Tasmania’s Freycinet Peninsula.
Quite a few places in Australia’s south bear pretty French names, largely due to the fact that Britain and France were in a race in the 18th century to chart or lay claim to bits of the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit. Shortly after Captain Arthur Phillip made land in Botany Bay in 1788 Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse, also came ashore to bid the commoner (later-) first British governor of New South Wales a most courteous and gallant, “Bonjour, mon capitaine!”. Later in the same year the noble count and his ships vanished off the coasts of the Santa Cruz Islands, a group now in the Solomon Islands. (Any interested in the Anglo-Gallic rivalry in the South Seas can read more on page 4 here.) And Botany Bay is now where Sydney’s crumby airport is.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart, the Most Reverend Julian Porteous, has been slapped with a notice that the official anti-discrimination peeps in Tasmania have accepted a complaint from a “transgender” election candidate of the Greens party (with an Irish name) that the archbishop’s distributing of a statement of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference on marriage among Catholic schools and parishes infringed the state’s anti-discrimination provisions and that action will ensue. Grrrrumphhhh!
Michael Cook, boss editor of the mercatornet website in Australia, picks up the tale and notes, or suggests anyway, that it may be virtually impossible in Tasmania for anyone to publicly oppose “gay marriage” there. The amended anti-discrimination provisions in Tasmania, let through by a coalition of Labour and Greens, may have seen to that.
This may be interesting as the whole of Australia may soon be facing a plebiscite on the “gay marriage” nonsense. However, it would appear that in Tasmania (population 515,000), anyway, it will be illegal for anyone to speak against it.
Let us hope that the Tasmanian provisions cannot catch any on CP&S for expressing their sincere views.
The offensive document from the Australian Bishops’ Conference can be viewed in all its horror here.
Michael Cook’s article is here.
Archbishop Julian Porteous of Hobart
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
No worries, Darlings!
Dame Edna will tell all those naughty little antipodean, gay, sausages what they ought to do!
With an “assist” from her son Kenny (notorious Sodomite) natch!
And then we’ll all be shooting through like a Bondi tram … won’t we possums! Betcha!
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Erm, thank you, Toad.
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I’m not sure what the problem is – after all, the most important thing is that we recognise we’re all basically good people, and life is just about being tolerant (ahem), inclusive and…nice:
‘To the modern world, in which “pseudo-tolerance” is one of the only “virtues” left, being nice is about the only commandment left. It seems that much will be forgiven a person just so long as he is “nice.” And little will be accepted from a person who is not thought of as “nice.”‘
http://blog.adw.org/2015/11/the-not-so-nice-origins-and-meanings-of-the-word-nice/
On a more serious note, GC, how is it that Tasmania was able (via the hard work of Labour and the Greens) to introduce this sort of legislation? What I mean is that this kind of measure (which is another sign of the soft despotism lurking in many modern liberal societies) should surely be applied to the whole country (or not, preferably) – is it not the sort of thing that is too important for states to decide for themselves, given that it will play a significant part in how people respond to a motion such as a same-sex ‘marriage’ proposal?
Please bear with me here – I know very little about federal government in general, and even less about Australia’s set-up in particular!
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I am no expert in matters constitutional either, Michael, but I think it all goes back to the fact that Australia is a federation of six former self-governing British colonies, now called “states”. They each governed themselves separately in all matters under the British Crown.
When federation came, only those powers and responsibilities that were needed to give real substance and effect to the federation were given to the new federal government, such as defense, foreign affairs. I think some powers were also later surrendered by the states to the Federal government, such as taxation and marriage. Changing marriage laws is a matter for the Federal parliament.
Other powers and responsibilities that did not logically need to be transferred to the Federation remained with the states, such as the criminal law, commercial law, education. I suspect that is why the states still have responsibility for their own anti-discrimination provisions too and why provisions may differ between states, as Tasmania’s do.
The Federal government has its own anti-discrimination provisions too, partly because it is the Federation’s responsibility to enact laws in accordance with any international treaties, conventions etc. that it signs onto.
So you’ve got to watch both levels of governments to know what you can and can’t say or do.
This sort of sets it all out, if you are interested.
Michael, Archbishop Porteous is “super-nice”, possibly too nice, as you can perhaps see in his face in the photo, and he is continuing to be very nice in all of this.
This article examines further the serious problems with the Tasmanian legislation. When did dissent become discrimination?
(We ought to remember also that Delaney would like to win in his/her seat at the next election, if poss.)
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Thank you GC – that is helpful indeed! I shall read the articles you’ve linked to properly later, but a quick skim through the one that lists all the discrimination laws seems to suggest that it is fairly similar to the situation in the UK with our Equality and Diversity legislation. Similar in that it describes the same kind of provisions, but also (I imagine) that some of the listed groups are more ‘equal’ than others, and some rights trump others too (this is, of course, a problem for all societies in the West, who have no frame of reference other than an arbitrary appeal to ‘rights’ to refer to).
As you say though, you’ve got to watch both levels of government to know what you can get away with, and what we can expect to be able to say nowadays without fear of reprisal is becoming narrowed everyday. It’s not just that one cannot use someone’s ‘orientation’ against them in ways that prevent them from having, when all other factors are considered, equality of opportunity (which is right and a good use of the law), but that discrimination extends to disagreeing with someone or potentially offending their sensibilities*. This is of course not only ridiculous, but intolerant and deeply illiberal, but as long as you’re on the ‘right/nice side of history’ no one cares.
As for Archbishop Porteous, I just watched a short video of him introducing and defending the document in very sensible, clear and non-‘hateful’ terms. There should be no reason to get het up about what he is saying at all in a free society open to debate and able to reason its way through difficult topics… But I guess that’s the point isn’t it 🙂
*Another troubling development in the UK was the proposed introduction of a law against ‘offensive speech’ – I’m not sure what happened to this actually; hopefully it got lost on its journey through Parliament.
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Well said, Michael. See how nice Archbishop Porteous is?
And he’s still being (too?) nice.
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P.S. I just finished the second article at The Age – very good survey of the situation, thank you! Two passages particularly stand out:
‘It’s hard to overstate how moderate this booklet is. It offers no fire or brimstone. It’s gentle and Christian, of the suburban pastoral variety. There’s much expression of sympathy for same-sex attracted people who also want to follow religious teachings that preclude their sexuality. It is a calm explanation of a major position on a prominent political policy issue.‘
It’s also amazing that it took the release of the booklet for people to realise that this is what the Catholic Church believes and teaches! I guess this is because of the ‘religion is fine if it stays in its private sphere’ way of thinking. Secondly…
‘It is symptomatic of the spread of no-go areas in Australian public discourse. Governments increasingly believe that protecting us from being offended – on whatever spurious grounds – is more important than allowing us to speak our mind.‘
Indeed. If this does lead to Australia having a full and frank debate about what free speech really means, etc (and that is a big if), maybe it could act as a catalyst for similar conversations to take place in other parts of the Western world. Maybe.
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He does seem very nice yes 🙂 Maybe when it becomes apparent that his opponents will not be satisfied with anything other than his (and the Church’s) capitulation to their demands, then the gloves will come off a bit!
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Yes, it looks to become a big fight down there and in the rest of the country when the more conservative media get involved as well.
Archbishop Porteous was consecrated by Cardinal Pell in 2003 to be one of his auxiliaries and led, and lectured at, the seminary in Sydney.
Shortly after he took off to Hobart in 2013 Cardinal Pell took off to Rome.
He’s quite an author too, with a number of titles on the spiritual life and pastoral matters, including a manual on exorcisms. (I’d say that latter one looks good enough to go onto JH’s shelves.)
Always such a real pleasure to read your posts, Michael.
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A native of the place once told me Tasmania was so dull people went to New Zealand for a bit of fun.
Did manage to produce Errol Flynn, though.
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An Australian professor once said to me that Australia should sell Tasmania to New Zealand and those pakehas could then all call it “West Island” to their hearts’ content. He was only half joking, I felt at the time. (We’ll see if we get a response from Mr Fisher on that point.)
Actually, Toad, it might be a good place for you to “aestivate”, i.e. repair there for the European winter months when it will of course be summer (usually very mild) there. Plenty of “furry fools” for you to befriend, but I would keep a safe distance from those devilly-looking black creatures with the very long sharp teeth and extremely powerful jaws.
I’ve not been yet myself, but I hear it’s really rather nice. I’ve a sister that migrated there with her husband and she says she’s not going nowhere else never.
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No possibility of going all the way down there these days, GC. Like some foul old wine, Toad does not travel at all well.
…Loved the link though.
We note “Manual of Minor Exorcisms” is part of Black Friday Deals Week. Very appropriate. Presumably major exorcisms are best left to bishops and above. Bound in “imitation leather” (the book that that is – not the bishop) which is heartening news.
No goat died to bring you this literary gem!
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We’ll see if we get a response from Mr Fisher on that point
how exciting!
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GC @ 12:15, November 25th:
Thank you 🙂 I return the compliment as well, and would add that I am most appreciative of the fact that you always have plenty of supporting information regarding the topics being discussed (this being a good example), which is very helpful.
Btw, you mention the conservative media in Australia – what’s the balance like down there in terms of media coverage and/or readership (two very different things of course; in the UK one gets a very different impression of contemporary opinion from watching the BBC than you would from actually talking to people in the street*)?
*Something I do as a matter of course, naturally. I carry a dictaphone with me at all times, just in case!
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Michael, I haven’t lived in Australia for 24 years or so, but as I recall the main newspaper companies are Fairfax and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. News Corp on the whole are more conservative and unfortunately behind a paywall, but appear to win about two thirds of total newspaper circulation. Andrew Bolt writes for News Corp and in September had this to say about “Ms Delaney”:
I’d say that hits a nail squarely, wouldn’t you?
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Toad @ November 25, 12:53
No possibility of going all the way down there these days, GC. Like some foul old wine, Toad does not travel at all well.
Come on, Toad, let yourself go!
This may help.
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You are kind to think so, GC – but “letting myself go,” would probably be the end result. I’d go to Oztralasia steerage, and return, like Nelson, pickled in a barrel of rum. Dead (of course.)
“Strange. The green Left demands free speech up to the point where they win an argument or gain power. Then they are all for censorship, at least for their critics.”
Not strange at all.
Every group, once it gets enough power to do so – starts censoring and bullying anyone else.
Left, right, or centre. No exceptions.
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GC @ 13:43:
That sounds a familiar state of affairs to me as well. As for the quote from Andrew Bolt, that hits the nail very firmly on the head indeed! The same incredible ability to hold mutually contradictory positions depending on one’s standing, etc, is also evident amongst ecclesiastical liberals – during one pontificate they are ready to downplay the importance of the papal office; during another the same people become ultramontanes all of a sudden. There does seem to be something of pattern amongst ‘progressives’ of all types in this respect I’d say 🙂
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P.S. Just to go way off topic for a moment, what I wrote above reminded me of an excellent piece by Fr. Hunwicke that I read this morning on what the essentials of the papacy are:
http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/dusting-down-archives-beware-of-mines.html
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Toad @ November 26, 16:43
You are kind to think so, GC – but “letting myself go,” would probably be the end result. I’d go to Oztralasia steerage, and return, like Nelson, pickled in a barrel of rum. Dead (of course.)
Toad, this little friend is saying, “we’re sorry we won’t be seeing Toad”.
(No, not a giant rat, but a Tasmanian pademelon.)
But thanks to modern technology you can enjoy the sights anyway of the Lord Archbishop’s domain. (Or should that be Sister Delaney’s domain? Perhaps she/he likes to think so?)
(Isaiah 55:12)
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I’m equally sorry, GC – he is very beautiful – considering he’s not made in the image of God, like Tony Blair. I’d love to be able to cuddle the little chap (Pademelon, that is, not Tony) and take him for a walk. But, Tasmania’s simply too far for me at my age.
Ironic, as I enjoy going too far. Generally, it’s the only place worth going.
Errol Flynn, was also very beautiful – godlike, some opined – and was known* to thousands of young Hollywood actresses as, ‘The Tasmanian Devil.’
*in the biblical sense
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I’d love to be able to cuddle the little chap (Pademelon, that is, not Tony) and take him for a walk.
Walk may not be the mot juste, Toad. Perhaps take him for a hop? Brother Pademelon is a cutey all right.
Hope this doesn’t start yet another “exotic pet” craze.
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Toad says: “Errol Flynn, was also very beautiful – godlike, some opined…”
He died in Vancouver. The pathologist who performed the autopsy said Flynn had the most awful case of genital warts he’d ever seen. He cut off said member (intending to preserve it in formaldehyde – as a conversation piece at cocktail parties perhaps) but was instructed to return it for burial with the rest of the remains.
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“Errol Flynn, warts and all: How the broke Hollywood film star met his end in Vancouver”
“The warts were so large, in fact, that the city’s chief pathologist, Tom Harmon, removed them and preserved the specimens in formaldehyde with an eye of having them serve as a teaching aid to future generations of British Columbia doctors. To this day, a piece of Flynn might still have resided in Canada if the bizarre act had not been caught by Mr. McDonald [the investigating coroner] who immediately scotch-taped the warts back into place. Fortunately for Mr. McDonald, even as the body was subjected to a second autopsy in Los Angeles, nobody ever mentioned the Canadians’ unorthodox treatment of the late star’s famed member.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/errol-flynn-warts-and-all-how-the-broke-hollywood-film-star-met-his-end-in-vancouver
Okay, so my memory ain’t perfect, but it’s still pretty good.
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Well, thank you for that JH. A most unseemly and ungenteel start to Toad’s Saturday.
“Off topic,” indeed. Although he did start the Flynn flam.
Is nothing sacred? Apparently not,
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After viewing the following youtube on the Shocking Desecration thread,
Toad had this to say:
GC, nice, sensible, link. Of course Catholics can, and should, involve themselves in politics and the workings of The State.
Will Toad, then, join me in roundly reprehending Sister Delaney and the Tasmanian parliament for their trying to stifle the Catholic Church there, as detailed above?
(Mr Fisher, we note, has remained completely silent on this matter.)
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Nobody should be stifled, GC. Not even Mel Gibson. (well, not all the time.)
Except, possibly, isis. What we want is a healthy plurality of ideas, peacefully expressed. (I reckon.)
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Mr Fisher’s silence may well speak volumes.
“whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.”
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Mr Fisher, we note, has remained completely silent on this matter
Dear G.C., I suppose I should make my view clear. There has been an outrageous attempt to stifle free political speech in Tasmania. I agree with your concerns. The Statement of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference was an entirely reasonable expression of the Catholic faith. I have not remained silent on this matter, I have communicated my opinion to the one office holder I know in Tasmania. My opinion counts for very little, (nothing) and I would not have helped the cause by commenting on CP&S. Good on you for drawing attention to this this issue. I know that you have a low opinion of me, based (presumably) on comments I have made. Fair enough, but you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. So let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt.
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whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent
Yeah Toad, but Wittgenstein was a true mystic, and it is impossible for most of us to follow his advice.
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Tom Fisher @ 10:27
I have not remained silent on this matter, I have communicated my opinion to the one office holder I know in Tasmania.
Dear Mr Fisher, it’s just that you had earlier, on these pages, given a very strong impression that you were a “stout defender of the freedom to dissent and of free speech”.
If it’s not breaching confidence, may we know the reaction of the Tasmanian office-holder you mention? What’s he or she going to do about it, if anything at all?
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“Dear Mr Fisher, it’s just that you had earlier, on these pages, given the impression that you were a “stout defender of free speech”.”
Toad is also a “stout defender” ( downright fat, more like) defender of free speech. Except, of course when it is disadvantageous for him to be so. In which case, he’s against it. The same as anyone else on earth.
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Toads can, like everybody else, speak for themselves quite accurately. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that they can do so for anybody else. Obviously not, actually – perish the thought.
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By the way, Mr Tom Fisher, what did you think of Dr Marshall’s youtube?
A penny for your thoughts on his “distinction” distinction?
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Hi G.C.,
A penny for your thoughts on his “distinction” distinction?
I just watched the video, I really don’t have much to add to what he said; I think he’s absolutely right.
I abhor the notion that opinions can be criminalised simply on the grounds that someone, somewhere, may be “offended”. I think the recent legislation in Tasmania is shameful. Germaine Greer shouldn’t speak at Cardiff University because she’s transphobic. Brandeis University shouldn’t give Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary doctorate because she’s Islamophobic. Italian high school students shouldn’t be taught Dante because of his anti-sin bias (They don’t put it that way), and of course his Islamophobia. The Catholic Church can’t participate in the ‘marriage’ debate because it’s homophobic. And the icing on the ordure:
In October 2014, a seemingly innocuous proposal came before the Goldsmiths student union to commemorate the Holocaust. However, the students voted against commemorating the Holocaust, voting it down almost unanimously—60 to 1. After the proposal was rejected, the union’s officer of education took to Twitter to explain to the confused public why they had voted down such a motion. Sarah El-alfy claimed the student union voted against the proposal commemorating the Holocaust because it was too Eurocentric. Another Goldsmiths student criticized the motion by calling it “colonialist” and claiming that “white people should not be proposing motions condemning genocides.” The rejection came the day after the same student union rejected another motion to condemn terrorist group ISIS, claiming that condemning such terrorists is a form of Islamophobia.
And
If it’s not breaching confidence, may we know the reaction of the Tasmanian office-holder you mention? What’s he or she going to do about it, if anything at all?
His reaction was a sympathetic shrug, he will do nothing whatsoever. I’m sorry to say.
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I suppose the Goldsmith students wouldn’t oppose shutting people up in broom closets in case they were considered claustrophobic.
(Something wrong with the logic there, Toad.)
“Toads can, like everybody else, speak for themselves quite accurately. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that they can do so for anybody else. “
That depends entirely on what you mean by “can,” GC.
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That depends entirely on what you mean by “can,” GC.
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Thank you, Mr Tom Fisher, you have certainly shown yourself to be a vigorous defender of the freedom of political dissent.
A good article in the Hobart Mercury (a Murdoch paper) by Dr Kevin Donnelly of the Australian Catholic University: Cultural Left guilty of double standard over freedom of speech.
Of which a few snippets:
NOTHING exposes the hypocrisy and double standards enforced by Australia’s cultural Left thought police than the attack on Tasmanian Archbishop Julian Porteous for espousing church doctrine in relation to same-sex marriage.
Forget about being an open, liberal, democratic society where freedom of religion and freedom of speech are central, the minute anyone questions politically correct doctrine they are vilified and silenced.
If those on the Left are serious about defending freedom of religion and the right we all have to enter the public debate and advocate what we hold to be true, they would be defending Porteous, but they seek to silence him.
Another resource on the Safe Schools Coalition website warns that the belief marriage involves a woman and a man is heteronormative. That is, guilty of imposing “a hierarchy where attitudes and practices that affirm heterosexuality are seen as better than those that don’t.
If the Safe Schools Coalition is free to advocate the cultural Left’s view of marriage promoted by the LGBTIQ rainbow alliance, it is irrational and unjust to deny the same right to the Catholic Church.
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Just trying to take a stab at what Ms Martine Delaney (twice married as a male before “reassignment” as a woman) believes to be the definition of marriage.
For me, this story shows the truly myopic nature of our country’s marriage legislation. Despite some relatively minor, hormonally-induced movement of body fat and the surgical re-arrangement of a small part of me, I am the person I was before transitioning. In reality, I’ve just been more honest with the world. The essence of me is not a tad different to the essence of me prior to settling for honesty. In so very, very much, Martine is no different to Martin.
Yet, the me who existed before, the “now” me sans honesty, could freely enter into matrimony – holy or otherwise and as dishonestly as I wanted to be. While the “now” me cannot marry the person I love because our lawmakers maintain eligibility criteria based on a prescribed package of genitalia. It makes no sense to me.
I think we’ve put our finger on it. Ms Delaney appears to think that marriage is the union of two (or more?) “essences”. Interestingly abstract there, that “essence” bit. I’d gathered that even the gay mirage people thought marriage involved bodies as well as “essences”. But incorrectly, apparently.
Well, there we have it. “Essences” exist apparently, or so Ms Delaney would have it. And presumably they exist in a kind of luminous “essence world”?
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Another resource on the Safe Schools Coalition website warns that the belief marriage involves a woman and a man is heteronormative. That is, guilty of imposing “a hierarchy where attitudes and practices that affirm heterosexuality are seen as better than those that don’t.
I remember the first time I encountered this idea – that the normal state of affairs re sex, marriage, etc was purely a social construct (and thus presumably the biggest mass con ever enacted in history). I was gobsmacked. I had no idea people actually took these things that far, or that they could talk about things like heteronormativity with a straight face. For a while I also thought that things couldn’t get any more ridiculous. Then ‘cisgender’ came along…
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GC @ 17:18:
The only hope one has in all this is that this movement of gender/sexual redefinition is so patently bonkers that it cannot last too much longer without self-destructing. Truth will out, eventually. It’s the same with the free speech issue – the extent to which student’s unions in the UK have gone to ban speakers, ostensibly in the name of liberal values (and all that), is gathering more and more coverage, and attracting more and more criticism. Also, I have had conversations fairly recently with people who consider themselves to be liberal on these issues, and even they find these sorts of developments bizarre. Whether this will lead them to reassess their own presuppositions is something I have less hope for, but you never know…
As for the body/essence business above, I think this points to something that Bishop Robert Barron drew attention to a while back:
http://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/bruce-jenner-the-shadow-council-and-st-irenaeus/4785/
There does seem to be something incorrigibly gnostic about modern society.
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What’s got me scratching my golden locks, Michael, is, if it’s only about “essences” and not about hormonally distributed body fat and meaningless appendages, why did Ms Delaney feel the need to go and have the chop-chop at vast expense to someone (if it wasn’t the national coffers)?
Surely if it is “essences” that are the only real thing, why do anything to your body? It shouldn’t matter at all, should it, what your body has or hasn’t?
Maybe the answer is, “well, it does matter and it doesn’t matter too”.
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Surely if it is “essences” that are the only real thing, why do anything to your body? It shouldn’t matter at all, should it, what your body has or hasn’t?
Maybe the answer is, “well, it does matter and it doesn’t matter too”.
I think the answer probably is something like that, given that our culture abandoned the law of non-contradiction years ago. Or perhaps a fuller answer would be more along the lines of ‘what matters is how I feel, and if I feel the paradoxical need to chop away in order to give full expression to feelings which are disconnected from physical reality anyway, you best accept it (or else).’
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Michael, thank you for Bishop Barron’s article on the “neo-gnostics” 2 above this^, which I’ll link again here.
I’m a little concerned now that the Tasmania Anti-Discrimination Commission may put St Irenaeus on their “Index” along with the horrible Australian Bishops’ statement for being rude to gnostics and gay mirage equality dogmatists. 😉
Best to get our copies of Irenaeus forthwith and conceal them behind false panels in the walls of our private libraries and studies.
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I’m a little concerned now that the Tasmania Anti-Discrimination Commission may put St Irenaeus on their “Index”…
Haha – indeed! One can imagine a particularly absurd (but not entirely implausible) possible future where a secular-humanist Index exists that prohibits all books except those previously prohibited by the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. I shall get to working on that false panel forthwith 🙂
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Michael, as if on cue, Michael Cook over at mercatornet in Australia has published an article to do with the project of the (gnostic?) “marriage-as-the-union-of-two-‘essences’ ” dogmatists in government schools there, which has been effectively achieved already.
Some snippets:
What should be done about intransigent educational institutions, ie, Christian schools? A 2005 report from La Trobe University, Writing Themselves In Again, which underpins the SSCA research, pulled no punches: “Christianity remains a last bastion of resistance to what is regarded in legal and health arenas as a normal part of human sexuality”. The AEU’s policy statement paints a bulls-eye on schools which refuse to change: they must be “condemned for their discriminatory attitudes and approaches”.
Supporters of same-sex marriage have hauled the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart before Tasmania’s anti-discrimination tribunal for distributing a booklet to Catholic schools defending marriage between a man and a woman. The head of Australian Marriage Equality, Rodney Croome, said that Catholic school students were being damaged and that the Church had no right to “enlist young people as the couriers of its prejudice”. In other words, he believes that they are being brainwashed.
Actually, brainwashing is already happening in hundreds of schools around Australia – children are being taught the lie that all expressions of sexuality are of equal value and will lead them to happy and fulfilled lives. If same-sex marriage is legalised, can anyone doubt that all schools will be forced to teach the same message, no matter how loudly parents object?
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In Spain we also have a famous ‘transgender’ artist (birth name Manuel Fernandez, new name, Bibiana Fernandez) who apparently decided to have the chop 😯 too after performing for years in some seedy transexual show.
Like ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner, he (ahem) she tries to look as sexy and womanlike as possible. Problem is (also like Jenner) for don’t-call-me-Manuel, Fernandez, the prominent Adam’s apple, deep masculine voice, large hands and broad shoulders are sure giveaways that the genitally-mutilated Fernandez is basically still a man!!
Here below is an interesting audio-tape [click into ‘listen’ or ‘download’] from a man who lived to regret his sex-change operation:
http://www.catholic.com/focus/22#
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Excellent (albeit worrying) article* there GC, thank you!
“Christianity remains a last bastion of resistance to what is regarded in legal and health arenas as a normal part of human sexuality”
Indeed. This calls to mind the blogpost by Msgr. Pope, quoted extensively in ‘Whence Comes the Special Resistance to Christ’ – our culture is indifferent to the existence of the Church, most often only turning round occasionally to scoff at belief in the Virgin Birth or suchlike, but as soon as it is reminded of the challenge that she presents to our ‘do what I want when I want’ ethics, many in our culture get very angry very quickly.
That the things discussed above are considered to be a normal part of human sexuality ‘in legal and health arenas’ says almost nothing at all about whether they are actually are normal, healthy, conducive to happiness in the long-term, etc. Yet we are told because arbitrary decisions (nay, capitulations) have been made in the passing of laws or approval of certain behaviours by psychiatrists, that the argument is over.
A culture that prefers these methods (i.e.; ones grounded in nothing other than contemporary feeling and the will of powers rooted in the same) to reasoned discourse referring to clear moral principles is, as has often been noted, not a sustainable one. Still, as long as we shout ‘bigot!’ and ‘brainwasher!’ even louder, I’m sure noone will notice 🙂
*One particularly worrying thing that is becoming apparent is, with reference to the misleading statistics used by lobby groups, that their ‘education programmes’ are not only designed to make people more amenable to their project, but actually to up those very statistics by warping the minds of young people and convincing them to try all kinds of things out ‘as long as its safe’. People will look back at this in years to come and weep.
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“Problem is (also like Jenner) for don’t-call-me-Manuel, Fernandez, the prominent Adam’s apple, deep masculine voice, large hands and broad shoulders are sure giveaways that the genitally-mutilated Fernandez is basically still a man!!”
People go to inordinate lengths of pain and expense to “change” their sex.
God knows why. But we should tolerate their action. We don’t have to approve it.
I suppose we can laugh unkindly at it, if we like.
In our high-pitched, girly voices.
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