Category: Social Issues

There is still life in the ALP

Posted by Chief Blogger – 22 January, 2012

Somewhat reassuring that the ALP has still not been completely overrun with progressive types:

Labor for Life was formed last month to link members with conservative views and, partly, in response to the party’s official recognition of gay marriage.

The move is being seen by progressive MPs as a sign Labor’s socially conservative rump is muscling up for a fight on issues such as abortion.

Given that homosexual marriage is now an ALP national policy, I wonder if these socially conservative MPs will be punnished for speaking out.

What about the irony?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 14 December, 2011

You are a homosexual couple that has a child. You naturally want the best for your child and so when considering where to send her to school you decide that only a Christian school will do.

A same-sex couple whose daughter was originally rejected by a Broken Hill Catholic school have turned down an offer of enrolment.

The couple, who do not want to be identified, say they were shocked and hurt when told their relationship was the reason their daughter’s kindergarten application had been turned down by Sacred Heart Primary.

Acting head of the Wilcannia-Forbes diocese, Bishop Kevin Manning, says he was appalled to hear about the situation and had extended an offer to the couple.

The irony of this couple’s decision has been completely lost on the main stream media. What does this say about the homosexual couple’s lifestyle choice and the choices Christians make? By their choice to send to their daughter to a Christian school, a religion that is opposed to homosexuality, this couple tacitly admitted whose values are best. I wonder where Senator Wong’s new child will go to school?

Senator Wong has said the biological father is a friend who will be known to the baby, but his name is not expected to be made public.

“We are extremely grateful to our IVF service and staff, and to our donor, for giving us the opportunity to raise a child together,” Senator Wong said.

Yes, well. Thank you daddy IVF. The media used the occasion to push Senator Wong’s case for homosexual marriage. To my friends on the right, consider this article from the Witherspoon Institute:

Same-sex marriage will contribute further to the erosion of our marriage culture by making it unacceptable to say that children need married moms and dads… Far from being a neutral or pro-liberty position, same-sex marriage amounts to a government takeover of an ancient and honorable institution….government cannot create life, and did not create marriage, and government has no business redefining either.

The WSJ last year reported on the problems associated with IVF treatment for fatherless homes:

Young adults with maverick moms and donor dads report a sense of confusion, loss and distress about their origins and identity, and about their inability to relate to their biological father and to his kin… Fifty-six percent of these offspring said they depend more on friends than on family, compared to just 29% of young adults born to two biological parents.

As a note, studies that claim that there are no negative consequences for children raised in homosexual households usually suffer from data sampling issues.

Tough but fair

Posted by Chief Blogger – 1 December, 2011

‘Guns are back’

Posted by Chief Blogger – 12 November, 2011

This is meant to be a problem, apparently:

Last financial year alone Australians imported more than 85,000 firearms, including 44,000 rifles, 12,000 shotguns and nearly 20,000 handguns, and research by Radio National’s Background Briefing program has revealed a resurging interest in guns and hunting….The national police information service CrimTrac does have a national database, and it lists 4.3 million registered firearms. A CrimTrac spokesperson says it has no control over the data and was unable to say anything else about those 4.3 million guns.

Let’s look at this ABC story in detail. The first paragraph in the story speaks volumes of the ABC’s agenda:

More than a decade after the horrific Port Arthur Massacre, gun ownership is on the rise in Australia, but experts say this resurgence is highlighting serious problems with the current regulation and registration system.

Notice how the ABC automatically links registered gun ownership with a massacre. Where’s the balance?

Gun control advocate Rebecca Peters says gun control groups are worried a resurgence of guns means a return to a pre-1996 gun culture.

“It’s possible that gun ownership is becoming cool again,” she said.

“It’s possible that the interest in guns is rising. I don’t think that’s a good thing, because in general it’s a kind of a pastime which is more associated with Australia’s past than with the modern Australia.”

Interesting how self appointed special interest groups get to determine what constitutes ‘modern Australia’. But this is the damning detail which is left for the end of the story. Despite gun ownership increasing:

For the past 15 years, gun homicide rates have been falling…

Oh…..so the murder rate has actually gone down while gun ownership has gone up, but at the beginning of the story would got an ear full of gun-massacre.

….but researchers fear because gun data is poorly kept and rarely shared, new crime trends involving guns are being missed.

Evidence? Are there gun related murders that are not being reported and recorded by the police? That makes no sense. Other factually challenged statements are throughout the ABC article as well.

If the UK can do it so can we

Posted by Chief Blogger – 10 November, 2011

It is not hospital privatisation, but at least it is a start:

In a landmark decision, the running of Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire will be handed over to Circle, one of Britain’s most prominent health care providers, which operates a John Lewis-style partnership model for its employees.

The move will be seized on by unions and Labour, who are certain to accuse the Coalition of privatising the NHS at a time when David Cameron is under pressure over his health reforms.

The same could be tried here as a step along to privatisation and a private health insurance safety net.

Makes me proud to be an Australian

Posted by Chief Blogger – 22 October, 2011

Andrew Bolt is not a conservative – part VI

Posted by Chief Blogger – 9 August, 2011

This was Bolt’s response to the news of a lesbian couple using IVF treatment to have a baby:

Penny Wong to be a Mum…Lovely news from Senator Penny Wong, but she is forced to share it with millions and I fear may have to defend it from thousands.

Now I would have thought – crazy I know – that someone who actually was a conservative would support in-principle the idea that a child should be raised by both a mother and a father, not give a ringing endorsement to a decidedly un-conservative alternative lifestyle and family, as the product of scientific process not natural attraction and law. Obviously not all circumstances permit permit normal parental circumstances to prevail, but this case falls well outside those circumstances. Furthermore, if Bolt is okay with homosexual couples using IVF treatment to have children, then Bolt must be okay with homosexual adoption and by extension homosexual marriage? I think the implications are very clear: Bolt is not a conservative.

UPDATE

I don’t want my blog to become a ‘get Bolt blog’, I just ask readers to consider all that I have written about Bolt and not just this one post. I still watch, read and listen to Bolt to be informed and not nit-pick the content. However, there are certain ‘game-breakers’ for me when it comes to being a conservative – government mandated population control as espoused by Kelvin Thomson and seemingly supported by Bolt is one of them! What are your game breakers?

IPA miss-guided on homosexual marriage

Posted by Chief Blogger – 27 July, 2011

The IPA is pushing the homosexual marriage bandwagon, and a long wagon it has become: human rights lawyers, celebrities, publicity seekers, other rent-seekers, anyone with an anti-freedom axe to grind, etc… This is Tim Wilson’s basic argument published on the weekend:

Evidence from jurisdictions that have made the change proves conservative fears are unfounded

Societal attitudes have changed organically in support of same-sex couples. And this is likely to continue

The extension of marriage to same-sex couples needn’t come at the expense of a stable society or religious human rights.

Interesting enough, but in a long article Tim Wilson cities only one study to support his case:

According to Gay Marriage for Better or Worse: What We’ve Learned from the Evidence, by William N. Eskridge Jr and Darren Spedale, the Danish experience found reforming marriage coincided with a reversal in declines of heterosexual marriage rates, lower divorce rates and fewer children born outside of wedlock.

Similar trends have also been identified in Sweden, with heterosexual marriage rates increasing by 30 per cent. The correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it is clear the reforms haven’t undermined heterosexual marriages.

That’s it. That’s the case for Tim Wilson. From the ABS however:

The number of divorces granted in Australia have been decreasing each year since reaching a peak in 2001.

There is a western decline in divorce rates, independent of reforms to marriage. So correlation really isn’t causation. Could there be other factors at play here? Very likely. Anyway, the main arguments against homosexual marriage are not as Tim Wilson has outlined in those two brief paragraphs above. No one is saying that if homosexuals get married heterosexual marriages will all of a sudden get divorced. It is a ridiculous straw man argument that Wilson seems to of re-printed without any critical analysis. Wilson’s whole article has therefore fallen over.

Homosexual marriage represents a massive violation of individual liberty and freedom. From USA Today by Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage:

Gay marriage is not an increase in liberty; it is a government takeover of an institution that government did not create and should not redefine.

The Heritage Foundation has outlined a litany of liberty violating legal sanctions in the USA, in places where homosexual unions or marriage has been legalised. The list of examples is so long that I am not going to re-produce them here. Just one example among many should suffice:

…..a Christian ministry declined to allow two lesbian couples to use one of its facilities for their civil union ceremonies because of the ministry’s religious beliefs about marriage. The lesbian couples filed complaints against the ministry for allegedly violating a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations based on civil union status. As a result, the State of New Jersey has already stripped the ministry of the tax exemption for the disputed facility and could yet impose additional liability.

Similar examples can be found in the UK and throughout Europe, relating to the operation of businesses, schooling, public employment, public rallies and events for instance. There was one example where the City of San Francisco encouraged Christians to actually leave the city!

Here in Australia, many faith based adoption agencies have already closed down under threats from state Administrative Tribunals dictating to religious organisations what their doctrines mean as a way to get around religious sensibility clauses in anti-discrimination legislation.

Seemingly the IPA has signed up for this extreme form of nanny state intervention – in the interests of anti-discrimination of course.

Very creepy indeed

Posted by Chief Blogger – 21 July, 2011

How would you describe the following environmental opinion? From the UK-based Optimum Population Trust:

“The Beckhams, and others like London mayor Boris Johnson, are very bad role models with their large families. There’s no point in people trying to reduce their carbon emissions and then increasing them 100% by having another child,” he said.

It is fascism: condemning and shaming the innocent and restricting freedom over very personal choices.

‘Gay marriage is not an increase in liberty’

Posted by Chief Blogger – 29 June, 2011

From USA Today by Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage:

Gay marriage is not an increase in liberty; it is a government takeover of an institution that government did not create and should not redefine.

I mention this because libertarians and the IPA have gotten it into their heads that a government provision for homosexual marriage is in keeping with principles of liberty.

Think of another institution that the government did not create but was trying to or had taken over: charity, wealth and enterprise, health care, schools, etc… All taken over in the argued interests of ‘fairness’ and’ equity’ no doubt. But libertarians know the results are neither fair nor equal. How is homosexual marriage as a private and primarily religious institution any different? Civil unions should be enough (I am in two minds), least we succumb to the same ‘fairness’ and ‘equity’ prejudice that creates less freedom in other aspects of life.