Seeking further information about the costing implications of extending public sector employee superannuation benefits to same sex and interdependent couples, Senator Nick Sherry, Labor's Shadow Minister for Superannuation, Intergenerational Finance, Banking & Financial Services, last month submitted a Freedom of Information request for documents.

The FOI request was refused recently by the Department of Finance and Administration, which did not think disclosure of the information to be "in the general public interest."

"The Government has not moved on its 2 year old commitment, and they will not reveal costing information about this policy--it demonstrates just how weak their commitment to address same-sex discrimination is," Senator Sherry said in a press release on 24 November 2006.

The voyage of the RMS Titanic is a much analysed tale of innumerable ironies and tragedy in the classic sense -- a fateful consequence of human hubris and vanity.

James and I were in Sydney last weekend to see Titanic. A new Musical at the Theatre Royal.


This picture from the program is one of the best I've seen of the ship; it shows how long and sleek she was.

Though principally an ensemble piece, Titanic gives some performers a chance to star briefly. All were good. James and I enjoyed opera veterans Joan Carden AO OBE and Robert Gard OBE as the devoted wealthy elderly couple Ida and Isidor Strauss.

Alexander Lewis's singing as stoker Barrett was superb, for example as he proposed to his distant love via the shy radioman Harold Bride, performed by Harold Willis. Though given only second billing, he has more songs than anyone else in the cast and renders them with tuneful strength.

Nick Tate as the Captain acted rather than sang, with proud yet saddened authority. Musical director Vanessa Scammell's modest forces produced an brisk impressive sound.

Only one scene features dance. Adam Williams was eye catching, dancing a ragtime number with Siobhan Ginty, as Roberto and Mirella Da Micos, ship's entertainers. Perhaps he was helped by the extra strong coffee I saw him buy just before the show.
The ensemble pieces are the particular musical strength of this show, with the parts woven together to seem almost choral. In the final number the whole company sings again the almost-hymn with which they despatched Titanic on its first and last voyage:
Farewell, farewell Godspeed, Titanic . . . From your berth glide free! As you plough the deep, In your arms I'll keep. Safely west May you carry me.	Sail on, sail on Great ship, Titanic... Cross the open sea Pray the journey's sound Till your port be found Fortune's winds Sing Godspeed to thee... Fortune's winds Sing Godspeed To thee!

The British Medical Journal has an obituary for Donald Duck.

Donald Duck

Former medical missionary and general practitioner. Mallaig (b. 1924; q. Edinburgh 1950), died from complications of Parkinson's disease on 8 June 2006.

After a brief foray into civil engineering, Donald Duck trained in medicine at the college in Edinburgh. He spent a year as general practice trainee in Skye before moving abroad with his new wife, Jean (also a doctor), to the Medical Missionary College at Ludhiana. There he learned Urdu and Hindi. He and his family then moved to hospitals in Quetta and later Kashmir, where he worked in a wide range of specialties, including eye surgery, until his return back to Britain in 1968. From 1968 till his retirement in 1993 Donald was the single handed general practitioner in Mallaig. Though originally from London, he relished the highlands of Scotland. He was a keen fisherman and stalker. He was an elder and stalwart supporter of the kirk in Mallaig, and a gifted lay preacher. He had a keen sense of humour and enjoyed many situations where his name led to confusion--for example, when signing cheques or prescriptions (he preceded the eponymous cartoon character by 10 years). His wife predeceased him in 1997, and he is survived by his four children (one a doctor) and seven grandchildren. [J Duck, A K Henderson]

Dr Duck's death was well noted in local and national press. He also appeared in a 2005 BBC program. "I think it is quaint," he said. "I have been asked once or twice why I did not change my name, but I have had so much fun with it." He always insisted that he was the original Donald Duck.

There is an officially registered MacDuck tartan. Walt Disney commissioned it in honor of Donald Duck's Uncle Scrooge MacDuck to raise money for war bonds during WWII.

The cartoon Donald never wears pants. The more ancient among us may recall a Scottish ditty, made (in)famous by Andy Stewart: 1. I just got in frae the Isle of Skye I'm not very big and I'm awful' shy The ladies shout as I go by "Donald where's your trousers?" Chorus Let the winds blow high, Let the winds blow low, Down the street in m' kilt I go And all the ladies say "Hello Donald where's your trousers?" 2. A lady took me to a ball And it was slippery in the hall I was afraid that I might fall 'Cause I had nae on me trousers! 3. They'd like to wed me everyone Just let them catch me if they can You canna put the breeks on a highland man Who doesnae like wearing trousers. 4. To wear the kilt is my delight, It isn't wrong, I know it's right. The highlanders would get a fright If they saw me in trousers. 5. Well I caught a cold and me nose was raw I had no handkerchief at all So I hiked up my kilt and I gave it a blow, Now you can't do that with trousers.

BBC Thought for the Day, 21 Nov 06>, by the Rt Rev. Dr Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark.

Good morning. The Archbishop of Canterbury starts his visit to the Vatican today and the standard story is that progress towards unity between the Roman Catholic church and the Anglican Communion has been set back, sadly, by the ordination of women as priests and bishops and the fracas concerning gay priests and bishops in the Anglican Communion.

There is another way of viewing the same happenings. The Church of England sees itself as being both Catholic and Reformed, taking on many of the reforms of the Reformation Churches whilst keeping a continuity with the catholic nature of the ordained ministry. More than this, it is possible to see the Church of England as a Prophetic, Catholic and Reformed Church, thoughtfully and prayerful making the developments that the wider catholic and orthodox churches might wish to take into their system later.

For example, at the reformation the Book of Common Prayer offered the people of England and subsequently people in other lands, worship in their own vernacular language. It took four centuries before the Roman Catholic church replaced the Latin mass by local languages as the norm of their worship. Again, the Church of England since the reformation has allowed its clergy to marry. It's only in the last dozen years that the Roman Catholic church in England has allowed former Anglican priests to become Roman Catholic priests, despite them being married, surely indicating that there is nothing theologically inherent preventing a married man being a priest.

Now we have the development of women being ordained as priests in the Anglican Communion. The decision was taken to ordain them believing that this was a legitimate development of church order. Over two thousand have already been ordained in the Church of England, I have 175 ministering in my own diocese. Women now form half the candidates at every ordination. It's nonsensical to believe that there'll be any going back and nor should there be. Women priests aren't a problem they're a blessing, not only to the Church of England, but to the wider community and I believe to the whole catholic church in years to come.

And what of gay priests? Of course there are divisions and splits in the Anglican Communion over this issue at the present time, and because we are a transparent church, the arguments are conducted in public. But Archbishop and Pope both know that they have serving their respective churches innumerable dedicated and devoted gay priests, often ministering in the most difficult and dangerous places on earth. They're not a problem. They're a blessing.

We may be in the winter of church unity negotiations, but calling blessings problems isn't the way to move towards the spring.

I have mentioned my admiration for Wendell Berry's poetry. Christianity Today (15 Nov.) has an good article about Berry, his life and ideas, written by Ragan Sutterfield. Some extracts:

Wendell Berry defies easy description. His book jackets call him everything from social critic to farmer to conservationist, and he is all of these, though they do not contain him.
[. . . ]
For the last four-plus decades, Berry, 72, has been asserting in various ways that we Americans live without much care for the world and our place in it. [Australian city dwellers are similar, but we are perhaps better acquainted with the rural context of our life and economy.] Berry points out that most of us consume and adopt new technologies without considering the hidden costs. Berry asks, how many of us think about environmental degradation when we start up our computers, which depend on electricity from coal gouged out of the mountains of Appalachia?

Berry does not mean that no one should use a computer or technology. Indeed, at the 125-acre farm he calls home at Lane's Landing, near Kentucky's tiny Port Royal (population 116), Berry drives a truck, uses a chainsaw, and has a CD player--though there is no computer. He writes in a tree-house stand on his hillside farm.

"For some," Berry writes, "their involvement in pollution, soil depletion, strip-mining, deforestation, industrial and commercial waste is simply a 'practical' compromise, a necessary 'reality,' the price of modern comfort and convenience. For others, this list of involvements is an agenda for thought and work that will produce remedies."

What Berry advocates is a sort of Sermon-on-the-Mount conservationism. If we are going to care for the world, if we are to walk away from our modern hubris and destruction, then we must "wash the inside of the cup" and "take the log out of our eye." What makes Berry different from so many other conservationists is his argument that we must live with a consistency that finds its roots not in our institutions, but within ourselves.

Berry is a careful reader of the Bible . . . attractive to Christians because he offers a vision of care for creation that is tied up with the sacredness of life. "What Christians offer is an understanding that the world is not ours, that we are not the ones that give things value."

But as Berry's friend, philosophy professor Norman Wirzba, says, he "sees the church as deeply and willingly implicated in an economy that has been unremitting and unrepentant in its destruction." As Berry told me, "The church and all of our institutions have failed to oppose the destruction of the world."

Berry's primary targets are not institutions, but individuals, including himself. He once wrote, "My work has been motivated by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place."
[. . .]
As Berry reminds us, there is nothing inherently wrong with proxies. The problem comes when we do not recognize our proxies and thus abdicate our responsibility for them. A common example for Berry is food production. If we are not able to grow, hunt, or gather our own food, then someone else must do it for us by proxy. In most urban places and increasingly in rural ones as well, food eaters have become "mere consumers--passive, uncritical, and dependent."

They have forgotten that "eating is an agricultural act" and that food is tied to the land, ecology, and work of a particular place. Whether that work is good or bad, healthy or destructive, it is beyond the vision of most industrial food eaters. They simply buy what is given to them.

"Eaters . . . must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." Berry suggests how to take responsibility for our food proxies: "participate in food production to the extent that you can"; "prepare your own food"; "learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home"; "whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer"; "learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production"; and "learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening."

Berry takes responsibility for his proxies. He has electricity, but the lights remain off because, though it is dim on this overcast day, we can see fine. Berry heats his house using a wood-burning stove with dead wood he has collected from his own forest (a task that becomes more difficult as he moves into his 70s). Behind his house is his garden, where Berry and his wife of nearly 50 years, Tanya, grow much of their own food. Berry's farm is very much a "home economy." It is here that care or destruction begins.

The difficulty, for Berry, is that fewer and fewer of us have a household with the constancy of place and community required for creating a good home economy. We are a transient, moving people who do not stay in places long enough to know local problems. [. . . ] Both of Berry's parents have at least five generations of farming roots in Henry County near the Kentucky River.
[. . . ]
Berry presents the goodness, neighborliness, and struggles of a small community like this one in his fiction. . . . Berry's fiction is best read with his essays. With his poetry, they provide a door to an understanding that makes most dedicated readers of his work want to change their lives.

Casey Smith, who makes art technology under the label Junkfunnel Labs has designed this Suspicious Looking Device, the only function of which is "to appear as suspicious as possible, whether carried in hand or placed indiscrimately in public places." The SLD contains LEDs, a LED array, a character display, an optical distance sensor, capacitive touch sensor, buzzer, and motors.

His other designs (inventions?) include The Technology Detector, The Terror-o-meter, The Phantasy Phone, an Idle Hands device, "Haiku" and "Escapement".

A worry for the airport authorities. Try bringing this one onto your next flight.

A week or so ago, our parish held its annual Twilight Fair. Of course we made a modest amount of money, but its great value was the chance to meet hundreds of people from our local community, who sat in the church courtyard eating, drinking and joining in the fun. James and I ran the second-hand bookstall and sold about 400 volumes. Carrying boxes of books is heavy work, but has compensations when you find a few treasures to buy. I found these music titles from Pelican.

I'd never read any of the Don Camillo books. So I bought this edition of the very first in the series, The Little world of Don Camillo. It's a lot of fun.

In the fiercest debate to surround the Dunmow Flitch Trials since their inception in 1104, the organisers in the small Essex town must decide whether same-sex couples may participate in the next competition, in July 2008. Apparently a local paper stirred up the debate when it asked whether gay couples are eligible to take part.

The trials, mentioned in Chaucer's The Wife of Bath award "a flitch (side) of bacon to married couples if they can satisfy the judge and jury of six maidens and six bachelors that, in twelvemonth and a day, they have not wisht themselves unmarried again".



Michael Chapman, a solicitor and one of three members of the Flitch Trials Committee, supports the inclusion of gay couples following the legalisation of civil partnerships this year. John Murphy, a local district councillor, said the custom had already changed. "Originally, it would have been church weddings, but now it allows people who have been married before to take part." However, the Reverend David Ainge, another member of the committee, disagrees. "A civil partnership is not a marriage," he said. "The law of the land specifically says that. If civil partnership couples were allowed to enter, it would change the very foundation of the trials and require a significant re-writing of the whole event."

Since the end of WWII, the trials have been held every four years in a leap year, with the next trials are to be held in July 2008. There is a judge, counsel representing the claimants, and opposing counsel representing the donors of the flitch of bacon, a jury of six maidens and six bachelors. Claimants married for at least a year and a day come from near and far. It is not a competition between the couples. All or none could be successful in their claim, which is vigorously defended by counsel on behalf of the donors of the bacon, test the claimants evidence and to try and persuade the Jury not to grant them the flitch. Successful couples are carried shoulder high by bearers in the ancient Flitch Chair to the market place where they take an oath (similar to pre-Reformation marriage vows) kneeling on pointed stones. Unsuccessful couples have to walk behind the empty chair to the Market Place, consoled with a prize of gammon. The original custom of awarding a Flitch to those who can prove marital harmony is not unique to Dunmow, but Dunmow is unique in continuing it to today.

I think old customs like the Dunmow Flitch trial are good fun and should be retained. It seems a bit silly of a local newspaper to threaten this amusing, yet serious, ritual with PC questions about whether gays can enter.

In a Boston Globe column (13 Nov 06) , "War, religion, and gay rights", (13 Nov 06) James Carroll notes the cancellation of a gay pride parade in Jerusalem because of religious protests, ballots in eight US states -- seven of which passed -- repudiating the right of homosexual couples to marry, and the fuss over Ted Haggard's resignation. However, the Massachusetts constitutional convention ignored unusual political pressure from the state's Catholic bishops to support an anti-gay-marriage amendment there.

When public crises are defined by an immoral American war, universal cuts in social services, violence among young people, resurgent nuclear arsenals, rising global inequity, unprecedented jeopardy of the earth itself, why are the bishops obsessed with this particular question?

Same-sex erotic love is not the issue. Humans, including Catholic bishops, have long accommodated it. But that accommodation assumes denial and shame. What brings demonstrators into streets across cultures, and what shows up in the United States as "values" politics, mobilizing bishops, is the movement to bring homosexuality out of the dark. When gay people openly assert their identities as such, whether through parades or through the demand for full and equal social recognition, reactionaries cannot stand it. Why?

Two answers, one personal and one political. The open affirmation of gay identity can pose a mortal threat to people whose own sexual identity is insecure. The Haggard story is a cautionary tale. As it happens, I was present last year to hear Pastor Ted preach a sermon at his mega-church, and it included a digressive attack on homosexuals that was as venomous and it was gratuitous. He equated gay sex with bestiality. Even at the time, I wondered about the dark energy of his hatred. That it is revealed now as self-hatred comes as no surprise. One needn't draw a direct line from Haggard's behavior to the private morality of Catholic bishops to sense that the church's own deepening insecurity on all matters of sexuality, especially those surfaced by the still unresolved crisis of priestly sexual abuse of children, informs its exceptional opposition to gay rights.

And so in Jerusalem. The insecurities of male establishments, whose dominance over women is threatened, readily explode in contempt for any expression of gay pride. Patriarchy is at issue. There is a deflection here, and that points to the political use of gay bashing. At the end of the Cold War, when the Pentagon defined itself as the world's largest closet by decreeing "don't ask, don't tell," the issue of gays in the military was being used to deflect attention from the military's real problem: how to maintain Cold War levels of spending, and a Cold War nuclear arsenal, without a Cold War enemy?

The real "don't ask, don't tell" was "Don't ask us about our budgets and nukes, and we won't tell you about the future wars they will enable." All of the Sturm und Drang about gays in the military deflected American attention from the real issue of the moment, and it worked. The American Cold War ethos is still with us.

The human race is undergoing a massive cultural mutation. The meaning of sexuality is being transformed as biology revolutionizes reproduction. Women are demanding equality across the globe. Men are being forced to reimagine their familial and social roles. Gays and lesbians are at the center of these changes. Their refusal to be silent and invisible is one of the era's great resources, a magnificent sign of hope.

Are you listening John?

James Carroll was born in 1943, the son of an Air Force general. He received BA and MA degrees from the Paulist Fathers' seminary in Washington, and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. Carroll served as Catholic Chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974 and then left the priesthood to become a writer.

He has published a ten novels, including three New York Times bestsellers. Carroll's essays and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Daedalus, and other publications. His op-ed page column has run weekly in the Boston Globe since 1992.

Carroll's memoir, An American requiem: God, my father, and the war that came between us, received the 1996 National Book Award in nonfiction and other awards. Constantine's sword: the church and the Jews: a history (2001) also received numerous awards. In 2004 he published Crusade: chronicles of an unjust war, adapted from his Boston Globe columns since 9/11. In May 2005, he published House of war: the Pentagon and the disastrous rise of American power, a history of the Pentagon, which the Chicago Tribune called "the first great non-fiction book of the new millennium."

Caroll is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University, a member of the Dean's Council at the Harvard Divinity School, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University.

I should not let 12th November pass without belatedly noting that is the commemoration of St. Margaret (1045-1093), Queen of Scotland. I visited St. Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle in 1976. The chapel is faithfully cared for by a Guild that keeps it decorated with flowers. It's a popular wedding spot. This is the St. Margaret's pin that I bought as a souvenir of my visit to Scotland.

Pray for Davis Mac-Iyalla, founder and Director of Changing Attitude Nigeria.

Colin Coward, Director of Changing Attitude England wrote that Davis collapsed last week in the French Embassy after being told that he had been refused a visa to attend an international LGBT meeting in Lyon. He came to in hospital and was there for 3 days.

He has now been discharged from hospital and writes

I am greatful to God Almighty who has made it possible for me to survive and come back home last night. I believed God Saved my Life for a Special Purpose that is best known to him.

Many Thanks to all those who did try to reach me on phone and emails. As I open my box to read and send mails I can see that friends and love ones from all over the world have sent mails of comfort and love. May our good Lord Bless and keep you all.

Sorry I will not be able to talk much about my experience while in the hospital but I will write and make an article with some pic that was taking on the day I was worst and everyone thought I would die, on Changing Attitude Website.

Thanks and Love
Davis Mac-Iyalla
Director, CA Nigeria.

This was Davis's second admission to hospital, this time for a week, with serious liver infection. The doctors were surprised he survived because most people with such a serious infection die before they get to hospital.

Please pray for Davis, for his health and strength and a speedy recovery. Please pray also for a flow of financial resources to cover his hospital expenses.

Colin believes that "Davis is carrying a huge burden which is adding to pressure on his heart and affecting his emotional well-being and balance. The news he has been able to provide from the contacts in the CA group in Nigeria have been having a huge effect on the Church authorities there. The news about +Akinola's plans for Lambeth was shown direct to +Rowan here, and Jim Rosenthal said people were abuzz with it in Washington when he attended Katharine Jeffert Schori's service. Our news items have created paranoia in the Nigerian hierarchy.

"Davis is being given huge power by them, power he certainly isn't aware of having himself. It's difficult to react to the abuse of church structures and systems without being abusive in return, and there is a huge cost on Davis as this drama is being played out."

Yesterday, I attended the annual valedictory eucharist of St. Mark's National Theological Centre. I appreciated the prayers, led by Dr Heather Thompson.

God of love, we pray for friends and family.
We thank you for those who support us in what we do,
even when they are tired,
even when we are absent or pre-occupied,
even when we are too busy to notice.
We thank you for their grace and care.
May we learn to notice and to thank them,
and to offer those around us the same generosity and care.
In the name of Jesus who cared for the least of all, we give you thanks and praise.

God of peace, we pray for those who cannot find peace.
May you be close this night to all who are troubled,
disturbed, in pain, or in war,
suffering sorrow or grief, who are lost or lonely.
Give them your peace that passes all understanding.
We ask this in the name of Jesus who offered us your peace.
Open us all to your love and grace.

God of compassion, may your church across the world embody your compassion in its life and work.
May it seek out the lost, bind up the broken-hearted,
feed the hungry and care for the sick.
May it celebrate the good,
love your beauty,
live life from your freedom,
and be a slave to no powers of this world.
We ask this in the name of Jesus, who came that we might have life, and have it in abundance. Amen.

Christian faith does not lead us all to identical moral convictions. I, for one, would not buy sex or (if I were younger!) work as a prostitute. (Though there is at least one prostitute in the Bible who found favour with God.) In fact I would not seek sex other than with my partner/spouse at all. Not because I am 'holier than thou', but because that's how I believe I am encouraged to behave as a follower of Christ. And besides, I love my partner.

Much has made of Ted Haggard's resignation from Christian leadership after he was outed by a gay male sex worker he had employed. But for his own bigoted preaching against gays, his offence would have been the same whether the prostitute were male or female. Homosexuality was not his problem. Infidelity and hypocrisy were.



In the New York Times Dan Savage notes that Mike Jones, the callboy in question, did something very unusual in identifying his former client. Most sex workers are serious and ethical about silence and discretion.

So why did Mike Jones speak out?

Because today it is arguably more shameful and damaging to be a hypocritical closet case than it is to be a sex worker. Even those delighted by Haggard's disgrace ache for his five children, all suffering now for the sins of their father. And let me be clear: Their father's sin is not his sexual orientation, but his deceit and hypocrisy.

When U.S. Representative Mark Foley flamed out, Pat Robertson said: "Well, this man's gay. He does what gay people do." That lie might have worked when most gay Americans were closeted, but it doesn't work anymore.

Ultimately it was Haggard's hypocrisy--railing against homosexuals and campaigning against gay marriage while apparently indulging in sex romps with a gay escort--that prompted Jones to shove him out of the closet. The homophobia promoted by Haggard and others undermined the callboy code of silence that Haggard himself relied on. Most callboys are gay, after all, and most are out of the closet these days.

The Haggards of the world have been placed on notice: You can't have your callboy and disparage him too.

There's a message for all Christians here (and others as well). You can argue respectfully about the moral rights and wrongs of sexuality, or anything else for that matter. But let those who are sinless cast the first stone. And practice what you preach. Simple really.

Thus Giles Fraser in The Church Times:

In his spiritual classic New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton wrote about what it is to be a saint.

Birds and flowers and mountains are saints in that they reflect back to God his own beauty, simply by being what they are. Human beings can't do that so straightforwardly, because, having been given free will, we are able to hide the truth about who we are. We can wear masks.

We can fool even ourselves. And, if we do that for long enough, we just won't be able to find the truth when we need it most.

Consider, then, the spiritual predicament of poor Pastor Ted Haggard. Pastor Ted is an adviser to President Bush, and founder of the New Life mega-church in Colorado Springs. Or, should I say, was. Last week, he admitted a relationship with a male escort, and that he bought drugs that are known for enhancing sexual excitement.

He has now resigned in disgrace, with the cries of "Hypocrite!" ringing in his ears from the gay community. Pastor Haggard's spiritual adviser told the press that he saw only relief on Haggard's face when the pastor told him he was standing down.

One blogger on the Christian website titusonenine wrote this: "So, the hatred he was showing to gay people turns out to be an attempt to hide his own self-hatred. It's very sad. I hope he can recover. My prayers are with his family, but also with the gay couples who may have been harmed by his vilification of their committed love."

Many of the conservative bloggers, however, argue that he has been in the grip of the devil. As a matter of fact, I agree with them. For Satan, properly understood, is the accuser and the teller of lies. And the problem surely is that Pastor Haggard has been living a lie.

I have a number of friends who have come out of the closet, and it has always seemed to me a deeply moving religious experience. It makes me think of some words from one of Charles Wesley's hymns:

I woke, the dungeon
flamed with light;
My chains fell off,
my heart was free,
I rose, went forth,
and followed thee.

The next verse begins: "No condemnation now I dread. . ."

Pastor Haggard's old church was called New Life. That's what he now needs, a new life. Yes, he needs to be born again. And this time, reborn in the truth. Reborn to be the person that God calls him to be. God calls nobody to be in the closet. For the closet is simply the gay word for hell.

In a 25 October press release, Nicola Roxon MP, Labor's Shadow Attorney-General, and Senator Nick Sherry, Shadow Minister for Superannuation, Intergenerational Finance, Banking & Financial Services, have again called on the Howard Government to take action to address discrimination against same sex couples in Commonwealth legislation, particularly in superannuation.

Despite its promises in 2004, the Howard Government still refuses to fix superannuation properly for same sex couples -- Australian Government officers are still not treated equally. Especially interesting is that Senator Sherry, has lodged a Freedom of Information request for documents relating to the costing implications of extending public sector superannuation benefits to same sex and interdependent couples. The figures will be interesting.

Senator Sherry also asked the Government and the Treasury for these costings at a Senate hearing last week, but they refused to supply any information.

On Saturday James and I wished "good luck" to our friends and neigbours Nicholas and Daniel as they left for the 2nd Festival of Universal Sacred Music in New York City, where Nicholas Ng's commissioned piece The Great Invocation is to be performed.

The piece blends multiple intonations of the sacred Hindu syllable "Om" with Chinese Chán Buddhist (known as Zen in Japan) chants and medieval Gregorian liturgical music using a Javanese skeletal structure, expressing humanity's unity through its communion with a needless God whose only emotion is total love for all people of all faiths and spiritual paths. The performance features the renowned indigenous didgeridoo recording artist Ash Dargan of the Larrakia Nation of Darwin, Australia

Nicholas's artistic dream involves bringing together the ancient and the modern in music through the use of traditional instruments and electronic sound. He writes both contemporary classical music and commerical music. He has written for new music ensembles such as The Australian Voices, Gamelan Kyai Kebo Giro, and the Zürich Ensemble for New Music. In May 2005, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra premiered his Secret of the Golden Flower: Spirals with new media artist Warwick Lynch in a live-to-air broadcast on ABC Classic FM.

Nicholas enjoys performing in western, Middle Eastern and Chinese ensembles on the erhu. He has played with guitarist Harold Gretton, the Choir of St. Christopher's Cathedral in Canberra, and with the combined ensembles of Kathy Walsh's Rahbani Dance Troupe. As a soloist, he has been recorded for the soundtrack of an SBS Independent film Yum Cha-Cha and has performed in venues such as The Canberra Theatre Playhouse and The Studio of the Sydney Opera House. In 2003, Nicholas established The Australian National University Chinese Music Ensemble, which has since been actively performing for the local Chinese and Taiwanese communities of Canberra. He is currently completing a doctorate in ethnomusicology at the University.