On the face of it, the increase in the number of Latino Trump voters seems bewildering - how could people vote against their own interests like that? Taking a closer look, it's both more and less depressing than you might think.
Showing posts with label Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Society. Show all posts
Bradford Exchange has the worst things for sale
If you're as old as I am, you may remember in the days of actual magazines made of trees, in the TV guides that came free with the newspapers and the trash mags at the doctor's waiting room, the regular full page ads for the company Bradford Exchange, hawking overpiced themed clocks and commemorative plates.
If you've thought about that organisation at all in the intervening years, you may have wondered if there was a place for such a company in the modern world, or if they'd gone out of business. Good heavens, no. Bradford Exchange is still a thing and. unhampered by the limits of paid advertising space, they're able to let their young hearts run free, selling the absolute worst overpriced "collectible" shit you can imagine to whoever on Earth is buying it.
Moving on the homeless
Overnight Sydney City Council officers removed the 24/7 Street Kitchen Safe Space homeless camp which had been operating for six months in Martin Place, the financial and civic heart of the city. The camp was started last December as a place for rough sleepers to find food, help and solidarity, particularly vital after assaults and sexual assaults of rough sleepers in the previous few months, with homeless women particularly vulnerable.
It's been death by a thousand little cuts over recent decades; not the more outrageous punish the poor policies like drug testing welfare recipients; but the stuff you never notice. Cuts to funding for local legal services, so the unfair dismissal claim can't go ahead. Cuts to the community organisation helping people experiencing domestic violence, so a woman with young children ends up fleeing in the night and sleeping in the car instead of getting assistance with housing to make a planned escape. Penalties for missing Centrelink appointments, so someone already couch surfing with friends misses the letter about their upcoming appointment and loses their payment for 13 weeks (and gets kicked out because they can't help with the rent or food any more). Payments that are so far below the poverty line that their is almost no chance of securing even the most modest of rental properties in any major city. Emergency housing waiting lists that are over two years long, with the waiting list for the general public twenty years. Onerous requirements for the disability support pension, so those who have almost no chance of finding work are put onto Newstart (and risk losing their payments through failure to meet "mutual obligation" requirements. Cuts to mental health services.
Austerity all around, trampling the disadvantaged to death. And most people don't realise how perilously close they are, maybe one or two mortgage or rent payments, from finding themselves in this situation. Rough sleepers are the most visible group of homeless people, but only a small percentage; there are those couch surfing, staying with friends and family, sleeping in their cars. But in any case homelessness is not a problem that can be solved with more beds in shelters, or one off donations or publicity stunts. What each of us can do to go some way towards addressing the issue happens every time we vote; by refusing to support parties who demonise the poor, who sell off public housing, who cut local services, who create the conditions that lead to poverty and disadvantage in the first place.
As far as the homeless camps set up, in Martin Place and Belmore Park and Wentworth Park - there are reasons for them, too. Homeless shelters can be scary, isolating and dehumanising places, and in NSW, shelter residents are required to present at a Housing Office every three days to prove their continued eligibility; they are often moved on at this point.
Homeless shelters, understandably, also do not permit alcohol and drug use on the premises; but substance abuse often accompanies homelessness, and whilst it is very simple to take the moral stance that the homeless should be getting their lives back together not using alcohol and drugs, the fact is that sudden cessation, or unsupervised detox, of alcohol and some drugs can be fatal, and the waiting lists for public detox and rehab beds can be many months long, and the trauma and anguish of homelessness is something a lot of us may well wish to numb.
It's not simple. There's no simple answers for any of this stuff. But for rough sleepers, offering access to showers and meals and a place to get their mail and help accessing services - housing, counselling, help with employment, help with substance issues - has got to be better than simply "moving them on" to god knows where or what.
And for homeless people, and those at risk of becoming homeless, well of course I don't have all the answers, but these lefty do gooder bleeding heart sorts of ideas that want to try and prevent people becoming homeless in the first place will be cheaper in the end. Homelessness is expensive, and it is always better to try and prevent it. You can't punish people out of poverty; a society that tries to help people when they're down will have fewer homeless people than one which tries to punish the weak and lazy poor away.
Part of the reasoning the Council gave for removing the camp - alongside the inevitable redevelopment of the site - was that it was interfering with "reasonable comfort and convenience of other uses of Martin Place".
Because if you want to interfere with the comfort and convenience of users of Martin Place, you have to pay. And once you've shelled out the tens of thousands of dollars for necessary permits, you can interfere to your heart's content, sending squads of English backpackers to hassle people on their lunch breaks into signing up for dubious charity donation programs, or setting up a garish marquee spruiking the latest sport betting app, so hypnotised gamblers can be parted from their hard earned without even having to log on to their computers.*
But the homeless camp, and the food, safety and company it offered, was unsightly and inconvenient. It had to go.
This of course, just days after the much maligned CEO Sleepout, where company executives do their tiny little bit by sleeping outside for a night, with being a bit cold and uncomfortable for the night somehow giving them an insight into the fear, grief, uncertainty, shame, loss and stigma of homelessness. Most of them at least do admit the experience can't possibly equate to the actual experience of homelessness, but the whole thing is still a slap in the face to actual homeless people, and those who have been homeless in the past (you never forget).
So those whose life trajectories have taken them from an upper middle class childhood to university college to maybe a bit of backpacking around Europe and then a junior executive role at Macquarie bank to start off their career get a taste of sleeping rough. Now what?
So those whose life trajectories have taken them from an upper middle class childhood to university college to maybe a bit of backpacking around Europe and then a junior executive role at Macquarie bank to start off their career get a taste of sleeping rough. Now what?
Because it's wrong to say the CEOs and executives involved all mean well, and aren't responsible for homelessness themselves. CEOs don't get to work in the morning, sit at their CEO workstations with all the other CEOS doing what the Big Boss tells them, then log off at 5pm and go home for the night. We are talking here about very powerful people.
People (mostly white, mostly men), who control large amounts of money and influence, and as much as we might like to think in an Australian democracy that every citizen is worth no more nor less than their individual vote, it's the CEOs who shape policy and get privileges through their donations and demands for tax breaks and cuts. And through their support for neoliberal government policies in general, and the Liberal party in particular, and their pathological aversion to paying company tax, they have helped create the society which sees the disadvantaged as a burden, poverty as a moral failing, and the government as a tool to keep poverty in check instead of doing anything to alleviate it.
People (mostly white, mostly men), who control large amounts of money and influence, and as much as we might like to think in an Australian democracy that every citizen is worth no more nor less than their individual vote, it's the CEOs who shape policy and get privileges through their donations and demands for tax breaks and cuts. And through their support for neoliberal government policies in general, and the Liberal party in particular, and their pathological aversion to paying company tax, they have helped create the society which sees the disadvantaged as a burden, poverty as a moral failing, and the government as a tool to keep poverty in check instead of doing anything to alleviate it.
It's been death by a thousand little cuts over recent decades; not the more outrageous punish the poor policies like drug testing welfare recipients; but the stuff you never notice. Cuts to funding for local legal services, so the unfair dismissal claim can't go ahead. Cuts to the community organisation helping people experiencing domestic violence, so a woman with young children ends up fleeing in the night and sleeping in the car instead of getting assistance with housing to make a planned escape. Penalties for missing Centrelink appointments, so someone already couch surfing with friends misses the letter about their upcoming appointment and loses their payment for 13 weeks (and gets kicked out because they can't help with the rent or food any more). Payments that are so far below the poverty line that their is almost no chance of securing even the most modest of rental properties in any major city. Emergency housing waiting lists that are over two years long, with the waiting list for the general public twenty years. Onerous requirements for the disability support pension, so those who have almost no chance of finding work are put onto Newstart (and risk losing their payments through failure to meet "mutual obligation" requirements. Cuts to mental health services.
Austerity all around, trampling the disadvantaged to death. And most people don't realise how perilously close they are, maybe one or two mortgage or rent payments, from finding themselves in this situation. Rough sleepers are the most visible group of homeless people, but only a small percentage; there are those couch surfing, staying with friends and family, sleeping in their cars. But in any case homelessness is not a problem that can be solved with more beds in shelters, or one off donations or publicity stunts. What each of us can do to go some way towards addressing the issue happens every time we vote; by refusing to support parties who demonise the poor, who sell off public housing, who cut local services, who create the conditions that lead to poverty and disadvantage in the first place.
As far as the homeless camps set up, in Martin Place and Belmore Park and Wentworth Park - there are reasons for them, too. Homeless shelters can be scary, isolating and dehumanising places, and in NSW, shelter residents are required to present at a Housing Office every three days to prove their continued eligibility; they are often moved on at this point.
Homeless shelters, understandably, also do not permit alcohol and drug use on the premises; but substance abuse often accompanies homelessness, and whilst it is very simple to take the moral stance that the homeless should be getting their lives back together not using alcohol and drugs, the fact is that sudden cessation, or unsupervised detox, of alcohol and some drugs can be fatal, and the waiting lists for public detox and rehab beds can be many months long, and the trauma and anguish of homelessness is something a lot of us may well wish to numb.
It's not simple. There's no simple answers for any of this stuff. But for rough sleepers, offering access to showers and meals and a place to get their mail and help accessing services - housing, counselling, help with employment, help with substance issues - has got to be better than simply "moving them on" to god knows where or what.
And for homeless people, and those at risk of becoming homeless, well of course I don't have all the answers, but these lefty do gooder bleeding heart sorts of ideas that want to try and prevent people becoming homeless in the first place will be cheaper in the end. Homelessness is expensive, and it is always better to try and prevent it. You can't punish people out of poverty; a society that tries to help people when they're down will have fewer homeless people than one which tries to punish the weak and lazy poor away.
* And is problem gambling a factor in homelessness? Of course it is.
Fear of Boys
At the park yesterday with G, one of those sparkling autumn days that makes you absolve Sydney of all its sins and renew your love forever. Despite the weather, he had the playground mostly to himself, but on two occasions toddler girls, apparently with their fathers, arrived to play. G loves other kids, and he approached each child in turn, once on the climbing frame and once on the roundabout, wanting to chat and play.
Each time - before Mister G actually did anything, and before I could explain that he's a gentle child used to playing with his younger cousins - the fathers of the little girls swooped in to protect their daughters from the threat.
And I could suddenly see what they saw - not my sweet baby, but an older, school aged, boy. No doubt wild, rough, loud, and a threat to their child.
Not this again.
My ex loves kids. And he's completely natural with them. He likes to play with them, talk to them, think Playschool presenter but with the messy, germy little things actually there*. And I saw, on so many occasions, when he'd be chatting to kids at a party or on a train, playing pen and paper games with them or telling stories, suspicious parents (almost always mothers - our current neighbourhood is a bit different) wondering what this strange man was doing talking to their children. It was up to me to explain that he was a paediatric nurse, and you could see the relief; deep breaths released, tense shoulders relaxed. Because otherwise, a strange man was a danger to their children.
The fear is understandable, after all. I just didn't expect to play out quite so soon. For the rest of his life, when people look at my son, they will see not the smart, sweet person he is, but a boy, then a man, with all that that implies in our society.
For society places men in a box (and women in another), creating the narrative that boys are rough, loud, aggressive, resistant to learning - and they grow into men who suppress their emotions, prefer hanging out with other men, need to sow their wild oats, and will lose their temper if provoked. It reduces them to stereotypes, creates difficulties in education. It's become popular in some circles to blame feminists for demonising men and boys. This is rubbish. A feminist didn't write the rhyme about boys being made of slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails. There are no feminists in the breakfast radio teams who blather stupid "battle of the sexes" tropes about remote controls and shopping and poker nights.
We've always told G he can be whatever he wants, regardless of that he's a boy. He can wear dresses and make up, and that doesn't make him a girl (when he was younger he loved to join me putting my face on; he's lost interest somewhat now but on a shopping trip recently, it was funny to walk into Mecca, have them see G and have looks on their faces that clearly said "great, a young boy, he'll be tearing around breaking things"... and have them look over two minutes later to see me and him comparing eyeshadow swatches). And he's always been gentle, affectionate and considerate - I know I'm his Mum, but consider this: at a party, age two and a half, his Dad poured him a cup of soft drink, a rare treat - and he immediately handed the cup to his cousin because she didn't have one yet. What toddler does that?
Sorry for the digression into proud Mother gushing, but I hate that all that sweetness will now be ignored because it is packaged in a boy's body - and therefore seen as a threat. We pigeonhole from pregnancy. You're having a girl? Cries of "Aww!". You're having a boy? "Ooh, you're in for trouble!". Girls and boys are treated differently from birth - girls are cuddled more, boys are allowed to talk more.
(And one of the saddest things I've ever heard was from one of G's teachers at his nursery, a daycare for under 3s only, back when he was Baby G. The teacher mentioned how cuddly and affectionate G was, "and that a lot of the boys don't cuddle as much any more". These were two year olds, they wouldn't reject hugs on their own - apparently their parents had stopped cuddling as them as much already.)
I'm well aware, of course, that girls have their own schtick (it's why I'm a feminist, after all). Girls are subjected to a lifetime of social conditioning that demands they behave in a ladylike way; quiet, considerate, caring, deferential. Boys are allowed, expected, to be wild, uncouth, rough, noisy. Then they grow up and girls and women are expected to be responsible for their own behaviour and that of the men around them. And boys, well, boys will be boys.
I don't want people to judge and fear G on his maleness - and if it happens here in our lefty bubble, it's much worse elsewhere (G's had long hair over the years, and the number of complete strangers who've told us we should cut it is well into double digits). I worry about the roles and expectations for him and his lovely little friends - and the educational outcomes and suicide rates and road deaths and all the other fears that come built-in with having a boy. The fear for boys, I want to get rid of. The fear of boys I hope will vanish with it.
* Yeah...I'm not into kids. I do quite like my own.
Want sympathy? You'd better be perfect then
There's a strange and awful trend, in Australia at least, when we see people going through a hard time in the media: what seems an insatiable desire to rip them to shreds for any perceived lack of purity in their victimhood.
“People say Men should treat women better ... I say a Lady should be more careful who she spends her time with ...”. “maybe he just had enough of your rot too ... he's human. we all have a snapping point..” "If you bag out Australia then you are not entitled to any empathy ever again in your entire life.” “Oh now she is sorry, how convenient.” “She was too good for Australia when all was going well with her … just deal with this yourself sweetheart. The rest of us are not interested” “Silly girl ...”
This vitriol speaks to a mentality that domestic violence is not serious, is the victim's fault. But it also shows a societal nasty streak that, instead of extending compassion when we see someone going through a hard time, wants to scrutinise, lose all sense of proportion, and rip them to shreds.
We can see this base instinct following the recent tragedy in Moama, NSW, where a woman has been charged with drowning one of her young sons and attempting to drown the other. It was an unspeakable crime, amid a turbulent family background of alleged drug use, custody battles and welfare concerns. And in all this, the estranged father of the boys came forward. He apparently hadn't seen the older of the two boys for many years, and had never met his younger son. Now though, he wanted to travel from his home in Queensland to Victoria to visit his older son in hospital and attend the younger one's funeral, and, claiming he needed to raise funds to do so, he or a family member launched an online fundraiser.
The comments caught fire; he was called a grub, despicable, not a father, told he should stay away from the funeral and hospital, an opportunist trying to make money off his dead kids. People went through his Facebook, arguing everything from that he was only in it for the money, if he wanted to get there he'd hitchhike, he shouldn't be crying poor when he's spent money on custom number plates. They cared not of any circumstances they knew nothing of; they were utterly convinced of their righteousness and unrestrained in their vitriol.
We see people with no sense of proportion, people unable to distinguish between disagreeing with someone's life choices and sensibly keeping it to themselves; and joining an online lynch mob attacking someone who's just lost a child.
Maybe we can chalk this up to some good in people, that they are so upset by what has happened they have a desperate need to focus their grief somewhere, and this man is a convenient target. I'm not so sure, though. Perhaps, after cases such as Belle Gibson, who after an outpouring of sympathy were found to be frauds, people fancy themselves too clever to be caught out again.
But it seems like something nastier than that. And it happens all the time: Dylan Voller deserved hideous abuse in juvenile detention because of the crimes he committed that landed him there; asylum seekers facing hideous conditions, prolonged detention, illness, and violence are queue jumpers; anyone a victim of Centrelink, from fake debts through to being injured on unsafe and unhelpful work for the dole projects should just have gotten a job in the first place.
Australia is notorious for the tall poppy syndrome, the national past time of tearing down those who are successful. But we also have a national tendency to kick those who are already down, to play amateur detective finding anything about them we deem less than blameless and then use it as an excuse to pile on. It's ugly and demeaning to everyone, those who gleefully join in the abuse most of all.
This week, Australian actress Melissa George went public with her account of how she suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her former partner. Now, Ms George has a somewhat spotty relationship with the Australian media, with ill-advised comments she made a few years back complaining Australians were fixated on her turn two decades ago as a teenage soap star, making it too stressful to come home when she could live a much more exciting life in New York or Paris. There was a predictable backlash at the time - I wrote myself about how petty her claims of distress seemed - but this is different. There's nothing, certainly not being a bit of a snob, that causes a person to deserve abuse; surely we would overlook Ms George's comments of the past and extend our sympathy for what she has been through.
But apparently not; disparaging Australia a bit means Ms George deserved physical abuse then, vile verbal abuse now. Consider some of the comments following her TV interview on Sunday night:
This vitriol speaks to a mentality that domestic violence is not serious, is the victim's fault. But it also shows a societal nasty streak that, instead of extending compassion when we see someone going through a hard time, wants to scrutinise, lose all sense of proportion, and rip them to shreds.
We can see this base instinct following the recent tragedy in Moama, NSW, where a woman has been charged with drowning one of her young sons and attempting to drown the other. It was an unspeakable crime, amid a turbulent family background of alleged drug use, custody battles and welfare concerns. And in all this, the estranged father of the boys came forward. He apparently hadn't seen the older of the two boys for many years, and had never met his younger son. Now though, he wanted to travel from his home in Queensland to Victoria to visit his older son in hospital and attend the younger one's funeral, and, claiming he needed to raise funds to do so, he or a family member launched an online fundraiser.
The comments caught fire; he was called a grub, despicable, not a father, told he should stay away from the funeral and hospital, an opportunist trying to make money off his dead kids. People went through his Facebook, arguing everything from that he was only in it for the money, if he wanted to get there he'd hitchhike, he shouldn't be crying poor when he's spent money on custom number plates. They cared not of any circumstances they knew nothing of; they were utterly convinced of their righteousness and unrestrained in their vitriol.
We see people with no sense of proportion, people unable to distinguish between disagreeing with someone's life choices and sensibly keeping it to themselves; and joining an online lynch mob attacking someone who's just lost a child.
Maybe we can chalk this up to some good in people, that they are so upset by what has happened they have a desperate need to focus their grief somewhere, and this man is a convenient target. I'm not so sure, though. Perhaps, after cases such as Belle Gibson, who after an outpouring of sympathy were found to be frauds, people fancy themselves too clever to be caught out again.
But it seems like something nastier than that. And it happens all the time: Dylan Voller deserved hideous abuse in juvenile detention because of the crimes he committed that landed him there; asylum seekers facing hideous conditions, prolonged detention, illness, and violence are queue jumpers; anyone a victim of Centrelink, from fake debts through to being injured on unsafe and unhelpful work for the dole projects should just have gotten a job in the first place.
Australia is notorious for the tall poppy syndrome, the national past time of tearing down those who are successful. But we also have a national tendency to kick those who are already down, to play amateur detective finding anything about them we deem less than blameless and then use it as an excuse to pile on. It's ugly and demeaning to everyone, those who gleefully join in the abuse most of all.
Dear Baby Boomers: I Hate You
Let's get a few things straight from the start. Baby boomers, I don't hate you individually. I've got nothing against you personally. I know you are an extremely diverse group. Many of you have struggled with poverty, disadvantage, racism, sexism and homophobia. Many of you have spent your lives working towards the betterment of society. You are not the people I'm talking about, here.
But I hate "baby boomers", as a group, who have enjoyed massive circumstances of privilege throughout their life course - and now vote and demand that subsequent generations do not share these privileges; and now squeal like stuck pigs when the structural inequality that you have benefited from is pointed out to you.
The number one complaint heard from baby boomers is that they had to work hard for everything they got. No doubt you did. But think about it. You could if you wanted leave school at 15 and get a respectable job. You knew that unless you stole from petty cash or turned up drunk, the job was yours to keep. You had a chance for promotion and progression. Training was provided on site. You got paid for it! And a lot of you didn't leave home until you got married. So, you decide to get married at 23, you want to buy a house and start a family - you've got eight years of savings there, with no debt and quite likely having paid little or nothing for housing.
Compare that to a 20 something, now. There are very few unskilled jobs for young people. Companies no longer train their employees - they want hires who are ready to go. As opposition leader Bill Shorten said today, in the near future two out of three jobs will require a university degree. So you have to stay in school, then go to university. So there you are, freshly graduated at 23, not with 8 years of savings, but with tens of thousands of dollars debt.
But surely that university graduate will be able to land a cushy job? Maybe, if you're lucky. But for most, stable employment is no guarantee. You might graduate with a teaching degree and be unable to land a stable teaching job and end up in the casual pool for years. Or with a nursing degree, not getting a new graduate hospital role and ending up working casually for a nursing agency. Or a business degree, and you land a junior role in a corporation, and 16 months later the company announces its closing your state's office and you and the other 350 employees join a flooded job market.
Or you're not that academic, and you've always wanted to be a hairdresser, but your local TAFE has closed and the only one offering the course costs too much even if you were able to get there, and so you end up in a depressing cycle of casual retail work and unemployment.
But the baby boomer, in mid twenties and wanting to buy a house, has worked hard for years. Because they had the opportunity to work hard. And now buying a house is a realistic proposition. Because the house price to income ratio in 1975, for example, was around 3. In Sydney now, it is 5.7. So essentially, houses are now almost twice as expensive compared to income.
So rather than realistically being able to buy a house with a comfortable chunk of savings at 23, the 23 year old today is burdened with a debt approaching six figures, unstable employment and no hope of buying a house. It may take many years to pay that debt off and actually start saving for a house. And whilst they are saving for that elusive deposit, house prices will march ever upwards. Meanwhile, you've paid off your home, maybe paid off a few, and have bought investment properties you rent out to the younger generations unable to afford to buy a place of their own. And you are guaranteed to make a profit, thanks to the taxpayer funded protection of negative gearing.
We can't put the genie of economic rationalism back in its bottle and restore the system of youth employment. But there are things we could do:
We could increase funding for TAFE and universities, but you don't want that.
We could ease the pressure on house prices by abolishing negative gearing, but you don't want that.
You could even help out the less well off members of your cohort by giving up some of those superannuation tax concessions in order to increase the aged pension, but there's two chances of that.
And whenever any suggestion is made that you give up some of the massive privilege circumstances beyond your control gifted you, you blame Generation X and Millenials for their financial struggle. You say that you worked for what you got - well, yeah, you got the chance. You say that people today have far more consumer items than you had as a young adult - when standards of living have risen enormously over the past 40 years, the internet is an essential service not a luxury, many people require smartphones for work, and labour-saving devices are essential when trying to work enough hours to stay afloat financially. You blame young people for going on overseas trip, as if a $4000 backpacking trip around Europe if foregone would make up for the deficit of hundreds of thousands of dollars caused by being born thirty years too late.
The more politically conservative amongst you would argue that sometimes life just isn't fair and you have to put up with it. I actually like this argument better. At least it's honest. But the baby boomers who insist the playing field is just as level for young people today as it was for them, who react with outrage when a few structural adjustments to their own lifestyles are suggested, who go off like a frog in a sock when it is proposed they give up a little of the enormous structural privilege they have benefited from to make it a bit easier for the generations that follow - you, you spoilt and selfish baby boomers, I hate you.
What The Catholic Church Really Believes About Homosexuality
In my quest for spiritual awareness, I've been keeping an eye on a few Catholic websites and forums lately. As you might expect, they're none too happy about the SCOTUS decision legalising same sex marriage across the United States. They're unhappy because homosexuality is unnatural and evil and disgusting, right? Actually, no. I used to believe that was the Church's stance on homosexuality; I was wrong. It's something quite else entirely; however, I wouldn't be expecting Pope Francis to be rocking the rainbow vestments any time soon. Let's go to the official teaching of the Church, the Catechism:
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (2333) 2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. (2347)
There's some of your "love the sinner, hate the sin" stuff right there. Catholicism teaches that having homosexual attraction is not a sin, acting on it is. Gay people are apparently meant to live celibate (and very likely lonely and frustrating) lives as an example of piety to the rest of us, because...God made them that way. Because, somehow, this or this or this is against the natural order of things, and children need a mother and a father according to the institution which in my home nation of Ireland for decades took children away from their unmarried mothers and raised them institutions, when they weren't selling them to America or neglecting them to death and dumping the bodies in unmarked graves.
I digress.
Anyway, it is never going to change. Catholics believe that the Church cannot change; any change to what they believe is the Church as Jesus ordained it would mean it was no longer the Catholic church. But they're still worried that this means end times are upon us, that God will finally lose his patience with our sinful ways (he was completely cool with the Holocaust, but this gay marriage thing really ticks him off). It's all a little weird - God made you gay and that's okay, but act on it and you're going to hell. Crazy, but that's how it goes. I think I might see what those Uniting folk are up to instead.
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (2333) 2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. (2347)
There's some of your "love the sinner, hate the sin" stuff right there. Catholicism teaches that having homosexual attraction is not a sin, acting on it is. Gay people are apparently meant to live celibate (and very likely lonely and frustrating) lives as an example of piety to the rest of us, because...God made them that way. Because, somehow, this or this or this is against the natural order of things, and children need a mother and a father according to the institution which in my home nation of Ireland for decades took children away from their unmarried mothers and raised them institutions, when they weren't selling them to America or neglecting them to death and dumping the bodies in unmarked graves.
I digress.
Anyway, it is never going to change. Catholics believe that the Church cannot change; any change to what they believe is the Church as Jesus ordained it would mean it was no longer the Catholic church. But they're still worried that this means end times are upon us, that God will finally lose his patience with our sinful ways (he was completely cool with the Holocaust, but this gay marriage thing really ticks him off). It's all a little weird - God made you gay and that's okay, but act on it and you're going to hell. Crazy, but that's how it goes. I think I might see what those Uniting folk are up to instead.
Can We Save These Two Lives?
Very moving scenes from this morning's candlelight vigil in Canberra to save the lives of Andrew Chan and Muyuran Sukumaran. Some have lamented the amount of media attention these men are getting. "If only we paid this much attention to women killed by domestic violence." I for one am glad of the attention Chan and Sukumaran are getting - the face of a united Australia may be the best chance to convince the Indonesian government to save their lives.
But it's not a zero sum game; I also wish this much media attention was given to violence against women. The deaths of women at the hands of their partners is an unspeakable tragedy in Australia that we must start speaking about - 17 so far just this year; the latest the mother of a week-old baby allegedly killed with an axe by her ex-partner the day after she sought court protection from him (I'm a pretty hardened type and it takes a lot to shock me, but dear God).
So, how can we save the lives of the next two women who will be killed by their current or former partners - and the lives of all the women who will tragically follow?
We know almost nothing about these women. We don't know their education levels, income, whether they live in the city or rural or regional Australia, their ethnic background, their occupation, their religious affiliation. That's the thing about domestic violence; it cuts across all these factors, discriminating by absence against no group in society. We do know that these women have an average age in their 30s, and are more likely than the general female population to be pregnant at the time of their deaths. We can ask why they didn't leave, if they were so afraid, when in fact the act of leaving a violent relationship is the most dangerous time.
We don't know their names, we can't look at their photos, can't read of their accomplishments and the impact their lives have made on those around them; and that makes it that much harder to rally against the upcoming deaths of these women. We don't know if their deaths will come as the result of a stunning, unforeseen act of violence from a "lovely guy" who "just snapped"; or whether they are the culmination of years of terror, of court orders, of refuge stays, of police visits, of lives disrupted, of interstate moves to escape, of being followed, of despair that it will never end, of final moments of horror that it will end like this.
But we know not a one of these deaths was in any way deserved. And we know, if we are to hold on to our vaunted status as a society of equality and value for human life, we have to prevent them. We have to try.
We are just starting to take this problem seriously as a community. The government announced it is funding a $30 million domestic violence awareness campaign; domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty named as Australian of the Year.
But does awareness do anything to stop the deaths. Where do we start with prevention? By addressing our violent culture - that we don't have an alcohol problem as much as we have a violence problem? Starting at the very beginning of the life cycle, by making it illegal for parents to hit their children, ending the very underpinning of our society that it is okay for the bigger, stronger person to hit a smaller, weaker person who disobeys and displeases them? (The latter has been something I have advocated for many years - and if you study the debates that were taking place around the time it became a crime for a man to hit his wife, the same objections were made as the objections we hear against banning smacking today - it is a private matter, it is my right, discipline, keeping society under control). Stiffer penalties? Measures designed to help victims, such as the Victorian law of defensive homicide, intended to be used in cases of sustained domestic violence that ended up being used largely by perpetrators, not victims?
I don't have all the answers. There is no repository of all the answers. We can but say "Do more. Try harder. Start now". There can be research grants, laws, a royal commission. In the meantime, women we don't know will die. I wish I could end on a note of hope. There may even be a final slim hope for Chan and Sukumaran, but can we save the lives of the women we never knew.
But it's not a zero sum game; I also wish this much media attention was given to violence against women. The deaths of women at the hands of their partners is an unspeakable tragedy in Australia that we must start speaking about - 17 so far just this year; the latest the mother of a week-old baby allegedly killed with an axe by her ex-partner the day after she sought court protection from him (I'm a pretty hardened type and it takes a lot to shock me, but dear God).
So, how can we save the lives of the next two women who will be killed by their current or former partners - and the lives of all the women who will tragically follow?
We know almost nothing about these women. We don't know their education levels, income, whether they live in the city or rural or regional Australia, their ethnic background, their occupation, their religious affiliation. That's the thing about domestic violence; it cuts across all these factors, discriminating by absence against no group in society. We do know that these women have an average age in their 30s, and are more likely than the general female population to be pregnant at the time of their deaths. We can ask why they didn't leave, if they were so afraid, when in fact the act of leaving a violent relationship is the most dangerous time.
We don't know their names, we can't look at their photos, can't read of their accomplishments and the impact their lives have made on those around them; and that makes it that much harder to rally against the upcoming deaths of these women. We don't know if their deaths will come as the result of a stunning, unforeseen act of violence from a "lovely guy" who "just snapped"; or whether they are the culmination of years of terror, of court orders, of refuge stays, of police visits, of lives disrupted, of interstate moves to escape, of being followed, of despair that it will never end, of final moments of horror that it will end like this.
But we know not a one of these deaths was in any way deserved. And we know, if we are to hold on to our vaunted status as a society of equality and value for human life, we have to prevent them. We have to try.
We are just starting to take this problem seriously as a community. The government announced it is funding a $30 million domestic violence awareness campaign; domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty named as Australian of the Year.
But does awareness do anything to stop the deaths. Where do we start with prevention? By addressing our violent culture - that we don't have an alcohol problem as much as we have a violence problem? Starting at the very beginning of the life cycle, by making it illegal for parents to hit their children, ending the very underpinning of our society that it is okay for the bigger, stronger person to hit a smaller, weaker person who disobeys and displeases them? (The latter has been something I have advocated for many years - and if you study the debates that were taking place around the time it became a crime for a man to hit his wife, the same objections were made as the objections we hear against banning smacking today - it is a private matter, it is my right, discipline, keeping society under control). Stiffer penalties? Measures designed to help victims, such as the Victorian law of defensive homicide, intended to be used in cases of sustained domestic violence that ended up being used largely by perpetrators, not victims?
I don't have all the answers. There is no repository of all the answers. We can but say "Do more. Try harder. Start now". There can be research grants, laws, a royal commission. In the meantime, women we don't know will die. I wish I could end on a note of hope. There may even be a final slim hope for Chan and Sukumaran, but can we save the lives of the women we never knew.
On Asperger's Syndrome and the death of Courtney Topic
This will be a much shorter post than usual, but there are just a few things I have to say regarding the tragic death of Courtney Topic, shot by police in a western Sydney carpark yesterday. The exact circumstances of her death are for the coroner to determine, but the death of any young person is a tragedy, and my deepest sympathy goes to her family and friends.
In the aftermath of her death, her family have revealed that Ms Topic lived with Asperger's syndrome, and this has set of a flurry of inaccurate comments on social media. Don't read the comments, they say, and I shouldn't have but did, and what's there is very distressing. People with Asperger's (or on the autism spectrum) are "mad", "mentally ill", "mentally challenged", "sick", "violent". This young woman should have been more closely watched by her parents, should have been looked after, we should re-open the institutions as people with autism cannot function in normal society.
Now, I've no idea how Ms Topic's autism manifested itself - every case is different, hence the common phrase "if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism". But public awareness of autism seems to stem mostly from crimes committed by people diagnosed in the media with autism - Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, or the inaccurate claim which persists to this day that Martin Bryant has Asperger's (he doesn't; his IQ would preclude a diagnosis). Here's what I'd dearly like to get out there:
- Autism is not a mental illness. Whilst symptoms can be treated, and skills taught to ease interaction with the world, it cannot be cured or medicated.
- Asperger's syndrome (AS) affects people's day to day functioning, however, it does not cause autistic people to suddenly engage in violent, erratic and uncharacteristic behaviour. Many people with AS have meltdowns throughout the course of the day, which may be small frustrations or larger tantrums. These act as a sort of pressure release valve, and are usually better out than in. A person with autism would be extremely unlikely to suddenly "snap" and grab a knife or gun to enact their frustrations on society - the angst would have been released in a meltdown long before then.
- Nor does AS cause people to hallucinate or hear voices telling them what to do.
- AS does not correlate with, cause or result in violence.
- Most people with AS are able to function in society, often without co-workers and friends realising they're autistic. Many have successful careers, particularly in the fields that value the attributes of logic and reason displayed by many Aspies, such as science, engineering and finance.
- People with AS are not mentally challenged and in fact often have IQs above the average.
- People with AS do often struggle to fit in socially, however, and that sure as hell isn't helped by stereotypes and misconceptions of them as angry, violent, mentally challenged loners.
Autism - especially in adults, especially in adult women - is still so misunderstood, If you'd like to read more, there are some excellent resources from Autism UK and the Victorian Health. We can't educate everyone, but I hope to start somewhere.
An Open Letter To Angela and Tony Wood: Stop. Please, Stop.
Dear Angela and Tony Wood,
When I read today of the death of a young woman at a Sydney dance party as an apparent result of a drug overdose, my heart sank. At the senseless loss of a young life (although the media apparently believes we should be the more grieved because, as they take pains to point out to us, she was beautiful and the daughter of a wealthy family). And for the renewed debate about drugs which I knew would be stymied by you swiftly appearing in the media to advocate escalating the war on drugs, as you have for nearly twenty years since the ecstasy related death of your daughter, Anna, in 1995.
And sure enough, this morning there you were.
I was the same age as Anna, in Year 10 in 1995. I have lived long enough to develop bad knees and make stupid mistakes and travel and change careers and to fall in and out of love; and, eventually, to marry and have a family of my own. Anna missed all that, as you must be so keenly aware every day. As a parent myself now I can't, don't want to, imagine the unbearable grief of losing a child.
We all cope with grief in different ways. You have chosen to do so by doing what you perceive as using your daughter's death as a force for good - using her story to highlight the dangers of ecstasy, and advocating an all-out war on drugs as a means of facing this scourge.
As a youth worker, a former drug user, and a parent who worries what her own child will be getting up to, sooner than I like to think about, I'm begging you to stop.
Please stop what you're doing. For nearly twenty years you have been advocating the zero tolerance, war on drugs approach. And it hasn't worked. Yet every time a young attractive woman dies a drug related death in NSW, you pop up in the media, advising governments do more of policies that have failed.
You use your grief as a weapon, to shut down debate, to prevent a rational debate in the community about the use and regulation of recreational drugs, to examine evidence based practices, a change in approach. We have to wonder if you are actually concerned with reducing young peoples' use of drugs, or if your true, if subconscious, aim in your zero tolerance approach is to punish the malevolent forces you hold responsible for your daughter's death.
No one wants to see young people dying as a result of taking drugs. And it's important to remember most who do aren't pretty rich young things from loving homes behaving "out of character" at a dance party. Most are dealing with longer term drug problems, often with other factors of mental illness and disadvantage. How is a zero tolerance approach to help them, if they are threatened with criminal charges if they seek to get help? If we treat addiction as a crime, instead of the disease it is? By closing facilities such as the medically supervised injecting room, which has saved at least scores of lives since opening in 2001?
But let's look at Anna's death. What zero tolerance policies would have saved her? Harsher penalties for the manufacturer of the ecstasy she took, or the young woman who supplied it to her? What if Anna herself had feared arrest, spending a night in lock up, a criminal charge, if she'd been caught with the pill? It's hard to imagine you as her parents would have advocated for that if she had lived (and in the book Anna's Story, you sensibly remark that the trip to hospital to have her stomach pumped would have been "punishment enough").
Tragically, that was never an option for Anna. Because she took the pill, for one reason or another, and had no information about taking it safely. So she drank litres and litres of water. And when she became ill, a combination of fear and that lack of information caused her friends to delay seeking medical treatment. By the time Anna did get medical help, it was too late, and she died - not of ecstasy overdose, but of water intoxication. Two critical factors that could have been averted if harm minimisation policies were in place.
Would fear of a zero tolerance approach have stopped Anna from taking that pill? Perhaps, perhaps. Conversely, could harm minimisation policies have saved Anna - if she'd known to regulate her water intake, if her friends had been aware of the importance of seeking medical help and been unafraid to do so? Again, we will never know. But the possibility of preventing similar future deaths is tantalisingly there.
Your solution is simple and uncompromising. Zero tolerance. No one should be taking drugs in the first place. But you can't keep pretending the war on drugs is working. You cannot destroy the factors which lead young people to take drugs through the force of your pain.
We need a proper, grown up debate on drugs, but you seek to shut that down. In the United States, individual states are moving to decriminalise marijuana, but here in Sydney we regularly see police and sniffer dogs at train stations during rush hour, ready to charge any commuter who has the botanical equivalent of a few drinks in their pocket. I despair of the waste of resources (and I don't even smoke marijuana).
Let's acknowledge the current policies aren't working. Let's talk harm minimisation. Let's have a mature debate on evidence based practice, on how whether it's drugs or sex abstinence education doesn't work.
If this is all too hard, after twenty years of the take no prisoners approach, I understand. Please retreat from the debate. Please stop using your loss to push well-intentioned but disastrous policies. Please accept that you are not experts on the drug debate and listen to those who are.
And next time, please, wait until the body of the latest young person lost to drugs is cold before you pop up in the media to peddle your agenda.
Yours,
Sikamikanico.
When I read today of the death of a young woman at a Sydney dance party as an apparent result of a drug overdose, my heart sank. At the senseless loss of a young life (although the media apparently believes we should be the more grieved because, as they take pains to point out to us, she was beautiful and the daughter of a wealthy family). And for the renewed debate about drugs which I knew would be stymied by you swiftly appearing in the media to advocate escalating the war on drugs, as you have for nearly twenty years since the ecstasy related death of your daughter, Anna, in 1995.
And sure enough, this morning there you were.
I was the same age as Anna, in Year 10 in 1995. I have lived long enough to develop bad knees and make stupid mistakes and travel and change careers and to fall in and out of love; and, eventually, to marry and have a family of my own. Anna missed all that, as you must be so keenly aware every day. As a parent myself now I can't, don't want to, imagine the unbearable grief of losing a child.
We all cope with grief in different ways. You have chosen to do so by doing what you perceive as using your daughter's death as a force for good - using her story to highlight the dangers of ecstasy, and advocating an all-out war on drugs as a means of facing this scourge.
As a youth worker, a former drug user, and a parent who worries what her own child will be getting up to, sooner than I like to think about, I'm begging you to stop.
Please stop what you're doing. For nearly twenty years you have been advocating the zero tolerance, war on drugs approach. And it hasn't worked. Yet every time a young attractive woman dies a drug related death in NSW, you pop up in the media, advising governments do more of policies that have failed.
You use your grief as a weapon, to shut down debate, to prevent a rational debate in the community about the use and regulation of recreational drugs, to examine evidence based practices, a change in approach. We have to wonder if you are actually concerned with reducing young peoples' use of drugs, or if your true, if subconscious, aim in your zero tolerance approach is to punish the malevolent forces you hold responsible for your daughter's death.
No one wants to see young people dying as a result of taking drugs. And it's important to remember most who do aren't pretty rich young things from loving homes behaving "out of character" at a dance party. Most are dealing with longer term drug problems, often with other factors of mental illness and disadvantage. How is a zero tolerance approach to help them, if they are threatened with criminal charges if they seek to get help? If we treat addiction as a crime, instead of the disease it is? By closing facilities such as the medically supervised injecting room, which has saved at least scores of lives since opening in 2001?
But let's look at Anna's death. What zero tolerance policies would have saved her? Harsher penalties for the manufacturer of the ecstasy she took, or the young woman who supplied it to her? What if Anna herself had feared arrest, spending a night in lock up, a criminal charge, if she'd been caught with the pill? It's hard to imagine you as her parents would have advocated for that if she had lived (and in the book Anna's Story, you sensibly remark that the trip to hospital to have her stomach pumped would have been "punishment enough").
Tragically, that was never an option for Anna. Because she took the pill, for one reason or another, and had no information about taking it safely. So she drank litres and litres of water. And when she became ill, a combination of fear and that lack of information caused her friends to delay seeking medical treatment. By the time Anna did get medical help, it was too late, and she died - not of ecstasy overdose, but of water intoxication. Two critical factors that could have been averted if harm minimisation policies were in place.
Would fear of a zero tolerance approach have stopped Anna from taking that pill? Perhaps, perhaps. Conversely, could harm minimisation policies have saved Anna - if she'd known to regulate her water intake, if her friends had been aware of the importance of seeking medical help and been unafraid to do so? Again, we will never know. But the possibility of preventing similar future deaths is tantalisingly there.
Your solution is simple and uncompromising. Zero tolerance. No one should be taking drugs in the first place. But you can't keep pretending the war on drugs is working. You cannot destroy the factors which lead young people to take drugs through the force of your pain.
We need a proper, grown up debate on drugs, but you seek to shut that down. In the United States, individual states are moving to decriminalise marijuana, but here in Sydney we regularly see police and sniffer dogs at train stations during rush hour, ready to charge any commuter who has the botanical equivalent of a few drinks in their pocket. I despair of the waste of resources (and I don't even smoke marijuana).
Let's acknowledge the current policies aren't working. Let's talk harm minimisation. Let's have a mature debate on evidence based practice, on how whether it's drugs or sex abstinence education doesn't work.
If this is all too hard, after twenty years of the take no prisoners approach, I understand. Please retreat from the debate. Please stop using your loss to push well-intentioned but disastrous policies. Please accept that you are not experts on the drug debate and listen to those who are.
And next time, please, wait until the body of the latest young person lost to drugs is cold before you pop up in the media to peddle your agenda.
Yours,
Sikamikanico.
