Love and the single guy

It would seem that the Civil Union Bill has more to do with political expediency on the Labour Government's part (let's do something pragmatic for the crowds at the Big Gay Out, who were doing mass Moonie-like weddings there and all) and a welcome chance for fundamentalists of all ilk to find a stick to beat their particular drum, than with what Mr and Ms Joe/Jo living on the sunny side of Lesbian Street in Gaytown may want.
Even though the proposed Bill is promoted and supported by the usual suspects, there are some rumblings in liberal quarters and among those who live more on the wild side.
A good example of the liberal view (i.e. we want full marriage and adoption rights, not some compromise that satisfies no-one and antagonises everybody else) is David W Young:

The Civil Union Bill is a cowardly half-measure. It will continue to prevent gay couples from adopting children or getting married. Those are the exact two rights that I want. I'd even say they are the only two rights that I want.

Card-carrying lesbian Marilyn Waring suprised a good many white picket fence lesbians with her submission against the Bill and quoted in a Queer Nation interview (quoted by, of all people, the Society For Promotion Of Community Standards. What is the world coming to when busybodies want to stay up late to be offended by queers on TV?):

I don’t want to live in a country that thinks that separate but equal has anything to do with human rights so I am completely opposed to civil unions.

They both have good points, so I'll add my own.
As a good old fashioned ("Ni Dieu, ni maitre") anarchist, I prefer the state out of my private life. Relationships approved by the state rewards them with all sorts of goodies unavailable to single people or in alternative arrangements. And those goodies are what gay people, who want to marry, are after. So in that sense it is a campaign to extend privileges to a variety of couplings between people but denied to anyone who hasn't had the luck to find someone who he/she can stand being with the morning after.
What should happen is a thorough privatisation of human relationships, and a return of marriage to its original purpose (something akin to what the Romans had): a freely entered into economic contractual arrangement between people. None of that sentimental love or families-are-the-touchstone-of-society, please.
The discrimination not addressed in any form of "marriage" system is against single people. Only when individuals are considered equal, and not inferior to people in a "relationship", there can be progress. Extending privilege is a step backward.

John Peel (1939-2004)

The thing about John Peel was that he made you listen to new, unusual and idiosyncratic music and you felt better, culturally, for it afterwards. He liked to challenge your tastes and seduce you to appreciate new work, not because it was new, but because you could trust him to have listened to it with a critical ear beforehand and it had passed muster.
My first memories of listening to the John Peel show was in bed, under the covers, with my little transistor radio tuned to BBC Radio 1 in 1977. His was a late night show and medium wave radio from Britain only reached my home town on the continent after dark. So it was an ideal introduction to new music and it certainly shaped my taste as a rookie punk rocker at the time.
His soundtrack of punk rock and reggae alternating and playing off against each other I thought was marvellous and the nightclub I spent my youth in (Cinderella's Ballroom in Antwerpen) adopted this mix of then contemporary underground music. It was hilarious and rousing. Of course it changed my life and I didn't want to miss one second of it.
Thanks for the excitement, Mr Peel, and if God is a DJ, he must have learned all the tricks from you.

Addendum:
Two years ago, John Peel came to New Zealand, nay, he even stayed on Waiheke Island and he said:

This might be the loveliest place I've ever been.

(Cheers, Peter, for the link)

Our policy: No sadist left behind.

So when is the Russian Army going to be indicted?

Pot to Kettle: Black!

An unintentionally funny website has a list of New Zealand "cult" sects, individuals and beliefs. And it labels each entry as "OK", "neutral", "caution" and "dangerous" or even, in the case of world creeds of the non-Christian kind, "false religion". And it invites you to write in with suggestions and reviews if you are familiar with any of the entries.
"Cult" is quite narrowly defined on their FAQ, and as you would expect from Christians, any belief systems that have over 100,000 adherents (give or take) in the census are exempt from that label.
I was puzzled/shocked/surprised/flabberghasted that none of the big Christian heresies have made the danger list. I did keep awake during history classes so I know that the Christian Church sent the Inquisition, crusaders and lesser church officials to deal with heresies and other Satanic cults and burned their members after playing some Abu Ghraib fungames with them. If that monopolistic (Catholic) church regime existed today I'm sure those Baptist, Presbyterian and Mehodist cults would have made the website list too - if there were any left alive in the glowing embers.
But as it is now, cults.co.nz is just a case of sour grapes over losing that religious mind control monopoly. They just want to protect their market share by teaming up with fellow soulmates to keep the competition in the superstition stakes at bay.

I'm amazed homosexuality isn't listed as not only one of the oldest but also fastest growing "cults" if you believe anti-CUB rants lately about society going to hell in a Louis Vuitton handbasket. It controls your mind! Even Catholic priests can't keep themselves from praying on their knees in front of disrobed altarboys! It really brings out the devil in you. Shall I suggest it to them?

Arguing

Russell Brown has launched the Great New Zealand Argument. It's a blog/forum which welcomes your contributions and

will publish notable essays, editorials, speeches, comments, reports, chapters and pamphlets, loosely - but not exclusively - revolving around a theme of national identity.

The Durex 2004 World Sex Survey

The Durex 2004 World Sex Survey is out and as always eagerly awaited, so we can compare our sexual prowess with the rest of the world. I legged it to the two result columns that tickled my fancy: the sexual indulgence ratings and number of sexual partners.
The Danes and the Brits are the most into handcuffs and bondage with NZ not that far behind. The Bulgars and Croats are most into roleplay and dressing up. The South Africans and Canadians watch porn the most, but the Brits and Hungarians are the biggest dab hands with a camcorder in the bedroom. The Macedonians, the Greeks, the Americans and the Spanish are the world's biggest spankers. The Brits and the Norwegians have the biggest sex toy collections. In the corollary - the ones with the least playful sexlives as they said they don't do any of the above: the Indians and the Vietnamese.
With regards to the number of sexual partners - always a question that gets answered more by wishful thinking than a factual behaviour description - the Chinese have almost double (19.3) the number of sexual partners than the world average (10.5). Yeah, right, with the imbalance of boy-girl numbers there some girls must have been doing a lot of overtime. New Zealand is slightly over the world average at 11.9.
The "It's Good to Be A Guy" rule of thumb in this kind of survey: guys state double and gals state half the numbers of partners they have actually slept with.
I won't bore you with my own actual statistic, but 11.9? That's sort of a very pathetically low number, no? Or didn't they ask any gay guys?

Educational standards in Brashville

National Party education shadow spokesman Bill English in his press release on the growing cost of education uses the verb "to bale out" several times:

While the Ministry of Education has baled out 5% of schools, parents and communities are left to bale out the other 95%, says National’s Education spokesman, Bill English. In the past four years the Ministry has baled out 100 schools at a cost of almost $6 million.

Now according to the English dictionary "to bale out" means:

To bale out is to jump from an aircraft

So what on earth does Mr English mean? Is it a slip indicating he is ready to jump waka? Or are spelling standards and vocabulary not up to scratch in Southland schools?

The Coalition of the Circumcised

When you start digging into history, it's not always a pretty picture you come up with. I am ready to accept that the past is not rose-tinted, but definitely another country, one where we have emigrated from.
The recent Robert Fisk commentary/reporting (I love how he can mix both of them without losing his sense of urgency, anger and the broad sweep of his subject) makes you wish that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair had studied their guru and mentor, Sir Winston Churchill, a bit better on how he dealt with the Middle East before they had a go themselves.
I think most major and minor conflicts around the world involve a large degree of religion, especially the monotheistic kind, of course linked to the other usual suspects in conflict stirring, such as nationalism and economic strife.
But if you add the various cultural wars that are being "fought" in the developed world - abortion/gay rights/church-state separation in America; religious symbolism and its relations with the state in 'decadent' Europe; and even in Australasia the flap over the Civil Unions Bill in NZ and the gay marriage prohibition in Australia - I am impressed about how much it all boils down to contemporary religious revivals trying to do down a few short centuries of Enlightenment and rationalism.
As a baby boomer growing up in a post-war largely secular (but never underestimating the grim tenacity of Catholic hierarchies) welfare state in the first world, I and my peers considered ourselves grown men only when we didn't go to church anymore and made it our point (or part of our subculture) to lead a rational and irreverend life as much possible. Since before the turn of the millennium I feel we live in the Dark Ages again, where crusades and pogroms are again considered part of contemporary history and national dialogue, and where it is respectable again to believe in superstition (even of a secular kind).
I can't say I am very pleased to be ranged against this coalition of the circumcised.

The Shorter SageNZ:

Unless you had a hard man in you, you can't become a real hard man yourself.

When wingnuts collide, they go conkers?

There is a deliciously ironic quote in Maxim Institute latest newsletter about the "licencing of parents to have children"

Should parents be licensed?

A Canadian academic, Professor Peg Tittle, who teaches ethics at Nipissing University in Northern Ontario, has written a book, "Should parents be Licensed?" According to Prof. Tittle would-be parents should have to apply for a license to procreate. She wants to make it illegal for parents to have children if they just want them to "work in the fields" or "look after them in their old age". We should not create a life if we know that life will be "spent in pain" or be lived out in a "substandard way".

Several other academics agree with her. Another contributor to the book argues that "prolific parenthood", a concept he has invented, is a type of unfitness, claiming that the ability to care for children diminishes as the family grows in number, while a psychiatry professor says licensing would convey the message that parenting is at least as important as marriage, military service and voting.

The absurdity of the idea is one thing. But underlying the suggestion is a huge faith in the state to predict the future and a belief that it should have the power to control who is fit to have children. This is a good example of the lunacy that can result when you start thinking that legislation can solve society’s ills.

The fun thing, of course, is that Maxim is one of the more rabid opponents of same sex parenting, and thus are overwhelmingly in favour of prohibiting gay couples to have/adopt children. If that isn't licensing of who can be a parent, what is?
I just wished they would adopt what they preached, as in their last sentence. A Marriage Act, or banning gay sex, or having a R20 drinking age don't solve society's ills either.

It's part of our kulture, dammit

What to make of all that male sex in the news?
First, we got those sods on the rocks, a.k.a. Pitcairn, saying all that extramarital nookie of the kids and everyone else's kids was ultimately OK because it was part of island culture. Having only been once to a Pacific island (Rarotonga) it didn't seem to me a hotbed of illicit sex, or any other sex. Every other building along the road was a church or a cemetery and the islanders seemed to have been very effective at breeding out and preaching out any fun you associate with a tropical island culture.
So what were those Adventists on Pitcairn up to then? Pitcairn looks to be such a godforsaken and boring place - there isn't even a sandy beach, let alone a palm tree - it's hardly surprising they had to make their own fun.

Making your own fun seems also to be the case with those 500 Australians arrested in one of those moral panic swoops on illicit internet shopping for kiddy porn. If we still had gallows, stocks or public burnings, they would be very busy these days, since the kiddy porn merchants have taken on the role of witches in the public mind. Never mind that they only need to be a dab hand at PhotoShop to come up with the imagery that they want to wank over (rather than having to molest the neighbour's daughter for real, as on Pitcairn), it's so much more satisfying to have a go at a few sad sacks. Maybe they should also claim it was part of Australian culture at their trials.

Which brings us (again) to Garth "Vader" George, patron saint of hazing rituals in the New Zealand Army. How dare those recruits complain about the treatment they received as part of their cadet training? he seems to say. The only one that is allowed a pip squeak is the dead one, according to Army chaplain Garth. The others should have taken the brooming, the beating and the humiliation like a man, like obviously George did when he was in the army.
Garth George is a living example of why we can't have any respect for our elders, unless they earn it by calling a spade a spade in past criminal behaviour by their peers.

UPDATE: More allegations of abuse at the Waiouru Military Cadet Camp have rolled in and this time it's rape. Wonder what spin Garth George will put on this one. Training to take it like a man is best left to consenting queer boys.

Belated Sunday reading

After all those months of hype, this town saw the debut of a new Sunday newspaper last weekend. It's tabloid by style and nature, and as such it was really too much to ask for a quality read.
Rather than a version of the UK's Independent on Sunday, all we got in the Herald on Sunday was an extended version of express newspaper (a gay bi-weekly), I mean what was it with all those gay-related stories on civil unions, ex-gay ministries, and Michael Barrymore (by the way, welcome to Kiwiland, mate, the pools must have fences here so no drunk or drugged straight guys can fall into them). And the Mini car feature was a near repeat of the Saturday version. Do these editors never talk to each other?
In all, not a compulsive read, methinks, and a lot of Kiwis have far better written blogs than newspaper columns.
The Saturday Herald, by contrast, is still a better paper, if you can call any newspaper in New Zealand any good, so I think I will stick to paying my ISP for net access to quality newspapers.