Peter Green

With everyone heading back to university this week after a week or two of putting off essays and being shocked at just how pasty white your newly exposed shins have got after six months of trouser-confinement, it seemed appropriate to do a quick recap of the news over the last couple of weeks.

Cory Bernadi

Cory Bernadi is a well-groomed, muscular, moderately handsome, former rower from South Australia, so his vehement opposition to gay marriage came as a shock to some. During the debate in the Senate over a private member’s bill to legalise gay marriage Mr Bernadi rolled out that old Herald Sun commenter chestnut that gay marriage would lead to the future legalisation of polygamy or bestiality.

Now we have dealt with these kind of claims before on The Bucket, so I won’t go into just how ridiculous an individual Mr. Bernadi is for making them, or the shame he has brought upon himself or his family, except to say that if Alan Jones is to be believed his parents should certainly be kept under constant medical observation, lest they succumb to death by shame. The eventual outcome of this pleasant little episode was that Tony Abbott got a new secretary and Malcolm Turnbull extended the margin by which he is the most lucid person in the federal Liberal party.

Further to this point, and on the topic of ‘social conservatives’ more generally, I am a bit puzzled. The social conservative movement seems to me to lack a certain amount of historical perspective. As Family Guy once mockingly said about the Amish, the Good Lord decided that we had exactly enough technology in the late 18^th century. Not too little, not too much. In the same way, social conservatism seems to be completely arbitrary in the way it draws the line as it endlessly concedes ground to the forces of social progression. If we look back to the earliest social conservatives, their main concern was witches, who are now embraced as party entertainment for small children, spreading their alternate lifestyle to our youngest and most impressionable. Even within the scope of the 20^th century, social conservatives in the USA opposed rights for African Americans, then said that was ok, as long as thy didn’t marry white people, then that was ok, as long as they didn’t join the military, then that was ok as long as they weren’t gay, now that’s ok (depending on who you ask) but they’d better not marry anyone. In the entire history of the human race, the social conservatives have never won. Not even once. Every time they take a stand they must know that it will only temporarily delay the march of progress, and while that means they are enormous bell-ends, it also gives me a great deal of pleasure to know that no matter what people like Cory Bernadi say, there is no hope that they will be successful in stopping whatever they decide to object to next.

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by Peter Green

Given the recent intrest in the subject, and taking my lead from The Bucket’s code of ethics, which implores everyone to help the most needy in society, I have taken some time to answer the queries about gay marriage posed by our fellow Australians on the comment boards of that flagship of rational debate, the Herald Sun. Some of them are long, disjointed and rambling, others not so much, but all are nonetheless an important contribution to the national debate surrounding this issue.

Comment: Wingnut:

“Gay marriage is about giving homosexuals access to children by ensuring that being “married” they can be eligible to adopt. “Most Australians want gay marriage” is lie perpetuated by the greens.”

Answer: Homosexuals can in fact already access children in a variety of social and professional situations including while using public transport, walking to work or bungee jumping. In the ACT, New South Whales and Western Australia, they can also adopt children without even being slightly married. In Tasmania same-sex couples can adopt as stepparents, and in all other states and territories barring the Northern Territory same sex couples can become foster parents.

To your astute observation that public support for same-sex marriage is obviously a clever ruse by the Greens, those devious knaves, this is indeed a matter for great concern, because almost 2/3 of the quarter of a million Australians that responded to the House of Representatives Social Policy and Legal Affairs committee’s request for input on this issue supported gay marriage, and as such I fear that the Greens might have quite a bit more reach than we first feared.

To put that response in perspective for you, the weekly opinion showing just how much of a hiding ‘Tones’ is going to give The PM poll about 1000 people while they’re eating dinner.

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by Peter Green

There is nothing more valued in western liberal democracy than freedom. I know it sounds eerily like something that Bill O’Reilly might have tattooed on his arse but it’s true. The thing that we have, that supposedly everyone else wants, is freedom. So why are we so willing to let other people think for us?

When Andrew Bolt derides a group like Australia21, a group whose board of directors includes four recipients of the Order Australia and a recipient of the Australia Police Medal for distinguished service, a group that also works closely with a former Federal Police Chief, a former West Australian Premier and a former Federal Health Minister, simply because they published a report on decriminalising drugs that doesn’t fit with his pre-constructed conservative world view (as he did in his piece “It’s A Smokescreen” on the 5^th of April), why are we so willing to lap it up?

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