now that i have your attention..
the new gay marriage legalisation ad campaign begging mr.abbot for a conscience vote is just about the stupidest thing the public could be doing.
truth be told, for a fact; if parliament goes to a conscience vote, the referendum will not succeed, and Australia will remain in this state of argument after argument.
the reason? think about it. go through the seats of Adelaide, South Australia. Christopher Pyne, Liberal seat for the area of Sturt. Practicing Catholic. Lives in an area made up at 85% church, 15% park. Also, he resides over a largely ‘senior’ populace in his area, and as we are all quite aware, a large percentage of people who disagree with gay marriage, are above the age of 65. Did you know, in Australia, the percentage of people over 60-65 is close to 68%? and by the year 2020, there will be around 22,000 centurians!
A conscience vote won’t get you anywhere.
I’m completely for allowing gay marriage.
But.
It won’t happen for another good few years…5, maybe 10.
Also on the topic of racism and particularly white slavery, i’d like to point out that my country, Australia was founded on white slavery.
“Two years ago, (article is dated 1999) Prime Minister Paul Keating of Australia refused to show “proper respect” to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II during her state visit. In response, Terry Dicks, a Conservative member of the British Parliament said, “It’s a country of ex-convicts, so we should not be surprised by the rudeness of their prime minister.”
A slur such as this would be considered unthinkable if it were uttered against any other class or race of people except the descendants of White slavery. Dicks’ remark is not only offensive, it is ignorant and false. Most of Australia’s “convicts” were shipped into servitude for such “crimes” as stealing seven yards of lace, cutting trees on an aristocrat’s estate or poaching sheep to feed a starving family.
The arrogant disregard for the holocaust visited upon the poor and working class Whites of Britain by the aristocracy continues in our time because the history of that epoch has been almost completely extirpated from our collective memory.
When White servitude is acknowledged as having existed in America, it is almost always termed as temporary “indentured servitude” or part of the convict trade, which, after the Revolution of 1776, centered on Australia instead of America. The “convicts” transported to America under the 1723 Waltham Act, perhaps numbered 100,000.
The indentured servants who served a tidy little period of 4 to 7 years polishing the master’s silver and china and then taking their place in colonial high society, were a minuscule fraction of the great unsung hundreds of thousands of White slaves who were worked to death in this country from the early l7th century onward.
Up to one-half of all the arrivals in the American colonies were Whites slaves and they were America’s first slaves. These Whites were slaves for life, long before Blacks ever were. This slavery was even hereditary. White children born to White slaves were enslaved too.”
the rest is here
Gillard unswayed by Obama’s new decision.
See, I think Julia Gillard is treated unfairly usually by the media and by Tony Abbott who is a monumentous prick who shouldn’t be in politics and the thought of him running Australia makes my soul vomit a little bit and my eyes bleed with horror and I cannot deal with his voice and urgh. Gillard is discriminated against because she’s a woman and it’s terrible and her policies are never really given a chance to work and I feel angry that the fact she is a woman without children in a de facto relationship is being used to belittle her policies.
But Gillard is no good. Any sort of anti-civil rights stand is no good.
Barack Obama has said he supports gay marriage (coz he’s a fucking g, such a champion, #1 celebrity crush).
Gillard goes on to say that she’s not changing her views and this just goes to show what a deeply personal issue it is.
I don’t give a fuck how far up your ass your head is Gillard, you aren’t running this country as your own little dollhouse, you shouldn’t be allowed to push all your bigoted fuckery onto the rest of us. A huge amount of people in Australia support gay marriage and your job is to make sure we get the best possible deal.
You dickwads in Australian politics are on the wrong side of the history. Like, I don’t get it, don’t all PMs want to be that one that was remembered for making a good change? Don’t we wanna be remembered like Obamas (bit preemptive but the guy’s a champion) rather than Bushs? I just don’t understand why they can’t choose a stance that’s ahead of the curve.
Makes me want to get the fuck out of here.
i just want to make this first point very clear because i’ve argued this before but people just seem to keep thinking it. Julia Gillard isn’t discriminated against because she’s a woman, she’s discriminated against in a feminine way because she’s the Prime Minister. as i said before, literally every PM we have had has faced ridicule, even fashion ridicule. i’m pretty sure it was Tony Abbott who we all laughed at for wearing speedos? and john howards little walking suit? every PM is and will get picked on regardless of gender.
this post confused me though, because i thought that Gillard WAS completely for same sex marriages? i remember watching an interview a few months ago on sunrise i think? with two gay men who had lunch with her to discuss it and i thought she said that Australians should keep up with the times and it’s probably time we changed our policies.
while i’m not entirely sure why she’s changed her mind, however i both support and don’t support her on this (probably for different reasons though)
here, julia says that while the labour party and herself do oppose same-sex they are working towards creating a more fair environment for same-sex couples and giving them the same rights as de-facto heterosexual and heterosexual married couples.
while i personally don’t support gay marriage and i would be quite disappointed if it was legalised in Australia, i also don’t support heterosexual marriages between atheist people, because i simply believe that the church shouldn’t have to change their traditions to suit people who aren’t a part of their religion and that marriage is useless if you are an atheist /. agnostic as you do take your vows in the name of god. but i would really like to see some sort of non-religious wedding ceremony (civil unions?) for atheist heterosexual and homosexual couples and i feel like Julia Gillard most likely has a similar view on this.
i think she is honestly just trying to keep both parties happy in this situation.
- because the Prime Minister of my country is continually denigrated by the media, by other politicians and by the wider public because she is a woman (see pictures of people at rallies that have placards calling her a witch or a bitch)
- because PM Julia Gillard is often referred to simply by her first name and not by her full and proper title that she was elected to
- because although the actions of conservative male politicians beg for ridicule by comedians and writers, only our female Prime Minister’s lifestyle choices, dress, beliefs, voice and gender were satirised in a full TV serial that was supposed to be “funny”
- because so-called “feminist” Germaine Greer continues to make comments about how “unflattering” Julia Gillard’s suits are (she actually mocked the Prime Minister’s “big arse”), as opposed to discussing the way she is running the Australian government and implementing policy.
lol okay, julia gillard is probably only sometimes called “julia” because australia is quite a laid back country, we don’t tend to take politics too seriously.
i mean half of us called kevin rudd, “ruddy” but do you care about that? no because it’s not disrespectful because he’s a man.
EVERY SINGLE PM WE HAVE EVER HAD HAS BEEN PICKED ON, do you not remember how often john howard got picked on for his little walking suit? and what about when kevin rudd went to the strip club? and what about how we all laughed at him for looking like the milky bar kid.
with every single PM there is always going to be a group of people who hate them, male or female. there are going to be people who call them names in order to offend. that’s life. it’s not exclusive to julia gillard just because she’s a woman.
i agree with the germaine greer part though, she’s a terrible feminist, she does not have the interests of the average woman (or man) at heart and she simply should not speak.
