Stanhope goes nuts at Rudd - video footage

Isn’t this only on the agenda because Andrew Barr is…

I’ve said too much…

CanberraResident said :

Reprobate said :

As a gay friend told me, ” Hetrosexuality isn’t normal… just common!” And no, he wasn’t using it as a pickup line – I think…

And with people like this in the world, how do we ever expect to achieve equality for all? Why the need to identify your friend as gay? Isn’t he or she simply a friend?

Labels, labels, labels everywhere … (sigh)

Ease up CR, I think Reprobate was using the label as a means of giving the quote some further context.

I’m straight, married and have no objections whatsoever to same sex civil unions. To me, it’s a non-issue. I cannot fathom the degree of anxiety about it from my straight brethren.

super-powered telephathic zombie who was his own father

Gold.

Gents, make sure when you get home tonight that you hit the missus up for some backdoor lovin’ so you can make a philosophical point for headbonius. Incidentally, isn’t that Latin for fellatio? Come out of the closet, precious, and let your rainbow shine.

Reprobate said :

As a gay friend told me, ” Hetrosexuality isn’t normal… just common!” And no, he wasn’t using it as a pickup line – I think…

And with people like this in the world, how do we ever expect to achieve equality for all? Why the need to identify your friend as gay? Isn’t he or she simply a friend?

Labels, labels, labels everywhere … (sigh)

As a gay friend told me, ” Hetrosexuality isn’t normal… just common!” And no, he wasn’t using it as a pickup line – I think…

It’s interesting to see the characters here whose idea of debate is abusing the people with whom they disagree. As soon as the abuse starts, I think most rational people consider the discussion is headed into the crapper.

Stanhope is at his best when standing up and saying something that appears to be heart-felt. Good on him. Most people are annoyed at the unfairness of it all, preventing the ACT from passing this legislation, and preventing same-sex couples from doing something that’s right and harms no one.

Apart from everything else, it’s also keeping these couples out in the wilderness, by preventing them from joining Rudd’s Chosen Ones, those Working Families.

What exactly is “some homosexual behaviour”? Something really gay like drinking a glass of chardonnay in public? Listening to Cher? Driving a Suzuki Swift?

Actually, Headbonius(the origin or whose moniker is becoming ever clearer), I said no such thing. My express point was that something may not be “normal”, ie mainstream, but may still be perfectly natural. Left-handedness, or red hair, or albinism, or disability, are not normal, but are perfectly natural.

Nor did I say that anything “natural” was OK; I simply said that it was not a basis *of itself* for excluding a significant minority from the rights and responsibilities the rest of us enjoy.

Arguments comparing consenting adults to children or animals are emotive diversions and irrelevant – they’re exactly the same arguments people who claimed not to be racist in the fifties used against so called “miscegenation”, and no more valid.

What I’d really like to see is an argument that goes a bit deeper than “I’m not comfortable with what these people do, and therefore I think they shouldn’t be allowed the same status as the rest of us”.

A few people have commented on the 2003 Australian Study into Health and Relationships report. It was a nationwide survey and found that while 2 percent of the population identified as solely gay or homosexual, a much larger number were either bisexual or had “some homosexual behaviour”. As I quoted before, 17 percent of men and 25 percent of women. The remainder are exclusively heterosexual. When you consider the tendency of people to give the socially acceptable answers when questioned on subjects such as this the figures are probably understated. The reason why the report is only on the Qld Government website is that the survey was commissioned by the Howard government to justify a tightening of censorship and the feds believed it would demonstrate a swing back to conservative, old fashioned family values. When it was clear that the report demonstrated the exact opposite, it was suppressed and taken off federal websites. The Christian lobby – especially the hate group Salt Shakers in Melbourne – began an intense campaign to try and discredit the report, claiming that it was taken in “gay Sydney” but the organisers hit back stating that it was taken all over Australia. While some of the more ratbag elements on this board might not believe it – “society would collapse if it were true” – the figures are there in black and white.

In Rudd’s utopia: Adam and Eve worshipping in the rectory
In the ACT: Adam and Steve whipping the rectum

Its a fine line.

headbonius – so are you trying to tell me heterosexuals don’t engage in anal sex?? more LOL. you are one of those people who if it’s not within your little world of experience then it’s *surely* not normal – there is no point trying to explain things rationally to you.

Headbonius: Whats your point? That two consenting adults should not be able to get married because they have sex in a way you don’t (and many do) consider natural? You get back in you box son.

Dear Toriness, to enlighten your feeble mind, the argument was about what is “normal” not natural. As for homosexuals, they are doing a great job at wiping themselves out with unprotected anal sex which obviously leads to anal bleeding and the easy tranferance of deadly blood borne diseases……Hang on, anal bleeding casued by something being forcibly shoved up your clacker? There’s nothing natural about that!

Anyway back to the point of my posting, needlenose stated that NORMAL = NATURAL. A very silly point to argue, you’d have to agree. The same argument could be applied to Nazi Germany where is was normal to exterminate the Jews. Was this natural? I don’t think so. Get back in your box.

i seriously ROLFMAO at people who claim homosexuality isn’t natural…..when it is even mentioned in their precious bible ie dating back to the ‘start of time’ and nevermind the fact it is also documented in numerous other animal species as well. it’s not a recent ‘invention’ or phenomenon at all.

and then people who equally illogically liken it to pedophilia or sex with animals – it’s about a CONSENSUAL relationship. so please please please try and draw your analogies with some sense of logic – otherwise i can bang on about men raping women and that’s an argument against heterosexuality.

some of you sound as off the planet as these people… http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv-reviews/the-most-hated-family-in-america/2008/05/02/1209235130581.html

Stanhope goes nuts at Rudd – video footage

I reckon this title is as hollow and sensational as LIVENEWS!!!1one!~

There I was ready for some yelling and screaming a la Bob Debus last year in NSW but all it was was Big Jon being rational 🙁

Poor Jon.

Saw you almost in tears because Kevvy has been got at by a minority and stopped you playing.

The Dragway enthusiasts offer their sympathy.

Kharma, anyone?

who gives a fguck I reckon the fckwit religio’s should get over it – or commit suicide so they can meet their maker and be happy. I also reckon the gays should get over it because it is only marriage (read meaningless waste of time and money and paper) let the religio freaks have it.

Shauno – just so you know only 4% of all creatures on this planet do not have homosexual relationships and we are not one of those 4%. So i think you can say it is pretty natural. If you disagree that makes you nothing worse than a filthy religio-creep.

Headbonius – the difference between homos’ and the people that you bring up is that in most cases homo’s are consenting. An animal and a human are not consenting. A child and an adult unlikely consenting but if it is, it is still questionable.

I’m tipping there is a portion of society that wishes polygamy was legal as well, although it isn’t.

Facts are that Australian society was built upon Christian ideals – any society around the world the laws are based upon the beliefs of the people of the country. I’m with headbonius on this one.

Dear needlenose, good, go on and have the shits – you idiot. Just because it is normal for a small section of society does not mean that it is natural. Paedophilia is “normal” for a small section of society – please give me a cogent argument as to how that makes paedophilia natural. Perhaps we should let adults marry children – like that sect in the USA? Because it is normal for them. Bestiality is normal for a small section of society. What about their rights? Should we set up farmyard love hotels so that their rights are not violated? Everybody has rights, homosexuals have rights. If they want to share their assets with their loved ones then the law should be changed to allow this, superannuation and all – I agree. If they want a fundamental change to our society like recognised marriages then why don’t we have a referendum – I’ll accept the umpire’s decision.

Of course it’s bloody natural! This sort of argument gives me the total shits. It’s not *mainstream*, but that doesn’t mean it’s not *natural*. There’s been a homosexual minority throughout history and across all cultures. It’s perfectly normal, for a small proportion of humanity.

What, do you believe that redheads and left-handers should not be allowed to marry either? When my mother was a kid she was beaten and made to write with her right hand, because being left-handed wasn’t “natural”. What’s the fricken difference? What’s your definition of “natural” anyway?

Because and im not being politicaly correct here and never will be. Its not a natural human relationship as marriage has all ways been. By all means give them what ever defacto rights they want but leave marriage to male/female relationships only.

@ Shauno – But can you actually explain why you think that? It’s all I ask, but people keep making these statements like it’s a given that this sort of discriminastion is OK, and I really don’t understand why it should be.

And your analogy doesn’t hold. There’s no biological reason gays can’t get married. (And anyway, why shouldn’t Loretta be able to adopt? Apart from the fact that the People’s Front of Judaea is no place to bring up a child…)

Im not religious but I agree with Rudd marriage should remain as per normal between male and female.

It reminds me of the Monty Python film Life of Brian. When one of the guys was campaining for his right to have babies lol and when told he couldnt have babies he still wanted it.

Best comment of the day – #33 posted by needlenose

Well said!

Isn’t 2 or 3% of the Australian population identified as aboriginal? If you are a minority than you will be used as a political football to best suit the image to be delivered for consumption – flip a coin to suit the generation…

Heh.

yeah, but, I think to be Working Families, you have to fit a pretty narrow pattern.

X + Y, + sproggen. + a fatguts 4WD or Falcodore, giant house, giant air conditioner, and a finely tuned sense of entitlement.

The oldies, the disabled, and everyone else can go hang. The kids must have X-Boxes and Play Stations, the parents must have plasmas and cheap childcare!

I thought Howard was evil, but all he did was pave the way for this lot.

el said :

+1 Needlenose, and Ant.

If you don’t fit nicely into the WORKING FAMILIES group you’re fücked. Rudd’s grand utopia consists of no gays and no single people.

Hey, Ant, want to get married? I will live in my own house, and not be any bother.

+1 Needlenose, and Ant.

If you don’t fit nicely into the WORKING FAMILIES group you’re fücked. Rudd’s grand utopia consists of no gays and no single people.

imhotep said :

I can’t understand all the fuss anyway. In a small city the gay community must be pretty small, and the number of gays who feel strongly about this issue must surely be even smaller.

Sounds more like cheap political grandstanding to me.

Wow. So you have to be black to abhor apartheid? You have to be female to object to gender-based pay discrimination? I’m so straight you could use me for architectural drafting, but surely bigotry and discrimination are something that diminish us all, not just the groups they target.

Needlenose, you are making waaaay too much sense. Well said, on all points.

And while these Working Families are being held up as the ideal, anyone else, especially same-sex couples who want to make a committment to each other, can safely be kicked into the kerb. I’m sure the government is happy to collect their taxes, in order to feed the gaping maw of the entitled families, but what the hell does it say about the society we live in?

The fact that some Christian loudmouth supported Rudd’s decision brings out all the usual anti-Christian diatribes.

I doubt that Rudd is making his stand because of pressure from some Christian lobby group. He is, after all, a politician, and he surely knows where the votes are…

I think that the Christian churches keep a pretty low profile in this country compared to many other countries, (and many other churches).

I can’t understand all the fuss anyway. In a small city the gay community must be pretty small, and the number of gays who feel strongly about this issue must surely be even smaller.

Sounds more like cheap political grandstanding to me.

A bit philosophical, but this really p*sses me off on a lot of levels.

I find it disgusting, personally, that someone could call themselves a Christian and then try to influence the law so that everyone has to follow the Christian way of life. Doesn’t following the bible have to come out of personal faith? If God wants us to live our lives in accordance with his ideals, wouldn’t that really require the individual to actually choose to do that? Do the rest of us (myself included) automatically become Christians if the law aligns itself with the bible or something? Is sharing a society with people who choose to live their lives in other ways somehow going to affect the Christian Coalition’s faith? If so, they’re pretty weak Christians.

Wide Boy Jake said :

WideBoyJake… ‘the Australian Study into Health and Relationships report in 2003 proved that 17 percent of men and 25 percent of women either identify as gay or else have sex with members of their own gender. Just goes to show how morally bankrupt the Christian lobby really is.”

Anyone else struck by the figures quoted there?

It appears to be a study done in Queensland (link below). I’m not keen enough to wade through the whole 35 pages, but I did find this-

“Approximately 3% of respondents identified as either homosexual or bisexual. Higher proportions of men aged 20-29 (2.9%) and 50-59 (1.9%) reported identifying as homosexual and commonly younger women identifying as bisexuals, especially within the 20-29 age range (3%).

What part were you quoting from Jake?

http://www.health.qld.gov.au/phs/documents/cdu/21729.pdf

Like I said: marriage is just not Christian. Come the islamic revolution, gays will be regretting their position.

“We can’t allow marriage to become a political trophy for 2 per cent of the population,” he said.

– nah, let’s maintain it as a political trophy for the Christian right instead. *rolleyes*

Why the hell shouldn’t any two people who want to marry be recognised under law as a couple? Who cares what they do in the bedroom? Isn’t marriage about the commitment..? Or are we saying it’s just about the procreation???

We need more gay people in the world anyway. It would help the overpopulation problem as procreation is more difficult for gay couples, so they often adopt.

needlenose and toriness: spot on.

good on stanhope. he’s right, in this instance rudd is being a complete election-commitment backflipping undemocratic religious-rght-pandering embarrassment and shame shame shame on him.

needlenose i am equally befuddled by the demented thinking (can’t call it logic or reasoning because it is neither) of people who are against civil unions. i can only conclude that anyone who claims the equal recognition of a committed loving relationship undermines their marriage – their marriage must be on pretty bloody shaky ground ie not loving or committed so they are jealous of what they don’t have.

” the Australian Study into Health and Relationships report in 2003 proved that 17 percent of men and 25 percent of women either identify as gay or else have sex with members of their own gender.”

What a crock of shit.

My guess would be somewhere around 1 to 2%. If it was anywhere near the numbers above the human race wouldnt have evolved to where we are now.

Can someone ou there explain to me what exactly people like Rudd mean when they say that allowing gays to marry would “undermine” marriage?

It seems to me sometimes that everyone argues “yes it will” or “no it won’t” without ever deconstructing what “underming marriage” actually is or would mean in practice.

To me it feels like saying “You can’t teach those people in Charnwood to read – that would undermine *my* ability to read”. It makes no sense.

And in any event, if the avoidance of “undermining marriage” is of such vital importance, why do we recognise de facto relationships and accord those couples so many of the rights and responsibilities that formerly were accorded only to those in marriages de jure? Surely if anything was “undermining marriage” it would be that?

I can’t follow the reasoning and it makes my head hurt.

I appreciate that the amswer is probably that there *is* no reasoning and these are merely specious excuses for what it basically rank bigotry. But if anyone can actually reason it through for me I would be very grateful for the explanation.

(And if while you’re at it you could explain to me what are “family values” exactly and how they differ from the values held by those of us not lucky enough to be part of a family, that would be hugely appreciated too.)

ant said :

Stanhope is quite good at standing up and saying things, I must say.

Stanhopeless is “quite good” at being a politician, nothing more.

Ah, what the hell. I love my pet iguana. Let’s change the laws so I can marry him, eerr, her … no, him …

When you look at the number of people who are divorced, perhaps banning marriage altogether is a much more sane idea.

And you can marry him, marriage is a religious thing, if your church will do the cerimony, great, it has nothing to do with law…

I quite like Chairman Kevin, and he’s certainly been doing a lot of good, but he believes that the entire universe is controlled by a super-powered telephathic zombie who was his own father, so there’s an undercurrent of pure insanity there that you just know is going to spill over.

It’d be nice if superstitious loonies weren’t running nearly every government on Earth, but it’s a bit like Douglas Adams’s lizards: if we don’t vote for these lizards, the wrong lizards might get in…

Sonic needs to be arseinated. Oh he was by a Bar!

Gnt: thats a fair call.

Rudd’s trying to cement his image with the uber white picket fence electorate (AKA Working Families). Doing the morally correct thing and allowing same-sex couples to enjoy a proper marriage ceremony with full recognition wouldn’t play at all well with the Telegraph-reading entitlement-minded folk whose pockets are about to be filled.

Stanhope is quite good at standing up and saying things, I must say.

Why can’t Stanhopeless be equally as passionate about issues that have relevance to ALL members of the community?

Ah, what the hell. I love my pet iguana. Let’s change the laws so I can marry him, eerr, her … no, him …

The only reason he is against gay marriage is because his church is against gay marriage. He is a committed Christian in a party of proud secularists. His attends his wife’s Anglican Church, and he is also an unashamed admirer of Protestant reformer Martin Luther. Martin Luther! I think If Martin Luther was alive today he would be a fundamentalist!
Mr Rudd’s political hero is Keir Hardy, the Scottish evangelical Christian miner who taught himself to read and became the first leader of the British Labour Party.
Mr Rudd is a member of the Parliamentary Christian Fellowship and recently wrote a paper arguing the Christian view of the world was just as much, if not more, about social justice as it was about moral issues. Oh he is religious indeed.

Rudd’s got it wrong here, he should have taken the line of “I don’t support gay marriage, but I do believe in democracy and so won’t overturn the law of the A.C.T.”

The cynic in me also thinks that if Sonic (and congrats on the anniversary tomorrow) wants to rabbit on about democratic rights, then perhaps he should hold plebiscites before arbitrarily extending the term of service in the Legislative Assembly.

The only reason he is agaist gay marriage is because his church is against gay marriage. He is a committed Christian in a party of proud secularists. His attends his wife’s Anglican Church, and he is also an unashamed admirer of Protestant reformer Martin Luther. Martin Luther! I think If Martin Luther was alive today he would be a fundermetalist!

Mr Rudd’s political hero is Keir Hardy, the Scottish evangelical Christian miner who taught himself to read and became the first leader of the British Labour Party.

Mr Rudd is a member of the Parliamentary Christian Fellowship and recently wrote a paper arguing the Christian view of the world was just as much, if not more, about social justice as it was about moral issues.

Just saw the video – Good on you Stanhope!!!! (One of the few occasions I’m prepared to say it).

I especailly agree with the point that recognising gay unions in no way diminishes marriage. If gay people want to get married, it in no way affects my marriage.

I never though Rudd was going to be 100% a decent leader. He will still always be far, far better than Howard, though. Still, I’m truly pissed at him.

Christians do not have copyright over marriage. It was never their exclusive tradition in the first place and it never will be.

Just want to make sure that in this debate we refer to the “Australian Christian Lobby” not ‘christians’, or ‘the church’, or ‘religious people’.

the Australian Christian lobby does not speak for all Christians.

Wide Boy Jake said :

the Australian Study into Health and Relationships report in 2003 proved that 17 percent of men and 25 percent of women either identify as gay or else have sex with members of their own gender.

Don’t suppose you’ve got a link to that article do you wilde boy jake? that would be interesting reading in this context.

….How predictable that Wallace is still trotting out that ridiculous claim that only 2 percent of the population is gay…

That is based on the number of priests that like boys….

I guess like everything, this decision depends on point of view.

If you see gays as filthy evil people, then associating marriage with them …would compromise the values of marriage.

If you think that being a homophobic fu#kwit is stoopid, then this decision compromise(s) the values of marriage.

How predictable that Wallace is still trotting out that ridiculous claim that only 2 percent of the population is gay when the Australian Study into Health and Relationships report in 2003 proved that 17 percent of men and 25 percent of women either identify as gay or else have sex with members of their own gender. Just goes to show how morally bankrupt the Christian lobby really is.

For once i find myself in the strange position of agreeing with Comrade Jon. Although if i was put in front of the camera to express my outrage i think i would have been far more succinct in my words.

I think Rudd got this wrong. Why is he against gay marriage?