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Cory Bernadi's recent speech in the Senate linking homosexuality to bestiality illustrated how inverted and confused politics in Australia has become. Gay marriage is not a radical and abstract liberal idea. In fact, the most persuasive arguments in favour of gay marriage are distinctly conservative.
Following the rape and murder of Jill Meagher in Melbourne last week, many women admitted they too may have risked the short walk from pub to home in the early hours of the morning. Few men would see it as a risk at all; nor would they understand the 'continuum of threatened violence' women encounter with distressing regularity.
In the 2012 Catholic Social Justice Statement on the family, 'the family' is characterised by stable relationships between husband, wife and children. In Australia families of this kind are the exception. Reflection on family needs to consider the factors that create instability and suffering to children in a variety of relationships.
Australia is seeing a divisive battle between those who oppose people being forced into sex work, and those who advocate for the right of people with disabilities to access sex workers. It is hard to see justice in a situation where one disadvantaged group needs to stay disadvantaged in order to service another disadvantaged group.
The late Cardinal Carlo Martini reached out constantly to the young, to intellectuals, to all manner of alienated Catholics, as well as immigrants and refugees. He was explicit in expressing his view that the encyclical Humanae Vitae had done 'great damage' reaffirming the ban on contraception. To him, it was why the Church lost credibility with young people on questions of sexuality and family planning.
My dad had just picked me up from the law library when we heard the screams. A chunky boy raced past, shirt tail flying, crying. Then I heard shouting, yelping and laughing, and three young men flew past in pursuit. This was to be my first experience of gay-bashing, and of the unofficial law-enforcement view of it.
The therapist's office is a place where frankness is imperative, and self-examination an artform. Among the current batch of patients are a displaced Indian widower, and a gay teen with a self-destructive streak. The audience is left to ponder whether the doctor or the patient is the more deeply disturbed.
‘I don’t think politics should be brought into the pulpit,’ said the gentleman who waited for me at the church door after all the other mass-goers at Sunday’s 8:30 am Mass had departed. ‘You upset my wife: she wanted to walk out during your homily.’
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.
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.
'My partner Johan gives me a rough time. He says the church has always been horrible to gays; why do you have anything to do with it? But I don't want any old gent in frocks to take my religion from me.' Former High Court Justice Kirby is a practicing Christian and one of Australia's best known openly homosexual citizens.
169-180 out of 200 results.