Comments

    At its heart is an act of violence against a child. But on the whole The Slap stands as an epic parable of middle class Australia. The tagline 'Whose side are you on?' is a furphy: it is impossible to wholly sympathise with any character. 

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  • RELIGION

    What difference does it make now that Mary MacKillop is a saint?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 14 October 2011

    Mary visited Rome as a young religious woman when she was being persecuted by local bishops for being too independent. She got a good hearing from the Pope and great assistance from Fr Anderledy who became the Superior General of the Jesuits. If only Bishop Bill Morris could have received the same sympathetic hearing.

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  • RELIGION

    Making friends not foes of rights and religion

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 September 2011
    5 Comments

    The Church of the 21st century should be the exemplar of due process, natural justice and transparency. While there can be little useful critique of the final decision of Pope Benedict to force the early retirement of Bishop Bill Morris, there is plenty of scope to review the processes leading up to it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we're mean to Julia

    • Moira Rayner
    • 20 July 2011
    38 Comments

    Those who rise by media approval, will fall by it. Once, talkback radio hosts and reporters drummed up Gillard as tomorrow's PM and the day's bright star in the political firmament. Today she's 'JuLiar', the 'witch', a fallen princess. What went wrong?

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  • RELIGION

    Human rights and Christian lawyers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 July 2011
    5 Comments

    When I appeared on Q&A with Christopher Hitchens, a young man asked whether we can 'ever hope to live in a truly secular society' while the religious continue to 'affect political discourse and decision making' on euthanasia, same-sex unions and abortion. Hitchens was simpaticao. I was dumbstruck.

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  • MEDIA

    Sex education in Pornland

    • Lyn Bender
    • 27 May 2011
    15 Comments

    British sociologist Gail Dines argues that porn shapes young people's expectations of how sex should be, at the cost of healthy intimacy. Positive erotic portrayals can inspire and guide us by enhancing our perceptions and extending our narrow world view. Dines argues that the hardcore porn industry promotes a damaging view of sex that shapes young men's (and women's) fantasies and expectations of how sex should be, at the cost of healthy intimacy.

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  • EDUCATION

    Rethinking religious education

    • Gary Bouma
    • 27 April 2011
    21 Comments

    If the aim is to inform students about religions, this is best done within the curriculum by people trained to deliver such content in a way that engenders respect for all religions. Problems arise if the goal is to produce believers in a particular religion.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2010: Germaine Greer's utopia

    • Jasmine-Kim Westendorf
    • 14 January 2011
    1 Comment

    Some say that not only is The Female Enuch of little relevance today: it never was relevant. Such arguments are often based more on attacks on Greer personally, and feminism generally, than considered critiques of the value of the feminist agenda set out in the book.

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