Colour me surprised. Our enlightened PM lines up alongside the Axis of Medieval, ruling out giving gay relationship status equivalent to marriage, which is "one of the bedrock institutions of our society" and "very much about the raising of children". Howard insists that this is not discriminatory, even though unmarried couples pay extra taxes and are not entitled to certain benefits, in effect subsidising those whose lifestyle meets the approval of John Howard's god. (Australia is a liberal democracy; you have the right not to be relaxed and comfortable, living in the suburbs in a state-sanctioned heterosexual breeding partnership, pumping out children to fight for God and Empire and spending your weekends polishing the Holden Commodore in your driveway or punting the footy to little Darren in the backyard, but you'll pay extra taxes if you do as that sort of thing should not be encouraged. Make it easier on yourself and conform.)

Posted by: dj | http:// | Tue Aug 5 04:37:39 2003

I'll have you know my dad didn't have a Commodore or kick the footy to me!

The social security and tax system is one of the biggest instruments of socio-cultural manipulation going round. OF course, though, it's only the 'left' that is into 'social engineering' though, because marriage and believing in patriarchal tribal sky gods is just as natural as mould growing on mandarins.

Posted by: michael | http://mailer.todaymail.com.au/fairfax/users/mkort | Tue Aug 5 05:05:21 2003

The statement about survival of the species should ring very strong alarm bells here: it reeks of "social darwinism" - attempting to give weight to a statement by drawing some scientific view into the argument. What this ignores (and denigrates science) is that married gay couples could adopt children, so equally it could be argued that gay marriage acts positively for survival of the species. We mustnt let our democratic leaders get away with this sort of obfuscation. Howard is clever enough to understand this which makes it all the more arrogant of him to abuse language this way.

Posted by: Ben | http://leviathan.weblogs.com | Wed Aug 6 09:10:25 2003

Actually gay couples get a pretty good deal out of the social security system, as they aren't legally considered partners their partner's income doesn't affect their eligibility for handouts. And if they get a kid they can get a sole parent pension even when happily homosexualising away. If they have 2 kids they can each get a SPP for each kid and clean up.

Beats working for a living.

Posted by: Raisin Lord | http:// | Sat Aug 9 00:09:33 2003

"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." - The Doctor, Doctor Who

Want to say something? Do so here.

Note to spammers: This comment system applies the rel=nofollow attribute to the poster's URL and all links. Posting links to this page will not improve their search engine rankings.

Display name:
URL:(optional)
To prove that you are not a bot, please enter the text in the image on the right in the field below it.

Your Comment:

Remember my details.

Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.

Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.