Yesterday to the National Gallery. I was delighted by the new arrangement of the main galleries, with new lighting -- especially the South and Southeast Asian galleries.

We saw Grace Crowley: being modern, a major retrospective of her work, showing Crowley's transition from traditional Australian styles in the early 1920s, through Cubism to abstract painting in the 1940s and 1950s. I have little understood abstract painting, beyond the general idea that form, color, texture, etc. are used to convey idea without representational depiction. A highlight of the show, Abstract painting 1952, demonstrates this very powerfully.



Elena Taylor, NGA's Curator of Australian Painting and Sculpture, notes that throughout the 1940s, Grace Crowley's avant-garde geometric abstracts

were poorly received in an environment that strongly favoured the representational and narrative work of artists such as William Dobell. It was not until the 1950s, when Crowley was in her sixties, that a public gallery exhibited her abstract works. Yet Crowley's geometric paintings from the early 1950s are arguably her finest achievement. They show her superb understanding of colour to create extraordinary lively and sophisticated abstract compositions. Abstract painting 1952 is one of her most 'hard-edge' geometric works, a series of overlapping rectangles in a shallow pictorial space jostling against each other, the forms appearing to be in continual movement yet anchored by the pink square at the front of the picture plane, and the dense black rectangle that lies behind. Crowley's late abstracts can be seen as the climax of her long journey to realise a universal art based on the harmonious relationship of colour and form.

Crowley's long artistic journey over five decades from painter of traditional landscapes to avant-garde abstracts was extraordinary. While Crowley is still best known for her cubist paintings of the 1920s and 1930s, Grace Crowley: being modern includes works that have never before been exhibited and reveals the full extent of Crowley's contribution to Australian art.

art

Two Christians, one from the left and one from the right, who have chosen equality --

Peter Garrett MP, the Shadow Minister for Heritage, the Environment and the Arts, has broken with his party's line by declaring himself a supporter of gay marriage. This is the first time a senior federal Labor politician has backed same-sex marriage, with the federal ALP having so far even refused to commit to civil unions.

Mr Garrett made the declaration during an appearance on Channel 10's late night variety show "The Big Night In With John Foreman" in a pre-recorded episode aired on Thursday the 21st of December. During the interview, Garrett, a committed Christian, referred to himself as a "social conservative" in favour of "the family". However, when asked if this conservatism extended to the issue of gay marriage, Garrett said, "I don't have a problem with it". He went on to say that the spectrum of diversity in society needed to be respected and that Governments had no place legislating sexual morality. However, when asked in general what the Labor recruit would do if his party was to push for policies he disagreed with, Garrett indicated he was prepared to vote with the ALP consensus on such issues, while lobby in the caucus for the approaches he thought right.

The late President Gerald Ford, who died on 26 Dec 06, was also clearly a man of faith, as shown in his 28 May 1977, commencement address to his son and 180 other Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary graduates, published by Christianity Today on 29 July 1977 and now republished. Yet Ford was also a vocal supporter of gay rights in his later years.

Detroit News of 2 Jan 07, by Deb Price

Thirty years ago, I thought of myself as a Jerry Ford Republican. . . . When I voted for him in November 1976, I was a timid, closeted 18-year-old. I couldn't have imagined -- and, I expect, neither could he -- that 25 years later, in an interview with me, Ford would become the highest-ranking Republican in history to endorse equal treatment for gay couples.

After Ford left office, my regard for him grew. I came to see his pardoning of Richard Nixon as wise and gutsy. To Ford, the question wasn't what Nixon deserved but what was best for the country. Ford wasn't wooing any political faction, wasn't playing divide-and-conquer politics and sure wasn't trying to win a popularity contest. He was simply leading.

And I admired that Ford had appointed John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court, picking him for his fine legal mind, not to score ideological points. Stevens went on to become gay Americans' most steadfast friend on the high court.

I had many reasons to admire Ford, yet long felt tremendously disappointed by him in one way: I'd read that after a San Francisco man thwarted a would-be assassin on Sept. 22, 1975, Ford sent a thank-you note but did nothing more because the hero, Bill Sipple, was gay. That account gnawed at me. Although I'd never known Ford to take a public stand on anything gay, I just couldn't square the story with what I knew about him. So, in October 2001, I faxed an interview request about this stain on his record. I soon received a call asking me to please hold -- the president wished to speak to me.

Ford, then 88, was eager to correct the record and sounded hurt that anyone had ever thought of him as anti-gay. "I wrote (Sipple) a note thanking him. As far as I was concerned, I had done the right thing and the matter was ended. I didn't learn until sometime later -- I can't remember when -- he was gay. I don't know where anyone got the crazy idea I was prejudiced and wanted to exclude gays," Ford told me.

Pleasantly surprised by how comfortable Ford was talking about gay issues -- not a trait I've found in many politicians -- I asked whether the federal government ought to treat gay couples the same as married heterosexuals. "I think they ought to be treated equally. Period," Ford replied.

Trying to get a better sense of what he meant, I pressed on, asking whether he believed gay couples should receive the same Social Security, tax and other federal benefits? "I don't see why they shouldn't. I think that's a proper goal," Ford replied.

He also told me that he supported a federal law to outlaw anti-gay job discrimination: "That is a step in the right direction. I have a longstanding record in favor of legislation to do away with discrimination," he said.

Amazed at finding myself chatting with the former president, I told him that my first vote ever was for him and he shared with me that he and his wife had gay friends. Ford also said that he wanted gay Americans to be part of his party. "I have always believed in an inclusive policy, in welcoming gays and others into the party. I think the party has to have an umbrella philosophy if it expects to win elections," he said.

Not long after my column about our interview was published, the gay-friendly Republican Unity Coalition contacted Ford, and he agreed to join its advisory board, lending his name to its cause. . . . With the passage of 30 years, I've become an even bigger admirer of the gay-friendly statesman.

Grandma Judy's light Christmas pudding
. . . a recipe handed down from my mother's mother.

You will need:
1 large bowl
a wooden spoon
cloth approx 0.5m x 0.5m (calico is good)
string
a very large pan

Ingredients
175g breadcrumbs (approx 5 slices)
100g currants
100g raisins
100g sultanas
50g candied peel or grated peel of a large lemon
2 teaspoons baking powder 2 teaspoons
3 eggs, medium to large
0.5 cups milk -- skim or whole
A dash of salt
A generous sprinkle of ground nutmeg
100g brown sugar
150g suet *
125g plain flour *
* or use 1 pkt of Tandaco suet and flour mix (250 gm)

Method
Mix all the dry ingredients.
Beat egg and milk. Pour into dry mix.
Blend to a soft dough with a wooden spoon.
Mix should almost glue together, not crumble.
Spray cloth with water (be sure every part of the cloth is damp! Better too much water than too little).
Sprinkle plain flour all over the cloth. (This will provide a seal after cooking.)
Tip mixture into the cloth, draw cloth up around pudding ball and tie firmly.
Trim extra cloth away.
Boil slowly for 3 hours. Keep completely submerged while cooking. Pudding should be free floating in the water not resting on the bottom of the saucepan.
Hang hot pudding freely where it can gradually dry out. (Do not let it lean on a wall, etc). As the string may break under the weight, stick a couple of strong safety pins through the loose cloth at the top and then suspend.
Reheat time is 1 hour in simmering hot water. Keep totally covered during reheat. Lift out. Unwrap and serve with custard.

Low temperature turkey
. . . from Frances, a former colleague of mine

Line a large open, roasting pan with heavy-duty foil (to save washing up).
If desired, stuff the turkey or turkey breast (to hold stuffing in a breast, wrap open side with foil and place some foil under the bird on the rack).
Rub the surface of the bird with margarine or butter.
Place a piece of gauze, which has been soaked in melted margarine or butter, over the entire breast. As gauze is thin use 2 to 3 layers together or use a piece of calico.
Place stuffed turkey, breast side up, on a rack in the lined pan.
Roast at 165°C (325°F). Baste only once or twice with pan juices.
Remove cloth for last half hour.
Allow 3-4 hours for a 2-5kg (4-8lb) bird, 4 to 4.5 hours for a 5-7kg (8-12lb) bird.

To serve hot: after taking turkey from the oven let it sit for 15 mins before carving to retain juices.
To serve cold: Cover with foil while cooling. Place in fridge as soon as cool enough. Seal completely after bird is cold.

Christmas Ice cream
. . . from my niece, Victoria

2 litres soft vanilla ice cream
1.5 cups mixed fruit
0.25 cups glazed pineapple and cherries, chopped (you could soak these in brandy)
0.25 cups chocolate bits
0.5 cups chopped nuts (cashews are good)
handful of chopped fresh mint (fresh dill will do also)
(change ingredients to taste)

Mix well; put into pudding basin and freeze.

The Times reports a powerful attack by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who accuses the British, US [and, by implication, the Australian] governments of endangering the lives and futures of many thousands of Christians in the Middle East, who are regarded by their countrymen as supporters of the "crusading West." Christians in the Middle East are being put at unprecedented risk by the Government's "shortsighted" and "ignorant" policy in Iraq, he says. Williams has been backed by bishops across the Church of England, who say that Christians in the Middle East are now paying the price for the "chaos" in Iraq after the British Government failed to heed their warnings about the consequences of military action.

In a piece in the Times written from Bethlehem, where the number of Christians has dropped to quarter of what it was, Dr Williams says that one prediction that was systematically ignored was that Western military action would put the whole of the Middle East's Christian population at risk. He condemns the governments for failing to put in place a strategy to help Christians.

"The results are now painfully adding to what was already a difficult situation for Christian communities across the region," he says. "The first Christian believers were Middle Easterners. It's a very sobering thought that we might live to see the last native Christian believers in the region." In some Middle Eastern countries where Muslim-Christian relations have always been good, he says that extremist attacks on Christians are becoming "notably more frequent."

Dr Williams, who is visiting Israel with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian, the Armenian Primate of Britain and David Coffey, the head of the Baptist World Alliance, returned to Britain with a call for all British churches to take action to raise the profile of Christians in the Middle East. Dr Williams said yesterday that the Israeli-built wall around Bethlehem symbolised what was "deeply wrong in the human heart". [. . .] Senior bishops have thrown their weight behind Dr Williams.

Read the article in full on the Archbishop's website.

The Bureau of Meteorology reports that most of the bushfire fire-affected areas in Victoria and elsewhere are having their worst year -- and in many cases, worst decade -- of rainfall in more than a century. Over the four months leading up to the bushfires, record temperatures up to four degrees hotter than average were felt in many areas. Although the report does not explicitly link the harsher weather to climate change, it concludes that "the warm temperatures are consistent with the long-term warming trend over Australia".



The Bureau's head of climate analysis, David Jones, told The Age it was hard to imagine how fire conditions across south-east Australia could have been any worse this summer. "This has been the worst-case scenario, where you've had a 10-year drought, followed by a 12-month drought that has been the worst on record in many regions, followed by three to four months of temperatures that have been the hottest on record by a very large margin in many areas. It's been the perfect set-up for a firestorm."

The extreme conditions have hit alpine areas hardest. Poor snowfall during winter and snow cover that melted earlier than normal, helped to push up spring temperatures at high altitudes and left behind unusually dry mountain slopes -- closely tracking what the CSIRO predicts will happen more often in alpine areas due to global warming.

"It's just one sample so one should be careful about it, but it is interesting that we've seen such extraordinarily high temperatures in alpine sites and that they appear to be linked to the lack of snow cover," Dr Jones said. Across south-eastern Australia, alpine regions recorded some of the most dramatic rainfall and temperature changes. Between January and the end of November, the north-east Victorian town of Harrietville received 494 mm of rain, well below the previous record low of 664 mm.

title="Fire continues unabated across a huge area. The map is is a composite of those published online by The Age.

When I opened my copy of the latest edition of a well known newsmagazine, this picture was in my face, across a two-page spread.



More evidence (if one needed any) that sex sells. But sells what exactly?

Jeans? Well we know that low-slung jeans are sexy.

Condom cases? Is that what the small white box is? Strange place to carry one.

When you find it, the small white print tells you what is actually on offer. By which time the slightly titillating image is well imbedded in the mind, so that a trendy brand of music player is associated with a vague sexual something or other.

Subtle? Or just in-yer-face?

	There's plenty of precedent . . . 'Abercrombie & crotch' in 5th Avenue in 2005 . . . the Stones' Sticky Fingers cover . . .

The last couple of weeks I've been doing battle with J.S. Bach's famed cantata Sleepers Wake! (Wachet Auf).



A couple of week's ago I attended the Canberra Choral Society's Christmas Concert, as guest of a friend who sings in the Society's choir. The program was Sleepers Wake [Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140], Heinreich Shütz (1585-1672) Die Weihnachtshistorien [Christmas story], and and Saint Saëns's Christmas Oratorio. I'd never heard any of these properly, so I looked forward to the concert.

The Saint-Saëns piece, played in the second half of the concert, was delightful. But I got very restless in the first half as the Bach and Schutz droned on. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Bach, especially his keyboard music. So what was wrong?

Bach prepared a shorter version as the first (BWV 645) of his Six Chorales of Diverse Kinds (the Schübler Chorales BWV 645-650). As played by organist Ton Koopman Ton Koopman,in Bach Organ Works v.2, it's truly superb (Teldec 4509 94459 2).

We sang the hymn version of Wachet Auf in church last Sunday. Our organist is top-class, yet only a few could sing the thing and it dragged terribly. So I'm led to a heretical question. Why does such a well regarded piece so dull? (Or why is such a dull piece so well regarded?)

James and I enjoyed the new Bond flick "Casino Royale" the other day. Up 'till now I haven't liked most James Bond films. The bad guys are just too unreal, with their megalomanic plans to take over the world, and Bond is too slick. Daniel Craig in "Casino Royale" is more believable, and a decent actor, too. The plot is the usual thriller mixture of near impossible stunts and close escapes. Bond's love affair in the film is tender and amusing by turns and crucial to the story, not just a bit of sex.

I liked it.

Craig makes a splash as A hunk in trunks, but the beach scene only lasts a few seconds, alas.

Bond's swimmers are "Grigioperla" trunks from La Perla's Spring/Summer 2006 collection. They're overpriced and pretty ordinary, really. This is a case not where "clothes maketh the man" but the man definitely maketh the clothing.

This is an event I look forward to.

The Archbishop of Adelaide The Most Reverend Jeffrey Driver invites Mr Brian McKinlay To join in worship at The Episcopal Ordination of The Reverend Dr Stephen Kim Pickard to be Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Adelaide The consecration will take place at 10.00am on Saturday 3 February 2007 in St Peter's Cathedral King William Road, North Adelaide This season celebrates the Presentation of Christ in the Temple of God and calls us all to lives consecrated to the service of the Holy God in whom we live and move and have our being. RSVP

Neela Banerjee writes in the New York Times (12 Dec 06) on the dilemna of being a gay evangelical Christian. For example, Justin Lee, who has set up a web site for gay evangelical Christian, says that, just as he is certain about the tenets of his faith, he also knows he is gay, that he did not choose it and cannot change it. To many people, he is a walking contradiction. Most evangelicals and gay people alike, the article says, consider Christians like him horribly deluded about their faith. Banerjee goes on to say that:

Gay evangelicals seem to have few paths carved out for them: they can leave religion behind; they can turn to theologically liberal congregations that often differ from the tradition they grew up in; or they can enter programs to try to change their behavior, even their orientation, through prayer and support. But as gay men and lesbians grapple with their sexuality and an evangelical upbringing they cherish, some have come to accept both. And like other Christians who are trying to broaden the definition of evangelical to include other, though less charged, concerns like the environment and AIDS, gay evangelicals are trying to expand the understanding of evangelical to include them, too.

"A lot of people are freaked out because their only exposure to evangelicalism was a bad one, and a lot ask, 'Why would you want to be part of a group that doesn't like you very much?' " Mr. Lee said. "But it's not about membership in groups. It's about what I believe. Just because some people who believe the same things I do aren't very loving doesn't mean I stop believing what I do."

Justin Cannon, 22, a seminarian who grew up in a conservative Episcopal parish in Michigan, started two Web sites, including an Internet dating site for gay Christians, because he realised that many were looking not just for a life partner but someone with whom they can connect spiritually.

On the other side of the question the article quotes Robert Gagnon, who says that:

If by gay evangelical is meant someone who claims both to abide by the authority of Scripture and to engage in a self-affirming manner in homosexual unions, then the concept gay evangelical is a contradiction. Scripture clearly, pervasively, strongly, absolutely and counterculturally opposes all homosexual practice. I trust that gay evangelicals would argue otherwise, but Christian proponents of homosexual practice have not made their case from Scripture.

Of course, as Banerjee says in her piece, both sides look to Scripture and argue about its meaning and application.

[E]ven when they accept themselves, gay evangelicals often have difficulty finding a community. They are too Christian for many gay people, with the evangelical rock they listen to and their talk of loving God. . . . Gay evangelicals seldom find churches that fit. Congregations and denominations that are open to gay people are often too liberal theologically for evangelicals. Yet those congregations whose preaching is familiar [to evangelicals] do not welcome gay members.

The example of Clyde Zuber, 49, and Martin Fowler, 55 (pictured) is a fine one; they met at a church and have been together 23 years. Now they attend an Episcopal church and hold a Bible study for gay evangelicals every Friday night at their home. "Our faith is the basis of our lives," said Mr. Fowler, a soft-spoken professor of philosophy. "It means that Jesus is the Lord of our household, that we resolve differences peacefully and through love," Mr Zuber said.

Though we do not describe ourselves as evangelical, liberal, anglo-catholic or any other sub-species of Christian, James and live in the dilemna described in Banerjee's article. The churches that seem most dynamic and oureaching are also the most unaccepting of gay people. Churches that are accepting are sometimes too reluctant to put some energy any dynamism into reaching others with the good news of the love of Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, most gay people are incredulous at the possibility of gays wanting to be church people.

The Australian Capital Territory's Attorney General Simon Corbell today presented the Civil Partnerships Bill 2006 in the Legislative Assembly. The bill replaces Civil Unions Act 2006, which was disallowed by the Governor-General on 13th June 2006 on the advice of the Federal government led by John Howard. Mr Corbell said:

The [Territory] Government is fully committed to this legislation. The Government does not accept that it is somehow satisfactory to discriminate against one part of society, and as a result has introduced the new Civil Partnerships Bill in the ACT Legislative Assembly today.

The Government can see no grounds for refusing recognition to same-sex relationships, or for refusing couples in any relationship the opportunity to enjoy functional legal equality with married couples under ACT law.

Mr Corbell said the new Civil Partnerships Bill was in some ways similar to the disallowed Civil Unions Act 2006, but with modifications designed to address the concerns expressed by the Commonwealth Government.

Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, the term 'civil partnership' has been used in preference to 'civil union'.

The term 'civil partnership' is used to avoid using the language of marriage. The old common law formulation of marriage, which the Commonwealth incorporated into the Marriage Act 1961 in 2004, is that marriage is 'the union of a man and woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life'. A civil partnership is not a marriage, and the use of 'partnership' instead of 'union' highlights this difference.

The new Civil Partnerships Bill also does not contain the provision that the Commonwealth apparently found to be so unacceptable, that said a civil union was to be treated in the same way as marriage under ACT law. Instead, the Civil Partnerships Bill provides that a civil partnership is a domestic partnership, a concept already well-established in Territory law.

The Government remains committed to a policy that it went to the electors with in the 2004 election, and that policy is to legislate for two people, regardless of their gender, to enter into a legally recognised relationship. Canberrans in same sex relationships are entitled to have the same rights under the law as other members of the community.

Postscript:
On 15 December Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said he is not satisfied with the ACT's new bill to recognise same-sex relationships. Mr Ruddock said there has been movement on some issues but not all the Commonwealth's concerns have been addressed. "With goodwill you can fix many things but I don't think the ACT Government demonstrated goodwill by essentially introducing legislation without talking to us about it first."

On 1 December, at the Third Session of the Human Rights Council, in Geneva, Ambassador Stommen of Norway made the following statement on behalf of 54 nations:

I have the honour to make this statement on human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity on behalf of the following 54 States (*), including 18 members of the Human Rights Council:

• At its recent session, the Human Rights Council received extensive evidence of human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, including deprivation of the rights to life, freedom from violence and torture.
• We commend the attention paid to these issues by the Special Procedures, treaty bodies and civil society. We call upon all Special Procedures and treaty bodies to continue to integrate consideration of human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity within their relevant mandates.
• We express deep concern at these ongoing human rights violations. The principles of universality and non-discrimination require that these issues be addressed. We therefore urge the Human Rights Council to pay due attention to human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and request the President of the Council to provide an opportunity, at an appropriate future session of the Council, for a discussion of these important human rights issues.

(*) Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

The Australian Government supported the statement. Of course it properly opposes gross violations of torture, execution and murder. But it still has much to do to get its own house in order, with many less blatant violations of human rights remaining embedded in Australian law.

The Australian Coalition for Equality applauded the Howard Government for supporting the UN statement. But a spokesperson called on the Howard Government to translate its concern about discrimination overseas to Australian law.

"There is more discrimination against same-sex couples in Australia national law than in almost every other western country. We welcome the Government's concern about discrimination and call for it to bring that concern home."

NGOs have celebrated the statement and congratulated the Norwegians for their leadership.

This is the largest-ever statement delivered at the UN on sexual orientation issues, and the first ever to explicitly highlight human rights violations based on gender identity." said John Fisher, Co-Director of ARC International. "We are encouraged by the measurable increase in cross-regional support for sexual orientation and gender identity issues in recent years. The time has come to ensure that human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity receive the international scrutiny and condemnation they demand."

"Numerous Special Procedures have documented violations of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons," said Chris Sidoti, Director of the International Service for Human Rights. "These violations include use of the death penalty, torture, criminal sanctions, police harassment, violence, rape, beatings, disappearances, denials of freedom of expression, raids and closures of NGOs, and discrimination in education, employment, health and housing. Too often in the past, these human rights abuses have passed in silence. Now, the era of invisibility is over."

Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, Co-Secretary General of the International Lesbian and Gay Association highlighted the fact that more than 460 NGOs from 69 different countries had joined together to commend Norway for its leadership and support the statement. "Activists from around the world often work on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity at risk of their jobs, their freedom, even their lives. The Norwegian statement has united States and NGOs from around the world to send a clear message that human rights violations directed against our communities can no longer be ignored."

Earlier this year, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour in a keynote speech to an International Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights noted that "violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons is frequently unreported, undocumented and goes ultimately unpunished. . . . This shameful silence is the ultimate rejection of the fundamental principle of universality of rights. . . . Excluding LGBT individuals from these protections clearly violates international human rights law as well as the common standards of humanity that define us all."

At a peak of 42.1 °C, Melbourne yesterday endured its hottest December day for 53 years. Despite a change to cool winds, fire fighters are bracing for conditions to worsen. The smoke-filled air is believed to have been the dirtiest the city has ever experienced. The fires have produced some spectacular pictures; these from The Age.

Last night was the second of CAMRA's two performances of Messiah for the year. The capacity audience sweltered in the small church. The music was a great success but we were glad to adjourn to the courtyard for cool drinks at interval and after the show.

This is smoke, not a rain cloud. Firefighters in Victoria struggle with massive blazes and a number of towns and regions are on high alert ahead of forecast extreme conditions over the next few days.

Authorities say more than 150,000 hectares of bushland have been burnt since the fires started a week ago. Temperatures in the high 30s °C tomorrow, combined with hot northerly winds, threaten to push more fires together and create one massive blaze with the potential to burn up to 600,000 hectares and more. Already fires in the Black Range and Rose River have joined to form a front that is now 50 km long and 30 km wide and burning an area of 75,000 hectares. There is a lot of fire caused by lightning and it is extremely dry. Here in Canberra, hundreds of kilometres away, the air is hazy with smoke. Much of the fire is in inaccessible terrain but threatens nearby towns and villages. It's only December and we've still got the rest of summer ahead of us. (Pictures from the ABC.)

This is the fire area today:


A location map show that the area is already large:


But authorities worry that by Sunday it could be huge:

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.

St. Philip's celebration of the combined festival of All Souls and All Saints will include Joseph Haydn's eucharistic setting, the Missa brevis Sancti joannis de Deo in B♭(Hob. XXI 1.7), often called the "Little Organ Mass". I hope to sing in the choir (bass/baritone).

Saint John of God (1495-1550), after whom the Mass is named, was the founder and patron of a religious order of brothers committed to the care of the sick and dying, now known in English as the Brothers of St. John of God and in German as the Barmherzige Brüder (Mercy Brothers). The Brothers have long had a hospital at Eisenstadt in Austria. It was there that the Esterhazy family, Haydn's patrons, were generous supporters of the Order.

This Mass was written for the Order's modest monastery church that still stands in the grounds of the modern Eisenstadt hospital. Unlike may mass settings composed for concert performance, this Missa Brevis is for use in church. Haydn may have written it as thanks for kind treatment by the monks of the hospital.

As the organ loft of the monastery church is very small, the number of musicians and singers was limited, and Haydn's score had to be small in scale. Typically such short masses use a small orchestra (such as two violins and bass) and a four-part choir. The name "Little Organ Mass" comes from the organ solo in the Benedictus, which also has the only voice solo, for soprano. The other movements are for four-part choir chorus, violins and bass.

Fourteen masses by Haydn survive, including two fragments found in the last fifty years or so. He composed four, possibly five, short masses. The Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo was his last in this form and probably dates between 1775 and 1778.

The text of the Missa brevis, as with many musical settings of the Eucharist, is from the Ordinary of the Mass, the part of the Mass that is always sung or recited. These words are used in both the Roman Catholic Mass and in Anglican Holy Communion Services -- such as the Second Order Holy Communion service of An Australian Prayer Book..

Thus Haydn's setting is in the usual six sections: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Benedictus, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. But it also follows the common practice of the Missa brevis with compacted versions of the Gloria and Credo, in which phrases are allowed to overlap, making the text (in any case in Latin) sometimes difficult to follow.

The Baroque monastic church of the Barmherzigen Brothers at Eisenstadt was built in 1739, though the original chapel may have been built in 1712-13. When the Barmherzigen Brothers came to Eisenstadt the chapel was renewed under the patronage of Prince Paul of Esterhazy. The small organ of the Barmherzigenkirche Eisenstadt originates from 1732 and is in full working order following restoration to its original condition in 1969.

It's good to see the steady development of Changing Attitude Australia since its establishment a few months ago. As the well-crafted website explains, its mission is to move forward the debate about human sexuality in the Anglican Church and beyond by raising awareness, providing education, introducing the experience of lesbian, gay, transgendered and intersex people, and building relationships. It welcomes people of all sexual orientations who support this mission and is modelled on the example of Changing Attitude UK. It also has brother/sister organisations and networks in Wales, Scotland, other European countries, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Brazil, Nigeria and Uganda.

Changing Attitude Australia provides speakers and resources for parishes and is committed to implementing the listening process in the Australian Church. It is seeking to create a nationwide network of members and is "is inspired to dispel the darkness of doubt by bringing the light of the Gospel to those on the margins of society."

It believes that:

• the lives of LGBTI Christians show evidence of the Gifts of the Spirit;
• our natural sexual orientation is neither a sickness nor sinful, but given by God, not chosen apart from God's will;
• loving, committed and faithful relationships are God's ideal for people of all sexual orientations;
• prejudice against gay people is no more acceptable than racism, or past justification of slavery on Biblical grounds; and
• the Church is responsible to bring the Gospel's message of salvation especially to the most socially marginalised.

Please pray that God will direct and empower St. Philip's Come and see catechumenate. The Candidates -- pray that they will be prepared and guided by the Spirit in their journey. The Sponsors -- pray that they also will be led by the Spirit in their journey with the candidates. Pray for all St. Philip's people, that we: -- invite those whom God is calling, -- care well for the candidates and sponsors, -- be for them examples of the love of Christ -- and are all encouraged to pray. The team -- pray that leaders and helpers will be equipped with joy, wisdom and commitment. Ask that God may take charge of the details. Above all, pray that Come and See will reveal the love of Christ and that we all may be encouraged and enriched by the journey.

This made me chuckle; maybe I'm on too many church rosters -- sidesperson, lay minister, occasional preacher, singer, etc, etc. I add that I do sit on the left side sometimes. We solved this one by getting the children to take up the collection and carry it to the altar.

P.S.It's just occurred to me to wonder whether the cartoonist also refers to people who sit on the left side of politics, etc! Are we the more chaotic?



From cartoonchurch.com

The rhetoric of understated disdain, by Peter Bolt. The Australian Church Record Issue 1890, October 2006

Sometimes the skill of the putdown lies simply in adopting the right tone. At other times it is more effective to have no tone at all. Such understated disdain is as beautiful an instrument of destruction as the prick from a poisoned thorn on a red Valentine's Day rose. Understated disdain has two crucial features. First, a clear statement of your opponent's belief. Secondly, there must be absolutely no 'loading' of emotion one way or the other. This has to be a statement, no, less than a statement, it has to be an understatement.

She thinks women shouldn't preach to men.
He thinks practicing homosexuals shouldn't be clergymen.
They are liberal voters.
You drink earl grey tea.

The external beauty of the rhetoric is rose-red. There is no caricature here. No misrepresentation. No sneering. No expression of disagreement. None of the usual weapons of argumentation, so often present and bristling for a fight. Your opponent is completely disarmed, because they simply have themselves reflected back upon them. 'Yes, this is what I believe'. But then, the lack of embellishment, the complete baldness of the way in which the fact is simply stated, pricks the skin. '. . . so what is wrong with that?' (they think).

The only sound in the air is the sound of their own dearly-held opinion. No judgement. No condemnation. Nothing. Nothing--but their own belief. Then the poison enters the blood stream. Isolation. Aloneness. Apparently no argument is needed. No tone of voice. No emotional investment from the attacker. The opinion simply needs to be stated. And as it hangs in the chilled air in all its isolated aloneness, it is self-evident that it is met with the disdain--of the entire world.

Guy Sebastian is interesting in an interview with the Herald Sun yesterday:

You've spoken about how you got a lot of negativity from the public a few years ago, people spray-painting "faggot" on your car, abusing you in the street.

It's the transition most people in this industry go through. It's just something you get used to. I read on my website how people were sad for me but they shouldn't be. I'm not sad, it just used to annoy me. To be honest nothing like that's happened for ages.

There was a mini-debate about you saying you had a lot of gay friends and so were offended by the word "faggot", but that homosexuality surely clashes with your Christian beliefs?

That's the sad side of Christianity. That's not how it's meant to be. I've been to gay clubs heaps of times. That's the old fundamentalist way of thinking that's unfortunately spread through all these generations. They miss the whole point of Christianity which is love. God loves people whether they are black, white, gay, straight, bisexual, whatever. As a Christian, we're never going to get close to being sinless or perfect, and I'm no better than anybody on this earth, but our No.1 goal is to be as loving as we can. We aim to be like God, so for me, I think that's a really ugly side of when people get lost in religion. It's funny, Shannon (Noll) gets called that, Anthony (Callea -- pictured), all my friends in the industry. That's the word everyone picks -- as soon as you're in the industry you're gay.

You're not anti gay marriage?

I'm not really anti anything. If you're a gay couple why not? I don't really have a stance because I don't know what it's like to be told you're not allowed to marry somebody. That doesn't seem fair to me.

Quite a few took offence at the language Sebastian used when on 21 September, he said that he almost quit the industry after he was subjected to gay taunts and had his Palm Beach house pelted with eggs.

"Someone spray-painted the word 'faggot' on my car. I grew up playing footy, I worked as a forklift driver at a warehouse in Adelaide. I move to Sydney and become a singer and suddenly I was a pansy and getting people calling me 'faggot'." Sebastian said he was offended by that word because "30 per cent" of his friends were gay. He was been forthright about being both heterosexual and a virgin, waiting until marriage.

The stereotyping that fork-lift driving footballers couldn't be faggots was, umm . . . injudicious. But this language simply shows Guy's roots, for which he shouldn't be taken to task too much.

What I appreciate is the willingness (and courage) of a man from a conservative Christian church to express plainly his acceptance of gay people and their relationships. That's valuable coming from a public Christian like Guy Sebastian.

John Heard criticises Jonestown, Chris Masters' biography of influential conservative commentator Alan Jones as "blatant homophobia" "It's outrageous," he says "to pick on gays just because they happen to be conservative."

I'm not conservative (and not a leftist either) but do agree with some of what Heard says.

Heard argues that

Jones has been targeted because of a heresy dear to many on what remains of the Left. Homosexuals should not be conservatives and, if they are, they must be repressed, in denial or self-hating hypocrites. This creed, because those who profess it seem to consider it a fundamental truth, pervades public discussion of politics, religion, social justice and sport.

According to the leftist creed, Heard argues, "Gay Catholics, for instance, who dare to think their Pope may know more about human flourishing than the homo-activists who act as apologists for the apparently liberated gay community must be full of hatred for themselves and those like them. . . . " and gay citizens who admire John Howard are misguided. "And it is all nonsense" Heard says.

Heard's comments about leftists are silly. But I do agree when he continues

I am no fan of lies and dishonesty. A man should stand up for himself; he mustn't be afraid to list his weaknesses alongside his strengths and demand the world keep both in mind while judging him. But there is no compulsion, no sense of decency or rigour that obligates a public figure to discuss his sexuality in a particular manner or at all.

That is where Heard's critcism of Masters strikes home.

Masters's silly book reads like the worst sort of Victorian scandal sheet. One is surprised the text isn't subtitled: Exposing a Sodomite. Contra Masters, Jones's ancient arrest in London by the somewhat homophobic British police after they suspected him of public indecency does not constitute a sex scandal. Publishing details of the same, details that reveal Jones was cleared of all charges and the police were embarrassed in their ridiculous game of entrapment, while still insisting it was a sex scandal is irresponsible, if not potentially defamatory.

The faiulures of Masters' book have nothing, as Heard asserts, to do with "the homophobia that seethes beneath the otherwise politically correct exterior of the modern Left." Rather, Masters has simply failed to write a decent critique of Jones' untoward political influence in a way that avoids improper invasion of his privacy.

With Heard,

I don't care what Jones did or didn't do in a bathroom in London all those years ago. I don't even care if he was an overbearing or demanding English teacher or football coach. I do care if there was any wrongdoing . . . To speculate on lies, to peddle gossip and innuendo, purely because the figure in question is a homosexual and . . . an effective conservative one, is simple rubbish writing and muckraking. It amounts to hate speech.
[. . .]
For too long, same-sex-attracted men have lived in ridiculous fear. We have been scared of blackmail. We have had to worry whether our best efforts will be interpreted in the worst possible light. We have been pursued unjustly by police and a legal system that criminalised a love that still dare not speak its name for fear of reprisals and retribution. This is just the kind of nonsense Masters and others have managed to bring once again to the pages of Australian newspapers and discuss in scandal-chasing books. The angle has changed but the methods of oppression are the same. Anyone involved with this outing of Jones . . . is not progressive or liberated.

Agreed, even though I oppose Jones in many of his political views.

The Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney last night adopted a motion that supports the 'Primates of the Global South'.

Synod commends the Primates of the Global South for their forthright stand in upholding biblical truth and expresses its support and encouragement for all within the Anglican Communion who are seeking to uphold biblical principles and prays for the Archbishop of Canterbury in his difficult role.

In a speech before the vote, Archbishop Peter Jensen said that overarching liberal views from the US would continue to affect individual Anglican parish churches around the world. "Disorder often opens the door to evils. We may even see a giant shift in loyalties and a new worldwide fellowship emerge." It is reported that at least two overseas congregations have written to the archbishop seeking some affliation with Sydney.

[P.S. Anglican Mainstream has the full speech]

The SMH says Dr Jensen, "played down the possibility of global disintegration of the Anglican Church but warned that looming changes would adversely affect the status of the Archbishop of Canterbury." He warned that "We may be only at the beginning of the disturbances which will lie before us and the effort we will be called upon to make". While the diocese needed to work and pray for the unity of the church, the communion was undergoing "remarkable transformation" in the wake of its crisis of biblical authority. "I do not talk of a split, for example. Nor have I been one to talk of schism and the break-up of the Anglican communion." " I have always said that it is more likely that we will see its devolution into a looser federation of churches, networking across old lines in new ways. Indeed, I think that this has now begun to occur. As a consequence, I do not think that the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury while, of course, very important, will regain its old place."

Dr Jensen said the US church had made genuine attempts to express regret over global tensions but it was missionary-like in its position on human sexuality. "The powerful individualism of American culture, and its triumphalistic belief that it leads the world in civic freedoms, has captured the church. The new faith is a missionary religion."

The Age offers other snippets from Dr Jensen's speech: Sydney has a stronger concentration of "relatively conservative Anglicans". England has been more pastorally involved in the building of churches but not involved at the political level. "They lack confidence and they lack organisation," he said. "The same is more so in New Zealand, far more so in South Africa, in Canada and I don't speak of the US. . . . I am telling you this now because I have to warn you that we may be only at the beginning of the disturbances which will lie before us and the effort which we will be called upon us to make." Calling on people and networking them "when they are in minority and threatened positions", and offering biblical theology as the basis of theological education are the two ways to help, Dr Jensen urged his colleagues. "To accept various contemporary ways of reading scripture will leave us vulnerable at all points." "We will not defend the uniqueness of Christ if we will not defend the plain teaching of scripture on human sexuality."

The idolatrous begged elephant

But that is the elephant in the room, the begged question, in all this. There is no "plain teaching of scripture" on human sexuality.

It is very far from clear that the views adopted by the Diocese of Sydney uphold "biblical truth". Even within Australia, there is disagreement on this.

The Sydney synod supports the Primates of the Global South for their "stand in upholding biblical truth" and in his speech Dr Jensen commends the Kigali Communiqué. But are the Primates truly "uphiolding biblical truth"? Rather, they are proposing exclusion and division; those are not 'biblical' values.

Dr Jensen says that "We will not defend the uniqueness of Christ if we will not defend the plain teaching of scripture on human sexuality." Even assuming that there is "plain teaching of scripture", that is an appalling conclusion. I am sure that Dr Jensen agrees that the divinity, holiness, and uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ are not in the least affected by what we mere humans do between the sheets. Nor are we any the less able to acknowledge and testify to His uniquenness merely because our sins are perhaps of a certain kind or because we disagree concerning interpretation of a few verses of the Bible. (This brings to bear the long arguments about whether the efficacy of a sacrament depends on the worthiness of the minister.) To deny that we cannot be witnesses to the Truth because we disgree about sexuality elevates sex to a place of far too great importance and makes it an idol, a thing supposed to be more powerful than God's very self.

Ganesha, the Hindu elephant-headed god, is turned to by those who face difficulties in life; he is called the remover of obstacles and is the first god to be worshipped when any new projects are undertaken.

"We have made up our minds"

Later, the Sydney Synod gagged an attempt to reopen, for the first time in six years, the debate the ordination of women as priests. Of the 351 lay members, 114 voted for and 235 against reopening the debate while of the 198 clergy, 31 voted for and 165 against.The rejection came as it was revealed that Sydney has fewer than 10 female deacons active in ministry but more than 120 women in paid lay ministry. Dr Mark Thompson, president of the Anglican Church League, said: "We have made up our minds on this one; the theological arguments have not changed."

James and I had our 15 seconds (10 minutes actually) when we gave evidence last Friday before the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's Inquiry, Same-sex: same entitlements. Ours was one of several 'personal stories' told at the invitation of the Commission during the morning. I was exciting to hear other people's stories and pleasant to chat with them over morning tea later. The people we met included Gary Fan and Wayne Lodge, whose story was told by The Age in July. (The picture is from Gary's flickr page.)

Gary Fan may have celebrated his nuptials with a traditional Chinese wedding banquet in Toronto, but back in Australia he can no longer legally refer to his newlywed as "my husband". "If I am in Canada I can call him my husband, but not here," Fan, a 41-year-old policy adviser from Canberra, says wryly.

Although it would have been more convenient to tie the knot in Australia, Fan and his husband, Wayne Lodge, travelled to Canada where same-sex marriages were legalised in July last year. "We decided it was a major human rights statement," Fan says. "We wanted to come back and say we got married in a country which is progressive and human rights-focused -- why can't we do it here? . . . If same sex couples want to get married, don't hang around waiting in Australia because it could take a long time."

Notes and audio from the hearings are on the Inquiry's website.

Late, ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell scooped the news reports by telling the Inquiry that the ACT is in the process of revising civil union legislation that was disallowed by the Federal Government earlier this year. There were also reports that the Prime Minister has been persuade by some of his party colleagues to undertake reforms.

Samantha Maiden sums up the state of play in The Australian of 23 Oct.

John Howard is under pressure to fast-track reforms to remove legal discrimination against same-sex couples as the federal Government considers a new ban on civil partnerships for gays and lesbians in the nation's capital.

Australia's national gay lobby group, the Australian Coalition for Equality, has welcomed moves by the Prime Minister to review federal legislation on the issue, but urged Mr Howard to commit to a timetable to removing discrimination.

However, the Government will be forced to decide shortly whether it will again ban looming legislation in the ACT to offer same-sex couples legal recognition that affords them the same rights as married and heterosexual de facto couples.

The Weekend Australian reported on Saturday that Mr Howard had pledged to tackle legal discrimination against gays and lesbians, after a quiet campaign for reform by an alliance of Liberal backbenchers. The group, led by Queenslander Warren Entsch, include parliamentary secretary Malcolm Turnbull, and Greg Hunt and Peter Lindsay. They have drawn up a list of eight areas where homosexuals are subject to legal discrimination, including aged care, taxation, superannuation and the Medicare safety net.

Australian Coalition for Equality spokesperson Rodney Croome said same-sex couples experienced emotional trauma and financial hardship as a result of legal discrimination. "For social conservatives like Prime Minister Howard, reform makes sense because it allows partners in same-sex relationships to better provide for each other and stops them falling into the welfare net," he said.
[. . .]
The ACT is pushing ahead with plans to reintroduce legislation allowing same-sex couples to enter into civil partnerships. ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell said the laws would not seek to replicate marriage, but would allow couples to enter into civil partnerships to be witnessed by an authorised officer. Previously, a celebrant was to preside over the ACT ceremonies, which the federal Government argued was too much like a heterosexual wedding.

"We are going out of our way to say this is not marriage--it's about giving gay and lesbian couples functional equality under the law," Mr Corbell said. "We anticipate we will have legislation presented to the ACT assembly late this year or early next year."
[. . .]
Subject to ACT cabinet and parliamentary approval, Mr Corbell said he would put forward a civil partnerships bill. "That mirrors the approach in the UK that achieves functional equality for same-sex couples, and what it means is people will be able to enter into a civil partnership that would be recognised under the ACT's domestic partnership legislation in the same way as heterosexual de facto relationships are recognised, and in the same way marriage is recognised."

Meanwhile, the federal Attorney-General has rejected a call by the WA Government for recognition of same-sex couples under federal family law.

I'll admit to being sceptical. All we have from the federal government are vague promises. It all depends entirely on the attitude of Prime Minister Howard who has broken earlier promises on these matters.

Here's what James and I told the Human Rights Commissioner.

---

Text of oral evidence by James Kim and Brian McKinlay to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's Inquiry, Same-sex: same entitlements, Canberra, 20 October 2006

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. There are many things we could say, but we will limit ourselves to the subject of my written submission--benefits for same-sex couples under the Commonwealth public sector superannuation schemes. This is by far the most serious disadvantage that my partner James and I encounter through legal discrimination.

We are old enough to remember when there it was very much more difficult for gay and lesbian people than it is today. We experience little in the way of overt discrimination against us in our life together--which, for us, makes superannuation a glaring anomaly. We are 60 and 58 years of age. We are both members of the Australian Public Service and contributors to the Public Sector Superannuation Scheme. We wish to provide security for each other. However, we are unable to do this through superannuation death benefits.

From October to December St Mark's here in Canberra is honoured by a visit from poet and spiritual director, Fr Michael McCarthy. An Irish Catholic priest, Fr McCarthy was born in County Cork and now lives in Sherburn-in-Elmet, Yorkshire. He was spiritual director of ordinands at Ushaw College, Durham, where he became a friend of the Director of St. Mark's, Prof. Stephen Pickard, in the 1980s.

Michael's first published poem was in 1995 when he was aged age 50. in 1997 he won the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Birds' Nests and Other Poems. I tracked down a copy. These are the first and the last in the book.

Metanoia

Let me be mad for awhile
unhinged; by some passion
made daring and deliberate

lured into the heart's motion
into the wild asunder
the broad and daredevil sky

inebriate with longing
mad with love or poetry
the dangerous delirium of flying.

In this madness we will meet
young in our reckless hopes
old in our dreaming

shaken loose and shocked
we'll sorrow, salt our crying.
We will not regret

how it made us different
changed our looking hearts
until we could see blind.

After the Wedding

I leave the revellers at midnight.
Southbound on the M6 the phone rings
and before answering it, I know.

At 9.30pm tonight my mother died.

The car cruises, the curve of the wipers
responding to sporadic showers.
My engines have shut down.

Dull at the edges, raw in the centre
I can feel my toes tingle.
Yesterday she sat out in the sun.

I wait an hour, then call you.
I hear the texture of your voice
as you retell each moment slowly.

This morning she said to you "I'm dying"
and you asked "are you afraid?"
She told you she was not.

After the priest had come and blessed her
with the final rites, the day went quietly.
She slept a little now and then.

In the evening she told Ita she was going.
"Maybe I'll wait until the morning."
In the event she didn't.

At 95 years, and conscious to the last
her breathing stopped. I ask about
distress. You say there was none.

Arriving home at 3.00am,
there are nine messages on my Ansaphone.
I don't need to answer them.

I check the Internet for flights, then walk outside.
In a while I hear the first birds sing.
Memories begin.

"Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first--verdict afterwards."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the sentence first!"
"Hold your tongue!" said the Queen, turning purple.
"I won't!" said Alice.
"Off with her head!" the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

This snippet from ch .12 of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol cannot have been far from the mind of writer of the NYT editorial of 16 Oct 06.

Under Bush's law, guilty until confirmed says the headline. Why should I care? Partly, because I'm a member of Amnesty International, by mostly just because I'm human.

One of the many problems with the new law [The newly passed Military Commissions Act of 2006] is that it will only make it harder than it already is to separate the real terrorists from the far larger group of inmates at the American military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who were bit players in the Taliban or innocent bystanders.

[Senator] Graham and other supporters of this dreadful legislation seem to have forgotten that American justice does not merely deliver swift punishment to the guilty. It also protects the innocent.

Bush ignored that fact after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he tried to put the prisoners of the war on terror beyond the reach of American law and the Geneva Conventions. For starters, he dispensed with one of the vital provisions of the conventions: that prisoners must be screened by a " competent tribunal" if there is any doubt about who they are and what role they played in hostilities.

As a result, hundreds of men captured in Afghanistan and other countries were sent to Guantánamo Bay and other prisons, including the network of illegal CIA detention camps, without any attempt to determine whether they were any sort of combatant, legal or illegal.

The Bush administration showed not the slightest interest in fixing this problem until the Supreme Court said in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that the president cannot simply lock up anyone--even a foreign citizen--without giving him a real chance to challenge his detention before a " neutral decision maker."

In response, Bush created Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which gave the most cursory possible reviews of the Guantánamo detainees. These reviews took place years after the prisoners were captured. They permitted the use of hearsay evidence, evidence obtained through coercion and even torture, and evidence that was kept secret from the prisoner. The normal burden of proof was reversed: The tribunals presumed prisoners were justifiably detained and the prisoners had the burden of disproving government evidence--presuming they knew what it was in the first place.

The new law makes this mockery of justice stronger. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 makes it virtually impossible to contest a status tribunal's decision. It prohibits claims of habeas corpus--the ancient right of prisoners in just societies to have their detentions reviewed--or any case based directly or indirectly on the Geneva Conventions. Even if an appeal got to the single appeals court now authorized to hear it, the administration would be very likely to argue that it cannot be heard without jeopardizing secrets, as it has done repeatedly.

The new law dangerously expands the definition of illegal enemy combatant and allows Bush--and the secretary of defense--to give to anyone they choose the authority to designate a prisoner as an illegal combatant. It also allows Bush to go on squirreling prisoners away at secret CIA camps where none of the rules apply.

Bush wants Americans to trust him to apply these powers only to truly dangerous men. Even if the American system were based on that sort of personal power and not the rule of law, it would be hard to trust the judgment of a president and an administration whose records are so bad. The United States has yet to acknowledge that it kidnapped an innocent Canadian citizen and sent him to be abused in a Syrian prison. In another case, a German citizen has accused the United States of grabbing him off the streets of Macedonia, drugging him and sending him to Afghanistan, where he was brutally treated. Then there is the Ethiopian living in London who said he was grabbed by American agents and brutalized by Moroccan torturers until he confessed to plotting with Jose Padilla to set off a " dirty bomb." Padilla was never charged with the crime. The Ethiopian remains at Guantánamo Bay.

Republicans who support the new law like to point out that it only covers foreigners. But Americans have never believed that human rights are just for Americans.

The United States is outraged when an authoritarian government jails an American, or one of its own citizens, on trumped-up charges and brings him or her before a phony court. Surely that is not the model that Americans want to follow in their own prisons.

The 2006 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand confirmed and earlier decision that the church "may not accept for training, license, ordain, or induct anyone involved in a sexual relationship outside of faithful marriage between a man and a woman". The Press reports that four churches in Christchurch New Zealand have issued public statements decrying the decision.

Knox Church session clerk, Alison Grimshaw, said the rule created "second-class citizens" out of valued church members. "It is all an issue of theological interpretation. In our mission statement, what we say is we are an inclusive church. We talk about inclusion of people of any age, gender, race, sexual orientation, and we say they are included as equally valued participants in the church and life. If they are equally valued, then they must be equally eligible for positions of leadership. Other attributes, like their commitment to the church, can be considered when thinking of leadership roles, but not their sexual orientation." Grimshaw said Knox Church had always dissented on the issue and had a long history of publicly voicing dissatisfaction. "Knox hasn't come to this decision lightly. Being valued means being valued in every way, not just some ways."

The mission statement says,

Knox Church - Creating Christian Community, seeking God in everyday life. We aim to create a Christian community in which people of all ages, sexual orientations, cultural backgrounds and socio-economic situations are included as equally valued participants in our congregational life. We cherish our diversity, offering a safe place of belonging to any who wish to explore their beliefs in an atmosphere promoting discussion, the development of healthy relationships and spiritual growth. We strive to be open to dialogue and shared experiences with people of other faiths. We enjoy worshipping the God made known in Jesus, endeavouring to do so in ways that are relevant to our daily lives, respect the integrity of creation, and make a positive difference to our wider world.

Knox Church sent this letter to the Editor of The Press

Dear Sir

Knox Presbyterian Church, Christchurch, dissents from and cannot comply with the legislation passed by our denomination's recent General Assembly, in which people in gay, lesbian and de facto relationships are excluded from positions of leadership in the Church. We have a long tradition of including people of all ages, sexual orientations, cultural backgrounds and socio-economic situations as equally valued participants in our congregational life. Our declared inclusive stance is based on our understanding of God's all-embracing love revealed in Jesus, who seemed quite happy to celebrate God's presence with all manner of people, enabling their gifts - including those of leadership - to grow and be used. It is our firm intention to continue to do the same.

(Rev Dr) Geoff King, Minister
Alison Grimshaw, Session Clerk

Revd Rob Ferguson, of St Ninian's, Riccarton, said his congregation would not comply with the rule, "which does not acknowledge that people in committed relationships apart from marriage have the necessary gifts or calling to offer leadership. St Ninian's will continue to search for and celebrate the meaning we find in God as our way. We will do that in the only way we know how--by being inclusive in our leadership and in our welcoming."

	Thursday last, 12 October, was the eighth anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard. How quickly we forget. And how quickly we forget that he is but one of too many.
© Matthew Shepard Foundation

"The Human Cost of the War in Iraq: A Mortality Study, 2002-2006" has been completed by Gilbert Burnham and others from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, and the Al Mustansiriya University, Baghdad. The results have been published in the The Lancet.

Saddam Hussein's evil regime took many lives. But the 'Coalition of the willing' has only added to the consequences of his crimes through its sheer incompetence.

The summary of the study says:

A new household survey of Iraq has found that approximately 600,000 people have been killed in the violence of the war that began with the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

The survey was conducted by an American and Iraqi team of public health researchers. Data were collected by Iraqi medical doctors with analysis conducted by faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

The survey is the only population-based assessment of fatalities in Iraq during the war. The method, a survey of more than 1800 households randomly selected in clusters that represent Iraq's population, is a standard tool of epidemiology and is used by the U.S. Government and many other agencies.

The survey also reflects growing sectarian violence, a steep rise in deaths by gunshots, and very high mortality among young men. An additional 53,000 deaths due to non-violent causes were estimated to have occurred above the pre-invasion mortality rate, most of them in recent months, suggesting a worsening of health status and access to health care.

Between May and July 2006 a national cluster survey was conducted in Iraq to assess deaths occurring during the period from January 1, 2002, through the time of survey in 2006. Information on deaths from 1,849 households containing 12,801 persons was collected. This survey followed a similar but smaller survey conducted in Iraq in 2004. Both surveys used standard methods for estimating deaths in conflict situations, using population-based methods.

Death rates were 5.5/1000/year pre-invasion, and overall, 13.2/1000/year for the 40 months post-invasion. We estimate that through July 2006, there have been 654,965 "excess deaths"--fatalities above the pre-invasion death rate--in Iraq as a consequence of the war. Of post-invasion deaths, 601,027 were due to violent causes. Non-violent deaths rose above the pre-invasion level only in 2006. Since March 2003, an additional 2.5% of Iraq's population have died above what would have occurred without conflict.

The proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has diminished in 2006, though the actual numbers have increased each year. Gunfire remains the most common reason for death, though deaths from car bombing have increased from 2005. Those killed are predominantly males aged 15-44 years.

Of the differing views of the provinces of the Anglican Communion, frequently it has been those of the Celtic churches--Scotland, Wales and Ireland--that have been the most sane, often because they have also been simple and straight forward; evidence this extract from from the Presidential Address to the Governing Body of the Church in Wales, by the Rt Rev Dr Barry Morgan, Bishop of Llandaff and Archbishop of Wales, September 2006.

Let us now move to the Anglican Communion. I have just said that Christians hold a variety of different viewpoints on a host of moral issues. The only moral issue on which diversity does not seem to be encouraged in various parts of the Communion, is the issue of homosexuality. I am therefore glad and proud that the bishops of this Church have given a lead to our Church, that there is no one correct Christian viewpoint on this issue. In preparing this address I came across this quote from Professor Grace Davie, who holds the Chair in Sociology and Religion at the University of Exeter, "Could it be" she asks "that churches offer space for debate regarding particular and often controversial topics that are difficult to address elsewhere in society? The current debate about homosexuality offers a possible example, an interpretation encouraged by the intense media attention directed at this issue. Is this simply an internal debate about senior clergy appointments in which different lobbies are exerting their influence? Or is this one way in which society as a whole comes to terms with profound shifts in the moral climate?" She goes on to say that, "If the latter is not true, it is hard to understand why so much attention is being paid to the churches in this respect. If it is true, sociological thinking must take this factor into account." It is an interesting observation about modern Britain, if not the Communion.

I do not know whether the Communion will ultimately hold together or not. If it fractures, it will not be a simple matter of just one province not recognising another but parishes and dioceses within provinces allying themselves with like-minded parishes and dioceses in other provinces. In other words, the fault lines will run through provinces as well as between them. Is that what we really want? And what kind of a church will we be, if we only associate with those who think or behave like us or conform to our view of things? No room then for difference or dissidence and what kind of witness to the Gospel is that? This is what I believe the Archbishop of Canterbury was implying when he wrote to all provinces about the implications of the break up of the Communion. He was not advocating a two tier Communion--one for true believers and another for those who could not swallow the full faith as it were, who would be in some form of loose association with the Communion. He was merely pointing out the danger we are in. The Windsor Report advocated that provinces should covenant with one another and consult with one another before making decisions which might affect the life of the Communion as a whole. As a member of that Commission, we did not have in mind a covenant that was prescriptive and detailed and intrusive. What we did have in mind was what ECUSA did at its convention in July when:

• It re-affirmed its abiding commitment to the fellowship of churches that constitute the Anglican Communion and sought to live into the highest degree of communion possible.
• It reaffirmed that it was in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.
• It went on to make a commitment to the vision of inter-dependent life in Christ, characterized by forbearance, trust, and respect, and commended the Windsor Report and process as a means of deepening understanding of that commitment.

I do not know about you, but I could sign a covenant such as that. For . . . we have to recognise, as far as the Anglican Communion is concerned, that globalisation and instant communication have changed the nature of our relationships with one another and that what happens in one part of the church does affect another for good or ill. A covenant, setting out our mutual inter-dependence would remind us all of that fact. But that is totally different from the kind of covenant that some people want--a kind of prescriptive one, setting up an inter-provincial constitution that would set out theological boundaries and perimeters for individual provinces in both belief and behaviour, policed by a central curia of the primates or Archbishop of Canterbury. That would go much further than what ECUSA has done, or the existing agreement of the Lambeth quadrilateral, based on the acceptance of the scriptures, the creeds, the two dominical sacraments and the historic episcopate. It would cut at the root of the Anglican Communion as it has been traditionally understood with to my mind, disastrous consequences. We are after all a communion not a confession. We all need reminding of the words of St Augustine In certis, unitas. In dubiis, libertas. Et in omnibus caritas. 'In fundamentals of faith there must be unity. In disputable matters there must be freedom for debate. But in everything there must be love.'

Best of any song is bird song in the quiet, but first you must have the quiet.

Wendell Berry. 1997.I in A timbered choir: the Sabbath poems 1979-1997. New York, Counterpoint, 1992, p. 207. Picture from from cover of Birdsong: A natural history, by Don Stap. Oxford, 2006 0-19-530901-4.

Bird song is our loud alarm clock these spring days.

"For, lo, the winter is past . . . The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come . . ." Song of Solomon 3.11-12

Jimmy Carter writes with wisdom in the New York Times (11 Oct o6) on "Solving the Korean stalemate". He makes it clear that North Korea is not the only party behaving badly. The Washington Post opines that the ill-advised 'axis of evil' speech has come bcak to haunt the Bush administration. Others are not so sure. In an equally well considered piece James Tarranto of the Wall Street Journal is wary of appeasement in the face of a demonstably evil régime.

In 1994, there was a consensus that the forces of South Korea and the United States could overwhelmingly defeat North Korea, but with huge civilian casualties. However an agreement was negotiated to once permit IAEA to assure that spent nuclear fuel was not reprocessed.

Mr Carter writes,

[B]eginning in 2002, the United States branded North Korea as part of an axis of evil, threatened military action, ended the shipments of fuel oil and the construction of nuclear power plants and refused to consider further bilateral talks. In their discussions with me at this time, North Korean spokesmen seemed convinced that the American positions posed a serious danger to their country.

Responding in its ill-advised but predictable way, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled atomic energy agency inspectors, resumed processing fuel rods and began developing nuclear explosive devices.

Six-nation talks finally concluded in an agreement last September that called for North Korea to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and for the United States and North Korea to respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize relations. Each side subsequently claimed that the other had violated the agreement. The United States imposed severe financial sanctions and Pyongyang adopted the deeply troubling nuclear option.

The current military situation is similar but worse than it was a decade ago: We can still destroy North Korea's Army, but if we do it is likely to result in many more than a million South Korean and American casualties.

If and when it is confirmed that the recent explosion in North Korea was nuclear, the international community will once again be faced with difficult choices.

One option, the most likely one, is to try to force Pyongyang's leaders to abandon their nuclear program with military threats and a further tightening of the embargoes, increasing the suffering of its already starving people. Two important facts must be faced: Kim Jong Il and his military leaders have proven themselves almost impervious to outside pressure, and both China and South Korea have shown that they are reluctant to destabilize the regime. This approach is also more likely to stimulate further nuclear-weapons activity.

The other option is to make an effort to put into effect the September denuclearization agreement, which the North Koreans still maintain is feasible. The simple framework for a step-by-step agreement exists, with the United States giving a firm and direct statement of no hostile intent, and moving toward normal relations if North Korea forgoes any further nuclear weapons program and remains at peace with its neighbors. Each element would have to be confirmed by mutual actions combined with unimpeded international inspections.

Although a small nuclear test is a far cry from even a crude deliverable bomb, this second option has become even more difficult now, but it is unlikely that the North Koreans will back down unless the United States meets this basic demand. Washington's pledge of no direct talks could be finessed through secret discussions with a trusted emissary like former Secretary of State Jim Baker, who earlier this week said, "It's not appeasement to talk to your enemies."

What must be avoided is to leave a beleaguered nuclear nation convinced that it is permanently excluded from the international community, its existence threatened, its people suffering horrible deprivation and its hard-liners in total control of military and political policy.

I am impressed by this speech by Mr Peter Garrett AM MP, Member for Kingsford Smith given in Parliament on Monday. (House of Representatives Hansard, 9 October pp.48-9). As might be expected from a former President of the Australian Conservation, Mr Garrett is one of the few members of the larger (Liberal and Labor) parties who appreciates the seriousness and urgency of the challenges of global warming is.

The Prime Minister returned from another overseas trip earlier this year and, following his meeting at the White House and with a backdrop of drought and record temperatures attributed to global warming breaking out world wide, assumed a new role--that of nuclear champion. According to Mr Howard, nuclear energy is a proven clean solution to a problem he had previously failed to respond to but now grudgingly accepts as real--namely, impending climate change caused by spiraling greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet there has never been any indication--prior to the Prime Minister's nuclear conversion or subsequently--that this government is serious about climate change. Its posture has ranged from denial to incremental acknowledgment, with a high degree of scepticism from the PM. Virtually alone amongst nations, the government bags the Kyoto treaty it was once going to sign and joins an Asia-Pacific partnership that has no substantial budget or target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The fact is that Australia, on a per capita basis, produces a lot of greenhouse pollution, and emissions will drastically ramp up over the next 20 years and beyond. And we have the highest per capita emissions of CO2 in the Asia Pacific region--17.2 tonnes per person compared with China's 2.7. Report after report has identified the likely impacts of rising temperatures: on our farms, with nearly 40 per cent of this year's grain harvest expected to be lost due to drought; on our coasts; on our health; and on our natural productive landscapes.

Today's release of Australia Responds: Helping our neighbours fight climate change,[1] by CSIRO scientists for aid and conservation organisations, is further confirmation of the expected impacts of global warming on the way of life of our Pacific neighbours who are struggling to retain a viable existence on their low lying island homes. It shows their future is now literally in jeopardy, and ours soon will be too.

But as things stand the Howard government's climate change policy is a farce. There is no national climate change action plan, no time lines, no targets and no real policies to significantly reduce greenhouse pollution or slow energy demand. The Prime Minister simply flies the flag for nuclear energy--an expensive technology, which has always relied on public subsidy, will only meet a portion of our energy needs, and produces long-lived radioactive waste. The government, which champions the free market, is opposed to a national market in greenhouse gas emissions--so go figure.

The necessary policy initiatives that Labor is committed to, like increasing mandatory renewable energy targets and establishing a national greenhouse trading scheme, are needed now. Other measures the government should address, like applying energy efficiency standards as mandatory across all states and responding to the Sustainable cities report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage, are missing in action.

Alarmingly, there is every chance the permafrost of the Northern Hemisphere will start to thaw earlier than expected and increase the prospects of accelerated warming--as will significant recent melts of sheet ice in the Antarctic. Sea levels will rise; the only question is how soon and how high. But, as the CSIRO report shows, low lying delta areas in Vietnam, China and Bangladesh, as well as Tonga, Kiribati and PNG, are all vulnerable. The costs of relocation and protection of coastal infrastructure are astronomical.

Put simply, we are facing the prospects of a full blown global emergency which threatens to alter the conditions of life on earth in significant and possibly irreversible ways. This is widely acknowledged in most quarters except Canberra under the conservatives. Recently the Lowy Institute released Heating up the Planet--Climate change and security,[1] by security expert Alan Dupont and climate scientist Graeme Pearman. It also highlighted the urgent need to respond to climate change--a point re-emphasised in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth by former US Vice President Al Gore, and in today's CSIRO report. And this points up how completely ill prepared the Howard government is for climate change. After going into some details to answer the question, 'Is climate change real?'--answer: yes--the paper outlines a number of issues that need focused government attention now.

They include the prospects of an increasing spread of infectious diseases and, critically, the likelihood of climate change refugees--if that is the right term, and there may be a better term--on a scale that renders the trickle of asylum seekers the government is intending to divert to Nauru and resettle in third countries tiny in comparison. The fact of the matter is that with climate change we are likely to see large migrations of people fleeing their countries, which have been affected by global warming and rising sea levels, into our part of the world.

I was pleased to see that the authors of the paper had taken seriously what a number of climate scientists, NGOs and others, including myself, have been repeatedly saying concerning the cumulative effect of human activities on the climate. Their conclusions are amply confirmed by today's CSIRO report, Australia Responds. In particular they raise the possibility of the emergence of climate wild cards--like the melting permafrost--and the need for policymakers to start factoring these kinds of risks into their thinking. And it is the case that each of the issues that flow out from climate change carry

substantial security considerations for Australia that well outweigh the current difficulties we face in the long term in relation to fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. This government constantly talks security--it is the mantra in this House--and yet the implications of the Lowy Institute and CSIRO reports are that failure to start genuine planning, and organising now for a climate change future, is to compromise the national interest and to add greatly to the regional and international challenges that lie ahead as global warming begins to kick in.

Du Pont and Pearman argue--and I agree--that the federal government needs to adopt a more strategic approach to climate change, and that an interdepartmental task force should be constituted to look into the connections between climate change and national security with reference to food security, water, health and environmental vulnerabilities. Importantly, disaster planning and the key question of unregulated population movements would be crucial matters for review.

The unfolding tragedy is that the government's acquiescence to foreign policy and culture wars, driven by an extreme right wing agenda, has left us poorly prepared for arguably the greatest threat we face. What stands out in the Lowy Institute report is the statement of the bleeding, but necessarily, obvious. Recommendation 6 reads: "The most effective way of ameliorating the security risk of prospective climate change is to reduce the level of greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet." There you have it. The experts are saying action is needed and the community, including those who gathered yesterday in front of Old Parliament House calling for 'clean energy for eternity', are demanding that action be taken.

So when is this government going to do something other than spin, divert, delay and embrace false gods masquerading as solutions on climate change and actually act to substantially address rising greenhouse gas emissions? Labor has serious policy here, but where is the big 'whole-of- government' plan on climate change from the Prime Minister? Where is the nation-building, nation-saving approach on increasing our use of renewables, on energy self-sufficiency, on demand management and on utilising our ingenuity and scientific ability to meet our energy needs--whether it is liquids to gas, hot rocks and tidal or, critically, in a country that receives on average more solar radiation per square metre than any other continent, fitting up in a substantial way solar cities and towns so that families and businesses can meet their energy needs and even sell their own surplus energy, green energy, which, unlike the nukes that the Prime Minister has now adopted as his first love, do not cost the earth and do not leave a legacy of toxic waste for eternity?

One of the world's foremost climate scientists, Jim Hansen from NASA, has observed that failure to act on climate change means subsequent generations will inhabit a far more desolate world than the one in which civilisations have flourished and developed over the past several thousand years. The stakes are that high. I simply ask: when will this reckless government wake up to climate change, pull its finger out and stop jeopardising the lives of its citizens and our neighbours as we stare down the abyss of an overheating planet?

Notes:
Australia Responds: Helping our neighbours fight climate change, was prepared by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Orgnaisation (CSIRO) for the Australian Climate Change and Development Roundtable a group of NGOs formed in "recognition that developing countries are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and to highlight the need for international aid and development agencies to consider the implications of climate change for their programs and advocacy."
2. Lowy Institute paper no. 12, Heating up the Planet--Climate change and security, by security expert Alan Dupont the Institute and Dr Graeme Pearman, former chief of atmospheric research at the CSIRO, canvasses the international security consequences of climate change especially for Australia's Asia-Pacific neighbourhood. The paper examines the implications of temperature increases and sea level rise for food, water, energy, infectious diseases, natural disasters and environmental refugees and asks whether scientists may have underestimated climate change risks. The paper also looks at several low probability, but high impact climate events which might push the planet past an environmental tipping point from which there will be no winners.

The recent shooting horror visited on the Amish people of Lancaster County, PA, puts me in mind of yet another fine poem by Wendell Berry.

Amish Economy

We live by mercy if we live.
To that we have no fit reply
But working well and giving thanks,
Loving God, loving one another,
To keep Creation's neighborhood.

And my friend David Kline told me,
"It falls strangely on Amish ears,
This talk of how you find yourself.
We Amish, after all, don't try
To find ourselves. We try to lose
Ourselves"--and thus are lost within
The found world of sunlight and rain
Where fields are green and then are ripe,
And the people eat together by
The charity of God, who is kind
Even to those who give no thanks.



In morning light, men in dark clothes
Go out among the beasts and fields.
Lest the community be lost,
Each day they must work out the bond
Between goods and their price: the garden
Weeded by sweat is flowerbright;
The wheat shocked in shorn fields, clover
Is growing where wheat grew; the crib
Is golden with the gathered corn,

While in the world of the found selves,
Lost to the sunlit, rainy world,
The motor-driven cannot stop.
This is the world where value is
Abstract, and preys on things, and things
Are changed to thoughts that have a price.
Cost + greed - fear = price:
Maury Telleen thus laid it out.
The need to balance greed and fear
Affords no stopping place, no rest,
And need increases as we fail.

But now, in summer dusk, a man
Whose hair and beard curl like spring ferns
Sits under the yard trees, at rest,
His smallest daughter on his lap.
This is because he rose at dawn,
Cared for his own, helped his neighbors,
Worked much, spent little, kept his peace.

Wendell Berry. 1995.IV in A timbered choir: the Sabbath poems 1979-1997. New York, Counterpoint, 1992, pp. 190-191.

On 20 August, Oliver Marre commented in The Observer that "A radical cat was to be set among the pigeons of Anglican traditionalism", aided by Prince Charles. A manuscript had been discovered among the papers of the Rev Harry Williams, Charle's spiritual mentor who died in January, and was to be published by Continuum.

According to sources there, it will be a provocative book, which Williams would probably not have wanted to see the light of day during his lifetime. As Williams was open about his homosexuality and already on the record as saying: 'Religious establishments invariably give me the creeps' and that approved Anglican services are 'clumsy constructions in flat, tired English made from pieces of doctrinal Meccano', it's likely to create quite a stir.

I'm told it will argue that Christians should move beyond doctrine altogether, in a call which will doubtless be seen as a direct challenge to the authority of the bishops and church's hierarchy. And who should have written the introduction to this revolutionary work but the Prince of Wales, future head of the Anglican communion, who praises Williams's 'humanity and sensitivity' and commends the book highly. Charles is known to have visited Williams when the latter had retired to a monastery and was dying.

'One of the greatest questions about what the country would see under a future King Charles is already centred on the C of E,' says a courtier. 'But nobody has been able to say exactly how far Williams would have gone in his advice to the Prince. This book--and the fact that Charles is involved explicitly with it--will leave little room for doubt any longer.'

The Telegraph now declares (8 October) that the Prince of Wales "has entered the controversy over gay clergy by lavishing praise on the first Church of England priest to write about his homosexuality."

Prince Charles has endorsed the ministry of Harry Williams in his foreword to a new book of essays by the Anglican theologian, who died earlier this year, aged 86.

The intervention from a man who, as king, will be the head of the Church of England, will alarm conservative bishops [so The Telegraph contends] who last week addressed growing concern over the number of gay clergy that have "married" since the Civil Partnerships Act was introduced last year.

In his autobiography, Some Day I'll Find You, Fr Williams shocked many within the church by writing openly about his life as a promiscuous homosexual. In his book, published in 1982, he said of his days working at Cambridge University: "I slept with several men, in each case fairly regularly. They were all of them friends. Cynics, of course, will smile, but I have seldom felt more like thanking God then when having sex. In bed I used to praise Him there and then for the joy I was receiving and giving." As well as casual affairs, Fr Williams had two long-term relationships with men.

Fr Williams was Dean of Chapel at Trinity College when the Prince arrived at Cambridge to study in 1967. Now, in a fond tribute to the theologian, Prince Charles has written a foreword to the book, Living Free, due to be published this month by Continuum. "Harry Williams proved to be a star; a man of intense humanity and warmth whose humour and originality created an aura of approachability," he writes.

The prince does not refer directly to Fr Williams's homosexuality but he hints heavily at it: "His courageous willingness to open up his inner soul and being and to speak from the heart about his own experience of the vicissitudes, complications and agonies of life struck a powerful and immediate chord with huge numbers of undergraduates."

Prince Charles comes across as understanding of Fr Williams's lifestyle and his controversial linking of God and homosexual activity. "His essence may have evaporated, but his heartening and profoundly sympathetic insight into our humanity and into the relationship between God and Man--what he called 'our identity with Life Universal, with God'--will live on through the power and presence of his words and through the affectionate memories of his old undergraduates," he writes.

Surely Charles should be allowed to praise his late mentor and say some pleasant things about his book without ecclesiatical knickers getting into a knot (yet agian) about homosexuality. Yes, it is difficult to be head of the C of E and a non-Christian at the same time. One would think that is a separate question. But it seems that some may argue that, by praising a deceased gay friend's theological writings, Charles is showing himself not to be Christian and Anglican. What nonsense.

Living Free by Harry Williams is to be published in hardcover (ISBN: 0826494692) on 24 Oct will be a modest volume of just 156 pages. Williams's great masterpiece is his book The True Wilderness. Other books include True Resurrection and The Joy of God.

Publisher Continuum says that

"Quoting Martin Buber's dictum that 'there is nothing that so masks the face of God as religion', Williams moves beyond traditional theological language to outline a new view which does not contradict Christian orthodoxy--it moves beyond it. He is doubtful about a personal relationship between God and man in Christ, in the usual sense, but articulates an epistemology of un-knowing as the most profound way of experiencing God. Williams himself once said of his writings 'All I can write of are those things which I had proved true in my own experience by living them and thus knowing them at first hand.'

This picture published by Chosun Ilbo seems to encapsulate North Korea's mood. I'm no apologist for the North Korean régime, but it's easy to understand its thinking, "You've got one, why can't I have one too?"

Dan Plesch, a fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Keele University, argues that North Korea's nuclear policy is not irrational at all.

North Korea's nuclear test is only the latest failure of the west's proliferation policy. And it demonstrates the need to return to the proven methods of multilateral disarmament. Far from being crazy, the North Korean policy is quite rational. Faced with a US government that believes the communist regime should be removed from the map, the North Koreans pressed ahead with building a deterrent. George Bush stopped the oil supplies to North Korea that had been part of a framework to end its nuclear programme previously agreed with Bill Clinton. Bush had already threatened pre-emptive war--Iraq-style--against a regime he dubbed as belonging to the axis of evil.

The background to North Korea's test is that, since the end of the cold war, the nuclear states have tried to impose a double standard, hanging on to nuclear weapons for themselves and their friends while denying them to others. Like alcoholics condemning teenage drinking, the nuclear powers have made the spread of nuclear weapons the terror of our age, distracting attention from their own behaviour. Western leaders refuse to accept that our own actions encourage others to follow suit.

Nonetheless, having failed to show that it can play safely with the grown ups, the North Korean régime is resorting to tantrums, breaching its 1992 agreement

Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula -- Entered into force 19 February, 1992

The South and the North,
Desiring to eliminate the danger of nuclear war through denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and thus to create an environment and conditions favorable for peace and peaceful unification of our country and contribute to peace and security in Asia and the world,

Declare as follows;

• The South and the North shall not test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.
• The South and the North shall use nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes.
• The South and the North shall not possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities.
• The South and the North, in order to verify the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, shall conduct inspection of the objects selected by the other side and agreed upon between the two sides, in accordance with procedures and methods to be determined by the South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission.
• The South and the North, in order to implement this joint declaration, shall establish and operate a South-North joint Nuclear Control Commission within one (1) month of the effectuation of this joint declaration.
• This Joint Declaration shall enter into force as of the day the two sides exchange appropriate instruments following the completion of their respective procedures for bringing it into effect.

Signed on January 20, 1992

Chung Won-shik, Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea; Chief delegate of the South delegation to the South-North High-Level Talks

Yon Hyong-muk, Premier of the Administration Council of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea; Head of the North delegation to the South-North High-Level Talks

The international Catholic Peace organisation Pax Christi says that rather than security, nuclear weapons will cause animosity and resentment. As if to anticipate yesterday's nuclear weapons test, Pax Christi has just released a position paper in which it also condemns the 'double standard' between the nuclear 'haves' and 'have-nots'. It questions the unequal treatment of Iran and North Korea in comparison to Israel.

Gary Gibson of Australia's Seismology Research Center estimated the blast at about one kiloton, tiny by nuclear weapons standards at about a tenth the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, but the Russians have produced greater estimates. A New York Times commentary notes that its early days yet in assessing what the North Koreans have 'achieved'.

If the test occurred as the North claimed, it is unclear whether it was an actual bomb or a more primitive device. Some experts cautioned that it could try to fake an explosion, setting off conventional explosives; the only way to know for sure will be if American "sniffer" planes, patrolling the North Korean coast, pick up evidence of nuclear byproducts in the air. . . . [T]he North Koreans could learn much from a nuclear test even if it was small by world standards or less than an unqualified success.

For a few weeks now I've been slowly pondering Wendell Berry's wonderful A timbered choir poems. Most of the poems focus on Berry's reflections on family and his natural surrounds. This poem is a superbly powerful criticism of vacuous materialism. It reminds me a little of T.S. Eliot's Wasteland.

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bulldozed, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
The once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best-paying prisons in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love unloved,
every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened only toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

Wendell Berry. 1997.II in A timbered choir: the Sabbath poems 1979-1997. New York, Counterpoint, 1992, pp. 208-209.

In the midst of all the drama about the North's nuclear weapons, Seoul newspaper Chosun Ilbo has the odd spot. It reports that the latest hot-selling tee-shirt in Seoul's in Itaewon district, where many tourists congregate, have slogans "I'm not migook" on the front, and on the back in Korean, "I am not an American."

The man who brought the thoughtful product into the world is a 31-year-old named Michael Kenny who would like to make it clear that he is Canadian.

. . . He found an untapped niche market: non-American Caucasians in Korea, with their fears of being thrown in the same pot with U.S. citizens. Kenny's idea paid off. The going price of W15,000 ($US15.80/$AUS21.30) is a little steep for a T-shirt, but that hasn't stopped droves of European tourists and Canadian and Australian English instructors--fed up with the "everything white is an American" attitude--from snapping up every last one of the shirts. He has already recouped his investment, and from here on out, it's pure profit for the entrepreneur. His Korean girlfriend says, "We've seen for ourselves just how many non-American Caucasians there really are in Korea."

Michael spends his Fridays and Saturdays out on the Itaewoon sidewalk hawking his goods. A spinoff of his original best-seller--"I'm waygook" on one side and "Foreigner" on the back--also sells well. "I've been to Korea six times now, and there are always Koreans who assume that I'm an American and come up speaking only English to me," said one German traveler who bought a shirt the moment he saw it. "What I've always wanted to say is written right there." There are even Americans who see the fun in the shirt and purchase one for themselves. Kenny is only waiting for his first Korean customer.

I love Americans, but I'not one myself and I want one of these!

Western Australian upper house parliamentarian Louise Pratt won the top spot on the Australian Labor Party's Senate ticket in a preselection ballot on 4 October, pushing frontbencher Senator Mark Bishop to the second spot and dumping first-tem Senator Ruth Webber into difficult-to-win third position. Press reports speculate that the demotion of Senators Bishop and Webber followed a factional battle and defied the wishes of leader Kim Beazley, also a Western Australian.

Ms Pratt is one of only a handful of openly gay and lesbian politicians to be elected to an Australian parliament, lists environmental sustainability, human rights, refugees and gender-equity issues among her key policy interests.

Ms Pratt, 34, originally from Kalgoorlie, was elected to the WA parliament in February 2001 and re-elected last year. In her inaugural speech on 23 May 2001 said that at that time, "Western Australia has the worst laws in the nation as far as lesbian and gay rights are concerned. . . . We cannot kid ourselves that we are a just community until these laws are changed. . . . It is time that my partner Linda and I were properly recognised as a couple with the same rights that others take for granted, including property rights, inheritance rights, guardianship rights and superannuation. I, like other lesbian and gay people, am sick of being treated as a second-class citizen in this State."

I hope to be part of a Parliament that will finally begin to bring real equality to lesbian and gay Western Australians. For me this is no small turnaround. Being an activist for lesbian and gay rights has not always been easy. All lesbian and gay people struggle with issues of coming out, and it is not something that is done once. There can be many awkward moments through life meeting new people. Being up-front and honest has always been important for my own peace of mind. Being a gay and lesbian activist has not just been about law reform; it has been, more importantly, about reaching out to the wider community, demonstrating to people that it is okay to be lesbian or gay. It has also been about creating positive images in the media to make it easier on young people who are lesbian or gay and who struggle with self-loathing and low self-esteem, because they think the world despises them. I have heard too many stories about school bullying, which often includes violent incidents that are essentially criminal in nature and based on a student's perceived gayness. It makes little difference if the person is gay or not. This is something that must be addressed as a matter of public policy in our schools, particularly in rural and regional areas, where there is a high rate of youth suicide.

In July 2001, Pratt was appointed to a gay and lesbian law reform committee with a wide mandate to eliminate discrimination in state law. Pratt, along with lesbian Green MP Giz Watson, played a major role in the committee, which ultimately made a wide range of reform recommendations. The committee's recommendations were largely taken into law in 2002.

Former Australian Democrats Senator Brian Greig congratulated Ms Pratt in an AusQueer posting.

It seems that WA's Gay and Lesbian Equality group (GALE), has helped produce its second senator. (Yours truly being the first). Louise and I both served at different times as activists and spokespeople for GALE. For a few years Louise was also a WA Female Delegate to the now defunct Australian Council for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Along with me, she participated in a few ACLGR meetings during the 1990's in Canberra and Melbourne.

I am delighted to see her win the Number One spot on Labor's WA Senate ticket for next year's election. At the Number One spot she is guaranteed of being elected. Along with Penny Wong, Labor will have two out Senators in 2008.

Louise played a key role in helping develop WA's ground breaking equality laws in 2001 and, more importantly, helped guide them undiluted through her party-room and into legislation. Her particular area of interest (not surprisingly), is parenting and fertility rights.

Louise is not a tribal Labor hack like so many are, and is comfortable and experienced at cross party negotiations - most notably with the Greens. It's worth noting too, that in pulling the Number One spot on the senate ticket, she has bumped sitting Senator Mark Bishop down to Number Two spot. While Senator Bishop is also reassured or being re-elected from this position, it is unusual that a frontbencher would get knocked down like that. Well done Louise!

There is also poetic justice in this, given that Senator Bishop hales from Labor's hard right Catholic faction and owes his support base to the Shop workers Union--Australia's most anti-gay union. Despite having a disproportionate number of GLBT members and employees, the "Shoppies" are controlled by very conservative Catholics and the union often makes homophobic senate submissions. The most recent being its submission to support the banning of IVF to lesbians and single women.

As THAT issue is likely to resurface in coming months as Howard moves to engender more moral panic as the federal election looms, Louise will have her work cut out for her.

I suspect Louise will find the shift from State politics to Federal politics quite difficult at first, and I wonder if she has not underestimated the gulf of difference between the gay-friendly state government and its much more reactionary federal wing? Perhaps not. But Louise is her own person and will stake her ground. [. . .]

The Canberra Handel Choir is a chamber choir of experienced singers formed earlier in 2006. The debut concert in May was a brilliant sucess -- with a standing ovation from the full house. The choir will perform its second concert for the year at St. Philip's Anglican Church, O'Connor, ACT 2602 at 7.30pm on 21 October 2006. Admission: $18 adult, $15 conc, $12 child. Directed by Adam Laslett (right), the Choir will sing solos, duets, and choral selections from each of Handel's oratorios in English.
	Soloists will include my neighbour and friend Daniel McMillan (left) and the orchestra will include graduates from the ANU Canberra School of Music. The concert is assisted by CAMRA, the Canberra Academy of Music and Related Arts.

This statement by Inclusive Church asks questions worth asking.

The end of the Communion?

1.0 As a result of the statements issued by the meeting of the Primates of the "Global South" in Kigali, the Anglican Communion has been moved into completely new territory. We are presented with a situation where the possibility of dialogue between believing Christians is being closed down. Both the tone and the content of the Communiqué of the Primates of the Global South reflect an understanding of the Church which is profoundly un-Anglican, and represents a radical departure from both our ecclesiology and our traditions. We are sleepwalking towards a new church, and unless the silent majority of Anglicans take action we will wake up find we have lost the Church and the Christianity we hold dear.

2.0 "One church, one bishop, one territory" is fundamental to our Anglican polity and identity; to say that it is now "outdated" is to deny the whole history of Anglicanism . To say that many of the Primates can either not be in communion or to be in "impaired communion" with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (TEC) represents a theological and ecclesiological nonsense, The sacrament of Holy Communion is a sacrament given to us by God which is not capable of impairment. We trust in God and give thanks to Him for the gift of communion; it is as the Body of Christ that we exist.

3.0 The proposal to create two parallel jurisdictions within the Anglican Communion, separate but both nominally Anglican through their relationship with Canterbury, rides roughshod over the Instruments of Unity and over the Windsor process. It also represents a misunderstanding of the nature of Anglican identity. If we are in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury we cannot be out of communion with one another.

But we remember that many of the primates of the "Global South" absented themselves from a Eucharist to which they were invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Dromantine Conference in 2005. We draw the conclusion from that that their allegiance to Canterbury is at best skin deep, and subject to his confirmation of their particular position on matters of human sexuality.

We also note that the Communiqué did not involve or receive the assent of the Archbishop of Cape Town and the Province of Southern Africa, and we wonder how many other Provinces' assent has been assumed instead of confirmed.

4.0 Those who believe in a church which is both inclusive and welcoming have until now sought to respond to the actions of the Primates of the "Global South" with reason and restraint. As a result, factions within our Church have pushed harder and harder at the bounds of communion. Their proposals now bear only a tangential resemblance to the Anglicanism which has until now defined and developed the Communion.

5.0 We note too that significant amounts of funding for many of the organisations which have led on these notably the American Anglican Council, Anglican Communion Network and Anglican Mainstream -- have come from the Ahmanson family and other non-Anglican, politically conservative foundations based in the United States. (http://www.edow.org/follow/part1.html) This funding has enabled the due processes of the Anglican Communion to be subverted and hijacked, raising issues of family life and human sexuality to a prominence within the life of our church which is unjustified and contrary to the Gospel values of love and justice.

6.0 We have noted with concern that although the Archbishop of Canterbury has implicitly on a number of occasions publicly been critical of the actions of TEC - for example in his recent Pastoral Letter (http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/releases/060915a.htm) he has as yet not been critical of the very serious breaches of the Instruments of Unity by the Church of Nigeria; for example, the creation of a Bishop in the United States in complete contravention of Windsor guidelines on provincial boundaries. Neither has he challenged the actions of the Church of Nigeria in its vociferous support of the criminalisation of homosexuality in Nigeria (http://www.anglican-nig.org/PH2006message2nation.htm) despite his condemnation of homophobia on several occasions.

5.0 We note that the Communiqué from the Primates of the "Global South" identifies the Church of England as being compromised by its attitude towards the civil partnership legislation in this country. We believe it is important in this context for the Church of England to be clear on its current practice. Namely, that hundreds if not thousands of same-gender partnerships have been celebrated over the past thirty years, in churches, by priests and deacons. Further, that there have been, and in the future no doubt will be homosexual bishops in relationships within our church. Any Covenant, therefore, which excludes members of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada will have also to exclude the Church of England. (http://www.episcopalmajorityonline.org)

5.0 In the light of what is being produced by the "Global South" we have the following questions for which we request urgent clarification from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion Office

5.1 Will they confirm that all Bishops duly elected or appointed and with current responsibilities in the Communion will be invited to the 2008 Lambeth Conference? There can be no other way to ensure that those loyal to the principles of Anglicanism are duly and properly involved in the life of our Communion.

5.2 If "Alternative Primatial Oversight" is granted for the Dioceses seeking it in the United States, what equivalent oversight will be offered to LGBT Christians experiencing danger and discrimination in Nigeria and other parts of Africa?

5.3 What structures exist to permit the selection of an "alternative" to the Presiding Bishop of TEC to attend Primates' meetings?

5.4 Is the development of parallel jurisdictions acceptable to the ACO? If it is, then what is to stop the development of more jurisdictions on other matters?

5.5 The "Global South" Primates appear to be seeking to pre-empt the Covenant process by preparing a draft with the clear intention of requiring assent to confessional propositions related to homosexuality. What implications does this have for the process of agreeing a Covenant which recognises the depth and breadth of Anglicanism, both Catholic and Reformed?

5.6 What brief was given to the Bishops of Durham and Winchester in their recent attendance at a meeting of Bishops of TEC?

6.0 We are also concerned by the silence from the Bishops of the Church of England. The implications of the "Global South" developments may well, in the near future, have an impact on the Church of England. Indeed there have already been actions which indicate the shape of things to come, such as the unauthorised ordinations in the Diocese of Southwark. There are significant numbers of English Bishops who are deeply perturbed by the actions of their colleagues across the world, and deeply concerned to counter homophobia and prejudice. Why are they not speaking?

7.0 Today we celebrate the life of Lancelot Andrewes, one of the fathers of our church. We deeply regret the way in which the Communion is being undermined and sidetracked by a false Anglicanism which neither reflects nor pays tribute to our history. We trust and pray that the dialogue to which we are all as Christians called will continue so that the Gospel of Christ may flourish in this country and across the Communion.

Giles Goddard
Chair, InclusiveChurch
Lancelot Andrewes; 25th September 2006

Similarly, Affirming Catholicism has issued this press release:

Affirming Catholics express deep sorrow at conservative Anglican statement

The Director of the Anglican organisation, Affirming Catholicism, today expressed deep sorrow at the communiqué issued after the meeting of Anglican Primates of the Global South. The communiqué expressed the determination of conservative Anglican leaders who met in Rwanda under the chairmanship of The Most Rev'd Peter Akinola, Primate of Nigeria, to set up rival church structures for conservative members of the Episcopal Church in the United States and elsewhere. The Global South leaders also called for the proposed Anglican covenant to be drafted to exclude those who take a progressive line on the issue of homosexuality.

The Director of Affirming Catholicism, the Rev'd Richard Jenkins, said: "The communiqué suggests that Anglicans should unite on the basis of their views on sexuality--which is the very issue that divides us. If we are to be unified, we must draw on deeper resources and display greater charity. The Anglican commitment to scripture, tradition and reason as sources of authority means that we cannot claim closure on the issue of homosexuality. A covenant which unites us must therefore hold together the three strands of our Church: catholic, evangelical and liberal. I call on the Primates of the Communion to heed the repeated calls of the Archbishop of Canterbury to engage on those lines and seek reconciliation by transcending differences."

The Primate of the Church of the West Indies, the Most Rev'd Drexel Gomez, has been invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to chair an official drafting group for an Anglican Covenant, but other members of the group have yet to be named. Affirming Catholicism is to hold a day conference to discuss the Covenant, entitled 'Anglican Unity and the limits of Diversity' on Saturday 20 January at St Matthew's Church, Westminster.

Meanwhile, an article "More objections voiced to Kigali communiqué", by Matthew Davies, international correspondent for the Episcopal News Service, 28 Sep 2006, recalls a history in which the writers of communications from the 'Global South' have been less than careful in attribting siugnatories to their work.

Another Anglican Primate from the Global South has raised concerns about the lack of adequate consultation regarding the contents of a communiqué issued after a group of Global South Anglican leaders met in Kigali, Rwanda, September 19-22.

Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town was the first to disavow the Kigali communiqué in a September 24 statement.

That was followed by a September 28 statement from the Episcopal Church in the Philippines (ECP) which clarified that its Prime Bishop, the Most Rev. Ignacio C. Soliba, "did not attend the meeting and was not a signatory to the so-called Kigali Communiqué."

The communiqué was not signed, but was followed by a list of 20 "Provinces Represented," including Burundi, Central Africa, the Church of South India, Congo, Indian Ocean, Jerusalem and Middle East, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, Southern Africa, South East Asia, Southern Cone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, West Africa, and the West Indies. Bangladesh and the Philippines were listed as "Not present but represented." There are 38 Provinces in the Anglican Communion.

It is unclear how many, or which, Primates actually endorsed the communiqué or saw it in its final form prior to publication on the Internet.

The Philippine statement also offered greetings on behalf of the province to Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori and welcomed her election. "The Episcopal Church in the Philippines will extend an invitation for her to visit the Philippines in early 2008 for the renewal of our historical ties and covenant relationship," the statement said.

The Kigali communiqué announced that an unspecified number of the Primates present at the meeting would not be able to recognize Jefferts Schori "as a Primate at the table with us" at the next Anglican Primates' Meeting, set for February 2007 in Tanzania.

Ndungane, in his September 24 statement, revealed that although he was present for part of the meeting, he was not consulted on the document. He described parts of it as "not consonant with the position of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa," whose bishops unanimously issued a strong call to work for unity within the Anglican Communion in early September.

Archbishop John Chew, Primate of the Church of the Province of South East Asia and secretary of the Global South Provinces in the Anglican Communion, countered that a draft agenda had been sent out to the Primates ahead of the meeting.

"Furthermore, a Communiqué drafting committee chaired by Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi of Burundi was unanimously appointed," Chew said. "Both Archbishop Ndungane and Canon Ngewu were present throughout the time these decisions were made."

The Kigali communiqué is not the first statement to be issued in the name of Global South primates or provinces without a clear indication of individual signatories or the full endorsement of provinces listed.

Two statements issued on November 2, 2003 and April 16, 2004 were signed on behalf of the Global South Primates by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, a leading critic of actions that endorse the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the life of the Church.

In a March 2004 interview with Episcopal News Service, Archbishop Joseph Marona of the Episcopal Church of Sudan denied signing a statement titled "ECUSA has separated itself," saying that he had been traveling at the time and there had been "an assumption...that I may have said that."

The third Anglican Global South to South Encounter, which met in Alexandria, Egypt, in October 2005, also issued an unsigned communiqué but noted that "a total of 103 delegates of 20 provinces in the Global South" were represented.

At the Egypt meeting, one Primate recalled that the delegates were shown a prepared communiqué, but that it was later indicated that all Primates present at the meeting had accordingly signed the statement.

A letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, that emerged from that meeting was also questioned by three of its alleged signatories, who said its contents had neither been discussed nor approved, the Church Times reported.

"The Primates of the West Indies, the Southern Cone, and Jerusalem and the Middle East all objected to the letter. One described it as 'an act of impatience,' one as 'scandalous,' and the other as 'megaphone diplomacy,'" the article revealed.

A November 17, 2005 response to the letter by Lambeth Palace noted that Williams is committed to the Windsor Process and added, "If this letter is a contribution to that process of debate, then it is to be welcomed, however robust. If it is an attempt to foreclose that debate, it would seem to serve very little purpose indeed."

Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, in a September 28 statement, raised concern that portions of the Kigali communiqué "that take issue with the actions of the Episcopal Church in advance of hearing from the advisory group, and before the Covenant has an opportunity to be developed, are inconsistent with the Windsor process" which, he says, "requires patience and respect for one another." He cited General Convention's Resolution A165 which affirmed the Episcopal Church's commitment to the Windsor process. Griswold also noted, with concern, the communiqué's recommendation "that there be a separate ecclesial body within our province."

"The suggestion of such a division raises profound questions about the nature of the church, its ordering and its oversight," he said. "I further believe such a division would open the way to multiple divisions across other provinces of the Communion, and any sense of a coherent mission would sink into chaos."

Such a recommendation, Griswold said, "appears to be an effort to preempt the Windsor process and acting upon it would create a fact on the ground, making healing and reconciliation -- the stated goal of the Windsor process -- that much more difficult to achieve."

Responding to the claim that some of the Primates would not be able to accept Jefferts Schori at the table with them, Griswold said: "The role of primates is to bear witness as fully as possible to the life and complexities of their own provinces. I have sought to bring to the primates' meetings the wide range of opinions and the consequent tensions within our own church. I have every confidence that Katharine will do the same."

He further noted that "the voices from dioceses that the Kigali communiqué fears will not be heard seem to be well represented among the primates themselves."

Griswold agreed with the communiqué's declaration that "the challenges facing our Anglican structures can be a distraction from the work of the gospel," and was encouraged by the time "devoted to such concerns as poverty eradication, HIV/AIDS, peace building and evangelization."

He noted the Episcopal Church's commitment to the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. "[I] pray that our mutual concerns will allow us to work together for the healing and reconciliation of the world, and thereby find the source of our healing and reconciliation as a Communion."

The tribulations of reorganising my home office/study.







Cartoons by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Now that I have more time for such things, I've discovered a liking for good contemporary detective novels, such as those of Ian Rankin and P.D. James. I particularly like stories in which the personality of the chief protagonist (Rebus or Dalgliesh) is a strong part of the story.

I've just finished The Lighthouse, the latest, 2005, novel by P.D. James -- more formally, Phyllis Dorothy James, The Rt Hon the Baroness James of Holland Park OBE, FRSL, FRSA, JP. I've also read, A Certain Justice, Death in Holy Orders, Death of an Expert Witness, Devices and Desires, Skull Beneath the Skin, The Children of Men, and The Murder Room.

Still waiting to be read, I have copies of Cover Her Face, Shroud for a Nightingale, and The Black Tower. And so far I haven't seen, A Mind to Murder, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Innocent Blood, Original Sin, and Unnatural Causes.

James' chief protagonist, police Commander Adam Dalgliesh is an intelligent, reflective, character and James sometimes give him some interesting introspections. For instance, in the The Black Tower (1975). is recovering in hospital from serious illness, having previously reconciled himself to the likelihood of death.

It was embarrassing now to recall with what little regret he had let slip his pleasures and preoccupations, the imminence of loss revealing them for what they were, at best only a solace, at worst a trivial squandering of time and energy. Now he had to lay hold of them again and believe that they were important, at least to himself. He doubted whether he would ever again believe them important to other people. No doubt, with returning strength, all that would look after itself.

The physical life would re assert itself given time. He would reconcile himself to living since there was no alternative and, this perverse fit of resentment and accidie conveniently put down to weak¬ness, would come to believe that he had had a lucky escape. His colleagues, relieved of embarrassment, would congratu¬late him. Now that death had replaced sex as the great unmentionable it had acquired its own pudency; to die when you had not yet become a nuisance and before your friends could reasonably raise the ritual chant of "happy release" was in the worst of taste.

But, at present, he wasn't sure that he could reconcile himself to his job. Resigned as he had become to the role of spectator and soon not even to be that he felt ill equipped to return to the noisy playground of the world and, if it had to be, was minded to find for himself a less violent corner of it. It wasn't something he had thought about deeply during his periods of consciousness; there hadn't been time. It was more a conviction than a decision. The time had come to change direction. [. . .]

He wasn't sure whether this disenchantment with his job was caused solely by his illness, the salutary reminder of inevitable death, or whether it was the symptom of a more fundamental malaise, that latitude in middle life of alternate doldrums and uncertain winds when one realizes that hopes deferred are no longer realizable, that ports not visited will now never be seen, that this journey and others before it may have been a mistake, that one has no longer even confidence in charts and compass. More than his job now seemed to him trivial and unsatisfactory. Lying sleepless as so many patients must have done before him in that bleak impersonal room, watching the headlamps of passing cars sweep across, the ceiling, listening to the secretive and muted noises of the hospital's nocturnal life, he took the dispiriting inventory of his life.

. . . In the last fifteen years he hadn't deliberately hurt a single human being. It struck him now that nothing more damning could be said about anyone.

Well, if none of that could be changed, his job could. But first there was one personal commitment to fulfil, one from which perversely he had been relieved that death would so conveniently excuse him.

And thus begins the story.

Baroness James says of the modern detective novel that it is now

far closer to the straight novel than were the rather cosy mysteries of the 1930s when setting, characterisation and, sometimes, psychological truth were all sacrificed to ingenuity of plot. The modern mystery (as the Americans call it) is often more violent, more sexually explicit, less confident in its affirmation of law and order and far more concerned with character and motive than with the ingenuity of the murder itself.

The critics have forecast the death of the classical detective story at every decade, but the form remains remarkably resilient. There are the attractions of a strong plot, a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. There is the challenge of a puzzle for those who like following clues. The detective story, like other forms of crime novel, provides vicarious excitement and danger. But there are other interesting psychological reasons. The classical detective story is rather like the modern morality play. It can provide catharsis, a means by which both writer and reader exorcise irrational feelings of anxiety or guilt. The basic moral premise, the sanctity of life, is also an attraction as is the solution of the plot at the end of the book. The classical detective story affirms our belief that we live in a rational and generally benevolent universe.

Oliver Kamm has an excellent critical overview of Baroness James' work.

This weekend brings the season grand finals of the Australian Football league and the National Rugby League. If pressed, I will admit to being a supporter of the Melbourne Storm, which will contest the NFL final on Sunday.

Ironically, there is no Melbourne team playing in the AFL final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and no Sydney team playing in the NRL final in Sydney.
The Age reports that next year all Australian Football League games (eight games per week) are likely to be broadcast on free-to-air television. That's about 20 hours of programming per week for over half the year, spread over two of Australia's three commercial networks, in addition to rugby league, rugby union and soccer.

One more reason not to watch commercial television.

Now, this is really scary.

"One degree and we're done for", by Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 2571, 27 September 2006, pp. 8-9.

"Further global warming of 1°C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know."

So says Jim Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Hansen and colleagues have analysed global temperature records and found that surface temperatures have been increasing by an average of 0.2°C every decade for the past 30 years. Warming is greatest in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the sub-Arctic boreal forests of Siberia and North America. Here the melting of ice and snow is exposing darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, creating a positive feedback.

Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and is within 2°C of being its hottest for a million years, says Hansen's team. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 14288).

Surface temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 from surface air measurements at meteorological stations and ship and satellite SST measurements. (A) Global annual mean anomalies. (B) Temperature anomaly for the first half decade of the 21st century, from J.Hansen, M. Sato, R. Ruedy, K. Lo, D.W. Lea, & M. Medina-Elizade. Global temperature change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(39):14288-14293, 26 Sep 06, Fig. 1.

The analysis reinforces a series of recent findings on accelerating environmental disruption in Siberia, northern Canada and Alaska, underlining a growing scientific consensus that these regions are pivotal to climate change. Earlier this month, NASA scientists reported that climate change was speeding up the melting of Arctic sea ice. Permanent sea ice has contracted by 14 per cent in the past two years (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 33, L17501). However, warming and melting have been just as dramatic on land in the far north.

A meeting on Siberian climate change held in Leicester, UK, last week confirmed that Siberia has become a hotspot of global climate change. Geographer Heiko Balzter, of the University of Leicester, said central Siberia has warmed by almost 2°C since 1970 -- that's three times the global average.

Meanwhile, Stuart Chapin of the University of Alaska Fairbanks this week reported that air temperatures in the Alaskan interior have risen by 2°C since 1950, and permafrost temperatures have risen by 2.5°C (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0606955103).

In Siberia the warming is especially pronounced in winter. "It has caused the onset of spring to advance by as much as one day a year since satellite observations began in 1982," says Balzter. Similarly, Alaskan springs now arrive two weeks earlier than in 1950, according to Chapin.

The Leicester meeting heard that the rising temperatures are causing ecological changes in the forests that ratchet up the warming still further. Vladimir Petko from the Russian Academy of Sciences Forest Research Institute in Krasnoyarsk says warm springs are triggering plagues of moths. "They can eat the needles of entire forest regions in one summer," he says. The trees die and then usually succumb to forest fires that in turn destroy soil vegetation and accelerate the melting of permafrost, Petko says.

In 2003 Siberia saw a record number of forest fires, losing 40,000 square kilometres according to Balzter, who has analysed remote sensing images of the region. Similar changes are occurring in Alaska. According to Chapin, warming there has shortened the life cycle of the bark beetle from two years to one, causing huge infestations and subsequent fires, which destroyed huge areas of forest in 2004. "The current boreal forest zone could be so dried out by 2090 that the trees will die off and be replaced by steppe," says Nadezhda Tchebakova, also at the institute in Krasnoyarsk.

Melting permafrost in the boreal forests and further north in the Arctic tundra is also triggering the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from thick layers of thawing peat. First reports published exclusively in New Scientist last year (13 August 2005, p 12) were recently confirmed by US scientists (Nature, vol 443, p 71).

"Large amounts of greenhouse gases are currently locked in the permafrost and if released could accelerate the greenhouse effect," says Balzter. Hansen's paper concludes that the effects of this positive feedback could be huge. "In past eras, the release of methane from melting permafrost and destabilised sediments on continental shelves has probably been responsible for some of the largest warmings in the Earth's history," he says.

We could be close to unleashing similar events in the 21st century, Hansen argues. Although the feedbacks should remain modest as long as global temperatures remain within the range of recent interglacial periods of the past million years, outside that range - beyond a further warming of about 1°C -- the feedbacks could accelerate. Such changes may become inevitable if the world does not begin to curb greenhouse gas emissions within the next decade, Hansen says.

Meantime the Arctic Ice is fast disappearing

May be this is Earth's way of telling President George W. Bush that global warming cannot be ignored: in just one year, the perennial sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has shrunk by nearly three-quarters of a million square kilometres, an area comparable to that of Bush's home state of Texas.

Perennial sea ice is the ice that survives at least one summer, and is usually more than 3 metres thick. Son Nghiem of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and his colleagues used NASA's QSCAT satellite to measure the changes in Arctic perennial ice from 2004 to 2005, by comparing ice cover averaged over November and December in each year, the team reports in Geophysical Research Letters (vol 33, p L17501). They found that perennial ice cover decreased by 720,000 square kilometres -- a 14 per cent drop in one year. This is a dramatic change compared with the 7.8 per cent reduction per decade that has been recorded since the 1970s. The changes were not evenly spread. Perennial ice made some gains in the west Arctic Ocean, but nearly half was lost in the east. If the trend continues, it could open a vast ice-free region in the east Arctic Ocean, the team says.
-- New Scientist, 2570, 26 September 2006, p.5.)

Among other things, the shrinking of the sea ice is threatening the extinction of polar bears and destroying the traditional life of the indigenous peoples that inhabit the fringes of the Arctic Ocean.

On 24 September 2006, the Most Revd Njongonkulu Ndungane Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of the Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa, made a statement in response to the Communiqué issued by the Kigali conference of 'Global South' Primates of the Anglican Communion, making it clear that not all members of that august body agree with or endorse the communiqué. Indeed, its clear that those who issued the communiqué were deliberately untruthful in implying that all the attending provinces agreed to it.

Especially valuable in Archbishop Ndungane's statement is his insistence on patience, on quiet waiting on God which, I suggest, is just what we need as an antidote to all-too-frequent and ill-informed dogmatic assertion that one group's point of view is right and another's must be always wrong.

Also very important is Archbishop Ndungane's warning that the Primates should not disenfranchise their bishops, clergy and laity. That is, it seems to me, they must accept that not all of the people within their respective provinces share the same views as themselves. Arrogance should not be the mark of episcopal primacy.

In July 2006 the Archbishop had written to the Primates of the Anglican Communion calling on them to uphold the 'broad rich heartlands of our Anglican heritage.' He argued that this must be 'the territory on which we debate our future.' adding that 'it is not something to be fought out at the limits of conservatism or liberalism, as if they were the only possibilities before us.'

In the 24 September statement, worth quoting at length, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane said:

I wish to offer this clarification of the position of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, in light of the potentially misleading impression that our Province has endorsed the Communiqué issued at the end of the meeting. Whereas Canon Livingstone Ngewu and I were present in Kigali, neither of us were made aware even of the possibility of a communiqué in the name of the Primates of the Global South, prior to its release.

While I may well concur with some sections of the text, there are others which are certainly not consonant with the position of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, as articulated only earlier this month by our Synod of Bishops and our Provincial Synod. This is particularly the case in relation to Section 10

As a general point, I want to comment that whereas I fully endorse the rationale for a body such as the Global South, which can help us address some of the power imbalances between North and South that exist within the Church and more generally, I am surprised that we allow our agenda to be so dominated and driven by an inordinate influence from the United States. This flies in the face of the experience of those of us who are steeped in black and post-colonial theology, the theology of liberation, and black consciousness. It is hard to understand why we continue to act in response to the North to such a great extent, rather than making use of our freedom to concentrate our energies on the priorities of our own people and Provinces.

That said, there is no doubt that the tensions within the Anglican Communion, arising from actions within North America, raise serious and problematic concerns for our future. Yet I am deeply disturbed by the tenor of our approach, as reflected in this communiqué. To me, at least, it appears in places that there is a hidden agenda, to which some of us are not privy. For example, I am unable to understand why there seems to be a deliberate intention to undermine the due processes of the Anglican Communion and the integrity of the Instruments of Unity, while at the same time we commit ourselves to upholding Anglican identity, of which these, as they have continued to evolve over the years in response to changing needs, are an intrinsic part. Thus, for example, recent meetings of the Primates, in which the Global South played a very full part, requested various actions from the Archbishop of Canterbury, which he has been assiduous in pursuing; such as setting up the Lambeth Commission, the Panel of Reference, and now the Covenant Design Group. Yet there seems to be an urgency to obtain particular outcomes in advance, pre-empting the proper outworking of the bodies for which we called.

Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. As Peter writes in his second letter, 'Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.' We do not want the best of Anglicanism to be cast aside, and so to perish! And to allow the due processes of these bodies, and the Instruments of Unity, to be followed through will take such a short time in relation to the life of God's Church over two millennia.
[. . . ]
I am also more than a little wary of calling into question the election processes of another Province in the way the Communiqué suggests, in relation to the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. This introduces a completely new dimension into our relationships within the Communion, the reciprocal implications of which we have not considered. I would feel more confident if we addressed this question as a part of the more comprehensive reassessment of the nature of the Communion for our times, which is underway not least through the work of the Covenant Design Group.

An added concern for me is the apparent marginalisation of laity, clergy and bishops in the debate within the Global South. I was particularly glad that circumstances allowed me fully to consult both my fellow bishops, and our Provincial Synod, immediately in advance of the Kigali meeting. For a fundamental and indispensable element of our Anglican identity is that we are both episcopally led and synodically governed. I long for a consultative process that fully engages the whole Body of Christ, recognising that 'to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good' (1 Cor 12:7). Primates do not have sole monopoly on wisdom and knowledge at this crucial time, nor indeed at any other!
[. . .]
To my brother Primates of the Global South and CAPA, I therefore offer a plea from the heart. Let us hold fast, in word and deed, to the true marks with which we believe the Lord has graced and gifted us as Anglicans--yes, our rootedness in Scripture as our primary touchstone, but also in our Tradition and our use of Reason. The Windsor Report has done us an invaluable service in beginning to address how we understand and recognise these and what they mean for us today, and the Archbishop of Canterbury has offered further vital insights in his reflections 'The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today.' I have offered my own thoughts in 'Heartlands of Anglicanism' and I am sure there is more to be said. But I am also sure that if we fail to carry forward the 'three-fold strands' not just of Scripture, Tradition and Reason, but also of what Archbishop Rowan has so eloquently described as 'reformed commitment to the absolute priority of the Bible for deciding doctrine, a catholic loyalty to the sacraments and the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, and a habit of cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected questions too quickly'--that if we fail to carry forward these, then we certainly relinquish our ability to claim that we stand authentically within Anglicanism.

In the book of the Prophet Isaiah, we read that 'those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not be faint.' We want the Anglican Communion to rise up, renewed and strengthened, on eagles' wings. It is for us to wait upon the Lord. We do not have a God who is slow to act. We can have confidence to let him lead our Church forward, through the ways he has so often done in the past. In our concerns for the Anglican Communion which we love, we do not have to be precipitate and risk losing much of what it is we wish to preserve and enhance.

And so I also offer a call to my brother Primates, that we step back from the brink at which the Kigali Communiqué appears to place us. It is certainly the case that we need changes within the life, and structures, and processes of the Anglican Communion. Yet part of the strength of our heritage is that intrinsic to our life, structures and processes is a considerable flexibility and openness to change that has allowed us to evolve--creating and amending Instruments of Unity, for example (and I am thinking here particularly of the ACC) in response to God's calling to be faithful in our mission and ministry to his people and his world. We are now in need of such evolution, to preserve the very best of the heart of Anglicanism--and working in conformity with this essence of Anglicanism will most effectively preserve that 'best' which has been God's continuing gift to us over the centuries.

Two weeks before our meeting in Kigali, the Synod of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa issued a statement which spoke of the gift of tolerance and grace in the face of the pains of divisions among ourselves with which we have had to deal in our past. The breadth of current divisions also find expression within our Province. Yet we remain convinced that what unites us far outweighs what divides us, and that we must therefore both choose and strive, with deep sacrificial love, for the Anglican Communion to remain united.

Our God surely is a God of surprises. As one of my predecessors as Archbishop of Cape Town said, 'God still works his purposes out, in spite of the confusions of our minds.'
May that be so! Amen!

---

1. Section 10 of the Communiqué said:

10. We are, however, greatly encouraged by the continued faithfulness of the Network Dioceses and all of the other congregations and communities of faithful Anglicans in North America. In addition, we commend the members of the Anglican Network in Canada for their commitment to historic, biblical faith and practice. We value their courage and consistent witness. We are also pleased by the emergence of a wider circle of 'Windsor Dioceses' and urge all of them to walk more closely together and deliberately work towards the unity that Christ enjoins. We are aware that a growing number of congregations are receiving oversight from dioceses in the Global South and in recent days we have received requests to provide Alternative Primatial Oversight for a number of dioceses. This is an unprecedented situation in our Communion that has not been helped by the slow response from the Panel of Reference. After a great deal of prayer and deliberation, and in order to support these faithful Anglican dioceses and parishes, we have come to agreement on the following actions:
a. We have asked the Global South Steering Committee to meet with the leadership of the dioceses requesting Alternative Primatial Oversight, in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Network and the 'Windsor Dioceses', to investigate their appeal in greater detail and to develop a proposal identifying the ways by which the requested Primatial oversight can be adequately provided.
b. At the next meeting of the Primates in February 2007 some of us will not be able to recognize Katharine Jefferts Schori as a Primate at the table with us. Others will be in impaired communion with her as a representative of The Episcopal Church. Since she cannot represent those dioceses and congregations who are abiding by the teaching of the Communion we propose that another bishop, chosen by these dioceses, be present at the meeting so that we might listen to their voices during our deliberations.
c. We are convinced that the time has now come to take initial steps towards the formation of what will be recognized as a separate ecclesiastical structure of the Anglican Communion in the USA. We have asked the Global South Steering Committee to develop such a proposal in consultation with the appropriate instruments of unity of the Communion. We understand the serious implications of this determination. We believe that we would be failing in our apostolic witness if we do not make this provision for those who hold firmly to a commitment to historic Anglican faith.

The Church Times said in its Editorial:

Taking the road from Kigali
The Communiqué issued by the Primates of the Global South, who met last week in Kigali, refers, before it goes on to deal with the Anglican Communion, to the genocide in Rwanda 12 years ago. The Primates might have treated the massacres as a warning of the extremes of intolerance and prejudice. Instead, the communiqué uses the language of natural disaster: "the genocide that tragically engulfed this nation and even its churches". It locates the evil as an outside force: "the utter depravity and inhumanity to which we are all subject outside of the transforming grace of God". And it shifts some of the culpability for this "fate" elsewhere: "During this time, Rwanda was abandoned to its fate by the world." The lesson they choose to draw? "That faith in Jesus Christ must be an active, whole-hearted faith if we are to stand against the evil and violence that threaten to consume our world."

This is not a statement to which one could object. Nevertheless, a determination to "stand against evil" is not a normal starting point for discussions about the better working of the Church Catholic. It helps to explain the Primates' antagonistic stance towards the leadership of the Episcopal Church in the United States, though this is cloaked as a willingness to respond to those inside the US who have asked for outside assistance and oversight. But, however explicable, the decision to set up a parallel organisation in an existing province - unbidden - is a schismatic act; for what is a "separate ecclesiastical structure" but a Church?

The Kigali Primates speak of proceeding "in consultation with the instruments of unity in the Communion". This is a perverse idea in the circumstances. None of those instruments - the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates' Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Lambeth Conference - could countenance such a move. It is possible that the Global South Primates believe the US Episcopal leadership to be so discredited that the rest of the Communion will allow a new organisation to take its place as the official Anglican body there. It is more likely that they are not particularly interested in seeking permission. The document The Road to Lambeth, endorsed by the Primates of the Global South, hopes that its road ahead "may pass through Lambeth, our historical mother. But above all it must be the road of the Cross."

The Kigali documents talk of coming of age. When this happens in a family, it signifies that the days of compulsion are past. If certain Primates wish for schism, little can be done to prevent them. Nor can they be denied the family name. The word "Anglican" is not a copyrighted brand. The C of E is used to living alongside other Anglican Churches, all of them small, and, according to the English Church Census, mostly shrinking. Both parties in any international schism will lay claim to the continued use of the name, and thus risk missing the more important part of the Churches' title. In this context, "Anglican" is nothing; "Communion" is all.

The September Equinox has just passed, 23 September 2006 at 0433h UTC, or 1422h in Eastern Australia. In the South it's our Spring equinox.

'Equinox' derives from aequus and nox (Latin). The equinoxes happen when the Sun is at one of the two points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator and the eliptic intersect. That is, the equinoxes are the two days each year when the centre of the Sun spends an equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on Earth. The actual equinox is a single moment in time, but its date varies because of the differences between calendar years (with their leap year) and the astronomical year. It's 94 days from the June solstice to the September equinox, but 89 days from the December solstice to the March equinox. The seasons are of unequal length because of the variable speed of the Earth's movement through its elliptical orbit.

Various traditional celebrations occur at one or other of the equinoxes and some calendars have their new year's day at an equinox.

So . . . time to give thanks for Spring and new life. To me that's wattle . . . and daffodils.

(Our daffodils failed miserably this year, as they did in some other Canberra gardens; something to do with last year's long hot drought. And wattle gives me hay fever. Sigh.)

5-7 October 2006 will be Chuseok which James and I celebrate as a thanksgiving.

In a Guardian online column (22 Sep 06) Peter Thatchell argues that the real radical alternative to Labour in Britain is now the Green Party. The same applies in Australia. Thatchell supports the formation of a Green Left within the British party, combining anti-capitalism with ecological sustainability. In Britain [and in Australia], the Greens are well to the left of Labour, with their " radical agenda for grassroots democracy, social justice, human rights, global equity, environmental protection, peace and internationalism."

The objective of the Green Left is to build on this progressive agenda and nudge the Greens further leftwards. In our view, this will lead to an empowering political paradigm for human liberation that offers the most credible alternative to Labour and the best hope for radical left advance.

Recognising the productivist, growth-driven limitations of traditional socialism, we are not a leftwing Trojan horse within the Greens. Quality of life and fair shares for all are more important than the left's often simplistic agenda of spending more on health and education.

The Green Left believes government needs to radically rethink basic premises, like shifting the focus in [public health] from curative medicine to preventative care. Our aim should be policies to help ensure that far fewer people get sick in the first place, rather than merely throwing more money at people once they get ill.

In other words, we are of the left and open to the left, but we also realise the left has to change, in order to meet people's needs and to ensure the survival of life on this planet. Old style socialist politics need to give way to new style eco-socialism: green anti-capitalism.

This is crunch time for progressive politics. Labour has lost its heart and soul. The party leadership has sacrificed socialist values and policies for short-term political gain. It has pandered to prejudice and irrationality on issues like asylum, drugs, terrorism, Europe and crime.
[. . . ]
No political party lasts forever. Even the most progressive party eventually decays or turns reactionary. Labour's great, historic achievement was the creation of the welfare state. The current party leadership is in the process of privatising it. I joined Labour because I wanted social justice and human rights for all. My values and aspirations remain the same. Labour's have changed fundamentally and irreversibly -- rightwards and for the worse. Reclaiming Labour for socialism is a fine aspiration, but about as likely as winning the German SPD back to the Marxism it ditched in the 1950s.
[. . .]
The real radical alternative is now the Greens. After two decades of moving from right to left, the Green party now occupies the progressive political space once held by leftwing Labour; with the added bonus of a far-sighted agenda to save the planet from ecological catastrophes like climate change.
[. . .]
Unlike the traditional left, with its superficial environmentalism, Greens understand there is no point campaigning for social justice if we don't have a planet capable of sustaining life. Ecological sustainability is the precondition for a just society.
[. . .]
Working with the Greens, the Australian trade unions have enforced 'green bans' on environmentally-destructive developments. This shows the potential for workers and greens to cooperate for the betterment of all. There are now lots of radical socialists who, like me, have joined the Greens and enhanced our leftwing politics with an ecological agenda. We get a sympathetic hearing too. The party is moving left.

Although the Greens are not perfect (is any party perfect?), its implicitly anti-capitalist agenda gives practical expression to socialist ideas. Very importantly, ordinary members are empowered to decide policy. The Greens are a grassroots democratic party, where activism is encouraged and where members with ideals and principles are valued.

There is a credible anti-capitalist party -- the Greens. They already have seats and could win many more if leftwingers and progressive social movements united together in the Green party. The Greens have plenty of potential to become an influential electoral force.
[. . .]
The great virtue of the Green party is that it is a grassroots democratic party, controlled by the ordinary membership and with no power elite or embedded hierarchy.
[. . .]
The potential is there. Seize it. Now is the time for reds to go green.

Personality disorder test Disorder Rating Paranoid Disorder: Low Schizoid Disorder: Low Schizotypal Disorder: Low Antisocial Disorder: Low Borderline Disorder: Low Histrionic Disorder: Low Narcissistic Disorder: Low Avoidant Disorder: Low Dependent Disorder: Low Obsessive-Compulsive: Low . . . Well, that's a relief! Take the Personality Disorder Test

My dating personality profile: Liberal - Politics matters to you, and you aren't afraid to share your left-leaning views. You would never be caught voting for a conservative candidate. Big-Hearted - You are a kind and caring person. Your warmth is inviting, and your heart is a wellspring of love. Stylish - You do not lack for fashion sense. Style matters. You wouldn't want to be seen with someone who doesn't care about his appearance.	My date match profile: Practical - You are drawn to people who are sensible and smart. Flashy, materialistic people turn you off. You appreciate the simpler side of living. Adventurous - You are looking for someone who is willing to try new things and experience life to its fullest. You need a companion who encourages you to take risks and do exciting things. Religious - You seek someone who is grounded in faith and who possesses religious values. You believe that a religious person can enhance your life.
My Top Ten Traits 1. Liberal 2. Big-Hearted 3. Stylish 4. Religious 5. Intellectual 6. Adventurous 7. Wealthy/Ambitious 8. Practical 9. Sensual 10. Romantic	My Top Ten Match Traits 1. Practical 2. Adventurous 3. Religious 4. Intellectual 5. Big-Hearted 6. Shy 7. Stylish 8. Sensual 9. Funny 10. Wealthy/Ambitious
Take the Online Dating Profile Quiz

Left brained -- no surprise there.

My best quality "shines through in how Independent I am. "The fact that you're an independent person who is usually able to handle things in a self-sufficient manner really draws people to you! But that's not the only thing. Your answers on the test indicate you're a reliable and dependable person whom others can usually count on. You are an honest person who values the truth and is sometimes willing to make sacrifices in order to uphold it, too. We've found that your particular combination of qualities is rare -- only 2 in 10,000 people share the same general mix of traits."

The Multiple Intelligences Test says "I'm smartest when it comes to personal intelligence. "Being asked life's big questions like, 'Who am I?' and 'Why am I here?' would have most people running for the hills but not you. In fact you might even relish sitting down to chat about it these quandaries in-depth. That's what personal intelligence is all about: the ability and willingness to reflect. As one who is more introspective than most, you seem to enjoy opportunities to get to know yourself. Whether you're testing your values, learning more about your likes and dislikes, or simply sitting in quiet contemplation, you seem to like spending time on you. In many ways, having strong personal intelligence signifies how fearless you are. You're not afraid to take that close look into the mirror and see who's looking back. Self-knowledge can only benefit you as you move through life's challenges, be they professional or personal ones."

The Enneagram Test, says I'm a Type 3 - The Entertainer "Friends, family, and colleagues likely look up to you for this passion and drive. They're also apt to know that when they come to you with a problem, you can be counted on help them find the kind of solution that will lead to greater self-knowledge and personal growth. You often motivate and inspire others by your good example alone. As an Entertainer, you're also likely to be seen as a valuable and competent person who is worthy of admiration. This means that compared to the eight other Enneagram types, you have a strong sense of self worth, which you're not afraid to show off in a public way. In fact, you're the kind of energetic, charming person who is often committed to being the very best that you can be." But previous results from the Enneagram Institute say I'm of the Investigator type -- type 5.

My true talent is allegedly mechanical ability (Huh?). "You're curious about how things work (true) and enjoy tinkering with machines (absolutely not). People like you can be both self-sufficient and a great help to others. You are much better than most people at fixing things -- whether it's changing a flat tire or tightening a leaky faucet (true). And the Sex IQ Test scores my Sex IQ at 123. "You scored higher than 91% of other people who have taken our test." Well, I would hope so; I am a life member of the local AIDS Council.

(Response from Ps. 22 setting by © Christopher Tambling)

My next outing as singer will be Psalm 22 on Sunday 15 October.
Ps. 22:1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2. O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. 3. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4 In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. . . .

The words, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") were spoken by Jesus from the cross, just before he died (Mark 15.34 and Matthew 27.26). Jesus may have been recalling this psalm, especially as verse 4 had just been parodied by those calling out, "He trusts in God; let God deliver him now" (Matthew 27.43). These mocking words are a chorus in Handel's Messiah, with a strong bass entry that I like, because I sing bass:

Googling "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?", I found model and ex-marine Jonathan Jesensky , here modelling Rufskin pants. From this interview, Jerensky seems a pleasant and interesting guy. I wonder why he has Jesus' cry of dereliction tattooed on his belly? (The armband tattoo seems to be in Korean, tho' I can't make it out.) Curious.

There is ample evidence that a practising faith hugely increases the likelihood of any committed relationship lasting.

The refusal of the church to bless gay commitment is a horrible irony. Christian gay couples have to build a relationship and witness to the importance of faithful love in the face of two enemies: the prevalent promiscuity of the secular gay scene and the rejection of the church itself. That makes Christian witness to other gay people nearly impossible, because it offers nothing but insult and rejection. While we deplore promiscuity we are doing absolutely nothing helpful about fidelity.

The Very Rev Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark, The Guardian 16 September, 2006

Today, 31 August, is Malaysia's national day, the 49th anniversary of the then Federation of Malaya's independence from Britain.

It's disappointing that, worried by debate over freedom of religion, the Malaysian government is restricting public discussion. "Public discussions . . . have the potential to create resentment among the public," Datuk Seri Mohd Nazri Aziz, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, has explained. "They have widened the gap between the different faiths and because of that, the government has decided to ban all public discussions, forums, and conferences on the matter before it gets out of hand. . . . We are not concerned with private discussions at home; what we worry about are inter-faith roadshows, public forums, and conferences. . . . The government has given Malaysians the freedom to discuss any current issue, even the freedom to criticize us in a constructive manner. We, however, cannot extend this freedom to religion because it can incite disharmony in our multi-religious society."

Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, says that the action is also to protect the status of Islam. "I have always said do not raise this matter [of religion]. But it emerges here, there, back and forth. If we take the attitude [not to raise religious matters], then only the religion [of Islam] has the status quo. But if it is continuously being raised, what will happen then? A conflict." Abdullah criticized four state governments for not outlawing the spread of religions other than Islam. "Why are they still not doing it? To those states that have not [implemented such laws], they should consider. Take whatever actions needed," he said.

I expect that one of those states would be Sabah, where I was a volunteer worker for two years. In Sabah and Sarawak, ethnic diversity is greater than elsewhere in Malaysia and there is less identification of race with religion. The Kadazans/Dusuns, for example, the largest indigenous group in Sabah, are mainly Christian. Society in both states is visibly less divided by race and religion than on the peninsula. Sabah and Sarawak make up a fifth of Malaysia's population.

Malaysia's constitution gives freedom of religion, yet Malays are identified by law as Muslim. Political parties are based on race and consequently divided on religion as well. A case is now before the courts to decide whether a person has the right to cease to be a Muslim.

The Malays still have special economic privileges, created in colonial times when they were poorer and had fewer entreprenurial skills than the Indian and Chinese minorities. Malaysia is a moderate Islamic nation and only 55 percent of its people are Muslim. The special status of the Malays and other indigenous peoples is now out of date in a prosperous independent multiracial state. But the Muslim-led goverment is always wary of playing into the hands of Islamic conservatives. To protect its base among Malay voters, it seems to need to be seen to support Islamic privileges.

The Malaysian national day is known as Merdeka day -- meaning freedom, the freedom of independence. It's sad that Merdeka does not mean freedom of religious discussion.

I've just bought Wendell Berry's A Timbered choir: the Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997. Already I'm struck by this poem; it reflects where I'm at myself right now. I'll enjoy this book!

1987
I

Coming to the woods' edge
on my Sunday morning walk,
I stand resting a moment beside
a ragged half dead wild plum
in bloom, its perfume
a moment enclosing me,
and standing side by side
with the old broken blooming tree,
I almost understand,
I almost recognize as a friend
the great impertinence of beauty
that comes even to the dying,
even to the fallen,
without reason sweetening the air.

I walk on,
distracted by a letter accusing me of distraction,
which distracts me only from the hundred things
that would otherwise distract me
from this whiteness, lightness,
sweetness in the air. The mind
is broken by the thousand
calling voices it is always too late
to answer, and that is why it yearns
for some hard task, lifelong, longer
than life, to concentrate it
and make it whole.

But where is the all-welcoming,
all-consecrating Sabbath
that would do the same? Where
the quietness of the heart
and the eye's clarity that would be a friend's reply
to the white-blossoming plum tree?

. . . from A Timbered choir: the Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997, by Wendell Berry. New York: Counterpoint, 1998, pp. 87-88.

31 August 2006

The General Manager
National Blood Authority
Locked Bag 8430
CANBERRA ACT 2601

The Age reports today that Australians are being urged to donate blood immediately , with current supplies of type O expected to last less than two days. The Australian Red Cross Blood Service today said it needed at least 1,000 more people with type O blood to give blood in the next couple of days to maintain necessary levels across the country. As you know, type O blood is important for accident victims when there is no time for blood analysis.

My blood type is O positive. I am willing to donate. I am in a monogamous relationship and HIV negative. But the Blood Bank doesn't want my blood because I am male and my partner is male.

Does this make sense?

Yours sincerely

Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height,
The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay,
We never seem to catch the running day
But travel on in everlasting night
With all the chic accoutrements of flight:
Lotions and essences in neat array
And yet another plastic cup and tray.
"Thank you so much. Oh no, I'm quite all right".

At home in Cornwall hurrying autumn skies
Leave Bray Hill barren, Stepper jutting bare,
And hold the moon above the sea-wet sand.
The very last of late September dies
In frosty silence and the hills declare
How vast the sky is, looked at from the land.
-- "Back from Australia" from A nip in the air (1974) by John Betjeman

Anglophile Australian Prime Minister of the 1950s, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, remarked that his ideal place for retirement would be a book-lined cottage in Kent. He was thinking of a kind of Englishness far better understood in the work of John Betjeman. Monday 28 August is the centenary of the birth of Sir John Betjeman CBE, poet laureate, Anglican, and eccentric observer of things English and the struggle between faith and doubt. In The Guardian (26 Aug 06) Terry Philpot look at the role faith played in Betjeman'spoetry.

Never an apologist for the Church of England--some of his poems satirise it--neither was he apologetic about his faith.

If there is a running theme in Betjeman's religious poetry, it is about the "honest doubt" which followed him all his life. This is seen in the conditionality with which he usually refers to his beliefs to friends, in letters and in his work. For example, he told the diarist James Lee-Milne that he "hoped" and thought that hope was greater than charity. He also talks of "wanting" to believe and "clinging" to the sacraments. Indeed, his attachment to a sacramental life was vital to sustaining his faith.

The coexistence of faith and doubt can be seen in lines like " 'I am the Resurrection and the Life': /strong, deep and painful, doubt inserts the knife." His eucharistic faith is poignantly stated in the poem Christmas: "That God was Man in Palestine/And lives today in Bread and Wine."

There were two especially significant experiences that affected his religious life. In childhood, a dreadful fear of hell was communicated by his Calvinist nurse. In later life came his fear of oblivion ("I would rather be alive in hell than extinct," he told one interviewer) but that early fear never left him. Even very late in life he would refer to the eschatological terror that he continued to feel. He also exhibited a deep fear of death and loneliness at end, as seen in poems like The Rest Home and Death in Leamington. [. . .]

Outwardly, Betjeman lived a traditional Anglican existence -- a regular churchgoer, bell ringer, church warden and parochial church council member. Yet behind these appearances, there was, for a poet whom some still regard as a nostalgic versifier, a profound and troubled spiritual existence. That he grappled with this into old age and that his work testifies to a lifelong unyielding search for truth rather than a discovery of it, shows how much Betjeman has to say to citizens of an age in which, in other ways, he found much to reject.

Betjeman appeals to me through his acute sense of place. As Charles Moore writes in The Telegraph(26 Aug 06)

Sometimes his imagination amazes. He listens to the autumn poplars in Harrow-on-the-Hill and imagines that the whole place is being invaded by the sea. He looks up at the cliffs above Matlock and perceives them poised like a great wave "a tossed and stony ocean nearing". Indeed, the sea ebbs and flows throughout his poetry, giving it much of its beauty, strangeness and sadness.

Betjeman understood better than almost any writer of his generation how what is seen--and heard and smelt and tasted--affects what is felt, and recalls it later. His experience of his father's anger or his mother's love, of his first schoolboy crush or his early Christian faith, might have universal application, but only took form in the particular--at the end of a drive from London to Cornwall, on Hackpen Hill near Marlborough, in evensong in City churches. [. . .]

Bells occur so often in Betjeman's poems because their sound dies at once and yet carries so much upon the air. They stand for the human relationship between the present, the past, and the eternal. They remind us of one place and one time, yet speak of all time: "Imprisoned in a cage of sound / Even the trivial seems profound", he wrote about a funeral bell, in a poem entitled, with characteristic specificity, "Uffington". Perhaps he was speaking about his own verse, too. The Global Positioning System that some people now have in their cars directs the driver to a minutely exact place. Betjeman works in the reverse way: he takes you from the minute place and positions you globally.

His Collected Poems contain, as well as an index of first lines, an "Index of Places", which I have never seen in any other book of verse. Start there and work outwards. Betjeman was passionate and utterly professional about his duty to turn this personal and local experience into art. "The gap from feeling to accomplishment!" he lamented. It is a gap that almost all amateur poets fail to bridge. Betjeman succeeded. I have often heard his poems read aloud to non-literary audiences, and there is always a gasp, an explosion of laughter, or a sigh which says, "Yes, that's it." He has "got" our embarrassment, or snobbery, or regret, or longing, our strange relation between what we say and what we really mean. And the flattering thing is that these are his feelings, too.

Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring, The Tortoise stove is lit again And lamp-oil light across the night Has caught the streaks of winter rain In many a stained-glass window sheen From Crimson Lake to Hooker's Green. The holly in the windy hedge And round the Manor House the yew Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge, The altar, font and arch and pew, So that the villagers can say 'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day. Provincial public houses blaze And Corporation tramcars clang, On lighted tenements I gaze Where paper decorations hang, And bunting in the red Town Hall Says 'Merry Christmas to you all.' And London shops on Christmas Eve Are strung with silver bells and flowers As hurrying clerks the City leave To pigeon-haunted classic towers, And marbled clouds go scudding by The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad, And oafish louts remember Mum, And sleepless children's hearts are glad, And Christmas-morning bells say'Come!' Even to shining ones who dwell Safe in the Dorchester Hotel. And is it true? And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all, Seen in a stained-glass window's hue, A Baby in an ox's stall? The Maker of the stars and sea Become a Child on earth for me? And is it true? For if it is, No loving fingers tying strings Around those tissued fripperies, The sweet and silly Christmas things, Bath salts and inexpensive scent And hideous tie so kindly meant, No love that in a family dwells, No carolling in frosty air, Nor all the steeple-shaking bells Can with this single Truth compare-- That God was Man in Palestine And lives today in Bread and Wine.

--Christmas, from A few late chrysanthemums (1954) by John Betjeman.

Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun of 20 Aug 06 is just one of many papers to report at length a full-length interview given by Mr Ian Thorpe OAM in response to yet another round of hurtful and stupid allegations.

Ian Thorpe has hit back at allegations he is fat and unfit by promising to race to new peaks of glory in the pool at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Thorpe, 23, has also defended his Los Angeles lifestyle and denied that gossip about him being gay is getting him down. But the five-times Olympic champion, one of the best swimmers of the modern era, says he is alarmed by the relentless paparazzi. He claims media scrutiny makes him think about retirement every day. Thorpe, who says a desire for privacy drove him out of Australia, was stung to defend his weight by a report he lived on pizza, hamburgers and soft drinks. He continues to train 40 hours a week, he says, and enjoys the tough regime. Thorpe also says he will be fit and firing for the world swimming championships in Melbourne next year. Responding to criticism of him in a Sydney newspaper, Thorpe said his only fast food indulgence was a weekly protein burger. Otherwise he stuck to a training diet.

I don't normally have much time for Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday stablemate, but this week's Sunday Telegraph is right when it opines that Thorpe has earned privacy and respect.

For some inexplicable reason, Australians seem to have a wildly equivocal love-hate relationship with our leading athletes. On the one hand, they are lionised and put up as inviolable objects of veneration, cast as solid-gold role models who can do no wrong, feted and fawned over in a manner that would be embarrassing if it weren't for their achievements. And on the other, they can fall victim to the uniquely Australian syndrome, that of the "tall poppy": a condition in which they become veritable sitting ducks for vicious and bile-filled cynics and critics waiting to attack with unmitigated glee.

Witness one of Australia's most successful and recognised athletes, and our most decorated Olympian, Ian Thorpe. In recent weeks, Thorpe has been the target of another newspaper organisation which ridiculed his physique, relied on unnamed sources who attacked his training ethic and commitment to swimming and questioned his "Hollywood" friends. Thorpe . . . has been almost besieged by those eager to paint a negative portrait of him, and has been forced in recent times to take extraordinary steps to protect his privacy, including moving to another country and taking evasive driving courses.

The stories about his fitness levels and diet were not just a cheap shot, they were wrong. There is now no denying that Thorpe is in swimming mode . . . the legendary swimmer is in excellent shape. . . . Thorpe has dedicated his life to swimming ever since he burst into public consciousness as a callow 14-year-old, and he has done it while graciously accepting the adoration of the public and the never-ending expectation that he continue to dominate the sport he loves, and the scrutiny of those who have questioned his sexuality and his lifestyle. It is important to note, too, that Thorpe has never let his country down, whether in the pool or out of it. Even when the pressures have been enormous, he has been a gentleman; he has made himself available to the public, and has given back to the community through his charity and community work.

He doesn't deserve such appalling treatment. The man Australians have come to love and know as the Thorpedo deserves much better. He deserves respect for his past achievements, just as he deserves the space to enable him to concentrate on those that may be in his future.

ACNS (10 August 06) reports that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams is to visit China from 8-23rd October, at the invitation of the senior leadership of the 'post-denominational' Protestant Churches in China. Dr Williams' visit "is intended to provide a deeper understanding of the Church in China and the varied context in which it is developing. The program will include opportunities to engage with religious leaders, academics, government officials, NGOs and business leaders on the contemporary challenges facing both Church and society and will build on the visits of previous Archbishops of Canterbury in 1983 and 1994. Dr Williams said:

I am greatly looking forward to my first direct encounter with China. I very much welcome this opportunity to come alongside the Church in China, as well as to gain a fuller appreciation of China's remarkable development in recent years and its unique cultural heritage. I am most grateful to Presbyter Ji Jianhong, the Chairperson of the National Committee of the Three Self Patriotic Movement, and to Revd Cao Shengjie, the President of the China Christian Council, for their invitation.

Menawhile, Howard W. French writes in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune on 18 Aug 06 concerning "a national wave of repression against independent, or underground, churches that are not registered with the government and do not recognize the authority of state-appointed spiritual leaders."uch as those Dr Williams will meet.

Since the Regulation on Religious Affairs law, was introduced in March 2005, provincial and local governments have begun a series of crackdowns on underground churches across China. The vaguely worded new rules call for local governments to "standardize" the management of religion nationwide. The Chinese crackdown, which also affects other faiths, especially Buddhism in Tibet and Islam in the far western Xinjiang Province, comes at a time of booming growth in underground churches across the country.

The right to practice any of five recognized faiths -- Buddhism, Catholicism, Taoism, Islam and Protestantism -- is enshrined in the Chinese Constitution, and the authorities routinely insist that religious freedom exists in this country. Under Chinese law, however, all recognized faiths must be registered and approved by the government, and they are closely monitored and required to follow strict and frequently changing regulations.

Armed with the new law, religious affairs and human rights specialists say, local officials are forcing small, independent parishes to close or to merge under tighter government control. The new rules also make it harder to register with the authorities even for those who wish to operate within the law. According to the China Aid Association, an American Christian advocacy group that monitors religious freedom in China, 1,958 pastors were arrested at churches like these in the past year alone.

Although the crackdown is decentralized, with each province and locality carrying out the repression on its own, the pattern is as unmistakable as the constant stream of incidents. In one recent case in Tongwei, a village in eastern Anhui Province, in late July, 90 children were reportedly detained with 40 adults after the police raided a Protestant Sunday school, calling the church teachings "illegal evangelism."

At about the same time, in Hebei Province in the north, as many as 90 protesters were arrested after demanding the release of two clergymen from the underground Roman Catholic Church, who had been detained without explanation.

French describes and incident in Hangzhou incident, in which the authorities demolished a the nearly completed church, saying that it was being built without proper authorization, while working hard to suppress news of the event.

One parishioner who spoke to foreign journalists about the destruction was detained. Zan Aizong was arrested and then fired from his job as a reporter for a local newspaper, after he wrote of the church demolition on a Chinese Web site.

According to a lawyer for the parishioners, most of them poor peasants, church leaders had long sought a permit to build a new place of worship but had been frustrated at every turn by administrative obstacles. At one point, parishioners were told they could erect a church on a narrow, triangular plot under an elevated highway.

"It was totally inappropriate for a church, and such a location gives us reason to believe the government doesn't want them to build a church," said the lawyer, Li Boguang. Asked why, he said: "The Chinese government is an atheistic government. They are afraid of the Christians and don't want to see Christianity develop, so they find all kinds of means to prevent it from growing freely."

For some years, the Superannuated Commonwealth Officers' Association (SCOA) has been pursuing the payment of superannuation death benefits for members of same sex couples. SCOA represents superannuated former employees of the Australian Government. The average age of its members must be well over 60; this suggests that some older people are not as opposed to same-sex couples as might be thought. As I will be a retiree in not too many years (!), SCOA's campaign on behalf of same-sex couples encouraged me to join.

The Superannuation (Entitlements of Same Sex Couples) Act 2003 allowed superannuation funds to pay 'reversionary' death benefits to members of same sex couples, but did ignored schemes for Australian Government employees, which are cover by separate laws. SCOA was also disappointed that changes didn't make such reversionary compulsory across for all the non-Government superannuation schemes, but left the decision to each fund's trustees. This unfair and discriminatory arrangement allows moral judgments to affect the retirement income security of many Australians.

SCOA has written repeatedly to the Minister for Finance and Administration, Senator Minchin, on these questions. His office replied in February 2006 that

Extending eligibility to reversionary benefits in the closed defined benefit schemes (the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme and the Public Sector Superannuation Scheme) is a more complex matter than for accumulation funds, which are the more common superannuation funds. As such the issue is still being examined.

Earlier advice from Senator Minchin had said,

However, because of the design of these schemes a number of technical matters and also budgetary considerations need to be fully examined before any decision can be made.

Yet the Federal Treasurer, Mr Costello, said on ABC News on 7 June 2006 that he supported improved superannuation rights for same sex couples.

On 24 May 2006 SCOA made a submission to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's inquiry into entitlements for same sex couples. It outlined its attempts to lobbying the Government and asked that the inquiry recommend that reversionary benefits be paid compulsorily to members of same sex couples.

The Australian Government schemes in question are now closed to new employees. I speculate that the present Howard Government will ignore its promises and not change them.

18 August 2006 is Australia's Vietnam Veterans' Day and the 40th Anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan. It was the first significant engagement for the 1st Australian Task Force in South Vietnam, costing 18 Australian lives and many more Vietnamese lives. The Vietnam war was the Australia's longest war, from 1962 to 1973. About 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam during the conflict. There were well over 3,000 casualties, including 520 deaths, of Australian service personnel. More have since died from war-related injuries or illnesses and many others still bear physical and mental scars.

As in America, Australia's participation in the war caused deep social and political conflict. I was one of those obliged to register as a potential draftee, though I was not selected. I was opposed to Australia's participation in the war but I do not criticize servicemen and women who did their duty honourably and are now represented by the Vietnam Veterans' Association. Blame rests with the conservative government of the day which, in craven subservience to the United States, committed Australia to the war. The friendship between Australian Prime Minister Holt and US President Johnson was genuine, but many Australians still wince at the memory of Holt's declaration, "All the way with LBJ." I did not like street demonstrations, but I sympathised with the protest slogan, "Drop Holt on Hanoi." One of the first acts of the new Australian Labor Party government elected on 2 December 1972 after 23 years of conservative rule was to abolish the conscription regulations.

The Medallion reproduced above depicts the Long Tan Cross which was raised on the third anniversary of the battle and remained while the Australians were stationed in the province. Today it is in the military museum at Bien Hoa. After long negotiation with the Australian Veterans Vietnam Reconstruction Group, in April 2002 the Vietnamese people unveiled a completely renovated memorial, giving official acceptance by the Vietnamese of the site's importance to Australian veterans. The AVVRG, a recognised non government organisation in Vietnam, has long worked in the former Australian Task Force area of operations, with aid projects such as water filtering systems apparatus, an orphanage, microfinance programs, English language tutoring and a kindergarten.

The Australian Senate today defeated 59 to 4 a proposal by Senator Bob Brown, Leader of the Australian Greens, that a Senate committee investigate and report on:

The role of the Exclusive Brethren in:
(a) family breakdown and psychological and emotional effects related to the practice of excommunication or other practices;
(b) Australian politics and political activities, including donations to political parties or other political entities and funding specific advertising campaigns;
(c) the receipt of funding from the Federal Government or other political entities;
(d) taxation and other special arrangements or exemptions from Australian law that relate to Exclusive Brethren businesses;
(e) special arrangements and exemptions from Australian law that relate to Exclusive Brethren schools, military service and voting; and
(f) any related matters.

The Labor party did not support Senator Brown's proposal because, in the words of Senator Chris Evans,

Labor's view is that a term of reference for a Senate inquiry into the Exclusive Brethren is not justified on the basis of our view of the Senate's function. We do not think it is appropriate for us to be conducting an inquiry into a private, in this case, religious organisation. There are other avenues to pursue various
points of concern that Senator Brown has listed in his motion. Some of those are available to him within the parliament, and I will certainly defend his right to raise these issues within the appropriate forums. Some of the matters really are a matter for the police, the Australian Electoral Commission or for the Taxation Office; concerns in those areas ought to be referred to them.

Conservative senators echoed Senator Eric Abetz's earlier call for Bob Brown to apologise. "Senator Brown should do the decent thing -- withdraw the motion and publicly apologise to the Australian people and to the Senate for this extreme and obnoxious vilification of this minority group." Abetz has gone so far as to compare Brown's action to Nazi persecution of the Jews. Being offensive himself, Abetz had said, "When a leader of a political party in Australia starts scapegoating a lawful religious minority the warning bells of history should be ringing loud . . . once you remove the Green overcoat, there is a Brown shirt lurking underneath."

The ABC reported on the Exclusive Brethren in its Background Briefing radio program on 30 April 2006.

The members (15,000 in Australia) don't vote because government is God's work. Yet their world leader, Sydney businessman Bruce Hales, has led his members into political activism. His titles rival those of the Pope in their effusiveness -- Elect Vessel, the Lord's Representative on Earth, the Great Man, the Paul of Our Day, Minister of the Lord in Recovery.

The Brethren are spending large sums for Australian political campaigns, including tens of thousands of dollars in a campaign to make life difficult for the Greens in the most recent Tasmanian State election. The New Zealand Greens also allege dirty tricks against them by the Exclusive Brethren.

The Tasmanian Greens were targeted by two campaigns, one from a group of Tasmanian business leaders warning of the dangers of minority government, and the other from a two men, later revealed to be members of the Exclusive Brethren, who leafleted every letterbox in Tasmania and placed ads in newspapers with an anti-Green message. They attacked the Greens on same-sex marriage and said they were planning to introduce unconditional dole payments for all. The impact of the campaign is difficult to assess, but the greens are convinced that The Exclusive Brethren are a malevolent social and political force -- as would seem evident from the ABC's report.

Tasmania's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner found there to be sufficient grounds to investigate a complaint about the Exclusive Brethren in relation to its conduct during the Tasmanian election campaign, especially in it publication of newspaper advertisements expressing alarm about the Tasmanian Greens' policies on same-sex marriages and sex-change operations. The Commissioner's decision has not been released. The Australian Electoral Commission has confirmed it is still "considering whether the Exclusive Brethren have a disclosure obligation related to the 2004 federal election".

David Marr has a full length article on the Exclusive Brethren in the Sydney Morning Herald of 1 Jul 06. In the article, Marr says that

Bob Brown admits his party was "almost culpably naive" going into the Tasmanian elections earlier this year. Mysterious pamphlets appeared smearing the Greens' lax attitudes to drugs and attacking the party's tax policies. But the focus was on sex: homosexuals, gay marriage, sex-change operations funded by Medicare and the foul idea that "persons [may] choose their own gender regardless of their sex at birth".

In a 16 August media release, the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group condemned the Senate's refusal to investigate the political activity of the Exclusive Brethren, but took heart that the Brethren's sect's political advertising is currently under examination by the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commission. Spokesperson Rodney Croome said that the Brethren have been behind gay-hate advertising campaigns in at least five countries, including Australia, and must be brought to account.

The vilification of minorities on such a huge and co-ordinated scale demands public scrutiny. The inquiry proposed by the Australian Greens would have exposed how the Brethren's anti-gay and anti-transgender hate campaigns are organised and funded, whether they are linked to mainstream political parties, and the objectives behind them.

Croome dismissed claims by Senator Eric Abetz that the Greens motion amounted to vilification of a religious group. "Hate cannot hide behind the Cross. If neo-Nazis had been published anti-gay and anti-transgender ads like the Brethren's the public would demand to know what was going on."

All this raises a difficult ethical question. Freedom of religion is extraordinarily important and to be protected whenever possible. But it is not absolute. It is surely possible to conclude that some religions are evil. Even the most important religions have been expressed in evil ways, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Can a parliamentary committee properly investigate whether a religious group is malevolent? Australia's constitution makes its Parliament responsible for peace, order and good government. The Australian Senate is an unlikely to stoop to McCarthyism; a majority of members on any committee would prevent a witch hunt; the Senate has done the Australian people a disservice in not responding to Senator Brown more carefully.

Rodney Croome wrote this letter to Tasmanian newspaper, The Mercury.

Dear Editor,

The Senate's refusal to investigate the Exclusive Brethren's political activity is a slap in the face to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people.

According to New Zealand academic, Marion Maddox, members of the Brethren have been behind anti-gay hate advertising campaigns for over a decade in at least five countries, including Australia. Vilification of minorities on such a huge and co-ordinated scale raises legitimate questions of public concern including how the Brethren's hate campaigns are organised and funded, the objectives behind them, and whether they are linked to mainstream political parties.

Congratulations to Senator Christine Milne for raising the latter issue. Many GLBT people are suspicious that the Brethren act as a front group for homophobic elements within the Liberal Party. The suspicion that the two are linked deepened when state election ads authorised by members of the Exclusive Brethren and those issued by the Liberal Party condemned same-sex marriage using identical wording.

Given that these ads fostered the kind of hatred which leads to discrimination and violence, the Liberal Party has a duty to account for this perfect match beyond the evasive responses we've heard from State Director, Damien Mantach.

To re-inspire trust in the Liberal Party could Mr Mantach please tell the Tasmanian public:

• Were gay and transgender issues discussed by members of the Exclusive Brethren and representatives of the Liberal Party before the last election?
• Were any materials exchanged relating to these issues, or to political advertising about these issues?
• Was money exchanged in relation to research, design or publication of political advertisements?
• How does the Liberal Party account for the fact that references to same-sex marriage in its election materials exactly match those in materials distributed by the Exclusive Brethren?
• Having met with representatives of the Brethren, will Damien Mantach now meet representatives of the GLBT community to discuss our concerns?

Yours sincerely,
Rodney Croome.
17 Aug 06

Note to press: being Christian is not anti-gay, James A Lopata, In Newsweekly, Boston 10 Aug 2006.

Are Christianity and homosexuality antithetical to each other? You might be led to that conclusion after reading many articles in the mainstream press lately. Unless it's a story specifically about the intersection of gay rights and religion -- like an article about openly gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson -- you're unlikely to find coverage of gay rights concerns that don't include anti-gay quotes from those who profess religious beliefs and an absence of pro-gay quotes from religious people. [. . .]

The problem is that good journalists are missing the irrelevance of supposed inverse relationships between homosexuality and Christianity just as many good journalists once missed the point that the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal was about pedophilia and not homosexuality. Worse still, the mainstream press still largely blanks on pro-gay religious activities when reporting on gay concerns.

The Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry (RCFM) has been a significant presence in lobbying for same-sex marriage rights. To the Boston Globe's credit, the newspaper wrote a significant story about the group and the work it was doing to defeat the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment several days before the July 12 Constitutional Convention (ConCon).
But when it came time for the Globe to cover the ConCon, there was no mention of RCFM, despite the fact that there were several pro-gay-marriage clergy from different religious denominations -- Unitarian, Episcopalian, United Church of Christ -- who showed up wearing their clerical garb -- so they weren't to be missed -- at the State House that day. Did the reporters assume that if they were religious that they must have been anti-gay? They could have interviewed Episcopalian Rev'd. Anne C. Fowler, United Methodist Rev. Tiffany Steinwert or American Baptist Rev. Irv Cummings. But they didn't. The Globe cover story quoted extensively from a Catholic nun who opposed same-sex marriage, and it quoted from another gay marriage opponent who was quoted as saying, "We came here today to support God."

That's all well and good, except that many, many people who support gay marriage also showed up at the State House to "support God." Why weren't they quoted? The divide on gay rights is not a divide between gay rights supporters and Christians. There are Christians on both sides of the issue. The divide is between gay rights supporters and those who favor discriminating against gay people. That's it.

Let's stop pretending that religion has anything to do with this. Those who support discrimination may think that it is because they are Christian, but nobody, least of all the press, should let them get away with it. Just because most -- if not all -- gay rights opponents are religious, doesn't mean that all gay people are anti-religious. The press needs to do a better job of ensuring that the Christian voice is heard on both sides of the debate.

Christian Churches are unified in their solidarity with the people of Gaza. Episcopal News Service reports a Caritas statement that on July 29, Caritas Jerusalem's President Monsignor Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem -- accompanied by Bishop Munib Younan, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and Bishop Riah Abu Al Assal of the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East, with other religious leaders -- visited the Gaza Strip to show solidarity its people.

The solidarity visit began with the delegation seeking to enter the Gaza Strip from the Erez crossing point, but they were delayed for two and one half hours even though the religious leaders had secured entry permits in advance.

Gaza's Roman Catholic parish priest Manuel Musallam had arranged a full program which had to be cut short due to the delay to enter Gaza. The delegation was not able to visit the most recently devastated areas of Al Maghazi and Atatrah in North Gaza.

(Details of the visit.)

[. . . ] The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, said he was pleased to be in Gaza, pointing out that the visit aims at showing the Churches solidarity with the Palestinian people. He stressed the importance of national unity to reach our goals, affirming that the all aggression against the Palestinian people must stop.

The Bishop of the Anglican Church, Riah H. Abu El-Assal, said the delegation carried greetings of Jerusalem to the people of Gaza despite the attempts to steal our freedom. For his part, the Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Jerusalem, Rev. Mounib Younan, stressed that justice must prevail to make a real peace, pointing out that occupation and walls produce hatred, not peace and love.

Since June 28, 2006, with the beginning of the recent problems in Gaza, Caritas Jerusalem has reached out to 1,074 families in the Gaza Strip with direct assistance and humanitarian food aid. The assistance has been made possible due to the support of numerous Caritas partner organizations that have joined Caritas Jerusalem's Special Operations Appeal.

So far Caritas partners from Australia, Belgium Canada, England, Japan, Spain, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland and France as well as other organizations such as Aid to the Church in Need from Germany and many individual donors have supported this appeal. This appeal was issued in May for almost $1.5 million (U.S. dollars). Since the initial release of the appeal, the situation in the Holy Land has deteriorated dramatically since the end of June.

In the Sydney Mornig Herald today (5 Aug 06) Adele Horin writes about the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's current National Inquiry into Discrimination against People in Same-Sex Relationships. She describes the experiences of some of the people who made submissions to the enquiry, including me.

The craziest thing in the article is that, as Horin notes, Prime Minister, John Howard, has said: "We will always seek to remove areas of discrimination against homosexual, gay and lesbian people. . . " Yet it is plainly and simply obvious that he has not done so. The hundreds of submissions to the Inquiry, including mine, are abundant evidence of government's hypocrisy and the Prime Minister's failure to keep his word.

Gay rights have come a long way in the past 30 years, but state and federal laws ensure homosexual couples are treated as second-class citizens.

Because of the 36-year age difference they had seemed an unlikely pair. Yet it had been love at first sight when Jiro Takamisawa met World War II veteran John George in Tokyo in 1984. George impressed the younger man with his "amazing personality", his kindness, his sense of humour and his knowledge of theatre. The Australian immigration officer was sceptical of the relationship when she later approved Takamisawa's application for permanent residency in Australia. But the relationship stood the test of time. "In the beginning I was dependent on him," Takamisawa, 48, says. "But in the last years he was dependent on me. I told him, 'I will be with you whatever happens'."

They lived together for 20 years, and Takamisawa gave up his job to care for his ailing partner in the last years of his life. After George died of heart disease in October 2004, aged 83, his grieving partner applied -- on principle -- for a war widow's pension. In the same situation a wife would have qualified. Takamisawa was taken aback when the Department of Veterans Affairs granted him the pension in January last year. The only catch was the letter addressed him as "Miss". When he informed the department he was a "Mr" the pension was rescinded immediately. There was sympathy but the law did not allow it.

The passionate debate around gay marriage and civil unions has obscured the continuing discrimination against homosexual couples embedded in dozens of pieces of federal and some state legislation. From the Veterans Entitlements Act to the Workplace Relations Act, from the Income Tax Assessment Act to the National Health Act, gay couples are excluded from receiving a range of benefits available to married and de facto heterosexual couples. Definitions of the term "spouse", "partner" or "dependent" explicitly exclude people in same-sex relationships.

This can affect access to carer's leave, bereavement leave and bereavement payments, the widow's allowance, health care and pensioner concession cards, superannuation spouse contributions, "paternity" leave, and child-care rebates where the non-biological mother pays the child-care fees.

It means the couple - because of a lack of acknowledgement of their combined income or expenditure - cannot qualify for a reduced Medicare levy and other benefits that flow to families under the Pharmaceutical Benefits and Medicare Safety Net schemes. Federal public servants, defence force members, veterans, members of Parliament and judges face particular discrimination in areas such as superannuation, pensions and workers' compensation.

Stories of discrimination are pouring forth at moving public hearings the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is holding around the country. Its investigation into discrimination against people in same-sex relationships, focusing on financial and work-related entitlements, is bringing to light the extent to which gay couples are treated as second-class citizens.

Stevie Clayton, chief executive of the AIDS Council of NSW, told the Sydney hearing the impact of the discrimination was "not that we miss out on a few dollars: when you have laws that say your relationships are not as real and whole and as important as everyone else's you see yourself in that way -- it leads to higher rates of depression, alcohol and drug use".

The people coming forward at the hearings -- or making written submissions -- are the kind that have converted staunch conservatives such as Warren Entsch, the Liberal backbencher from northern Queensland, to the cause of equal rights for same-sex couples. He has drafted a bill, to be presented to Coalition colleagues soon, to eliminate discrimination against these couples.

Thirty years after gays came out of the closet, many now have lived with their partner for two decades or more. They are federal public servants such as Brian McKinlay, 58, who wrote to the inquiry that he had been required, when he joined the Australian Public Service 30 years ago, to join the Public Sector Superannuation Scheme. "Of itself, that is no bad thing," he says. His salary is double that of his 60-year-old long-term partner "and I want to provide security for him should I die before he does".

But as the legislated definition of "eligible spouse" for the scheme excludes a person of the same sex, he cannot provide that security through superannuation death benefits. They hold all their "debts and assets in common -- house, mortgage, car, bank account, furniture, insurance, etc. Superannuation is the only asset of importance that we cannot share."

John Goldbaum wrote that he is in "a same-sex de facto marriage" of 30 years. His "husband" has three biological children and "we now have seven grandchildren and they all love me and regard me as their grandfather". But they had not been eligible for a family rate for private health insurance.

"That's in the past . . . We are now getting old," he wrote. And the discrimination continues. They cannot combine their expenditure in order to reach the Medicare and Pharmaceutical Benefit safety net thresholds, and pay out twice as much as their heterosexual counterparts because they each must reach the thresholds. "It's not the money . . . it's the principle. It makes us second-class citizens despite the fact that we are first-class taxpayers."

Jim Woulfe is looking further ahead, to the possibility of nursing home care. Though he and Andreas Ohm, his partner of 19 years, are fit 49-year-olds, they know that without changes to the Aged Care Act they may suffer discrimination should one of them need to move into an aged-care residence. Under the act, the family home does not have to be sold to pay for the accommodation bond if a spouse or heterosexual de facto partner is still living in it. But a gay partner is not given the same protection.

Entsch, who describes himself as "fiercely heterosexual", says his bill would eliminate such discrimination by inserting where appropriate in all relevant laws the words "same sex and interdependent couples". Friendship with gay people has opened his eyes. "I've had one fellow working for me, he's been in a gay relationship for 15 years. He bleeds when you cut him. He's a decent human being," he says. "I know people in Canberra together for 40 years. An ex-public servant who is 78 with a partner 72. If the older man dies his partner gets nothing out of Commonwealth super. I have a wonderful partner but if I broke up with her, walked down the street and met someone, lived with her six months and nominated her as my 'spouse' she would get five-eighths of my pension."

Some progress has been made in eliminating discrimination. For example, gay partners of serving military are treated as an "interdependent partner" and have their moving costs covered in transfers. As well, changes in superannuation laws in 2004 mean people in "interdependency relationships" can receive the same super benefits as married or de facto partners, but this does not apply to federal public servants, defence force personnel, or parliamentarians.

Changes to state law have put same-sex couples on an equal footing in areas such as inheritance, division of property and next-of-kin rights. But parenting rights remain unequal. Susan Everingham and Maria Vidal, together for 13 years, have a 20-month-old daughter, Antonia. Everingham told the Sydney hearing: "I am her biological mother but my partner loves her just as much and yet our daughter's birth certificate states she has only one parent. I find that very sad."

An increasing number of lesbians use artificial insemination, but the non-biological parent -- unlike a male partner in the same situation -- has limited rights. The lack of formal recognition causes uncertainty in areas such as parental authority in relation to schooling and medical treatment. Under the federal laws, she is not eligible for "paternity" leave when the baby is born, and may not have equal rights to access if the relationship breaks up, or a responsibility to pay child support.

"We are a family and yet if I die, Maria would have to rely on the good will of my parents and three siblings not to challenge her right to have custody," Everingham says.

Lynne Martin and her partner of 12 years, Michelle McCormack, have an eight-week-old son, Tom. Dismay over discrimination has prompted them to consider taking advantage of a rare benefit available to them that is not available to heterosexual couples -- the sole parent payment. As their relationship is not recognised under the Social Security Act, McCormack, the biological mother, is eligible for the payment. "It's a moral dilemma," Martin says.

In comparison with gay marriage or civil unions, the push for equality before the law in these less contentious areas has more chance of success. Entsch says most of his colleagues are giving strong support: "A number of them want to second my bill."

The Prime Minister, John Howard, while leading the charge against civil unions, has said: "We will always seek to remove areas of discrimination against homosexual, gay and lesbian people . . . "

Michael Burge, like the others who spoke at the Sydney hearings, believes legal changes would help soften homophobic attitudes. But his experience tells him that will not be enough. After his partner of four years, Jonathan Rosten, died suddenly, he found his name had been removed from the death certificate when the funeral director complied with requests of Rosten's family even though under NSW law Burge was next of kin. "Change will come when parents and family accept their sons and daughters are openly gay and have relationships which are in every way equal to heterosexual relationships," he says.

With census night on 8 August 2006, the Australian Coalition for Equality has reminded same-sex couples and people with differing gender identities that it is important they be counted in the Australian 2006 Census of Population and Housing.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will count the number of same-sex couples in Australia for the third time during this census -- having previously counted 10,214 couples in 1996 and 19,594 couples in 2001.

Same-sex couples can have their relationship counted by indicating that they are in a de facto relationship at questions 5 and 53. The Coalition provides more information here. One partner fills in their details as person one, and the other as person two. To indicate a same-sex relationship, you each indicate the same sex at question 3 (i.e. both male, or both female), while at question 5 person two indicates that they are in a 'de facto relationship with person 1' at question 5.

The Census will underestimates the number of non-heterosexual people in Australia, as it does not ask the sexual orientation of individuals. The ABS says that for statistical purposes "A de facto marriage exists between a couple of the same sex when the two people are usual residents in the same household and their relationship is reported as husband, wife, spouse, partner, de facto, common law husband/wife/spouse, lover or boyfriend. The term girlfriend is not used as an indication of a de facto marriage between two females who are usual residents in the same household."

I was once a supporter of the State of Israel. No longer. I have long been troubled by the hardship imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people. I join the dismay at Israel's airstrike on the village of Qana, killing more that 56 people, mostly women and children. One word came to mind at once when I heard of the bombing: Guernica

Certainly Hezbollah's assaults on Israel are wrong and the Israelis have some entitlement to respond with force. It is one thing to hunt out and destroy launching sites for rockets and the guerrillas who threaten and murder Israelis; but it is quite another to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure and kill its children. This is merely revenge and retribution that will make Israel no safer. Israel wants the Lebanese government to rein in Hezbollah and control its southern border, yet hinders its capacity to do so. It would to do better to equip and work with the Lebanese army or police. The fragile Lebanese government has been crippled and its ability to restrain violence within its own borders weakened. Israel has blundered. Hezbollah is gaining in support. The appalling sights of dead children, flattened buildings and floods of refugees are reinvigorating terrorism and demanding the support of all Muslim nations.

An open letter from the Rt. Rev. Riah H. Abu El-Assal, Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, 26 July 2006.

Dear Friends,
For the past forty years we have been largely alone on this desert fighting a predator that not only has robbed us of all but a small piece of our historic homeland, but threatens the traditions and holy sites of Christianity. We are tired, weary, sick, and wounded. We need your help.

We have seen and we have been the recipients of the generosity of our American and British friends. We cherish the support of everyone throughout the world who stands with us in solidarity. Daily, I hear from many of them who express outrage at the arrogant and aggressive positions of President Bush, Secretary Rice, Senator Clinton, and Prime Minister Blair. I am saddened to realize just how much the deserved prestige of the United States and Britain has declined as a result of politicians who seem to devalue human life and suffering. And, I am disturbed that the Zionist Christian community is damaging America's image as never before.

Little more than a week ago, we were focused on the plight of the Palestinian people. In Gaza, four and five generations have been victims of Israeli racism, hate crimes, terror, violence, and murder. Garbage and sewage have created a likely outbreak of cholera as Israeli strategies create the collapse of infrastructures. There is no milk. Drinking water, food, and medicine are in serious short supply. Innocents are being killed and dying from lack of available emergency care. Children are paying the ultimate price. Even for those whose lives are spared, many of them are traumatized and will not grow to live useful lives. Commerce between the West Bank and Gaza has been halted and humanitarian aid barely trickles into some of the neediest in the world.

Movement of residents of the West Bank is difficult or impossible as "security measures" are heightened to break the backs of the Palestinian people and cut them off from their place of work, schools, hospitals, and families. It is family and community that has sustained these people during these hopeless times. For some, it is all that they had, but that too has been taken away with the continued building of the wall and check points. The strategy of ethnic cleansing on the part of the State of Israel continues.

This week, war broke out on the Lebanon-Israeli border (near Banyas where Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to heaven and earth). The Israeli government's disproportionate reaction to provocation was consistent with their opportunistic responses in which they destroy their perceived enemy.

In her recent article, "The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel," American, Kathleen Christison, a former CIA analyst says, "The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength." She continues, "A society that can brush off as unimportant an army officer's brutal murder of a thirteen year old girl on the claim that she threatened soldiers at a military post (one of nearly seven hundred Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since the Intifada began) is not a society with a conscience." The "situation" as it has come to be called, has deteriorated into a war without boundaries or limitations. It is a war with deadly potential beyond the imaginations of most civilized people.

As I write to you, I am preparing to leave with other bishops for Nablus with medical and other emergency supplies for five hundred families, and a pledge for one thousand families more.

On Saturday we will attempt to enter Gaza with medical aid for doctors and nurses in our hospital there who struggle to serve the injured, the sick, and the dying.

My plan is that I will be able to go to Lebanon next week--where we are presently without a resident priest--to bury the dead, and comfort the victims of war. Perhaps as others have you will ask, "What can I do?" Certainly we encourage and appreciate your prayers. That is important, but it is not enough. If you find that you can no longer look away, take up your cross. It takes courage as we were promised.

Write every elected official you know. Write to your news media. Speak to your congregation, friends, and colleagues about injustice and the threat of global war. If Syria, Iran, the United States, Great Britain, China and others enter into this war--the consequence is incalculable. Participate in rallies and forums. Find ways that you and your churches can participate in humanitarian relief efforts for the region. Contact us and let us know if you stand with us. I urge you not to be like a disciple watching from afar.

2 Corinthians 6.11: "We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians, our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return--I speak as to children--open wide your hearts also."

In, with, and through Christ,

Riah H. Abu El-Assal

Stephen Hough is a well-known concert pianist and also fine writer. He is interested in theology as well as music and his book The Bible as prayer will be published by Continuum in early 2007. A couple of pieces of his writing, reproduced on his website, are especially helpful to me. In 1983 Hough won the Naumburg International Piano Competition in New York. He describes it as the "best of times" for it opened the door at once to an international performing career; but it was also the "worst of times".

To begin with, I had very few concertos in my repertoire--maybe six or seven. What would I do when it was the eighth which was requested? Learn it, of course! But when in one season I had to learn seven new concertos and keep as many older ones on the boil too my mind began seriously to spin out of control. "Tiredness can kill: take a break" is wise advice, but once this car is up and running it can be very hard to pull over to the lay-by and rest a while. The temptation to continue driving can be overwhelming
[. . .]
I became terribly tired--always tired. I was forever hurtling backwards and forwards across the Atlantic and learning repertoire became a chore--works which had thrilled me were now like heavy burdens on my back. I was like someone whose garden tree had produced a few admired, succulent pears and was now faced with planting a whole orchard. How could I not just learn the notes of all this music but make it my own, wear it, live it? And if this season's recital was well-received what would I play next season? "Lovely programme idea, but we really need some Schubert . . . I'm afraid we had too much Liszt last season, do you play any Scriabin? . . . It's too much unusual repertoire . . . it's too much standard repertoire . . . so and so has just cancelled in Los Angeles tomorrow, do you play the Beethoven 4th? . . . Ms. Connie Ductor has asked for you in Tokyo. Can you learn d'Issey Nantes' Concertino for Piano and Brass? Rehearsals start in three weeks".

I sat by a hotel pool one glorious afternoon in Singapore sipping a cool drink and wondered why I was not enjoying all of this. Only a couple of years before it was what I really wanted to do and things were going well. This poolside reflection was a very low moment for me but was also an important point of realization that no 'best of times' which relied on some 'thing' to support it could be guaranteed to last. I would only really find joy in my music if I was not expecting the music itself to provide me with joy. If I could stand back from it then I could see it in perspective, a partner in rather than a provider of happiness. That moment between the Monday of depression and the Tuesday of serenity was the point at which best and worst could be seen as two sides of the same tapestry: one knotted and tangled, the other smooth and ordered but stitched by the same hand and part of the same design. It was also a Catholic moment, when I dipped my toe tentatively back into a faith which put things into an even bigger context. Times have been better since.

 

Problems Playing the Piano?
[. . .]
Psychological problems probably account for the vast majority of difficulties or discouragements for a musician at every stage of their careers, and most of these should be avoidable. So often it boils down to inflated or distorted egos: the excessive desire to be admired, successful, or praised. There's a sense in which these desires contain perfectly natural reflexes for us as human beings, both sheer survival techniques and also a matter of common sense and mental stability. But there's also the potential here for enormous strain and self-destruction. If we walk on to the stage, or into a lesson, with an excessive hunger for approval or adulation we stifle something inside us. Aside from any moral or cultural distaste one might have for boastful, egotistical people, such self-absorption rarely makes sense from a purely practical standpoint. It's like driving on the highway and looking too closely at the car in the next lane--the lack of perspective is dizzying and dangerous. Or like seeing reality in a mirror--observing ourselves only through the eyes of others and their approval or lack of it. The great pianist, Egon Petri, once said that we would never be nervous if we were humble. It's not a matter of not caring, or of being a shrinking violet, but of practical mental health.

This is a battle with the self which is never completely won, and each defeat can be a further source of discouragement! I'm certainly far from victory and constantly have to remind myself again and again of these issues. But that bad masterclass, that failed audition, that vicious review, that memory lapse can pass us by unscathed if we can try to transcend the debris of our wounded egos. Whatever musical talent we have, whether great or modest, will flourish better in the larger garden of ultimate reality than in the cramped plant-pots of our own small worlds. To reach beyond ourselves in achievement is an ambition which can best be achieved by looking beyond our 'selves'. That is after all what 'ecstasy' means, to stand outside: not as an 'outsider' but as one passionately involved, with a perspective that's as large as the reality it aims to contemplate. (April 2005)

I came across Stephen Hough's writing through an extract in the The Tablet (29 Apr 06), from "An equal music", a chapter of The Way We Are Now (ed. Ben Summerskill) also published by Continuum.

The first message of explicit negativity I heard towards being gay came from my religious beliefs as I entered my teenage years in an evangelical Church. The teaching was that something growing within me (which was me) was disgusting and must be kept quiet, cured, squashed, punished . . anything will do.
[. . .]
I became a Catholic at the age of 19 and the teaching on homosexuality remained the same, although being unmarried now became a respectable, even glamorous option.
[. . .]
It was when reading Pope John Paul II's famous book Love and Responsibility, published in 1960 when he was an auxiliary bishop in Krakow, that I first began to think again about this issue. You cannot offer such a radiant and dazzling vision of love and human relationships to your readers, and then exclude those who happen to have "green eyes". Once you have affirmed, as he did controversially and courageously for a Catholic bishop of his time, the sacredness of the human body and its self-gift in the sexual act, you have opened a floodgate of recognition for all who have both bodies to reverence and "selves" to give.

"It is not good that the man should be alone," said God in the opening chapters of the Bible and of human history--the one blemish in an otherwise unblemished world, where everything was "very good". Such an affirmation of companionship at the beginning of time is fresh and inspiring still; and, combined with new discoveries about sexual orientation in the natural world, it opens up a radical challenge to previously confident assessments of the morality of gay relationships.

To share a life of intimacy with another is the way the vast majority of men and women, regardless of their gender preference, are meant to live whole and holy lives. Such relationships are about more than making babies. They are about making love, because to do so is to be fully human, with sensitive, "musical" hearts attuned to vibrations that animals may hear but only men and women can hold. Celibacy is of value only as an affirmation of what is renounced--the best given up freely because it is the best gift one can give. If celibacy is not rare, and a totally free donation, it has the whiff of something slightly perverse about it--literally "contrary to nature".

We are subject to natural law as part of creation, but we are also able to contemplate it and relish it. It is the great epiphany of reality: what is actually there, not what we would like to be there, or what our forebears have told us is there. It can be full of surprises, and it has no favourites. The one who claims natural law as an ally in arguing for the sanctity of life might end up finding it an annoying foe in a discussion on homosexuality.

When the world in which we live tells a different story from what we were taught, we eventually have to break free. It isn't so much that law changes, but that the Church (from St Paul onwards) simply has not had the vocabulary to discuss an issue it neither named nor understood. (The idea that a person could actually be homosexual, rather than a badly behaved heterosexual, has been accepted by the Church only in the past 30 years or so.)

Law is living and flexible: always growing, adapting, changing shape; never abandoning its roots but never rigid either. Christ not only boiled theology down to the simple statement, "God is love", he also distilled the complex religious laws of his time to love of that same God and of neighbour as oneself. The spiritual liberty and simplicity that resulted from this new, unified vision led, in theory at least, to the breaking down of the divisive barriers between men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. It is tragic that it took Christians at least 1,900 years even to begin to explore or live this freedom in practice. The prison gates were open but we remained inside, either cowering in the corner or standing with arms outstretched, blocking the exit. Both responses came from fear, and both were betrayals of the Christian message.

Ultimately the only real argument against homosexual equality is a belief that God has told us it is wrong. All the other reasons given (destruction of the family, seduction of the young, unnatural behaviour, a genetic disorder like alcoholism) are attempts to find a common, secular currency to barter for what is an a priori, religious judgement. But the coins are fake and are being rendered obsolete by common sense and daily experience.

Actually I believe that the religious arguments are wrong too, and that, as with slavery, the Churches will have to re-evaluate their teaching on this issue--but that's for another chapter, indeed another book. That re-evaluation will probably take decades, but in the meantime the Churches cannot expect gay non-Christians in a secular world to abstain from sexual relationships from their teenage years up to the end of their lives [. . .]

AngliCORD is appealing for emergency help for Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. The hospital is a vital institution of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, and led by Palestinian Christian Suhalia Tarazi.

Serious food, water, fuel, and power shortages are devastating for Palestinian families in the Gaza strip, as conflict deepens the humanitarian crisis. AngliCORD's long term partner in Gaza, the Al Ahli Arab Hospital, is seriously affected by a lack of power, medical supplies and food. Al Ahli needs money to run the hospital generator, after the bombing of Gaza's power plant. The hospital's emergency, critical care and burns units are treating men, women, and children injured by bombs and artillery fire. Food packages are being provided to families with malnourished children.

Donations are needed urgently to provide essential medial care, food for malnourished children, and support for trauma recovery programs in Gaza. Please respond to this humanitarian emergency. Donate online.

UN chief Kofi Annan has appealed for urgent action to alleviate the desperate humanitarian situation of the civilian population of Gaza. More than half of the 1.4 million people of Gaza depend on food aid; bread, milk, sugar, rice, and beans are all in short supply, mainly due to frequent border closures.

Read more about the hospital here and here.

In church a couple of Sundays ago, our Rector, the Rev'd Rebecca Newland, showed the children this picture that she had painted. They were quick to say what was wrong with it! Rebecca's point was that God is relaxed about the fact that we make mistakes. This was helpful to me, as I was recovering from the embarrassment of a large mistake (details later, perhaps).



This house is certainly on an unsure foundation!

Here's most of Rebecca's homily.

Pentecost 5B: 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Psalm 48, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Hands up all who have failed at something? [I put up my hand.] Hands up all those who have set out to achieve something and have had to give up? [Again, I raised my hand] Hands up all those who have broken a promise? [Once more, my hand went up.] Hands up all those who think the Christian way of life is impossibly idealistic and no one can really live up to it? [Not sure]. There is no way around it. Failure is as common as sunrises and the fear of failure is like a disease in our minds and memories. We can have one bad failure and we can never attempt the task again. [. . . ]

God does call us into a way of life, a way of being, into a life beyond what we can imagine. Many people confuse Christianity with a type of religious humanism. As if it was all about being a good person, doing the right thing, helping others and then going to heaven. Yet the gospel is about a Kingdom--about a new reality, a way of life that demands everything of us. It's a way of life that transforms all regions of our hearts, minds and actions. That is the Kingdom of God.

We receive the Kingdom, we enter it and we are called to share Jesus' message in announcing it. The twelve Apostles in today's Gospel were called and sent by Jesus to announce his Kingdom--but what a sad and sorry lot. These blokes in Mark's gospel are always only on the way to understanding, always vowing and trying to follow but they have repeated failures. This mob is quite inadequate as messengers/disciples -- but Jesus uses them anyway. Flawed as they are he sends them. They are not sent because they have amazing skills and abilities. Jesus chooses them despite their failures. And God chooses us despite our failures. In fact he keeps choosing us even when we keep failing. Just think of that--God chooses us, over and over again! How can he do that? How can he possibly think this is an efficient way of doing things?

Well I guess God's ways are not our ways! So what does this Gospel passage tell us about God's ways? What is it about God's choosing that can help us overcome our failures and weaknesses?

The first clue is the example of Jesus himself. He experiences a major failure in his hometown. "He could do no deed of power there" (6:5) and was "amazed at their unbelief" (6:6). So how does he handle this? Well he accepts the rejection in his stride, he leaves behind the people who have rejected him, and continues his ministry elsewhere -- "he went among the villages teaching" (6:6). He simply gets on with it. W.C. Fields once famously said, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There is no use being a damn fool about it." However we are called to be fools for Christ. Jesus shows the way--get on with it and keep going. Maybe we need to change the detail, maybe we need to do things in a different way, but the underpinning idea is to remain faithful to the life to which Jesus calls us.

Another key point is that Jesus sends the apostles out in pairs, "two by two" (6:7). He does not send them out alone. Indeed none of our ministry is done alone. We have a community of people to share the burden and the task with--a bunch of people to encourage and build us up. I have read that Jesus did not found a religion or a doctrine, he founded a community.

It's a flawed and frustrating community, yet it is the place where we are called to journey together, supporting each other as we try and live in the way of Christ. If we look at the stories of the first disciples in the Acts of the Apostles, they always worked in pairs and groups. A lone Christian is an oxymoron.

And the last point I want to talk about from this passage is the need to travel light. Jesus orders the apostles to "take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread; no bag, no money in their belts" (6:8). They were to take the bare essentials. This is as much about an attitude of mind as it is about material encumbrances. We can all be heavily weighted down by what we think is essential in life, even the Christian life. Maybe we are weighed down by fears, a sense of not being worthy, maybe we have some false humility. Maybe we are weighed down by a fear of failure. Maybe we are encumbered with a list of "shoulds", "maybes" and "only whens" Jesus encourages us to unburden ourselves and become free agents--free agents for the Gospel.

If we are honest people we know we make mistakes, we know we can fail easily at what we do. As C.S Lewis said we live in the shadow lands--the shadow lands of fear and failure. We know too that living out the Christian message in real and viable ways takes guts and courage. The call of the disciples we have been considering is sandwiched between two stories of rejected prophets: Jesus rejected by his hometown people (vv. 1-6a) and then John the Baptist killed by king Herod (vv. 14-29). It is not an easy road. Standing up for what you believe to be true, standing up for what you believe to be right is neither safe nor easy. But God does not ask us to succeed. He asks us only to be faithful.

Jesus as always gives us the clues about God's way in all this: keep going and don't give up, travel with friends and travel light. But maybe you are not convinced. Maybe that doesn't seem enough. Perhaps we think that will not get us over the line or maybe even nowhere near it. I'd like to leave one final word to St. Paul, who I suspect often liked to have the final word!

When Paul is writing to the church in Corinth we hear him defending himself against critics. In his discussion of visions and boasting, his hardships and problems he tells how three times he begged God to remove his 'thorn in the flesh'. We do not know what this 'thorn in the flesh' was. We don't know whether it was a mental problem, a physical disability, or a problem to do with other people. What ever it was, it was something he did not want to deal with. The answer he received was this "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (12:9). It does not matter what our weaknesses, our fears, our issues are, God's grace is enough. Just let that sink in . . . God's grace is sufficient. You are enough, just as you are, for God's good purposes to be fulfilled. We have only to say yes, to go where we are sent, to love God and others, to proclaim the message of God's redeeming love and peace, just as we are, fears, failings, weaknesses, doubts and all.

As we gather around the Lord's table to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus may we leave behind us all that weighs us down. May we kneel and stand with our brothers and sisters in Christ, pilgrims and partners on the way. May we trust that we have been truly called, as it says in our Baptism service to "Confess Christ crucified and proclaim his resurrection", may we never give up, may we "finish the race and keep the faith" and may we come to the table trusting in the absolute sufficiency of God's grace. Amen.

It is indeed natural to us to wish and to plan, and it is merciful in the Lord to disappoint our plans, and to cross our wishes. For we cannot be safe, much less happy, but in proportion as we are weaned from our own wills, and made simply desirous of being directed by His guidance. This truth (when we are enlightened by His Word) is sufficiently familiar to the judgement; but we seldom learn to reduce it into practice without being trained a while in the school of disappointment. The schemes we form look so plausible and convenient that when they are broken we are ready to say, What a pity! We try again, and with no better success; we are grieved, and perhaps angry, and plan another, and so on; at length, in a course of time, experience and observation begin to convince us that we are not more able than we are worthy to choose aright for ourselves. Then the Lord's invitation to cast our cares upon Him, and His promise to take care of us, appear valuable; and when we have done planning, His plan in our favour gradually opens, and He does more and better for us than we could either ask or think. I can hardly recollect a single plan of mine, of which I have not since seen reason to be satisfied that, had it taken place in season and circumstance just as I proposed, it would, humanly speaking, have proved my ruin; or at least it would have deprived me of the greater good the Lord had designed for me. We judge of things by their present appearance, but the Lord sees them in their consequences; if we could do so likewise, we should be perfectly of His mind; but as we cannot, it is an unspeakable mercy that He will manage for us, whether we are pleased with His management or not; and it is spoken of as one of His heaviest judgements, when He gives any person or people up to the way of their own hearts, and to walk after their own counsels.

John Newton. Two letters to Miss P----. Cardiphonia (1781)

Before our Sunday church service this morning, two members of Falun Gong in Australia visited on our Rector. Falun Gong, the quasi-religious movement outlawed in China, says that thousands of their imprisoned members have been murdered and their organs taken supply a trade in transplants. The visitors asked our priest to pass some information to us -- which she did.

It has been known for some time and even partly acknowledged that the organs of criminals executed in China have been take for transplants, though a new July 2006 law is purported to make this illegal.

But now reports emerge of a new horror. On 24 March 06, for example, The Washington Times reported that a Chinese journalist had uncovered a secret detention center in northern China that is being used by a hospital to harvest human organs for sale to domestic and international buyers. A Mr Jin Zhong (a pseudonym) discovered that secret medical work was being done at the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, in Shenyang, in northeastern China. An underground prison beneath the hospital is allegedly holding up to 6,000 Falun Gong members,whose organs are being systematically harvested, and sold to people, from both China and abroad, who need medical organ transplants. Mr. Jin said bodies of the prisoners were burned in the boiler room of the hospital and that boiler room workers had taken jewelry and watches from the dead and sold them. He said he has provided information about the organ harvesting to U.S. government officials, including members of Congress.

CTV.ca says that a report this month by Canadian MP David Kilgour has supported accusations that China is harvesting the vital organs of imprisoned Falun Gong dissidentd. "They take both kidneys, then the heart and the skin and the corneas and the liver, and your body is then thrown in the incinerator. . . . I don't think anyone can have any doubt that this unbelievable practice is continuing," Kilgour said of his findings. China, of course, denies the allegations. The UN and Amnesty International are also investigating, but neither considers that it has enough solid evidence to reach the same conclusion.

The Laogai Research Foundation is a non-profit organization that compiles information about the Laogai--China's network of forced labor camps. (The word Laogai comes from the expression Laodong Gaizao or "reform through labor".")

The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CPIFG) has members of many faiths and none and provides a well ordered, comprehensive compilation of evidence and reports. It explains:

For thousands of years, the Chinese have engaged in body, mind and spiritual practices loosely known as "qigong," whose purpose is to improve one's health and cultivate one's virtue. Tai chi, the martial arts and yoga emanated from this rich tradition and Lao Zi and Confucius are examples of its teachers. Falun Gong is one of these body, mind and spiritual practices. Like its kin, it consists of five gentle exercises, and meditation. Falun Gong is based on the principles of Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance. Those who practice, regularly find it to bring them better health, reduced stress, inner peace, a deepened sense of morality and a state of selflessness and inner balance.

See also: Falun Dafa, Global Rescue, Uphold Justice and Falun Gong Human Rights.

I would find this practice unsatisfactory as a religion, but as a form of meditation and exercise it seems harmless enough and probably beneficial. I have no idea whether Falun Gong could be obssesive or what we have come to call a cult. I am a registered organ donor. I am glad that when, in God's good time, I am dead, others may benefit from the use of my body.

What is certain is that, if the allegations about organ harvesting in China are even partly true, they point to a new and especially horrible evil.

It's an agony that the seemingly trivial question of homosexuality once again brings deep division to much loved church. The Age speculates that "the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) has moved a step closer to splitting with conservative leaders who have resolved to form their own assembly."

A meeting this week in Brisbane of members of the Reforming Alliance and Evangelical Members within the UCA produced a charter and resolved to form an Assembly of Confessing Congregations (ACC). Reverend Stephen Estherby, who is on the ACC's steering body, said the new group would fulfil the doctrinal responsibilities which he believed had been neglected or had become dysfunctional in the UCA. "We are not saying we are going to totally disengage at this stage, we have to see how this is going to work itself out. But you could say the relationship is not working and we are looking at some sort of separation but it is not at that divorce stage yet. We've come to the point where we are saying, we have had enough. [. . .] It's not just issues of sexuality, all of the church's teaching needs to be measured by scripture. [. . .] This action has been necessary because of the refusal of the national Assembly to affirm the traditional teaching and practice of the Uniting Church. [. . .] For us, the Assembly of Confessing Congregations represents the hope of a new beginning and a way in which we can remain associated with the UCA with integrity."

A few days ago the Uniting Church of Australia's General Assembly decided against trying to reach consensus at present on a policy about homosexual people in positions of ministry and leadership. Members of its 11th Assembly meeting in Brisbane agreed they were "not of one mind" on the issue of accepting into ministry people who were living in a committed same-gender sexual relationships. Below is the text of a resolution passed 173-48 (78.3%) in a formal vote.

Uniting Church President, Rev. Gregor Henderson said Assembly members recognised this was an important issue for many members of the Church but that after lengthy discussions and spiritual discernment they had been unable to reach agreement as to whether the Assembly should further exercise determining responsibility on this issue and adopt a single policy to apply across the entire church.

"I am grateful for the gracious and respectful way that members of the Assembly addressed this issue. We were also deeply moved by the response of the Aboriginal arm of the church which, despite opposing the current practice, committed itself to remain within the fellowship of the Uniting Church. Our discussions over the last few days remind us that we have a range of deeply held convictions in our church on this issue and that we are not of the same mind at this time. Notwithstanding the hopes of many in the church, the Assembly resolved that it was unable to exercise further its determining authority in this matter.

"We have prayerfully sought to discern God's will on this matter and I believe we have reached a position of integrity at this time that allows us to live in unity with our diversity. The decision of the Assembly today recognises that there are a range of understandings about this issue.

"This decision re-affirms that congregations and presbyteries will continue to be the place where decisions around the ordination and placement of those living in committed same-gender relationships are made. Congregations who are unable, in all good conscience, to receive such a minister will not be compelled to do so. The resolution also calls the church to respect the decision of a congregation indicating its willingness to consider calling a minister in a committed same-gender relationship."

Sexuality and leadership in the Uniting Church of Australia

The Assembly resolved:

Preamble

In the struggle to be the Uniting Church in Australia, we affirm that our unity is our oneness in Jesus Christ; we acknowledge a variety of theological perspectives and biblical understandings which we maintain in tension within our life as a church, recognising that variety is a gift to the Church which allows most people to find a spiritual home amongst our many congregations and faith communities.

1. To acknowledge and lament that even though the decision of the 10th Assembly regarding Sexuality and Leadership (Assembly Minute 03.12.04, varied by Assembly Standing Committee Minute 03.69.03) was made prayerfully and in good faith and according to UCA polity, it was a catalyst for the deep concern and disquiet present in some parts of the UCA.

[Commonly known as "Proposal 84", this decision left with presbyteries the authority to decide about a minister living in a committed same-gender relationship.]

2. To express its regret that following the 10th Assembly there were some faithful ministers and members of the church who believed that because of the decision of the 10th Assembly regarding Sexuality and Leadership (Assembly Minute 03.12.04, varied by Assembly Standing Committee Minute 03.69.03) they had no option but to withdraw from the Uniting Church altogether.

3. To express its regret that faithful Christian gay and lesbian people, on whose lives the Assembly deliberations have impacted, have continued to experience pain in our church.

4. To declare that the matter of Sexuality and Leadership is at heart a matter of faith and concerns our humanity in Christ.

The 11th Assembly

5. To acknowledge:

a) that Assembly members are not of one mind regarding the issue of the acceptance into the specified ministries of those living in committed same-gender relationships; and
b) that some members of the Assembly adhere to traditional teaching and practice of Reformed and Evangelical churches in this matter, while others who also adhere to the Reformed and Evangelical tradition believe that God may be leading this tradition to a different understanding and practice;
and therefore, notwithstanding the hopes of many in the Church, the 11th Assembly, having prayerfully sought to discern God's will and after much deliberation, is not prepared to exercise further its determining responsibility in this matter.

The Next Steps

6. Pursuant to clauses 38 of the Constitution, to advise Synods and Presbyteries;

a) that congregations who resolve that they are unable in conscience to receive into ministry placement a person living in a committed same-gender relationship, shall not be compelled to do so; and
b) to respect the decision of a congregation indicating its willingness to consider calling a minister in a committed same-gender relationship.

7. To encourage Congregations:

a) to be aware that within many Congregations there is a diversity of belief on matters of sexuality and leadership and that some members do not feel free to express their beliefs;
b) to become safe communities where people may hold diverse beliefs on these matters and work together as the Body of Christ; and
c) to recognise that the possibility of living with difference is a gift which Christ offers to the world.

8. To encourage the whole church:
a) to commit itself to continue to grapple with the implications of the gospel of God's grace for our humanity, the church's life, and participation in God's mission in the world;
b) to call on all members of the church who hold different views to work at living together in peace as members of the Body of Christ; and
c) to hope, pray and work for that common mind in faith which is Jesus Christ's gift and will.

9. To request the Assembly Working Group on Doctrine to engage in further work that assists the Church in our ongoing consideration of the theological diversity of the Church on this issue and to authorise the Assembly Standing Committee to determine the terms of reference for such work.

10. To acknowledge:

(a) that the Uniting Church is committed "to bear witness to that unity which is both Christ's gift and will for the Church"; and
(b) that Christ continues to feed us with word and sacrament as we wait on God's living Word;
and to call the Uniting Church to re-commit itself to its primary purpose of "worship, witness and service" (Quotes are from the Basis of Union, Paragraph 1).

11. To request that the President consult with the Moderators in relation to a pastoral letter to the whole church.

Note: The contents of the pastoral letter may include (a) the matters referred to in the preamble (b) the contents of this resolution (c) a reflection of the nature and spirit of the 11th Assembly discussions and contributions from the UAICC and Multicultural congregations (d) the longing of the 11th Assembly for the day when those Christians who in conscience left congregations are reconciled with those Christians who remain within the UCA, and that we may unite in faith, hope and love.

It's impossible to escape sport in this country and, after a while, you get to think that maybe it would be OK to at least notionally support a team or two. These are my allegiances. The oldest is to Hawthorn. I remember sitting as a little boy on my grandfather's veranda, listening with my grandfather and uncle to a radio broadcast of a Hawthorn game. I think it may have been the first semi-final of the 1957 season, when Hawthorn 10-11-71 defeated Carlton 6-12-48 on 31 August. As I was born close to Hawthorn, I decided to be a supporter! But I don't think I ever got to go to a game, as we lived a very long way from the city.

There are so many competitions; most interesting are cricket and soccer (international football).

	The Hawks (Australian Football League)
	Sydney FC (A League soccer.)
	The ACT Brumbies (Super 14 rugby)
	Melbourne Storm (National Rugby League)
	Canberra Capitals (Womens National Basketball League)
	The Bushrangers (Victoria's state cricket team)
	The Australian Cricket team
	The Socceroos
	The Kookaburras and the Hockeyroos.
	Australia's Davis Cup team.

The The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age report that the Uniting Church of Australia, Australia's third largest church, faces rebellion after conservatives yesterday lost their battle to exclude practising gays from the ministry. This is a cut-and-paste from the three reports.

The Uniting Church's national assembly, meeting in Brisbane, has admitted the church is "not of one mind" and unable to resolve divisions. Its failure to decide affirms the status quo, adopted in 2003, which upholds the autonomy of local presbyteries to appoint clergy who are practising homosexuals.

An overwhelming majority of Uniting Church delegates - about three-quarters of the 250 gathered in Brisbane for the first general debate about sexuality and ministry since 2003 - voted against a proposal for a national policy that could ban gay ministers. Under the 2003 assembly's Resolution 84, it is up to regional bodies, or presbyteries, to decide whether to appoint gay ministers, which means the church has no national policy on the issue.

"They have agreed to disagree and leave it at that," said a source from the assembly. The Australian understands only about eight delegates voted for a proposal to develop a national policy on gay clergy that would overrule decisions made on a presbytery or regional level.

Conservative responses

Stephen Estherby, spokesman for the evangelical network EMU, said he failed to see how the statement would help the church move beyond existing confusion and distress. "I believe that the direction you are taking will only set us up for three more years of controversy, misunderstanding, despair and decline." he said. "We are not going to operate within the existing structures of the church."

Addressing 40 evangelicals gathered for a prayer vigil outside the assembly, the chairman of the conservative Reforming Alliance, Dr Max Champion, said the effect of no decision was support for the ordination of homosexual clergy. Although indigenous members objected to homosexual clergy on biblical grounds, they remained "willing to live within the fellowship and diversity of the church".

Reverend Keith Garner, superintendent of Wesley Mission, said those in committed homosexual relationships were welcome in the church but were not "appropriate for church leadership". "The prolonged debate over same-sex relationships and church leadership is deflecting the Uniting Church from its core mission and ministry."

Conservatives are to meet on Wednesday to consider options. These include walking out, or staying put but dissociating themselves from the leadership structure.

Liberal responses

The Revd Ian Pearson, minister of Pitt Street Uniting Church and NSW leader of gay advocacy group Uniting Network, said the future of the church lay in the explicit acknowledgement of gays and lesbians called to church leadership. He told The Age "We want more to happen, and it will one day, but not at this assembly." He said the 2003 decision had been bad for gays. "In the three years since it came in, there has not been one gay or lesbian candidate for ordination because now the church can ask questions about sexuality."

Presidential admonitions

Canberra minister Gregor Henderson, installed as 11th president of the Uniting Church during the Assembly, said he was distressed at the way disagreements had descended to personal denigration and abuse, and urged an end to name-calling and divisive attitudes. He rebuked members of his church for "shameful behaviour not worthy of Christians" in their deep divisions over gay clergy.

"This is not the way of Christ," he said last night. "That is not an occasion for celebration or praise, it is a matter of loss, failure and sadness." He also criticised the more than 20,000 members who signed a petition after the 2003 assembly in Melbourne, which cleared the way for churches to appoint ministers living in same-sex relationships, and said the language of the petition was "unfortunately over the top".

As its 12th and first full-time President, to take office in 2009 the Uniting Church has chosen Alister Macrae, a leading advocate for gay and lesbian Christians.

Mr Macrae said the church could be a multicultural role model for the wider community. He said the sexuality debate and presenting the Christian message in a postmodern culture were the most immediate challenges.

"It is not true that the Uniting Church is weak on doctrine. We are a credal, confessional church, but where we can accept disagreement about faith kicks in a little earlier," he said.

In his Presidential address to the General Synod of the Church of England, Archbishop Sentamu reflects on his experience of the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church. He notes that much that was good, gracious and godly was done at the Convention, but criticises the failure of an overly complex legislative process to give a clear response to Windsor. Citing (Philippians 4:5), he calls for gracious magnanimity to be manifest to all. He says that:

The person who is immoderate (akribodikaios) is the person who stands up for the last title of their legal rights; but the person who is graciously magnanimous (epieikes) knows that there are times when a thing may be legally completely justified and yet morally completely wrong.

True, but the person who is immoderate is also the person who insists that the law enforce their own view of what is moral, while the person who is graciously magnanimous knows that there are times when disagreement about morality requires that we allow people to act according to conscience. Indeed something may be moral even though illegal and vice versa. Thus Archbishop Sentamu says:

The person who is forbearing (epieikes) knows when to relax the law under the compulsion of a force that is higher and greater than law. They know the time when to stand on their rights would unquestionably be legal, and would just as unquestionably be completely unchristian.

This also cuts both ways. We may say that for the sake of morality and forbearance, gay people should not insist on legal equality. But we could just as readily say that for the sake of a higher morality of love, acceptance, peace and tolerance, others should not insist on law that prevents people in same-sex relationships from fulfil their ministries.

Consequently, a plea for graciousness of itself does not get us very far. It merely changes the language of the debate, causing us to argue as to what is gracious.

Though preferring 'orthodoxy' (itself a loaded term), in effect Archbishop Sentamu calls for a middle path. But on 'issues' of homosexuality there is no middle path available. Either gay and lesbian people may be ordained (and consecrated as bishops), or they may not. Either faithful monogamous same-sex couples may live together as part of a Christian community that celebrates their relationships, or they may not. The Episcopal Church's General Convention failed with respect to homosexuality because it tried to take a middle path where none exists. But I would not attribute blame to that failure, as it merely reflected confusion in the church as a whole.

If there is no middle path, we are obliged to decide whether the conservatives or the progressives should be required to tolerate a situation they do not like. Archbishop Sentamu, by his advocacy of Windsor, seems to prefer complete constraint on the part of the progressives, though I may be wrong on this. But if we were to take a stance that inflicts the least pain, we would allow blessing of same-sex relationships, for to do so harms no-one while prohibition causes pain to the people refused. We would be cautious in consecrating as bishops people living in same-sex relationships, unless it was very clear that most people under their oversight agreed and that alternative oversight were available to the others. Would this not offer the 'gracious magnanimity' that scripture enjoins?

See also interesting comments on the Archbishop of York's address by Tony Clavier and Mark Harris.

Meanwhile, the General Synod of the Church of England has agreed in principle that women may be bishops. Bishops voted 31-9 (76%) in favour, clergy 134-42 (78%) and the laity 123-68 (64%). The resolution was:

That this Synod welcome and affirm the view of the majority of the House of Bishops that admitting women to the episcopate in the Church of England is consonant with the faith of the Church as the Church of England has received it and would be a proper development in proclaiming afresh in this generation the grace and truth of Christ.

Ruth Gledhill reports that the online discussion group COIN has been debating whether the required two-thirds majority (127 votes in favour) will be present in the house of the laity when the final legislation comes before the synod.

In the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, legislation allowing appointment of women bishops narrowly failed in a secret ballot when last considered in late 2004. The proposal was passed by the house of bishops 17-6 (73% in favour) but failed in the houses of clergy 63-43 (59%) and the laity 67-39 (63%). It is difficult to see how a measure could pass, as the largest diocese opposed, Sydney, is growing in its representation in General Synod. Much work is being done, especially in the Appellate Tribunal, to try to decide whether women bishops may legally be appointed without changes to legislation being made by General Synod.

Lord Christ, help us to have the courage and humility to name our burdens and lay them down so that we are light to walk across the water to where you beckon us.

Our pride, armouring us, hardening us, making us defend our dignity by belittling others;
we name it and we lay it down.

The memory of hurts and insults, driving us to lash out, to strike back;
we name it and we lay it down.

Our antagonism against those whose actions, differences, presence, threaten our comfort or security;
we name it and we lay it down.

Our fear, of unsolved questions, of the unknown, of fear itself;
we name it and we lay it down.

We do not need these burdens, but we have grown used to carrying them, have forgotten what it is like to be light. Beckon us to lightness of being, for you show us it is not unbearable. Only so can we close the distance. Only so can we walk upon the water.

It is so. Blessed are you, Lord Christ, who makes heavy burdens light.

-- Katby Galloway (Iona Community)

With an Italy v. France final, the World Cup has become a bore. The early rounds were intriguing, but the finalists have been selected by cheating.

Maybe this superb Canadian athlete, Alexandre Despatie, should be recruited for the French football team. He's cute, speaks French and is a world-class diver.

France advanced to the final after defeating Portugal 1-0, not in the run of play, but by yet another arbitrary match-deciding penalty. Zidane skilfully converted the penalty after Uruguayan referee Larrionda adjudged that Carvalho had fouled Henry. Carvalho had slipped as he tried to win the ball and Henry took advantage of his flailing leg, by going over after contact. One report declared that "The dark arts of diving, play-acting and intimidating the officials were all on display."

Nobody's fooled by the diving (except the referee); thus Michelle Kauffman in the Miami Herald 27 Jun. 2006, writing about the earlier Australia v. Italy match.

What happened in Kaiserslautern on Monday . . . was disgusting. That film clip, which is very real, clearly shows Italian player Fabio Grosso taking a dive Greg Louganis would be proud of, tumbling over the prostrate Australian defender Lucas Neill in the penalty box, just as time is about to expire at 0-0.

Grosso crumpled into the fetal position, and peeked out to see if referee Luis Medina Cantalejo bit. He did. A few seconds later, Francisco Totti lined up a penalty kick, scored, and Italy advanced to the quarterfinals. Australia got a long plane ride home, and four years to wonder what would have happened had they played extra time.

It was the latest -- and perhaps most blatant -- example of unpunished cheating going on at this World Cup. For, what else is diving if not cheating? A player who is barely touched launches himself at the ground, feigns injury, and tries to con the referee into a penalty kick or free kick. Often times, he is carried off on a stretcher, at which point he takes a swig of water, brushes off his shorts, and rejoins the game at full speed. It has been going on for decades now, and it is still just as wrong.

Thus CW Nevius in the San Francisio Chronicle, 1 Jul 06

Millions of Americans are watching World Cup soccer this year. But what are they seeing from some of the best players in the world? Flopping, diving and yelling at the referee.

Is this really what we wanted our young soccer players to learn? . . . On Monday, Italy and Australia battled through a thrilling match for some 95 minutes. Just as the game was about to go to overtime, an Italian player stumbled in the box -- the area around the goal -- and executed a world-class flop, going down as if he'd stepped on a high-voltage wire. A penalty kick was awarded, Italy converted the shot, and the Australians lost 1-0.

Eurosport reports that Franz Beckenbauer president of the German organising committee for the World Cup, has called for a summit meeting of players, coaches and referees in "an attempt to put an end to the play-acting which has blighted this summer's tournament in Germany."

Beckenbauer, president of the German organising committee, said he has had enough of players and coaches trying to cheat their way to victory by trying to con officials. "I think it is time to get the players, the coaches and the referees around the table and try to find some sort of solution to this problem. None of us in the game wants these incidents. The players are seeking to gain an unfair advantage and attempt to exploit every situation.

The referees are there to correct this kind of misconduct, but the players do not make it easy for the referees. If I was a referee I would also show the yellow card to any player who signalled to the ref with an imaginary card to get an opponent booked. That is also cheating."

Last night, we attended an enjoyable performance of highlights from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, presented by CAMRA -- the Canberra Academy of Music and Related Arts. The singing and acting were excellent in this 'semi-staged' version and it was a lot of fun.

Cast:
Figaro: Peter Laurence
Susanna: Sheena Smith
Cherubino: Alison Knight
Countess: Tanuja Doss
Count: Paul Cambridge
Marcellina: Leila Fetter
Dr Bartolo: Robert Orr
Babarina: Madeleine Rowland
Barbarina's friend: Odette Upstill
Don Curzio: Wicbe terBals
Director of Music and Pianist: Colin Forbes
Vocal coach and facilitator: Patricia Whitbread
(Paul Cambridge and Wicbe terBals are from other studios but joined CAMRA for this presentation.)

In 2005, several singers from this cast met together on Saturday afternoons and workshopped scenes from the Marriage of Figaro. They decided take their project a little further and present a performance of highlights. A semi-staged version added enjoyment. The students -- amateur and professional and various ages -- were responsible for most of the production.

As well as some excellent singing, I much enjoyed Colin's fine piano accompaniment. Marriage of Figaro is well suited to presentation by small forces as a 'chamber opera'.

Most of the performance was in English, though a few arias were done in Italian. The Cherubino character added some amusing narration to keep the audience in touch with the convoluted and fast moving plot, in place of pages of recitative. This device also allowed some minor roles to be left out.

CAMRA is so encouraged by what the students have achieved that it will present the Marriage of Figaro in full next year.

With the last kick of the match, Italy scored a penalty goal, to knock Australia out of the World Cup, 1-0. Were the Socceroos robbed? I have no idea.

Michael Cockerill, as always, gives an interesting summary in the SMH.

But what irritates me about football is the apparent arbitrariness of the results. One questionnable refereeing decision right at the death of a match and it's all over. Not to speak of the ridiculous nonsense that occured in the Holland v. Portugal match, with 16 yellow and 4 red cards issued!

A fascination in South Korea's World Cup campaign has been the depth and breadth of support Korea's people. Enthused by their country's successes in the 2002 World Cup, huge crowds out in Korea's mian cities to watch the match between Korea and Switzerland last night on a giant video screens including 350,000 around Gwanghwamun in downtown Seoul, 150,000 in front of Seoul Plaza and 100,000 in the Busan Asiad Stadium. This picture is from Chosun Ilbo.



Vast apartment complexes and residential streets were lit up all night as people waited for the match and watched other matches. But in the end Korea was crushed 2-0 by Switzerland. Dae Han Min Guk rang through the Hanover stadium and the 'Red Devils' sang. The Koreans had several chances to score but none of them went in. Inability to convert opportunities cost Korea the match.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has found a way through the ordination-of-homosexuals question.

By a vote of 298-221 (57% to 43%), the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) today approved an "authoritative interpretation" of the church's Constitution that maintains current ordination standards for church officers but gives ordaining bodies greater leeway in applying those standards to individual candidates for ordination.

"Today we saw the Presbyterian process of doing things at its best," said the Rev. Joan Gray, moderator of the 217th General Assembly, at a press conference following the vote. "We saw people working fairly and treating each other justly." . . .

The proposal was one of seven contained in the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church (TTF) that has spent the last four years looking for ways to help the deeply divided denomination stay together despite its differences.

Four other recommendations passed by an overwhelming 87% majority. They "strongly encourage" all Presbyterians to witness to the church's oneness and "to avoid division into separate denominations"; to urge congregations, governing bodies and other groups of Presbyterians to engage in "intensive discernment" in the face of difficult issues; to study the theological reflection section of the TTF report; and to encourage church bodies to "explore the use of alternative forms of discernment and decision-making as a complement to parliamentary procedure.". . .

[I]n what TTF member the Rev. William Stacy Johnson of Princeton Theological Seminary called "a simple and time-tested framework for staying together in times of conflict," the authoritative interpretation harkens back to the Adopting Act of 1729 in stating: "Ordaining and installing bodies, acting as corporate expressions of the church, have the responsibility to determine their membership by applying these standards to those elected to office."

The 1729 act allowed ordination candidates to declare a "scruple" against any matter of church doctrine (then the Westminster Confession and Catechism), with the ordaining body determining if the scruple constituted "a departure from scriptural and constitutional standards for fitness for office" and "a failure to adhere to the essentials of the Reformed faith and polity."

The authoritative interpretation approved today borrows that language. Supporters of the authoritative interpretation expressed hope it will break the cycle of conflict in the PC(USA), particularly over the gay ordination issue. . . .

Former General Assembly moderator, elder Marj Carpenter of Big Spring, TX, said, "I'm against the ordination of homosexuals, though I love 'em. But we've been fighting in this ditch for 28 years and the ditch is getting deeper." Her voice quavering with emotion, Carpenter continued, "It's starting to affect our mission work, our youth ministry and our evangelism and I'm ready to try something else. Please, let's get on with being the church, taking the gospel into the world and offering them something else other than arguments." . . .

Well said Ms Carpenter.

I need to be careful in commenting about the affairs of another church, observed from the other side of the earth, but I'm inclined to agree with Christopher in his description of the General Convention's passage of B033 as doing "spiritual violence".

It is clear that lgbt folks were repeatedly being asked to take up their crosses by others who were unwilling to join them in the cross they recommended to us. Such is Babylonic unity. That is why I repeatedly said that an honest response to Windsor either had to be a complete repudiation or general moratoria on the consent to all recommended to the episcopate and on all blessings lifestyles-- marriages, monastic vows, unions, by the ordained. I preferred the latter because it could provide space to say we're ready to continue conversation and communion with our sister churches . . .

Christopher is not alone. A number of bishops have made a statement of conscience dissenting from the decision and the manner of its making. Fr John also calls the action violent. Others are deeply troubled and Fr Jake comments that the church has bowed to the "idol of communion" by "embracing bigotry".

Having risen at 4.30am to watch the game, many Australians are happy but sleepy today as the Socceroos go forward to the World Cup round of 16 after a 2-2 draw with Croatia. A goal by Harry Kewell (pictured) in the 79th-minute equalised for Australia. Twice Australia were forced to come from behind.



Super coach Guus Hiddink had gambled wrongly and near disastrously in choosing Kalac as goalkeeper for this game, ahead of the established Mark Schwarzer. Referee Poll lost the plot more than once and booked Croatian Josip Siminic three times before red-carding him after the final whistle.

The spectacle and skill of world-class football is undeniable and exciting. But I find it a frustrating game to watch. The outcome often seems arbitrary to me. A single lucky goal, refereeing error or mistake by a player can make or break the result of an entire tournament. "That's football" they say. Hmm?

The Australian Financial Review, 22 June 2006 reports that the the Howard government is deliberately obtructing the work of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's National Inquiry into Discrimination against People in Same-Sex Relationships: Financial and Work-Related Entitlements and Benefits. The government has instructed federal departments and agencies not to make submissions to the inquiry. The inquiry is an audit of federal, state and territory laws to develop a full list of circumstances in which same-sex couples and their children may be denied financial and/or work-related benefits and entitlements worth tens of thousands of dollars that are available to heterosexual couples.

[A] spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock told The Australian Financial Review that ministers had discussed the inquiry and collectively agreed to instruct their departments not to make submissions to it, arguing that since it was HREOC's inquiry it should be left to HREOC to do the work, rather than their departments. The instruction to the public service appears to fly in the face of the stated position of Prime Minister John Howard who, despite the federal government's move last week to overturn ACT same-sex union laws, has in the past insisted his government was keen to address any financial discrimination same-sex couples might face.Submissions to the inquiry already published document discrimination on issues such as public service superannuation, housing loans, war veterans pensions, workers' compensation and Medicare benefits, which can cost couples thousands of dollars. The superannuation industry has made a submission to the inquiry highlighting the problems of same-sex couples in super, such as being unable to split their contributions, leaving them exposed to tax payments of 15 per cent on amounts of more than $129,751 which heterosexual couples have not had to pay.
When Mr Howard announced amendments to the Marriage Act in May 2004, he also announced the government would be legislating in the area of superannuation to introduce the concept of financial interdependency. This meant same-sex couples could access the same concessional tax treatment for superannuation death benefits available to heterosexuals instead of facing a 30 per cent tax bill. But a pressing concern among the federal government's own public servants is that the legislation did not apply the law to its own public sector funds.

The Australian Coalition for Equality spokesperson Rod Swift says the gag is yet another piece in the Howard Government's 'Straight Australia Policy'.

The Prime Minister and Cabinet have proven that actions speak louder than words. They make noises that they want to remove discrimination, but act in a deceitful way to hinder investigations into the extent of that very discrimination. . . . Government departments and agencies are acutely aware of the hundreds of laws and regulations that discriminate against same-sex couples. The Howard Government clearly does not want the embarrassment of the exposure of this endemic discrimination.

Nicola Roxon MP, Labor's Shadow Attorney-General said on 22 June 2006 that:

Yet again, John Howard has been caught out saying one thing to the public and another thing to his public servants. This time the issue is discrimination against same sex couples. . . . This arrogant and high-handed move comes just weeks after Mr Howard said he wants to get rid of discrimination. . . . Which one is it? Is he for or against discrimination? HREOC is doing exactly what the Prime Minister wants: looking at this issue on a case-by-case basis. If he were taken at his word, he should be encouraging this inquiry, not obstructing it. The fact is that he can't be taken at his word. In ten long years, his Government has done next to nothing to get rid of discrimination. Same sex couples are still treated differently for the purposes of superannuation, veterans' entitlements, family law, taxation, welfare, Medicare and pharmaceuticals benefits, among other areas. . . . The pigheaded and unreasonable directive not to co-operate with HREOC shows Mr Howard's true colours. He talks the talk on discrimination, but he walks in the opposite direction.

I'm impressed by Bishop Jefferts Schori's homily at the closing eucharist of the Convention. "We children can continue to squabble over the inheritance", she concluded, "Or we can claim our name and heritage as God's beloveds and share that name, beloved, with the whole world."

Among all the comments on the outcomes of the Convention (and there'll be plenty), Christopher's words are especially valuable.

It seems that Convention has chosen fudge in preference to a split. As best I can figure, this is what happened. In the dying hours of the Convention, and following rejection by the House of Deputies of a resolution on 'gay bishops' and blessing of same-sex relationships, outgoing Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold spoke to a joint meeting of Deputies and Bishops to urge the adoption of this resolution (B033)

Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, that the 75th General Convention receive and embrace The Windsor Report's invitation to engage in a process of healing and reconciliation; and be it further
Resolved, that this Convention therefore call upon Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on the communion.

The bishops then left the Hall of Deputies to consider the resolution. After several attempts to amend the second clause they adopted B033 on a voice vote and delivered the resolution to the House of Deputies.

The Deputies interrupted debate to hear Presiding Bishop Elect Jefferts Schori who asked them to concur in the resolution despite its shortcomings, saying it was the best that could be expected. After several failed amendments the time allotted for debate expired. In a vote by orders and dioceses, the House of Deputies concurred in the resolution (Lay -- Yes: 72, No: 21, Divided: 7; Clerical -- Yes: 75, No: 24, Divided: 4). The resolution is now the official decision of The Episcopal Church.

Was the Convention's decision too great a price to pay? Is Badger right when he says:

The deputies eventually passed the resolution, but not with out tears, a very dear gift to the incoming Presiding Bishop. But I fear, will accomplish nothing. The dying sect will not cease from their drive to establish a separate ecclesiastical entity, and since the language is not 'windsor compliant', it will do nothing to appease the akinolas. It is an expensive gift, bitter to all Gays and Lesbians who live lives of holiness. It will accomplish little. We have sold our reputation for a song.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has responded to thank the Convention for its work, saying

It is not yet clear how far the resolutions passed this week and today represent the adoption by the Episcopal Church of all the proposals set out in the Windsor Report. The wider Communion will therefore need to reflect carefully on the significance of what has been decided before we respond more fully.

All this came after the House of Deputies had rejected a resolution (A161), which was too strong for the liberals and too weak for the conservatives to accept. As Dr Harmon of Titus 1: 9 argues,

The strategy of leaders of the Anglican church at Columbus had been to engineer the moderate middle ground to be Windsor-compliant, marginalising the radical liberals and the orthodox, for the sake of unity. This strategy failed. In the end, the key resolutions were too liberal for the conservatives or too conservative for the liberals.

I like Andrew's comment that:

The good news is that what began to emerge was another kind of center. A center that is not anxious, well focused and firm. This is a center that both listens to the edges and takes what is best from both to move forward. Legislatively, the language here is less is more.

Colin Coward, Director of Changing Attitude, England says:

Resolution B033 seems to represent a change of mind on the part of the House of Deputies at General Convention . . . It has brought time, and it is something of a climb down and a fudge. It will not provide full satisfaction to anyone. Certainly not to Integrity leaders and members, nor to those who believe in direct progress to the full inclusion of LGBT people in the Anglican churches worldwide. Neither will it satisfy those conservatives who desire to create a split and separate themselves from the Episcopal Church at all costs. I don't think it will increase the speed with which the Church splits, and places a difficult ball back in the conservative court. I think it's likely that if dioceses or bishops do want to make a move, there will be further realignments in coming days and weeks. Watch for the announcement from Michael Nazir-Ali, who has nailed his colours dangerously to the mast.

Does it satisfy me? Yes, insofar as no-one is given total satisfaction and the Episcopal Church hasn't abandoned it's commitment to ultimate full inclusion, and it doesn't mean that the Church of England can escape from our desire and determination to work for full inclusion here. For me, it also means that LGBT people in other parts of the Communion, Nigeria and other African Provinces in particular, remain in communion with us. We can continue to extend our networks, Changing Attitude and Integrity, to provide encouragement and support and help work for justice for LGBT people in every Province and country of the Communion.

The rejected resolution would have said that The Episcopal Church

regrets the extent to which we have, by action and inaction, contributed to strains on communion and caused deep offense to many faithful Anglican Christians as we consented to the consecration of a bishop living openly in a same-gender union. Accordingly, we are obliged to urge nominating committees, electing conventions, Standing Committees, and bishops with jurisdiction to refrain from the nomination, election, consent to, and consecration of bishops whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion; and be it further

Resolved that this General Convention not proceed to develop or authorize Rites for the Blessing of same-sex unions at this time, thereby concurring with the Windsor Report in its exhortation to bishops of the Anglican Communion to honor the Primates' Pastoral Letter of May 2003; and be it further

Resolved that this General Convention affirm the need to maintain a breadth of responses to situations of pastoral care for gay and lesbian Christians in this Church.

Resolved that this General Convention apologize to those gay and lesbian Episcopalians and their supporters hurt by these decisions.

The furore in the Deputies, an overcrowded program, and a chaotic legislative process, led to there being much important unfinished business. Quite a number of resolutions passed the Bishops but were not considered by the Deputies before time ran out. Integrity USA mentions some of interest to it.

However the Deputies concurred with resolution A166 from the House of Bishops supporting the process of developing an Anglican Covenant:

Resolved . . . That the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, as a demonstration of our commitment to mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Anglican Communion, support the process of the development of an Anglican Covenant that underscores our unity in faith, order, and common life in the service of God's mission; and be it further

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention direct the International Concerns Standing Committee of the Executive Council and the Episcopal Church's members of the Anglican Consultative Council to follow the development processes of an Anglican Covenant in the Communion, and report regularly to the Executive Council as well as to the 76th General Convention; and be it further

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention report these actions supporting the Anglican Covenant development process, noting such missiological and theological resources as the Standing Commission on World Mission and the House of Bishops' Theology Committee to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates, and the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion; and that the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church report the same to the Primates of the churches of the Anglican Communion.

The Convention has also adopted resolution A159, a commitment to interdependence in the Anglican Communion.

Resolved, . . . That the 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church reaffirm the abiding commitment of The Episcopal Church to the fellowship of churches that constitute the Anglican Communion and seek to live into the highest degree of communion possible; and be it further

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention reaffirm that The Episcopal Church is in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer; and be it further

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention join with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the primates, and the Anglican Consultative Council in making a commitment to the vision of interdependent life in Christ, characterized by forbearance, trust, and respect, and commend the Windsor Report and process as a means of deepening our understanding of that commitment; and be it further

Resolved, That as an expression of interdependence, the Presiding officers of both Houses work in partnership with the churches of the Anglican Communion to explore ways by which there might be inter-Anglican consultation and participation on Standing Commissions of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church.

The House of Deputies of The Episcopal Church has passed the following resolution (A160) by a large majority and sent it to the House of Bishops for concurrence.

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, that the 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church, mindful of "the repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation enjoined on us by Christ" (Windsor Report, paragraph 134), express its regret for breaching the proper constraintsstraining the bonds of affection in the events surrounding the General Convention of 2003 and the consequences which followed; offer its sincerest apology to those within our Anglican Communion who are offended by our failure to accord sufficient importance to the impact of our actions on our church and other parts of the Communion; and ask forgiveness as we seek to live into deeper levels of communion one with another.

The word "straining" was substituted for the words "breaching the proper constraints" in the committee draft. Father Jake says that:

this may seem like a minor change, but the discussion that led up to it was quite revealing. The amendment was offered because it was argued that 'breaching' was too severe of a term to use to describe our current situation. Some parts of the communion are angry with one another. We're having a family argument. What the deputies would not accept was the premise that there is a serious 'breach' in the relationship.

Exactly so.

The minority opposing the resolution were divided between those thinking it too strong and those thinking it too weak. Thus, for example, Father John comments "Even though I voted for the amendment, I voted against the final resolution. I could not in good conscience ask forgiveness for something I don't believe was wrong. Still, the amendment was an improvement . . . it gets rid of the language of "constraints" that implies the Windsor Report has an authority that it does not have . . . and it is still disengenuous." If I were there, I would also have voted against the resolution. Our American sisters and brothers have little to apologise for but obedience to the command to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6.8).

I am praying as the Convention considers resolution A161 calling upon dioceses and the General Convention to refrain from consecrating openly gay or lesbian parterned clergy as bishops and the General Convention not to authorize rites for blessing same-sex unions.

In an ACNielsen/Age poll, 45% of those polled supported ACT laws allowing gay civil unions, while 34% opposed them. (What happened to the remaining 21%? -- that's a lot of 'don't knows'.) There have beeen a lot of informal phone-in and on-line 'polls' on this topic lately, but they have little credibility. This poll used good statistical methods and is definitely credible.

The younger the respondents, the more supported the ACT laws, with 56% of people aged 18-39 in favour, compared with 48% of people aged 40-54 and 29% of people aged 55+. Labor voters were much more likely to support the laws (55%) than voters supporting the liberal-national Howard government (30%).

A poll by Nine's Sunday program on 18 June asked "Should same-sex couples have exactly the same legal rights as heterosexual couples?" -- 59% of respondents said "Yes" and 41% said "No".

Today the Senate rejected, by 32 votes to 30, a move to overturn the federal government's disallowance of the Australian Capital Territory's Civil Unions Act 2006, which is now effectively dead. Government Senators from around the nation had today "shamefully and explicitly" endorsed second-class citizenship for ACT's people, by failing to support its right to legislate for civil unions, Australian Capital Territory Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said. However, he congratulated ACT Liberal Senator Gary Humphries for crossing the floor on the issue, to vote with the Greens, the Democrats and Labor, all of whom should be congratulated for their stance.

Today, Mr Humphries stands alone as the only Coalition Senator prepared to stand up for the ACT's rights. But when his colleagues, elected representatives from around the country, had a historic opportunity to defend and uphold the very principles of democracy that brought them into the Senate Chamber in the first place, they squibbed. They abandoned 320,000 of their fellow Australians and they rubber-stamped the Prime Minister's own disgraceful disenfranchisement of the people of the ACT, rendering the rights of Canberrans second-class rights, the democratic entitlements of Canberrans second-class entitlements.

Mr Stanhope said he was deeply disappointed that the Senate had failed so wholly to comprehend the gravity of what it was doing and he questioned whether coalition Senators would have been so cavalier with the principles of democracy if the issue at stake had not involved a minority group.

If the Federal Government had taken aim at a majority interest, instead of the interest of Australia's gay and lesbian communities, would Coalition Senators have been so complacent about their vote? And what will they do next time, when the issue is one of greater personal relevance to them and their perceived constituencies? By then, of course, it will be too late. The precedent will have been established. The ACT's capacity to make laws in its own interest and according to its own conscience will have been forever eroded.

Credit where its due: Senator for the ACT Gary Humphries is the first (and, thus far, only) Liberal senator to have voted against the Howard Government in its 10-year history. "It's a big step to take," Senator Humphries told the Canberra Times. "I've been a member of two parliaments representing the Liberal Party for 17 years and I've never before crossed the floor." This shot from the front page of the Canberra Times shows him voting by sitting, glum and alone, on what for him is the 'wrong' side of the Senate chamber, behind two of the Greens, Senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle.

The over-riding of the territory's capacity to make its own laws had been "the biggest consideration" for the former ACT Chief Minister.

I am deeply unhappy about the decision that's been made. I spent 14 years of my life as a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly, where the Liberal Party entrusted me with the task of bedding down what was initially a fairly unpopular concept [territory self-government]. The thing that I told the citizens of the ACT time and again over those 14 years was that as a community we were mature enough and well educated enough to sit down and make decisions for ourselves about the things that were important to us. I think in those circumstances any step which takes away from the ACT the capacity to executive decisions based on the democratic process is a very serious and a very regrettable step . . . It's not easy to buck the consensus of the Government, but it is certainly a matter that I've given very serious consideration to and I fully understand the implications.

I found Mr Humphries open-minded and inclusive as ACT Chief Minister in his relationships with local gay and lesbian groups. But he was a little disingenous when he said in the Senate today that he thought the federal Liberal government had done much for gay and lesbian people.

"No Virginia, elder abuse is not when Grandpa swore at you."

Stories of horrific sexual assault of the elderly shocked even the most hardened social workers when its prevalence, the violence associated with it and the difficulties of prosecution were detailed at an Australian Association of Gerontology symposium in Sydney yesterday. . . . International studies showed that sexual predators gravitated towards the aged because of their vulnerability and the difficulties victims had in providing reliable evidence. (SMH 16 June 2006)

15 June 2006, is the 1st annual World Elder Abuse Awareness Day sponsored by the International Network for the Prevention for Elder Abuse (INPEA). The day is in support of the United Nations International Plan of Action which recognizes the significance of elder abuse as a public health and human rights issue. It promotes better understanding of abuse and neglect of older persons. There are activities around the world to raise awareness of the cultural, social, economic and demographic processes affecting elder abuse and neglect.



Abuse and neglect of older persons is largely under-recognized or treated as an unspoken problem. No community or country in the world is immune from this costly public health and human rights concern. The International Network for the Prevention for Elder Abuse (INPEA) was founded in 1997 and is dedicated to global dissemination of information as part of its commitment to world-wide prevention of elder abuse. Acknowledging the diversity of culture, background, and life style of the world population, INPEA aims to increase ability, through international collaboration, to recognize and respond to the mistreatment of older people in whatever setting it occurs, so that the latter years of life will be free from abuse, neglect and exploitation.

The United Nations is addressing elder abuse through UN Programme on Ageing, for example in the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing agreed at the Second World Assembly on Ageing in 2002. The first World Elder Abuse Awareness Day Global Symposium is being held on 15 June at the UN Headquarters in New York.

In Australia seminars are being held on 15 June in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide to mark International Elder Abuse Awareness Day. A Model Policy to assist aged care services to prevent and responding to the abuse of older people will be launched at the Sydney seminar, organised by the Australian Association of Gerontology, and has been published on the website of the Benevolent Society.

On the motion of Greens Senator, Kerry Nettle, the Australian Senate resolved today:

That the Senate--
(a) notes that:
     (i) Thursday, 15 June 2006 is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day aimed at promoting a better understanding of abuse and neglect of older persons,
     (ii) the United Nations International Plan of Action on Ageing recognises the significance of elder abuse as a public health and human rights issue,
     (iii) no community or country in the world, including Australia, is immune from this costly public health and human rights crisis, and
     (iv) Australia's seniors are valued members of society and it is our collective responsibility to ensure they live safely and with dignity; and
(b) calls on the Government to support initiatives that will ensure:
     (i) the safety of elder Australians in their homes, in aged care facilities, and in the wider community, and
     (ii) that elder Australians have access to adequate food, housing standards and medical care.

Links:
Australia's Elder Abuse Prevention Association.
The Canadian Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse.

There is much comment in the press about the Howard government's disllowance of the ACT's civil union laws, much of it tediously repetitive. But senior journalist Laurie Oakes's observations in The Bulletin are interesting and provocative. Some extracts:

Union bashing

. . . Howard is engaging in a bit of subtle gay bashing -- or, to put it more kindly, blowing the dog whistle again -- to exploit prejudice for political gain. But that can't be right. We have the PM's word on it. The federal government's stand, he says, has nothing at all to do with discrimination against homosexuals.

In Howard's own party room, there is some concern over his attitude. "He's out of touch," says a prominent Liberal backbencher. "He's got his knickers in a knot, when most Australians are thinking, 'Get over it!' The PM's stuck in the past on this." According to another of Howard's own MPs: "If he believes this is a wedge issue to use against the Labor Party, he's miscued." Howard seems to be taking his political lead on this -- as he does on the Iraq issue -- from George W. Bush, who has just tried unsuccessfully to have Congress approve a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

But in the US even the retiring Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, said last week that the Catholic Church could live with civil unions. So why can't Howard? Because -- or so he tells colleagues -- he believes the ACT's legislation amounts to gay marriage by stealth. The ACT's chief minister, Jon Stanhope, announced the plan to legislate for civil unions before last facing the voters -- which is more than Howard bothered to do with his radical reshaping of industrial laws. But the PM is not impressed by the fact that Stanhope has a mandate. . . .

Just in case anyone imagines Howard is acting on the basis of sincere conviction rather than playing political games, a bit of background is called for. When the first draft of Stanhope's legislation was produced, the federal government threw up its hands and said it conflicted with the Marriage Act, which defines marriage as "the union of a man and a woman". Unless the ACT government amended the proposed civil unions law, Howard said, it would be disallowed. Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock was instructed to write to the Stanhope government explaining which aspects of the legislation were unacceptable. This Ruddock duly did, nominating four areas where he said the legislation would have to be amended. But he did not specify how it should be changed, and there's the rub.

Ruddock originally intended to set out details of the changes that would make the legislation acceptable. When the PM's office got wind of this, however, the attorney-general was jumped on and told to write only in the most general terms. The reason, as I understand it, was that -- for tactical reasons -- Howard wanted to retain maximum flexibility. "If we'd laid out our requirements and Stanhope did what we asked, we'd be bound to accept his legislation, a federal government source told me. So the ACT government had to guess at what the feds would accept. Even though all four sections identified as problem areas by Ruddock were amended, Howard was able to dismiss the changes as not going far enough. One federal Liberal MP -- in private conversation with colleagues -- has described what Howard and Ruddock did as "a sting operation".

The only section of the amended ACT legislation that Howard has publicly singled out as objectionable reads: "A civil union is different to a marriage but is to be treated for all purposes under territory law in the same way as marriage." That seems to me to say no more than that partners in a civil union should not be discriminated against under the law. . . .

My information is that Howard wants the ACT's civil unions law watered down to something like the model that operates in Tasmania -- basically, a registration system. The ACT legislation provides for ceremonies at which people entering into civil unions make declarations before civil union celebrants. It is this ceremonial aspect which gets up the nose of the PM and his cabinet allies. If Stanhope had changed his legislation to something close to the Tasmanian template, Howard would have copped it. This, I suspect, was what Ruddock was not allowed to say in his letter. . . .

Postscript: Shortly after 1pm on 15 June, the Senate voted 30-32 to negative a motion to disallow the Governor-General's decision disallowing the ACT law. Thus the Governor-General's decision, made on the advice of the Howard government, has been upheld by the Senate and the ACT Civil Unions Act 2006 remains repealed.

In a meeting of the Executive Council this morning, the Governor-General accepted a recommendation by the Howard government that he disallow the Australian Capital Territory's Civil Unions Act 2006. The disallowance takes effect at midnight today, follwing its entry this afternoon in the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments.

No civil unions had been celebrated under the law.

Earlier today, the Speaker of the ACT Legislative Assembly, Mr Wayne Berry, called on the Governor-General to deliver an Address from the Assembly. However, in a subsequent press release, the Governor-General stated that his role is merely "to receive the Address from the Assembly and then refer it to the Australian Government for consideration" and that he has "no constitutional authority to intervene personally on any matter of policy where there may be a difference between the ACT Legislative Assembly and the Australian Government." "In the matters relating to the Civil Unions Act 2006" the Governor-General states, he "therefore has no authority to act independently."

Postscript: Shortly after 1pm on 15 June, the Senate voted 30-32 to negative a motion to disallow the Governor-General's decision disallowing the ACT law. Thus the Governor-General's decision, made on the advice of the Howard government, has been upheld by the Senate and the ACT Civil Unions Act 2006 stays repealed.





The matter now moves to the federal Parliament, where the decision of the Governor-General may in turn be disallowed by a majority of either house of Parliament. If this were to occur, it would most likely be in the Senate, where the government's majority is smaller than in the House. The opposition can at least force a vote on the matter, as a proposed dissallowance takes effect automatically unless it is voted down or withdrawn within 15 sitting days. Government Senators are being urged to cross the floor and over-ride the doissallowance, but I am sceptical.

Meanwhile, ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell has attacked the Governor-General's decision, calling it arrogant and undemocratic. He said the issue of same sex unions will not go away and he will continue to push for legal recognition for gay couples. "We will pursue all options to provide for equality under the law for people in same sex relationships." Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says the ACT Government can propose further amendments to the legislation in the future, if it wants to revisit the issue. But he says the legislation as it stands goes beyond the territory's powers. "There are issues that remain the responsibility of the Commonwealth and marriage is one of those."

The ACT's Human Rights Commissioner, Dr Helen Watchirs, says the Governor-General's decision marks a disappointing day for democracy. "I think the move towards better recognition of same-sex partnerships was very positive," she said. "We didn't go as far as civil marriage, as other countries like Canada and Spain have done recently. But we were getting through to get some recognition so that these people aren't treated as second-class citizens and prejudice against them is not reinforced by our legislature."

The formal Explanatory Statement published by the government in the Register says:

Issued by the Authority of the Attorney-General, for the Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads

Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988 -- Instrument of Disallowance

Subsection 35(2) of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988 (the ACT Self-Government Act) provides that the Governor-General may, by written instrument, disallow an enactment made by the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory (the ACT Assembly) within 6 months after it is made. An enactment is made when it is notified in the Australian Capital Territory Legislation Register.

The ACT Assembly passed the Civil Unions Act 2006 (ACT) on 11 May 2006. It was notified in the Australian Capital Territory Legislation Register on 19 May 2006. The Civil Unions Act 2006 (ACT) would have enabled two people, whether of the same or opposite sexes, to enter into a civil union.

The disallowance of the Civil Unions Act 2006 (ACT) supports the fundamental institution of marriage.  The Marriage Act 1961 (Cth) makes it clear that marriage is the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others voluntarily entered into for life. This is the definition of marriage inserted into the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth) by the Parliament in the Marriage Amendment Act 2004 (Cth). The unique status of marriage is undermined by any measures that elevate other relationships to the same or similar level of public recognition and legal status.

The Civil Unions Act 2006 (ACT) created a statutory scheme for the recognition of relationships which bore a marked similarity to the Commonwealth's scheme for the regulation of marriage. This legislation appeared to undermine marriage, attempted to circumvent the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth), and may have created ambiguity between civil unions and marriages.

The ACT Assembly made an Address to the Governor-General on 8 June 2006. Notwithstanding statements made in that Address, the power of the Governor-General to disallow an enactment under section 35 of the Act is at large and is not constrained by the policy considerations set out in that Address. The ACT Self-Government Act specifies no conditions that need to be satisfied before the power to disallow an enactment may be exercised.

The disallowance instrument is a legislative instrument for the purposes of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003. The instrument commenced on the day after it was registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments. The instrument has the same effect as a repeal of the Civil Unions Act 2006 (ACT).

Gloomy reviews (23% at Rotten Tomatoes, 2.5 stars from At the Movies) persuaded James and I not to bother with the movie, The Da Vinci code. But there's been so much fuss, I felt duty-bound to read this battered public library paperback copy.

The grand hypothesis of the novel is that the church has ruthlessly suppressed the femininity that should be at the heart of a genuine Christianity. Setting aside the bogus 'history' of the novel, I'm in sympathy with a feminist theological critique of contemporary church belief and practice.

But even from an "alternative" prespective there is more than enough information to thoroughly debunk author Dan Brown's speculations. Bishop N.T. Wright has an has an excellent article in Response 26(2) Summer 2005, publsihed by Seattle Pacific University:

One of the fascinating questions about the book is, why is it so popular? It can't just be because it's a page-turner; there are plenty of those around. Where does it fit in to our culture? In what way is it saying things that so many people are so eager to hear? Granted that many readers can see how fantastic its conspiracy theories are, why do they still want to believe, or at least be open to, some of the more extreme and bizarre of its claims? I believe the book does indeed represent a quintessential statement of where a significant part of our culture, not least here in North America but also in the UK, passionately wants to be. It is for this reason, not simply because the book is well known or because it perpetuates some currently popular but ultimately silly ideas about Jesus, that I want in this . . . presentation to work down through some of the surface noise of the book to the issues at the heart of it all.

Yet, in the end, the book is a fiction. The book is a novel. It's not historical fiction. Despite rave reviews and huge sales, to me the book is a failure even as simply a mystery thriller. The characters are flat and underdeveloped, so that all that drives the book and makes it a page-turner is the unravelling of the mystery of the location of the 'Holy Grail'. But this cannot be anything but unresolved at the anti-climactic end of the story. There's pages of description that add nothing to the story but to slow it down. The writing is uneconomical and dull. Pages and pages are devoted to speeches filling in the fictitious historical background that plays no part in solving the central mystery of this one-plot wank.

The Age enhances its reputation as a respected newspaper in this sensible Editorial, "Same-sex unions a matter of human rights" (12 Jun 06).

The last time the Federal Parliament overturned a territory law was in 1997 when it voted on the Northern Territory's euthanasia legislation. A conscience vote was allowed, liberating parliamentarians from the restrictions of party politics. The Age believes that the Howard Government should reconsider its decision to quash ACT laws giving homosexual couples access to civil unions. But if the matter is to go before Parliament, then MPs should at least be given the freedom to decide for themselves how they will vote on it.

It is already apparent that some politicians on the Government benches are uncomfortable with the Coalition's interference in the ACT's legislation. ACT Liberal Senator Gary Humphries, a former territory chief minister, said he was considering crossing the floor to oppose the Howard Government. Senator Humphries was concerned with the Federal Government's decision to intervene in the ACT's affairs and also disapproved of the lack of consultation. "I personally find it very difficult to be confronted with this decision without having had the chance to discuss it in detail with the various ministers before it was actually put to cabinet," he said. It is safe to assume that Senator Humphries is not alone with his misgivings. Liberal backbencher Warren Entsch has plans to introduce a private member's bill recognising same-sex de facto relationships for the purposes of taxation, superannuation, Medicare, veterans' affairs and social security. The bill, which has the cautious support of Treasurer Peter Costello, tackles the various ways in which the law discriminates against homosexual couples. This important topic is also the subject of an inquiry by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

It is this newspaper's opinion that the subject of recognising civil unions between gay couples is more rightly seen as a human rights matter rather than a political one (a view shared by those ACT couples who wish to affirm their rights at a civil union ceremony in the ACT even though they know the union may be short-lived -- in the eyes of the law at least). By interfering in the ACT's laws, the Government has chosen to politicise the issue, doubtless because it believes there is some advantage in doing so. Its actions mirror the political manoeuvres of the Bush Administration, which recently failed in its attempt to introduce a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. By deciding to place the prospect of short-term political gain ahead of principle, the Government is seeking to capitalise on an outdated prejudice that nevertheless continues to cause a great deal of suffering among people in long-term, loving relationships. Thankfully, it is a prejudice that many in the community have overcome -- as The Age reported on Saturday, the growing number of openly gay people respected for their achievements in public life is an encouraging sign that homosexuality is on its way to becoming an unremarkable fact of life.

Unfortunately, the Federal Government's actions have set back this cause, while Labor's muddled response does not advance it. In 2004, the ALP backed the Federal Marriage Act, which explicitly stated that marriage was the union of men and women to the exclusion of all others -- a matter more properly decided by the church than by politicians. Last week, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said the ACT laws did not contravene the Federal Marriage Act and that Labor therefore would not support the Coalition's intervention, a response that makes a nice legal distinction but which dodges the larger ethical questions. In Victoria, the State Government has removed many of the legal obstacles faced by homosexual couples, but Premier Steve Bracks says he has no plans to allow same-sex civil unions, whereas Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu says he is "comfortable" with the idea. Political allegiance is no indicator of where an MP will stand on this issue, which is why the Government should declare it to be a matter of conscience. By intervening in the ACT's laws, the Coalition has declared the issue of civil unions to be one of national importance. Why not then allow the nation's MPs to make a free choice when they cast their vote?

Yesterday, Trinity Sunday, was marked by sung Eucharist, for which I sung Psalm 29 in this lovely setting by Rosalie Bonighton. This was my second outing as cantor, so I think I'm in the groove now!


1. Ascribe to the Lord you po | wers of heaven, | ascribe to the Lord glo | ry and strength.
2. Ascribe to the Lord the honour due | to his name; | worship the Lord in the beau | ty of holiness. . . .
9. The Lord sits enthroned a | bove the water flood; | the Lord sits enthroned as king for | evermore.
10. The Lord shall give strength | to his people; | the Lord shall give his people the bles | sing of peace.

One of the joys of singing in church is to be accompanied by Colin Forbes playing our Hill, Norman and Beard 'Continuo' organ. It was manufactured in 1964 and installed in 1967 by the Australian subsidiary of English organ builders Wm. Hill & Son and Norman & Beard Ltd. In operation in Melbourne from 1927 to 1974, when the parent company was wound up, Hill, Norman & Beard (Australia) Ltd fulfilled many orders, including the prestigious new organ for Melbourne Town Hall. Its order books are in the custody of the University of Melbourne Archives. The St. Philip's organ is recorded as job no. ACT719.

It is a single manual pipe organ of 56 notes and four stops -- Stopped Diapason 8 ft., Prestant 4 ft., Doublet 2 ft. and Larigot 1-1/3 ft. It is recorded in the Supplement to historic organs of New South Wales, by Graeme D. Rushworth and on the website of the Organ Historical Trust of New South Wales.

Colin says he loves the organ dearly -- it's very suitable for a small church which has fine acoustics; but it would be better with a pedal bass and will soon be due for renovation.

With apologies to Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Rabbi Mark S. Glickman, of Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island, Washington reads Leviticus with love and humour in "Scripture misread by those who oppose gay-rights legislation", The Seattle Times, 10 Jun 06.

I'm usually content to leave it to Christians to decide what Christianity says about contemporary issues. However, many Americans -- Christians, Jews and others -- derive their views on this particular issue from a misinterpretation of Jewish scripture, and, as a student and teacher of Torah, I feel compelled to throw in my own two shekels.

There are several passages from Jewish and Christian scripture that are often at the center of religious debates regarding homosexuality. Foremost among them tend to be two passages from the book of Leviticus. The first, Leviticus 18:22, says, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abhorrence." The second, Leviticus 20:13, echoes that prohibition and adds that those who break it are subject to capital punishment.

That's it. The laws of the Jewish Bible devote only two lines to homosexual behavior. Sadly, over the centuries countless readers of these texts have based vast condemnations of homosexuals and homosexuality on these two brief passages, ignoring the greater lessons of love and compassion that Torah teaches. Additionally, a close look at what these two verses actually say will reveal that many who draw conclusions from them are reading the texts incorrectly.

First, note that the verses say nothing about lesbianism. Indeed, though Jewish law (mistakenly, I believe) prohibits both male and female homosexual relations, its prohibition of lesbianism isn't nearly as strong as its prohibition of male homosexuality -- and the rabbis of antiquity had to turn to post-biblical literature in order to justify their prohibition of women having sex with other women.

Second, it is important to remember that the biblical world had no concept of "gay people." The Bible categorizes people in many other ways, of course -- by tribe, nation, gender, age, etc. -- but nowhere does it discuss gay people, as such. Thus, these two passages were most likely intended for straight people -- straight men shouldn't lie with other men. In other words, in a biblical world devoid of any conception of "sexual orientation," these passages seem to prohibit not homosexuality, but promiscuity.

Finally, even if we do read the passages in question as being about homosexuality, it is important for us to realize that the texts don't actually prohibit it.

Men, the Bible says, may not lie with other men as they would with women -- evidently, when a man wants to lie with a man, he needs to figure out some other way to do so! A literal reading of the text allows for a lot of leeway. Leviticus never prohibits romantic relationships between two men, nor does it prohibit men showing one another physical affection. And provided this affection is different from male-female affection, it seems to allow it to be of a sexual nature, as well.

Maybe the Bible's deeper truth here is that homosexual relationships can indeed be good and sacred and noble in ways that heterosexuals could never imagine. Maybe the Bible was really trying to teach that there are different ways for people to connect with one another, that to presume to know how everyone else should have sex is an act of wanton disrespect, and therefore a great sin.

Reflecting upon these matters, I realize that . . . I don't know for sure what God thinks about this issue. But what I've learned over the years has made me believe that God calls upon us to treat all human beings with dignity; that God has created us each the way we are for a reason; and that in this world of broken families and unfulfilled commitments, God values stable, loving and committed relationships between people of all kinds, even between those of the same sex.

The current hoo-hah about The Da Vinci Code has stimulated me to learn something about Leonardo. This is his St. John the Baptist c.1513-1516, from the Louvre. To our eyes, it's a little err ... odd. It's queer.

Art teacher Shelley Esaak writes that it's typical of Florentine pictures of young men at the time. "Leonardo was not alone in this perceived artistic gender-bending. He was his own man, but he was also a product of his time. . . . The Florentine School had a long tradition of often depicting young males as sweet, pretty, rather effeminate persons. Why? Well, it was simply how it was done. It was tradition, and at least partly so because young men were frequently objects of desire - outright lust, if you will - of some, usually older, Florentine men. Yes, pedophilia, as we now describe it. . . . Leonardo was sticking to tradition: Biblical . . . Florentine (young men were often love objects) and the Florentine School (young men were often painted as "pretty")."

Which brings me to the question I ask myself: "How much of our representation of Biblical figures, especially Jesus, is merely an artifact of our own time and culture?"

Following the federal government's decision to ask the Governor-General to disallow the ACT's Civil Unions Act 2006, the Territory's assembly has taken the unprecedented step of voting to deliver a formal address to the Governor-General, imploring him not to disallow the legislation. The ACT Self-Government Act, which contains the power to disallow ACT laws, also allows the Governor-General to request amendments. The Assembly wants the Governor-General request amendments. Nonetheless, he is likely to follow convention and abide by the advice of the Prime Minister.

ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell says it would be more constructive for the Commonwealth to recommend amendments to the legislation. "Rather than this vague assertion that it offends the institution of marriage. I mean there's no real way we can respond to that, but if they can give us real detail and proposed amendments that will satisfy their concerns, we stand ready to consider those, and consider them seriously. Tell us exactly which clauses and which provisions of our Act they are unhappy with how they believe those could be changed, and recommend those amendments through the Governor-General to the Legislative Assembly."

The Assembly's address emphasises that the ACT is a body politic with a plenary grant of power. ACT parliamentarians have a mandate to carry out their publicly-made pre-election commitments. The ACT disagrees with the Commonwealth contention that its law trespasses on a legitimate area of Commonwealth power (marriage). The ACT stands ready to consider amending the Act, were the Governor-General to make recommendations "to resolve any outstanding ambiguities".

The address says, "This is an exceptional request, which will inevitably form the basis for future precedent, not just in relation to the ACT, but in relation to self-governing territories and other polities, including the Commonwealth itself. It is submitted that the power to disallow does not exist at large, but is constrained by ordinary convention in relation to Crown consideration of new legislation."

During the assembly debate, Education Minister Andrew Barr described the proponents of disallowance as evil. "What is it about supporting loving, caring relationships that they oppose?" he asked. "What is it about Anthony and I living next door to all of you in this community? What is it about our relationship that undermines you?" Turning to the ACT Liberal Opposition, Mr Barr asked, "Don't they believe in our democracy any more? Have you lost your spine? If that's the case, if the Liberal Party supports this federal intervention in the territory they should resign from this place now. Go."

The ACT Assembly will shorten the notice period for civil unions from a month to a week to allow couples to have their relationships formally recognised before any federal disallowance. The ACT's Registrar-General has published the necessary forms, although civil union celebrants are yet to be appointed. (I cannot become one as my bishop has directed that no church lay minister may be a civil marriage or civil union celebrant.)

The federal Senate can overturn the Governor-General's disallowance, but this would require three government senators to vote with the opposition. Liberal Senator for the ACT, Gary Humphries, may do this, but I doubt that any others will join him.

If the ACT law doesn't survive, any civil unions celebrated under it will be nullified, as if they had never existed. James and I are wondering whether its worth the trouble and expense to make what may turn out to be merely a political protest. We are confident of our union, civil ceremony or no. We have evidenced it publicly by wearing identical rings, in three colors of gold (the picture shows mine). A Christian ceremony would be indeed a blessing. But we appreciate the legal benefits and protections that civil unions would provide, should the ACT government's courageous efforts ultimately bear fruit.

Sala has devised a way of graphically representing the links in a website. Some of the most interesting results are displayed on flickr. The not too much graph is below. The key is: blue for links, red for tables, green for the div tag, violet for images, yellow for forms, orange for linebreaks and blockquotes, black for the HTML tag, the root node, and grey for all other tags. It looks pretty, but does it mean anything? I suspect not!

Changing Attitude Australia, Inc. will be launched at a gathering at 3pm-5pm, Sunday 25 June 2006, 3-pm at St John's Anglican Church, Bentleigh (corner of Tucker and Centre Roads).

Dr Peter Sherlock will speak on Sexuality and the Anglican Church of Australia--where to from here?

Changing Attitude Australia is a new organisation dedicated to promoting the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the life of the Anglican Church. Changing Attitude aims to move forward the debate about sexuality in the Anglican Church of Australia and beyond by:

• raising awareness
• providing education
• introducing our experience; and
• building relationships.

In the medium term, Changing Attitude Australia aims to:

• move forward the listening process in the Australian church;
• provide speakers and resources for parishes;
• create a nation-wide network of members for mutual support; and
• bring the gospel to those on the margins of society.

Changing Attitude Australia welcomes as members everyone who supports these aims.

Changing Attitude began in England and has brother/sister organisations and networks in Wales, Scotland, other European countries, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Brazil, Nigeria and Uganda.

Peter Sherlock has an MA from the University of Melbourne and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. He is an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in history at the University of Melbourne. He is an active member of the Diocese of Melbourne and the Parish of St. Peter's, Eastern Hill.

The launch will include a brief General Meeting of Members to elect office-bearers. Contact by email at changingattitude@yahoo.com.au

Changing Attitude Australia is yet to be launched, but I like this statement of belief from Changing Attitude Scotland as a summary of what we might be on about:

We believe that:

• there is integrity in being both Christian and gay, lesbian or bisexual;
• gay, lesbian and bisexual people are called by God to express their sexuality in loving, faithful and committed relationships;
• same-sex orientation is a God-given reality for a large minority of people, not a sin or a sickness;
• as the positive contribution of the gay community towards society becomes clearer, the church's mission to this expanding group becomes urgent;
• gay people's lives offer evidence of the fruit of the Spirit;
• our present experience requires a re-evaluation of scripture and tradition;
• to be gay, lesbian or bisexual is not limited to sexual activity or sexual identity but encompasses every dimension of life;
• prejudice against gay people in the church is as unacceptable as racism or prejudice against women;
• the church should stop colluding with cultural repression and discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people in all parts of the world.

"How can same-sex unions possibly be a threat to marriage?" by Andrew Lynch Andrew Lynch is senior lecturer in the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, Univerity of New South Wales, The Age, 7 June 2006.

Gay marriage is a topic that is not going away any time soon. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is holding an inquiry to chart the extent to which same-sex couples are disadvantaged under Australian law. There is no doubt that such couples get a raw deal compared with their heterosexual friends who are married or in de facto relationships. The difficult question is how we should fix this.

The HREOC inquiry is looking at the operation of Commonwealth, state and territory laws that discriminate against gay and lesbian couples. It is particularly interested in hearing from such people about cases in which they have missed out on financial and work-related entitlements because they are in a relationship with a person of the same gender.

Although the inquiry is just gathering steam, there are countless ways in which same-sex couples lose out under the law. Just some of the areas include the taxation system, social security benefits and worker's compensation. An example arises when a member of a same-sex relationship dies without a will. In some states, the deceased's partner will not be able to inherit as they are not a spouse nor are they able to claim as a de facto partner.
It is not really clear how much of this discrimination is the result of a definite policy or just a failure to update legislation in line with growing community acceptance of same-sex relationships. While it is rare these days to find laws that talk about "husbands" and "wives", many statutes still use gender- specific language when discussing couples, be they married or de facto. The effect, however, is to exclude people whose partner is of the same sex.

We might think then that the solution to whatever the HREOC inquiry turns up is a simple one. Instances of discrimination against same-sex couples could be eliminated by statutory amendment on a case-by-case basis. But even taking this step would not amount to true equality in the recognition of same-sex relationships. It might, at best, put those couples on the same footing as other de facto relationships.

While these days the position of heterosexual de facto couples approximates that of married couples, the two are not simply equivalent under the law. Apart from any specific benefits denied to the former, the paramount distinction is that people in a de facto relationship still have to prove their relationship when they are seeking to enforce legal entitlements. To return to the earlier example, if a de facto partner wishes to receive his or her partner's estate on their death, there is a list of factors the courts use to decide if their relationship meets the bar. These include evidence as to where the couple lived, their sex life, their level of financial dependence and even how household duties were shared.

But while heterosexuals can avoid these disabilities by affirming their relationship for legal purposes through marriage, this is not an option for same-sex couples. Even wide-ranging statutory change that puts same-sex relationships on a par with de facto relationships fails to guarantee true and complete equality.

Gay and lesbian relationships will be on a level footing with heterosexual ones only when same-sex couples are able to make a similar choice about having their relationship recognised under the law and to enjoy the consequences which flow from that.

This need not mean including same-sex unions within the definition of marriage. For one thing, that might be constitutionally impossible given that when the Commonwealth was given power over marriage in 1900 it was undoubtedly understood as limited to the union of a man and woman.

The Australian Capital Territory's Civil Unions Act shows how we might achieve equity for same-sex couples. A civil union is to be treated as a marriage for all purposes under ACT law, but it expressly states that "a civil union is not a marriage". This aims to avoid any inconsistency with the federal Marriage Act. While the Attorney-General seemed placated by those efforts, the Commonwealth yesterday indicated that it sees the ACT's law as usurping its power over marriage. The act will be quashed from August 1.

It is tempting to think the ACT law introduces gay marriage but that it dare not speak its name. However, it seems to strike the middle ground of respecting the traditional and constitutional definition of "marriage", while ensuring that same-sex couples are able to have their union recognised as exclusive under the law.

Even people with qualms about same-sex couples as parents should be able to appreciate that there can be no justification for the many instances of financial disadvantage experienced by these members of our community. The solution is to provide a means of legally recognising such relationships and then extending to those people the same benefits that apply to married couples.

This will remove the discrimination HREOC is cataloguing. If doing so threatens the institution of marriage then it is a weak institution indeed.

The conservative Australian federal government announced today that it will legislate to to overturn the Australian Capital Territory's Civil Unions Act 2006. Federal Attorney-General, Mr Ruddock, says that the ACT law treats civil unions as though they were marriages, in contravention of the federal Marriage Act.

Though not given to strong and emotional political statements, I find myself exceedingly angry at the Howard Government's outrageously undemocratic and sickeningly disappointing decision. This is the first time that the federal parliament will be asked to overturn an ACT law, which is possible only because the ACT is not a state, but a federal territory.

"We have decided to defend the fundamental institution of marriage against the laws that were passed here in the Australian Capital Territory", Mr Ruddock said. "The (federal) Marriage Act makes it clear that marriage is a union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. That definition reflects the traditional understanding and was supported bipartisanly in 2004. The ACT's Civil Unions Act creates a statutory scheme in recognition of relationships which bear a striking resemblance to the Commonwealth's regulation of marriage." Mr Ruddock says the ACT Government did not take on board all the Commonwealth's suggested changes to the bill.

Mr Ruddock said the Federal Government had given the ACT Government advice about its concerns, but it was deliberately ignored. "They didn't pick up those measures and I think that was a deliberate decision on their part. This issue could have been dealt with in a way that was not deliberately as confrontational as it was."

However, Section 5 of the ACT Act clearly says that civil unions aren't marriages. The Territory's laws simply give partners in civil only give civil unions similar treatment to married people, under Territory law only.

Mr Ruddock said if the ACT Government wanted to re-draft the laws, it could approach the Federal Government for advice. I hope the A.C.T. Government will keeping talking withe the federal government, though I doubt that Mr Stanhope, the ACT Chief Minister, would want to go grovelling to the conservatives for "advice".

In his "Lives of moral leadership" (New York: Randon House, 2000, p. xiv) Pulitzer-winning author Robert Coles describes moral leaders as "people whose acts, ideals and ordeals, ideas and thoughts, whose affirmed visible commitments, have in one way or another had meaning and worth to others, have enabled others to see their own aspirations and dreams brought to life."

In this decision, the Howard government represses the aspirations and dreams of many and fails singularly in moral leadership.

At St. Philip's today, we celebrated Pentecost with a service including music in the Taizé style -- the first time I had experienced it. It was joyful, but peaceful. There is water, a candle symbolising fire, and a wind chime. (Pictures by our Deacon, the Revd Linda Anchell)

This image of the dove and tongues of fire is from the 3 June edition of the The Tablet, which has an article on Pentecost by James Alison. He shows how "Luke's tableau of Pentecost, sketched out for us in Acts 2, is an extraordinarily deft compilation of scriptural fulfilments."

[O]f course, the gathering together of all the nations and languages in Jerusalem reflects the beginning of the undoing of Babel, where tongues became confused as a punishment for the pride of those who would have made one language which would have controlled the whole earth. Here God undoes the confusion without imposing a single language, but enables the single truth to be spread throughout all the nations of the earth, thus permitting for the first time a non-controlling unity of all humans. It is the same truth in all translations, none "purer" than the other, for we are all secondary cultures. Back even beyond this, the Spirit which comes down is the same Spirit as that which hovered over the earth. It is the Creator who is erupting into his people.

Those gathered in Jersusalem for the feast were from many lands, yet they were together as worshippers of the one true God -- a diversity echoed in this rainbow image from the Jerusalem Open House.

The Jerusalem Open House LGBTQ Community Center (JOH) is a grassroots, activist organization of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people. Since 1997, it has worked to make Jersusalem a place where all are free to seek self-fulfillment. Its greatest challenge is a tradition of conformist heterosexism that continues to be enforced by almost all Israeli social institutions, especially in Jerusalem, a city of traditional values and deeply rooted religious commitments. The JOH provides services to build the community and act as a catalyst of LGBTQ fellowship and culture. It also advocates social change on issues of concern to its constituents, taking action to promote the values of tolerance and pluralism in Jerusalem.

To celebrate Pentecost, we all wore red to church. I had to hunt to find a red shirt -- they're not in fashion and I don't usually wear red. All the red colors reminded me of my visit to Korea at the time of the 2002 World Cup, when the street were full of people wearing red tee shirts and chanting "Dae Han Min Guk" in support of the Korean national team, the fans of which are called the "Red Devils". It might have been fun to wear a "Devils" shirt to church! I couldn't even find a World Cup shirt in Korean colours -- not many Korean fans in Canberra, it seems. Even James and I will support Australia, of course. Nike's retro designs for the official team outfits are rather dull. The Australian players didn't seem too thrilled with theirs. So long as they can play as least as well as the team beloved of the "Red Devils"!

Mr Warren Entsch, Liberal (i.e. conservative) federal Member of Parliament for the north Queensland seat of Leichardt, is proposing a Private Member's Bill to abolish federal legal inequities against people in interdependent and same-sex unions. It would allow same-sex couples access to the Medicare Safety-Net, taxation offsets, and superannuation contributions splitting (amongst other things). Australian supporters of the legislation are encouraged to sign an electronic petition on Mr Entsch's website

Mr Entsch has written an open letter to his fellow Government MPs, experssing "alarm" at the extent of the discrimination that exists in Federal Government legislation for those individuals living in interdependent relationships." He says that, "This discrimination has a real and negative impact on these people's lives and their relationships." The letter includes a summary list of the many forms of discrimination that still exist against same-sex couple under federal legislation.

I don't watch a lot of TV, but Inspector Rex is a regular weekly escape, as he always gets his man (or woman) "with canine cunning . . . and a ham roll". (Actually Extrawurst, apparently.) The Viennese setting is often interesting and Rex is always entertaining. But in seasons 4 to 7, he's in danger of losing star billing to good looking Gedeon Burkhard who plays Rex's human companion, Austrian homicide cop, Alexander Brandtner. One of Burkhard's ambitions is to play James Bond. He'd fit the job, methinks . . . imagine James Bond with an Austrian accent.

16th June is the last day for submissions to a national enquiry by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Same-Sex: Same Entitlements -- Discrimination against People in Same-Sex Relationships: Financial and Work-Related Entitlements and Benefits. "The Inquiry intends to conduct an audit of Commonwealth, State and Territory laws in order to develop a full list of circumstances in which same-sex couples may be denied financial and work-related benefits and entitlements that heterosexual couples enjoy. The Inquiry will also be collecting individual stories about the impact of such laws on people in same-sex couples, and any children of same-sex couples. The Inquiry will make recommendations to the Federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, and Federal Parliament as to how to address any discrimination."

I sent in a short submission. Of course the Commission is well aware of the issue I mention. But it asked for " personal stories"! The Commission does good work. But I am sceptical of any result, as the Howard Government often ignores the Commission. On questions of same-sex equality, it's simply not listening or, at least, has very selective hearing. This is what I said (edited slightly):

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission.

My long-term same-sex partner and I are both members of the Australian Public Service. On joining the APS, we were each required to become members of the Public Sector Superannuation Scheme (the PSS). Of itself, that is no bad thing.

My salary is higher that of my partner and I want to provide security for him should I die before he does. However, unlike other couples, we are unable to provide security to each other through superannuation death benefits, as the legislated definition of "eligible spouse" for the PSS excludes a person of the same sex -- even though opposite-sex de facto partners are eligible.

My partner and I hold all our debts and assets in common -- house, mortgage, car, bank accounts, furniture, insurance, etc. Superannuation is the only asset of importance that we cannot share.

Changes to Commonwealth legislation have allowed members of some same sex couples to nominate their partners to receive superannuation death benefits, and have extended tax free status for superannuation benefits to same sex couples.

However, the changes excluded Australian Government employees. This is an extraordinary and hurtful discrimination by the Australian Government against its own employees. Am I any less committed to my partner than a member of a de facto opposite-sex couple or a person employed in the private sector?

Future changes to superannuation law may make it possible for Australian Government employees to move to other schemes that permit payment of benefits to same-sex couples. But the financial cost of this to mature age couples could well be considerable. On retirement, we could take our PSS benefits as lump sums and invest them in other ways but, again, the whole-of-life financial loss would be considerable.

The Government has long promised to address this anomaly but has failed to do so. Yet it now claims to have removed discrimination against gay and lesbian people! I cannot tell whether its motives are financial, political, or both -- or whether it simply doesn't care.

Today, 31 May, is World No Tobacco Day.

not too much is tobacco free.

Quit!

However, I cannot say that this site is entirely caffeine, alcohol or calorie free.

The National Gallery of Australia is staging a travelling exhibition of work by Michael Riley (1960-2004) of the Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi people. Riley was one of Australia's "most important contemporary Indigenous visual artists of the past two decades. His . . . film and video work challenged non-Indigenous perceptions of Indigenous experience, particularly among the most disenfranchised communities in the eastern region of Australia."



Brenda Croft, Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, writes in the introduction to the exhibition that

Riley's images reflect what he has described as the 'sacrifices Aboriginal people made to be Christian'. They resonate with loss -- experienced not only by the individual, but also by entire Indigenous communities -- loss of culture and land in an enforced or sometimes embraced exchange for Christianity. Biblical elements abound in Sacrifice: the cross laid on the chest and standing out sharp against the sky in an unseen cemetery; the shimmering skin of the fish is in stark contrast to the parched earth; the oozing liquid in the dark palms of the black Christ-like figure evoking his struggle on the cross; and the granules of sugar, flour and coffee echoing the rations meted out to Aboriginal people on missions and hinting at the struggles present-day communities face with the onslaught of drugs.

Riley's photographs in the exhibition include this mystical image, Darell (1989). Curator Gael Newton describes it as "very enigmatic, with the young man's soft-lit face, eyes lowered and closed, in a Zen-like meditation." This beautiful picture brings me to pondering "How much of the beauty is from the subject and how much is in the work of the photographer?

In this week of prayer for Christian unity, you could be forgiven for thinking that there are too many churches in our inner Canberra suburb of Turner. In our street are the Holy Trinity Finnish Lutheran Church and the Canberra National Seventh-Day Adventist Church. A Baptist fellowship meets in the SDA hall on Sundays.



A few hundred metres north of us is the Canberra Meeting House (pictured below) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The North Canberra Baptist Church is near the Friends. A Korean Full Gospel church meets at the Baptist church and another Korean fellowship meets in the Finnish Lutheran church.


Our own church, St. Philip's Anglican (above), is technically in the next suburb, but is only 15 minutes' walk away.

The Canberra City congregation of the Uniting Church of Australia is nearby.

There are Vietnamese, German and English language congregations at St. Patrick's Roman Catholic church (Central Canberra Parish) ten minutes' walk from us in nearby Braddon, and another Catholic church an easy walk from us. Half a kilometre from us is another congregation of the Uniting Church, St. Columba's (picture below), just up the street from the Canberra City Temple of the Salvation Army.



Then there's the Hope of God congregation that meets near us and chapels at the Australian National University residences including Burgmann College and the John XXIII chapel (below), as well as the University chaplaincy. No doubt I've missed quite few!



Our most spectacular neigbourhood church, one street away, is the Ukrainian Autocephalic Orthodox War Memorial Church of St. Nicholas.

Built in Ukrainian Kozak Baroque style, the church is white rendered with cupolas made from bronze. There are Byzantine mosaics on the outside walls depicting the Mary and the saints. A memorial centre, opened in 1988, is located next to the church and was erected by parishioners of Australia and New Zealand. A memorial stone nearby is dedicated to the victims of the artificial famine in the Ukraine during 1932-33, the Holodomor.

Gracious God, grant that that by our common commitment to you, and our one faith in Christ, we may recognise your presence and grow more and more into unity with each other. Make us truly one, O God. May we so to recognise your presence among us in differing ways that our desire for true community in our churches and society may be increased, and our yearning for the unity of your Church be strengthened. As you lead us into the future, give us the hope that, united in the name of Jesus, death will not prevail, our divisions will be healed, and we will attain fullness of life, love and light in your new creation.

Baby photos can be embarrassing when rediscovered after fifty years, but not these fortunately! They have notes on the back, written by my mother, whose 84th birthday would have been this week. The top right snapshot, taken 5th December 1948, shows me in the arms of my mothers' mother, Judith, who is with her husband, Bill, and my other grandmother, Christina McKinlay ("Grandma Mac"). The boy with the teddy bear and the young gardener were photographed at Grandma Mac's home in El Nido Grove Glen Huntly in 1950.
My mother's note on the back of the family group says it was taken at my chistening at "St. Mark's Camberwell" (in Melbourne). But my baptismal certificate says I was christened at "St. John's Chapel" by Neale G. Molloy. The Revd. Canon Neale Molloy OBE (1911-2003) was a particular friend of my father and director of St John's Home from 1940 until 1976.

St John's Home for Boys was established in Canterbury Victoria in 1921. By 1958, the home had also began caring for young girls and changed its name to St John's Home for Boys and Girls. It is now a ministry of Anglicare. I was born while my parents were live-in supervisors at St. John's home for older boys, St. Martin's, while my father, recently returned from war service, was studying social work and education.

I am not afraid of death, though I do sometimes fear the suffering that often accompanies dying. Latterly I've had to work hard to avoid hypochondria and anxiety while working through a series of medical challenges. The results are good. A suspicious swelling that could have been fatal has turned out to be benign. Problems with sleep are being well overcome. Meanwhile my assorted aches and pains still keep my excellent chiropractor busy.

This morning, the very day after hearing the news that I do not have cancer, I've been well and truly exhorted by today's page from John Baillie's A diary of readings.

The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their lives which infallibly destroy them. This is a reflection made by some historians, upon observing that there are many more thousands killed in a flight than in a battle, and may be applied to those multitudes of imaginary sick persons that break their constitutions by physic, and throw themselves into the arms of death by endeavouring to escape it. This method is not only dangerous, but below the practice of a reasonable creature. To consult the preservation of life as the only end of it, to make our health our business, to engage in no action that is not part of a regimen or course of physic, are purposes so abject, so mean, so unworthy human nature, that a generous soul would rather die than submit to them. Besides that a continual anxiety for life vitiates all the relishes of it, and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature; as it is impossible we should take delight in anything that we are every moment afraid of losing.

I do not mean, by what I have here said, that I think anyone to blame for taking due care of their health. On the contrary, as cheerfulness of mind and capacity for business are in a great measure the effects of a well-tempered constitution, a man cannot be at too much pains to cultivate and preserve it. But this care, which we are prompted to not only by common sense but by duty and instinct, should never engage us in groundless fears, melancholy apprehensions, and imaginary distempers, which,are natural to every man who is more anxious to live than how to live. In short, the preservation of life should be only a secondary concern, and the direction of it our principal. If we have this frame of mind, we shall take the best means to preserve life, without being oversolicitous about the event; and shall arrive at that point of felicity which Martial has mentioned as the perfection of happiness, of neither fearing nor wishing for death.
-- Joseph Addison, The Spectator, 29 March 1711.

Now, if only I could get rid of those extra kilos! Definitely don't want to have to hunt this much to find it!
"At last, there it is."

In a speech to Australia's Ambassador Plunkett when she presented her credentials on 18 May, Pope Benedict XVI continued his campaign against same-sex unions.

It is . . . respect for transcendent order that has led Australians to recognize the fundamental importance of marriage and stable domestic life at the heart of society, and to expect that political and social forces -- including the media and entertainment industries -- recognize, support and protect the irreplaceable value of families. They appreciate that pseudo-forms of 'marriage' distort the Creator's design and undermine the truth of our human nature, confusing a false sense of freedom with the true freedom of choosing the definitive gift of the permanent "yes" which spouses promise to each other.

More helpful than vague condemnations of "pseudo-forms of marriage" are the Pope's rightly expressed concerns about Australia's refugee policies and our lack of progress in bringing about oneness between Australia's indigenous and immigrant peoples. The Pope noted that "practical commitment to ensuring the rule of justice and promoting peace is a widely recognized trait" of Australia's people.

The laudable resolve to work for peace on an international scale must be matched with an equal determination to attain justice at the local level. I know that your Government has assiduously addressed concerns regarding the reception of refugees, in order to ensure that humanitarian considerations are incorporated within immigration detention policy and duly monitored. In regard to the Aboriginal people of your land, there is still much to be achieved. Their social situation is cause for much pain. I encourage you and the Government to continue to address with compassion and determination the deep underlying causes of their plight. Commitment to truth opens the way to lasting reconciliation through the healing process of asking for forgiveness and granting forgiveness -- two indispensable elements for peace. In this way our memory is purified, our hearts are made serene, and our future is filled with a well-founded hope in the peace which springs from truth.

Australians have already shown much greater interest in and concern for these warnings than the Pope's statements about 'pseudo marriage'.

Benedict XVI is right when he says:

In countries such as yours, where the disquieting process of secularization is much advanced, many young people are themselves coming to realize that it is the transcendent order that steers all life along the path of authentic freedom and happiness. Against the tide of moral relativism which, by recognizing nothing as definitive, traps people within a futile and insatiable bid for novelty, the young generation is rediscovering the satisfying quest for goodness and truth. In so doing they look to both Church and civil leaders to dispel any eclipse of the sense of God and to allow the light of truth to shine forth, giving purpose to all life and making joy and contentment possible for everyone.

To allow people to publicly affirm and formalise permanent monogamous same-sex relationships will allow just what the Pope is seeking, the making of "joy and contentment possible for everyone". Refusal to allow such recognition encourages young gay people to feel that their love is transient and has no enduring worth, feeding the very moral relativism that the Pope deplores.

The Pope truthfully speaks of 'the true freedom of choosing the definitive gift of the permanent "yes" which spouses promise to each other'. Whether or not in a public ceremony, many same-sex couples have chosen this 'definitive gift' through a permanent "yes" to each other; James and I have. It's no pseudo-commitment; it's for life.

"In front of a bigger crowd than they'll see at the World Cup, the Socceroos enjoyed the perfect farewell with a winning - and at times commanding - performance against Greece at a jam-packed MCG last night.
A stunning first-half volley from midfielder Josip Skoko, perhaps the best of his career, provided the difference, and gave a singing, flag-waving crowd of 95,103 cause for celebration and optimism. The squad leaves for Europe today in good spirits, and in great shape."
-- Michael Cockerill in The Age this morning (26 May 26)

Good luck, gentlemen!

photo: The Australian

Just what I needed to see, after way too many medical tests lately.

From "Latter Day Psalms", by Chris Ashby:

2. The tree waves in the wind But does not break unless The bough is over-burdened. When spring disrupts the dead days Buds, leaves, and birds praise God In song and silent sound The dead dock, stiff With last year's pride Leans unwillingly in the gale: My heart Lord [or, more to the point my body] , is unyeilding. My joints are stiff The knuckles of my knees Refuse to bend. The knife is at my kneck, My back breaks. I will say my matitudinal prayers From a crippled position, Perhaps the Lord will hear?

Chris Ashby. Plain song: collected poems. Carcanet Press, 1985.

On Pentecost Sunday, our church will read Acts 2.1-21 with verses in each of French, German, Pidgin, Swahili, Korean, Afrikaans, Bontok, Shona, Russian, Thai and Dutch.

It falls to me read Acts 2.1-2 in French. I soon remembered that English speakers are not the only ones with the luxury and dilemma of a variety of Bible translations from which to choose, thus:

Le jour de la Pentecôte, ils étaient tous ensemble dans le même lieu. Tout à coup il vint du ciel un bruit comme celui d'un vent impétueux, et il remplit toute la maison où ils étaient assis. (La Sainte Bible, tr. Lois Segond, ed. rev. 1970, 37 words)

Quand le jour de la Pentecôte arriva, les disciples étaient tous rassemblés au même endroit. Tout à coup, un grand bruit survint du ciel: c'était comme si un violent coup de vent s'abattait sur eux et remplissait toute la maison où ils se trouvaient assis. (La Bible du Semeur. International Bible Society, 1999, 45 words)

Quand le jour de la Pentecôte arriva, les croyants étaient réunis tous ensembles au même endroit. Tout à coup, un bruit vint du ciel: comme si un vent violent se mettaient à souffler, et il remplit toute la maison où ils étaient assis. (La Bible en Français courant. Alliance Biblique Universelle [UBS], 1992, 43 words)

I've chosen the last, as it seems simpler; it's the equivalent of the Today's English Version/Good News Bible.

James will read some other verses in Korean, but these are verses 1-2. The Korean Revised Bible has been a proud part of Korea's Christian heritage and was last revised in 1961. However, as the orthography rules have been changing, and because of changes in the everyday language of Korean people, a New Korean Revised Bible was published in May 1998, after fifteen years of patient work.

Ron Ferguson writes in the Glasgow Herald (22 May 2006) of "sexuality time-bomb" set to explode very soon under the Church of Scotland. My interest is not so much in the battles of the Church of Scotland, which differ little from those elsewhere, but in Ferguson's own sensible response.

What is it with the churches and sex? No, it's not Catholics and condoms this week, but Protestants and gay relationships. The issue threatens to disrupt the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland amid mutterings about another Disruption.

(The Disruption of 1843 was a schism within the Church of Scotland, in which 450 ministers of the Church broke away over the issue of the Church's relationship with the State, to form the Free Church of Scotland.)

It was only a matter of time before the explosive issue of homosexuality burst through the attempts to sideline it. The Rev Basil Fawlty's nervous admonitions not to talk about the war have failed. Strangely, what has triggered the contentious matter's rise to the top of the agenda is a report from a group which is not normally associated with controversy.

The Kirk's legal questions committee is no sleeping cell for theological terrorists. But tomorrow it will ask the assembly to permit ministers to conduct ceremonies marking civil partnerships. [The controversy is about part 15 of the report published here.] This is the Presbyterian equivalent of lighting the blue touch-paper and retiring. The committee, in its wisdom, decided to take up the question of whether ministers and deacons, if approached, could bless such partnerships without being disciplined by the Kirk. They opted for the view that ministers' freedom of pastoral conscience must be safeguarded. This means that if a cleric were approached by, for example, a couple of Christian gays, he or she should be free to consider the case on its merits. The committee also sought to safeguard the rights of those who, in conscience, could not affirm legally-recognised same-sex relationships. In other words, the legislation would be permissive rather than mandatory.

Ferguson goes on to describe the people and groups drawn up on each side, and in the middle, of the forthcoming debate in the Church of Scotland. Some ministers, " said that they would not be able to continue in ministry if the vote went against them." Astonishing.

The evangelicals are right to argue that the church shouldn't allow its agenda to be dictated by cultural trends; the weakness of their case lies in their talk about the "plain meaning of scripture". The same phrases were used not only in relation to women's ordination, but in the historic argument about slavery. The few biblical texts about homosexuality are not free from abiguity; not only that, evangelicals are as guilty of "pick'n'mix" in relation to texts as anyone.

Historically, churches have made up their minds on major issues both by studying the scriptures and by seeking the guidance of the spirit in the light of new knowledge. We know things now about the spectrum of human sexuality which were unknown to biblical writers.

My own mind was changed by the experience of meeting Christian gays. I know same-sex couples of tremendous faith and long-standing commitment to each other who would put many heterosexual couples to shame. Bless their relationship? Of course. They should be part of an inclusive and open church.

There is a real struggle here. But the Kirk, like other churches, needs to engage in that struggle without becoming an over-my-dead-body war zone. In the way in which it handles this debate--and it may need time for more study--its credibility as a community of integrity and reconciliation is publicly on the line.

Just so. As Ferguson says, "What is it with the churches and sex?"

Postscript

After a difficult debate, the Church of Scotland has voted in principle that it should be left to individual ministers to decide whether or not to mark civil partnerships, which are now law in the UK. The decision went through after two votes. The first saw the attempt to have ministers halted from carrying out ceremonies marking civil unions was rejected by 322 votes to 314. The legal committee's motion carried by 372 to 240. However, The Scotsman reports that a binding decision was avoided when the assembly voted to have the decision sent down under the Barrier Act 1697 requiring the 46 presbyteries to consider the matter. If a majority of them approve of the assembly's view, a definite decision will be taken next year. But if they do not, the assembly will have to reconsider.

The resolution says:

Whereas the Civil Partnership Act 2004 does not confer on ministers or deacons the power to create civil partnerships;

Whereas a service marking a partnership under the Civil Partnership Act 2004 is to be distinguished from the joining together of a man and a woman in marriage;

Whereas ministers and deacons are uncertain whether they may expect to be charged with a disciplinary offence in the event of conducting a service for those who have contracted a partnership in terms of the Civil Partnership Act;

Whereas ministers and deacons who are unwilling to conduct such services are entitled to have their opinions protected;

And whereas the diversity of view on the matter means that the availability of such services varies from parish to parish;

The General Assembly declares as follows:

1. A minister or deacon who conducts any service marking a civil partnership does not commit a disciplinary offence in terms of Act III 2001 (as amended).
2. No minister or deacon shall be compelled or obliged to conduct such a service against his or her conscience.
3. Where a minister or deacon officiating at such service has been approached by the parties in the first instance, or where a minister or deacon so approached officiates in circumstances where the parish minister has declined to officiate, such minister or deacon shall not be deemed to have intruded upon the sphere of ministry of a parish minister in terms of section 18 of Act II 2000.

On Saturday we went to the debut concert of the Canberra Handel Choir, founded and managed by Annette Gaykema and directed by Adam Laslett. The concert was held in our church, St. Philip's, which has good acoustics for chamber music. Supported by a small orchestra the chamber choir of experienced singers performed a selection of arias and choruses from Semele, Hercules, Solomon and Judas Maccabaeus.

The soloists included graduates of the School of Music of the Australian National University; Erika Tolano sung three solos and was outstanding, particularly in "Where shall I fly?" from Hercules. Also very fine was tenor Daniel McMillan who sang "Where'er you walk from Semele. James and I hear Daniel practising somethimes as he and friend Nicholas Ng are our pleasant neighbours. Nick is also a musician -- a composer and ethnomusicologist and doctoral candidate.

In my ignorance, I had heard little of this music before, and my appetite was well whetted. I greatly enjoyed the show and was glad to enjoy the standing ovation at the end.

Medical technology company ResMed yesterday won Standards Australia's prestigious Australian Design Award of the Year for its portable S8 AutoSet Spirit flow generator and HumidAire 3i Humidifier system. These gadgets are used to treat sleep apnea.

This is encouraging to me as I bought one of these machines less than a week ago!

According to the ABC Stephanie Watson, manager of the awards, ResMed is leading the world in vital areas of product development -- "their designers have a lot to be proud of."

The Australian Design Awards is Australia's only national product design awards program. More than 250 products across 11 categories were entered this year. An international panel of designers from America, Sweden, Korea, the Netherlands and Australia shortlisted the entries to 104. The entries were then assessed by a panel of industry professionals, who spent a full week judging the originality, design, safety and commercial viability of the products. The Australian Design Awards is recognised by the Australian Government and the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design as the peak promotional award for the Australian design.

If not treated during sleep, sleep apnea can narrow or close a person's upper airway to cause snoring or, in some cases, stop airflow for as long as 10 seconds. This sleep disturbance may occur several hundred times a night resulting in tiredness and may contribute to other serious health conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and depression. A treatment machine uses a flow lightly pressurized air to keep the upper airway open - CPAP ('Continuous Positive Airway Pressure').

I've used a conventional machine for some years with reasonable success, but the automatic machine is already giving me better sleep. It's not cheap, however. You shouldn't buy and use one without medical advice, but if you do know just what you need, you can save a bundle by shopping around and buying online from a reputable company.

Unlike conventional CPAP devices, the AutoSpirit delivers air at a pressure level that varies automatically as the patients needs change during sleep.

Mr John Tucker, CEO of Standards Australia, said that this is one of the most important developments in the treatment of sleep disorders and goes a long way to improving the quality of life for hundreds and thousands of Australians. Australian Design Awards judge, Mr Robert Tiller, head of one a leading Australian design consultancy described the ResMed sleep apnea machine as a high quality product with "so much technology squeezed into such a small space". "It is a comprehensive design and beautifully executed. Years of design achievement have lead to a hero product, extremely well considered and designed perfectly to do the job."

ResMed also won the 2006 Western Sydney Industry Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Most Outstanding Large Business category.
It's great to see an Aussie company producing such a superb high-tech product, exported world-wide.

On the occasion of a visit by the Archbishop of Sydney, the Most Revd. Dr Peter Jensen, the Christchurch newspaper The Press has published an article by him, also found on the New Zealand website The Stuff. Dr Jensen says:

My greatest desire as a Christian minister has always been to point to Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead. He is the loving Saviour and Lord of all who have turned to him in repentance and faith. I want to align my teaching to the merciful message of the Bible.

I wish all Christian writers were as clear in their adherence to Jesus Christ!

. . . Since becoming Archbishop of Sydney I have found that I am expected to be an instant expert on all sorts of topics . . .

A temptation Dr Jensen would do well to avoid, especially when it comes to homosexuality, on which he says both too much and too little -- too much in repetitive, simplistic assertions and too little in careful argument and discussion based on the scholarship that took him to the principalship of a leading theological college.

If I am willing to make a comment, I always attempt to speak from the expertise and knowledge that is uniquely my own as a Christian minister. . . . My aim is to provide a biblically-based Christian critique and opinion on the question of community concern at hand. I want to ensure that a Christian view, based on biblical teaching, becomes part of community discussion alongside other community voices.

Discussions on human sexuality and sexual relationships are part of an even more important debate on the nature and rights of human beings. Are we to be seen basically as individuals, or as individuals in relationship with others? Western culture has become intensely individualistic, which suits the drive to economic liberalism and globalisation, but may not meet our real needs.

Too true.

Human sexuality is seen as a matter of individual choice, freedom and justice for the individual. Families struggle to find time for relationships, and faithful, fruitful relationships are not cherished, honoured and supported by the community.

Yes, but the former is not a consequence of the later. Properly exercised, choice, freedom and justice will support families, as well as people in other forms of relationship.

Sex has become a commodity rather than a joy.

Sadly true, but sex would be less a 'commodity' in society if the churches could be clearer and more open in their appreciation and celebration of the goodness and joy of God's gift to us of sexuality.

The Christian churches of the West have been shaped by these developments.

Without doubt a key issue for the church is that of authority. As an Anglican, I accept that the Bible is God's word and that its teaching determines the content of Christian faith. It is clear that its teaching contradicts the individualism of the age in which we live.

I believe that the biblical view is actually much better for the well-being of the whole human family.

So far, so good.

The issue before us in this debate on human sexuality, on marriage and sexual relations outside of marriage, is the question of God's authority, and the true nature of humanity. One way of avoiding the central issue of debate is to label those holding the biblical views as "fundamentalists" and "puritans". That is a shame, because there are issues involved here which have a profound bearing on human well-being.

Traditional, scripturally-based Christians believe that marriage is a God-ordained relationship between a man and a woman, and that sexual relationships outside of marriage are sinful relationships.

Here we see here the usual problem. Dr Jensen asserts that his interpretation and application of the Bible is the only one that honours God's authority. He assumes that only those who understand the Bible as he understands it can possibly be correct.

I recognise as well, however, that in a sex-obsessed culture such as our own, such teaching presents people with agonisingly difficult choices and a call for self-discipline out of keeping with the mood of the times. Those who seek to live like this deserve every honour and care; those of us who lapse -- and who does not lapse in all sorts of ways? -- come to know something of the grace and love of the Lord as we turn to him afresh.

Mercifully true, given the assumptions Dr Jensen is working from.

. . . Traditional, scriptural Anglicans from the West are joined in opposition to liberal secularist views on human sexuality by the majority of Anglican Christians and their bishops from the developing nations.

I would say, on the other hand, that it is entirely possible to support a greater role within the church for people in faithful monogamous same sex relationship, while remaining conservative and 'non-secularist' (e.g. in acceptance of the creeds, and the essential doctrines of the faith, including, if you please, the authority of scripture).

The point at issue is whether the Bible speaks the truth about our relationships and especially our relationship with God.

No, Dr Jensen, the point at issue is whether your understanding as to what the Bible says about human relationships is correct and whether God requires others to agree with and apply your understanding.

The great danger is that the biblical teaching about sin is being redefined through this issue of human sexuality. If we weaken on the biblical teaching on the nature of sin, we weaken on the identity of the Saviour from sin. It will no longer be clear that Jesus is the unique Saviour of the world.

This is simply not true. Whatever we define to be sinful, whatever God clearly shows us to be sinful, Jesus can never be less than Saviour. There are many sins concerning which the church says so little. Is the place of Christ as Saviour diminished thereby? Of course not. His role as Saviour is inherent to his very name and being, to which the church contributes nothing. Exactly what conduct, by whom, in what circumstances makes up this sin to which Dr Jensen attributes the power to redefine the identity of Jesus as Saviour?

It is no less problematic, in any case, to judge the conduct of one's sisters and brothers in Christ, who do not concur in one's poorly articulated interpretations of the Bible.

The efforts of liberal theology are, in human terms, endangering the gospel enterprise of the church. If we do not stand here we will not be able to stand anywhere.

Dr Jensen seems to say that if his interpretation of the Bible concerning faithful monogamous same-sex relationships cannot be enforced on the church, the entire cause of the Gospel will be lost. This is would appear to be a viewpoint singularly lacking in epistemic humility. It also greatly diminishes the very authority of God that Dr Jensen is so keen to protect (not that it needs protecting.) For myself, I have the utmost confidence that God the Holy Spirit will bring about a right understanding and application of the truth concerning human sexuality. But we do not assist the work of the Spirit if we diminish the Spirit's role in bringing wisdom to the church, wisdom that encourages us to think and pray carefully about the application of the scripture to our own lives and society.

By Richard Rohr, OFM, Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico, in his foreword to Coming in: gays and lesbians reclaiming the spiritual journey , by Urs Mattmann. Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications 2066.

Avoiding the risk of a transgression has become more important to us than holding a difficult position for God, and it is this that is killing us. -- Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Surprisingly -- although maybe not -- the issue of homosexuality has become the test case and the contentious issue inside most Christian denominations today. It divides otherwise reasonable people, and they move into fear, accusation, and quick absolutes or Scripture quotes -- on both sides -- to settle the seeming dust. When we deal with the issue of sexuality and gender, when we appear to be tampering with the basic archetypes of male and female, everybody gets defensive or aggressive. It's a sure giveaway that we are dealing with something very important and very mysterious. We are on holy ground, which always both attracts and intimidates at the same time. So the first thing we must do is take off our shoes.

In other words, we must tread lightly and with respect for the other, no matter on which side of the issue we find ourselves. Fundamentalist assertions are just as bad as fundamentalist rejections. The true gift will be found in the middle somewhere, not by avoiding the struggle but by entering into the mystery of human love, and letting it teach us and stretch us, until we are finally capable of hearing God in all things -- even those things that at first appear dangerous. We must hear both the experience of healthy homosexual love and the social critiques of those who are trying to preserve other social and spiritual values. Both have something necessary to say, and both are hard to hear from the other side. So keep those shoes off until you can tiptoe over to the other perspective, and even, if we can dare to imagine it, to the perspective of a good God.

Once other believers can see that gay men and women are concerned about the values of faithfulness, and are willing to preserve the normative value of heterosexual marriage for the sake of human life's continuation, many of their fears will be lessened. Once gay women and men can expect trust and respect from other people and from society, I think we can begin a civil and truly spiritual conversation. We are still in the early stages of creating that conversation and that climate. Remember, true spirituality is always telling us to change, and not giving us weapons to change other people. How different Christian history would have been if we had just learned that one simple lesson. But somehow the human ego was not ready for that much participation in the mystery of transformation. It is so much easier to spend our lives'converting' others than to undergo the always painful task of personal conversion. It is more attractive to feel ourselves'right' than to continually admit that we are also partially wrong.

After working with people as a priest for over 31 years, I have come to an extraordinary conclusion: we come to God not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. This is obvious to me now, although it does not really become obvious until the second half of life. By then, if we are honest, we have seen the pattern in ourselves and in others. You understand mercy and grace by looking backwards. Looking forwards it is just a nice theory, but not yet 'good news'.

Why, then, are we so obsessed with the bad news of being right? Why do we spend so much time trying to concoct a worthy ego? Whether we are homosexual or heterosexual, can't we just 'hold a difficult position for God'? Jesus appears to be doing just that, as he hangs archetypally between the good thief and the bad thief on the cross -- naked before reality. He also pays the price of hanging on this collision of opposites, and it seems very few are willing to join him there. The realm of true faith, liminal space as I call it, will always be 'narrow' and 'only a few find it' (Matthew 7:14).

Homosexuality is emerging as the issue that institutional religion finds itself structurally most incapable of resolving. It reveals, like nothing else, the very limitations of managed religion. Denominations have to please constituencies and donors; they have to appear mainline and'solid' to maintain their religious credibility. They find themselves incapable of dealing with genuine mystery because of their penchant for grand universals. They must preserve their authority and never be caught without an answer for everything. And, worst of all, they find themselves more and more incapable of dealing with the exceptions (precisely where Jesus was at his best!) because they are intent on being normative. All of these concerns are actually legitimate and understandable, but fortunately Jesus suffered under none of these social constraints. Quite simply, he was able to speak the truth to each person -- as they needed it, when they needed it, and in a way they could hear it. All for the sake of leading them into union with God.

Once we know this is our only goal, the process becomes less paranoid, less controlling, and much more hopeful. Looking backwards at history and at our own lives, we learn that God 'uses all things unto good' (Romans 8:28). It is almost the only lesson of the Bible. There are no superiority positions in the Bible, only broken people who are used by God in spite of, and often because of, their mistakes. Later notions of perfection emerged with mathematics, the only area of life where it applies. It is not a biblical concept at all, except when it refers to the Godhead itself; it never refers to humankind. The worthiness road is a dead end. Where is the cut off point from unworthiness to worthiness? All we can do is desire, hope, and ask. So let's join the grand parade of being human, let's surrender to the purifying process of learning how to love. It is an identical process for both homosexuals and heterosexuals, and we are all losing valuable time by trying to resolve this 'love mystery' in our heads or inside our separate group. I used to think that the opposite of control was just non-control or giving up. Gradually I have come to see that the true opposite of control is, in fact, participation.

The Gospel does not ask us just to give up control. That would be too simple, and even an abdication of the necessary tension. It asks us to participate in the mystery of active loving. Here, we are never in charge; here, we live in a luminous darkness; here, we are never sure that we are doing it right, and -- even better -- we no longer need to be sure. This is the 'difficult position for God'. And this is why it is called faith and not certitude. . . .

Speech by the Hon. Andrew Barr MLA, Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Minister for Industrial Relations and Member for Molonglo -- in the ACT Legislative Assembly on 11 May 2006, in support of the Civil Unions Bill.

---

I am very pleased to speak in support of the Civil Unions Bill. It is important to me and indeed to the whole community. I was there when this law reform process began 6 years ago with a series of resolutions from ACT Young Labor that led to the Labor party putting this to the electorate in 2001. And I am very proud to be here today to vote for this bill.

This bill is about recognising and strengthening relationships. It is about supporting loving, caring relationships regardless of the sexuality of those involved. Just last week I stood in this chamber and spoke about how good governments seek to lead on important social issues. This government believes all loving, committed relationships deserve to be treated equally and to be celebrated.

This government is standing up for what it and the citizens of the Territory overwhelmingly believe in. The Civil Unions Bill forms part of the Stanhope government's commitment to reform all areas of ACT law that discriminate on the grounds of sexual preference or gender identity. It is a commitment that the government is taking to two elections and it is a principled commitment that has brought strong support from the community.

One of the reasons that people of Canberra voted so strongly for the Labor party at the last two elections was that we stand for progressive social reform. Good governments set the social agenda for their communities. They govern as leaders, not as followers. It is the duty of the government to reflect the much wider interests of our society and the common values of fairness and tolerance that bind us all together.

Mr Speaker, gay and lesbian Canberrans are part of our community. We are not nameless, faceless people who live on the margins of society. Gay and lesbian Canberrans deserve the respect and dignity afforded to others, we deserve equality. This bill affords us equality under the law. The equality is not only functional and practical but it is also highly symbolic. It allows us to hold our heads up high as equal members of the community and to celebrate our relationships. It is about dignity.

Mr Speaker, despite the Stanhope government taking this reform process to the electorate on two occasions, and winning the support of the community quite decidedly, the federal government is threatening to intervene in this Territory's law making process. The federal Attorney-General, Phillip Ruddock, has made a series of outrageous statements about the federal government's intention to overturn this ACT legislation. This is despite his earlier comments, and I quote, "That the matter of civil unions is a matter for the states and territories."

Mr Speaker, Mr Ruddock's first instinct was correct. Civil unions are a matter for the states and territories. And the amendments that have been circulated by my colleague, the Attorney-General, will address the concerns raised by the Commonwealth. If the federal government now seeks to intervene and say, "No", to civil unions it will be endorsing discrimination against people who choose, for whatever reason, not to marry or who in fact cannot marry.

Saying, "No", to civil unions is to say that some relationships are more legitimate than others, that some loving, committed long-term relationships are for some inexplicable reason of lesser value. I find that an unacceptable proposition. And so to do many Liberal MPs. Dr Mal Washer, the federal Liberal member for Moore has said that:

"This country is civilised enough to get beyond the fact that people are different. If same sex couples have a commitment to one another, then it is reasonable for us to allow them recognition of their union."

And Warren Entsch, the Liberal member for Leichhardt in far North Queensland, who I quote is a, "Fierce heterosexual", has said:

"What we want is equal treatment for two people that are committed to each other. You are always going to get those fundamentalists who we are never going to convince, but the more I talk to people about it, the more support I get."

Mr Speaker, what is really at play here is a battle between the progressives and the conservatives for control of the social agenda in this country. The late Professor Manning Clarke spoke in his hstory of Australia, of this struggle in Australian life in terms of the enlargers taking on the straighteners. He said:

"This generation has a chance to be wiser than previous generations. They can make their own history. With the end of the domination by the straighteners the enlargers of life now have their chance. They have the chance to lavish on each other the love that previous generations had given to God, and to bestow on the here and now the hopes and dreams they had once entertained for some future human harmony."

Mr Speaker, I call on those members of the Liberal party who still hold liberal values to stand up now and oppose the straighteners. If they do not take a stand on these issues then the Liberal party will have given up its last vestiges of liberalism and the transformation to fundamentalism will be complete.

I also call on the Liberal party to stand up for our local democracy. If there is any member opposite who supports their federal party vetoing this legislation then they should resign from this place right now. They not only disrespect to their constituents. They are saying that they do not believe in local democracy, that they do not believe in the right of ACT residents to make decisions about how they are governed and by whom they are led.

Mr Speaker, there are often those motivated by religious convictions, who believe that same sex relationships are immoral and that those relationships should be discouraged at every turn. They are, of course, entitled to hold such views. But just as we tolerate the right of this minority to disagree, and let us be clear that they are a small minority of Canberrans, I would welcome, as would the community, a reciprocal tolerance to put the alternate view.

We live in a secular liberal democracy, and while much of our tradition is based on a Christian ethic, I do not believe that organised religion has the monopoly over morality or ethics. Governments permit divorce, abortion, sex before marriage, and child bearing out of wedlock. None of these things had affected the right or ability of Christians to live by their religion. And there is no reason why civil unions will either.

Mr Speaker, another great furphy in this debate is that civil union are some way of undermining marriage. This is simply not the case. Civil unions do not undermine marriage. The easiest way to assess this is by applying the general principle. Does the conferring of rights on a minority ever undermine the majority. The answer is no, it never does. I do not think anyone's marriage is undermined because Andrew and Anthony living next door to them will have their relationship recognised in law.

Mr Speaker, we often also hear that marriage has a special place in society and should be elevated to a status above all other relationships. But what does this mean in practice? Should a married person be treated differently in relation to a sale of a motor vehicle? Do married people deserve greater protection under the Witness Protection Act? Or on the other hand, should both parties in a same sex relationship be able to claim the first home owner's grant? The answer to these questions is clearly no. We should treat all relationships the same. And that is the practical effect of what is proposed with this change to ACT legislation.

Mr Speaker, there is strong public support in the enactment of civil unions. A recent news poll taken in February 2006 found that 52 per cent of respondents supported the introduction of laws to formally recognise same sex relationships. Support for civil unions was even higher amongst younger Australians and women. I know that Canberrans want a fair, open and inclusive society that respects and embraces people in non-traditional relationships. It is time our law reflected these changes in society in formally recognising same sex relationships.

Mr Speaker, I would like to make some observations on the Registration of Relationships Bill that Mr Stefaniak has proposed on behalf on the Liberal party. In the context of the recent amendments to the Commonwealth Marriage Act, this bill can really only be viewed as offering grudging tolerance of same sex couples. It is better than nothing, but really it is just a recognition by the Liberal party that absolute opposition to any form of same sex relationship recognition would be politically untenable.

I consider this a win for the progressives. It is hard to imagine that the ACT Liberal party of 2003 would propose such legislation. In fact three years ago, the conservatives were trying to block the Tasmanian law reforms that they are now champion in this place. Those opposite cannot continue to walk down both sides of a street on this issue. Saying to gay and lesbian Canberrans on one hand, "We do believe in you and we value you as members of our society", but on the other hand saying, "By the way, you cannot have access to a civil union."

If they really do value gay and lesbian Canberrans, they will come out and support the Stanhope government's civil union scheme that enables people in loving relationships to make a legally recognised public declaration of their commitment.

Mr Speaker, it takes more than showing up at Mardi Gras to demonstrate support for the community. You have to take a stand in this place where the laws of the territory are made.

Mr Speaker, strong relationships deliver important benefits for us all. We all define ourselves in some way by those we choose to share our lives with. Love, trust, intimacy and commitment are to be found at the heart of all good relationships. There is no good argument for allowing only opposite sex couples to form alliance and celebrate their relationships and to deny that right to same sex couples.

Those who oppose the Civil Unions Bill have frequently talked about its alleged dire effect on families. This ignores the fact that gay men and women have families too. We are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles and we are parents. Mr Speaker, this government has seized the opportunity to support family and to say plainly that no one deserves to be excluded simply because of his or her sexual orientation, we have drawn a line in the sand. Mr Speaker, the Civil Unions Bill encourages and empowers and protects couples who want to make their relationships loving, long-term, stable and committed.

We all should embrace such relationships because they enrich us all. Mr Speaker, the passage of this bill will remove a form of discrimination that is intensely felt by Canberrans who have been living quietly in long-term loving relationships. It will also help ensure that all our citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation, are shown the dignity and respect to which they are entitled.

Mr Speaker, discrimination has no place in our society and I strongly commend this bill to the Assembly and hope that this legal recognition will prompt more people in same-sex relationships to come forward proudly into our community.

Mr Speaker, finally I wish those couples that choose to formalise their relationships under this new law long and happy lives together. I know that their commitment will be recognised and embraced by the vast majority of their fellow Australians.

After a long debate the ACT Legislative Assembly passed the Civil Unions Bill 2006 late last night, with voting along party lines. The Assembly amended the bill to try to overcome federal objections without gutting the legislation.

• The Howard federal government had argued that the Bill improperly equated civil union with marriage (which is a matter for federal law). Therefore the first change was to state that "a civil union is different to a marriage but is to be treated for all purposes under territory law in the same way as marriage", acknowledging that mnmatriage under overuling federal law can be only between one woman and one man.
• The federal government also objected to use of its civil marriage celebrants to celebrate civil unions, so a separate register of ACT civil union celebrants has been created.
• Except in exceptional circumstances, 16 or 17 year olds may now enter a civil union only with ther permission of parents or guardians and the Children's Court.
• The bill now recognises a "union entered into by any 2 people under the law of a foreign country" rather than a (same-sex) marriage solemnised in a foreign country, as federal marriage law denies recognition of foreign same-sex marriages.
• Rather than changing many ACT laws to say "marriage includes a civil union" the Bill now amends ACT law to say "marriage or civil union".

Government Ministers Stanhope, Hargreaves, Corbell and Barr, and Greens MLA Dr Foskey spoke well. The speech of Andrew Barr, the Assembly's first and only gay member was especially poignant.

When federal Parliament next meets in June 2006, the Howard Government will have its first opportunity to use the federal power over territories (as distinct from states) to overturn what will by then be the ACT's Civil Unions Act 2006. The ACT has met the federal concerns fully and should be allowed to make laws to celebrate the personal relationships of its people in a just, equal and fair way.

Much good lobbying work was done by the ACT's Good Process group.

But there's still doubt about whether the Commonwealth will let the legislation stand, even though the ACT amended its Civil Unions Bill to attampt to satisfy the federal government. The federal Attorney-General is waiting to see the detail of the ACT laws before deciding whether to block them. Philip Ruddock says he was concerned the initial version of the legislation equated civil unions with marriage. "I've yet to see it and I've asked for my officials . . . now that it's been finalised, to obtain it and they'll brief me on it and I'll make some further comments," he told the ABC today.

The ACT Attorney-General, Simon Corbell, says the laws should worry the federal government no longer.

Well, I hope that they don't because there's no reason for them to feel that the union is equal to marriage. In fact a very explicit amendment moved in the debate in the Legislative Assembly last night was to make clear that a civil union is not a marriage, and the reason it's not a marriage is that it does not meet the criteria under the [federal] Marriage Act. [That is, between one man and one woman] . . . My very strong view, and the advice I've received from the Justice Department here in the ACT is that there really are no grounds for the Commonwealth to argue that this in any way trespasses on their powers to make laws in relation to marriage.

[C]learly there's been a lot of interest in this legislation, both here in the ACT and indeed across Australia. I think the important thing is that this opportunity is now available, and the ACT is saying very clearly that regardless of your sexual preference there should be the opportunity to enter into a union which is recognised under law.

[W]e will now commence on the process of establishing the registration scheme for our own civil union celebrants, and then people will be able to register to enter into a civil union. We anticipate that process will take between two to three months before people can formally enter into a civil union.

My sole chemical vice, 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-
2,6(3H,7H)-dione, a psychoactive water-soluble purine alkaloid, commonly known as . . . .

There is speculation that the Vatican may yet allow Catholics to use condoms when one partner is HIV positive, especially within marriage. I pray that it might see that when there is a possibility of HIV transmission the use of condoms is indeed a life preserving measure. As I understand it, the predominant principle to be applied is life -- the creation and preservation of human life. (Which is why I am opposed to abortion except to save life, while acknowledging that it must be the woman's own choice.)

Sex without a condom is manslaughter when one partner knowingly conceals HIV positive status. Non-consensual sex is rape, but without a condom it is also murder or attempted murder when the rapist knows that he or she is HIV positive.

Such crimes have happened to millions of women, especially in Africa, causing millions of preventable deaths of women and their children. Is not the Vatican embarrassed that it has helped cause millions of murders and manslaughters?

In the midst of the great and the glorious featured by Time in its 8 May 2006 special issue on 100 of "the world's most influential people", I'm attracted to a small piece by Malcolm Gladwell about Steven Levitt, author (with Stephen Dubner) of Freakonomics (Wm. Morrow, 2005).

Galdwell writes:

Not long after Freakonomics came out, Steven Levitt and I had a public debate at a salon in downtown Manhattan. The subject was crime. [. . .] It was a straightforward back-andforth. Levitt got up and made his case. I got up and made mine. But halfway through, I glanced over at Levitt and had a realization that I'm not sure I've ever had before with an intellectual opponent--that if I made my case persuasively and cogently enough, he would change his mind. He was, in other words, listening.

This is not a great moment for listeners in American society. The public conversation is dominated by those whose minds are unalterably made up, and we have come to view the man or woman whose views remain steadfast, even in the face of overwhelmingly evidentiary assault, as a kind of moral hero. Those people are not heroes, of course. They're usually just stubborn.

In Freakonomics and in his astonishing, wide-ranging academic work at the University of Chicago, Levitt, 38, reminds us that we owe a bigger debt to those with the humility to go wherever logic and discovery lead them. Does the possibility that abortion reduces crime raise uncomfortable questions? Of course it does. But Levitt believes that if we are to have an honest conversation about things like crime and abortion, we are obliged to consider those phenomena in all their dimensions. It takes a certain amount of courage to make an argument like that. And by the way, if you can come up with some good evidence to the contrary, Levitt will listen, and if you're really convincing, he's the sort of person who will change his mind. That takes courage too.

I am struck by this, not because of any relationship between crime rates and legalised abortion. What impresses me is the example of Levitt as a listener, someone "with the humility to go wherever logic and discovery lead"; humilty, and the courage to change one's mind -- qualities we need desperately in the church.

Canada's Anglican bishops have spoken against Nigerian laws on homosexuality, and disassociated themselves from the Nigerian church's support for the laws.

Anglican Journal 4 May 2006 - Canada's Anglican bishops unanimously endorsed a motion expressing "grave concern" about proposed legislation in Nigeria that "would prohibit or severely restrict the freedom of speech, association, expression and assembly of gay and lesbian persons." Their motion also called criticized the (Anglican) Church of Nigeria for its support of the legislation.The legislation is inconsistent with the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the bishops said in their motion, which was passed at their spring meeting held April 22-27. They said they were "especially grieved" by the support for the legislation given by the Church of Nigeria, noting that the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops called upon churches to "listen to the experience of homosexual persons."The proposed laws, said the bishops, "criminalize civil and religious same-sex marriage as well as the public and private expression of same-sex affection, all public affiliation between gay persons and even publicity, public support and media reporting of the same." The proposals "would make the very act of listening to homosexual persons impossible."In unusually strong language, the bishops said they "disassociate" themselves from the actions of the Church of Nigeria and called upon Anglicans around the world to listen to and respect the human rights of gay people.

I am sorry that Australia's bishop do not do the same.

Related earlier posts (newest first):

• Nigeria: more facts and some suspicions
• A cagey Nigerian game
• Nigerian church turns to policies of the Inquisition
• Dr Williams, please act now
• Compelled to ask whether the global Christian community has lost not only its backbone but its moral bearings
• Mwamba's message of maturity
• Open letter from Changing Attitude to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, to the ACO and to ACC officials
• Signaling the existance of gay Nigerians
• Nigerian disgrace
• Changing attitudes
• Stoning and power

Last weekend, after wrestling with the question of which of the world's too many troubles to mention in the intercessions at Sunday Eucharist, I empathised with Phillip Adams' lament in his column in the Weekend Australian Magazine(29-30 Apr). An extract:

I understand why fewer people are reading newspapers. I sympathise with the millions who don't watch the news or SBS, or listen to Radio National, or read important books, or attend lectures on urgent issues. If you know about the woes of the world, then "compassion fatigue" can be more comprehensible than reprehensible. And if you're lucky enough not to know, then who can blame you for wanting to censor the incoming signals? I can begin to empathise with those who dull the pain with drugs or shopping.

It seems I spend my time writing or broadcasting on wars, genocides, child soldiers, torture, climate change, George Bush, terrorism, refugees, West Papua, species extinction, John Howard, AIDS in Africa, ethnic cleansing, salinity problems, deforestation in the Solomon Islands, fundamentalists, social injustice, political chicanery, right-wing lunacies and the Vatican's blanket ban on condoms. And that's just Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday it's on to the death penalty, the decreasing incidence of voting in Western democracies ... before looking at really serious problems such as the mess the AL--bloody--P is in and the millions who'll die when the bird flu pandernic breaks out.

So bring on Donald O'Connor falling over the furniture, or Gene Kelly waltzing with his umbrella. Bring on anything that's silly or harmless and doesn't cause cancer or add to greenhouse gases.

And it just occurs to me that waltzing is a very funny word, and that our national song is about a waltzing swagman who commits suicide over a sheep, which reminds me of all the problems in the rural sector, particularly the endless drought at the farm, and the depression afflicting swaggies, Les Murray and the ex-premier of Western Australia -- and me, whenever I think of John Howard.

Darfur, petrol-sniffing [in remote indigenous communities], Cronulla [race-riots], domestic violence, arsonists lighting bushfires-- a laugh a minute. It's like being trapped in a revolving door with a hundred hopeless problems, like being beaten on the head by the vanes of Don Quixote's windmill, like being condemned to spend eternity dancing with Pauline Hanson [retired right-wing politican] or attending a dinner party with Phil Ruddock [Attorney-General of Australia]. Only it's even worse: like waking up and finding that Bush is still president.

I try to cheer myself up thinking that I'll soon be dead, but that could take months. . . . Then, all of a sudden, I feel a hint of hope. Not too much--just enough to rejoin the human race, that sad and sorry mob who muck everything up. Yet humanity can claim one great victory. We made Singin' in the Rain.

Titusonenine quotes the Rt. Rev. Ted Gulick, Bishop of Kentucky, who a little while ago at an ECUSA Province IV meeting referred to "this specific neuralgic moment in our church . . .". One commenter regrets that this "specific neuralgic moment" has been going on for as long as 3 years (since the previous ECUSA national convention).

I regret the discomfort of my American brothers and sisters, but three years is indeed only a moment in the 2,000 year history of the church. We seek God the Holy Spirit for the wise answer, not the quick answer. There are plenty of examples in the history of church controversies that took decades and centuries to resolve, if ever. The present debate about homosexuality may be similar in duration. Therefore, we need to find ways to live and worship together while the debate remains unresolved.

Encouraged today by my teachers, I was the cantor for the singing of Psalm 133 in our communion service this morning; it was the first time that I've sung a solo in public since I was a boy soprano. Psalm 133 is mercifully short, but it is one of my favorites.

We sung the setting by Andrew Moore from his excellent Sunday Psalms: music settings for Common Worship (Mayhew, 2000) .



1 Behold how good and plea | sant it is
to dwell toge | ther in unity.

2 It is like the precious oil u | pon the head,
running down u | pon the beard,

3 Even on | Aaron's beard,
running down upon the collar | of his clothing.

4 It is like the dew of Hermon running down upon the | hills of Zion.
For there the Lord has promised his blessing: even life, for | evermore.

Hat tip to *Christopher, who got it from ePiscoSours, who got it from not a shrinking violet who got it from . . .

Accent: 'educated' Australian with hints of England

Booze: Australian wine

Chore(s) I hate: with Dave at ePiscoSours, "I kinda hate them all equally"

Composers I like (added): Mozart and Bach

Dog or cat: none; I don't like dogs much and I'm allergic to cat hairs -- I like plants!

Essential electronics: laptop, radio, alarm clock -- the handy-dandy mobile 'phone does everything (calls, messages, camera, diary, radio, mp3 player, address book, yada yada yada, but its not essential)

Favorite cologne: Tuscany by Aramis;

Favorite clothes (added): jeans and tee shirt

Gold or silver: gold

Hometown: Melbourne, Vic.

Insomnia: when I'm anxious, which is waaaaay too often

Job title: Assistant Director, Management Information and Data Analysis

Kids: nope; never wanted any either

Living arrangements: ground-level apartment with garden coourtyard, owned and shared with James

Most admirable trait: commitment;

Least admirable trait(s) (added by *Christopher): I don't suffer fools or stupidity gladly; I lose things

Number of sexual partners: next question please;

Number of life partners (added): one

Overnight hospital stays: one; unless you count the six months I spent in hospital at seven years of age, due to polio

Phobias: snakes (long story)

Quote: "Not too much" (my family motto, very suitable for weight watchers)

Religion: Christian, subspecies Anglican

Siblings: one younger brother and two younger sisters (one deceased)

Time I wake up: variable -- 6.00-6.30am most days

Unusual talent or skill: none that's unusual, but I'm good at most things to do with words

Vegetable I refuse to eat: none, but I don't eat mushrooms or unusual parts of animals

Worst habit: anxiousness (the little white pills help)

X-rays: teeth (dentist), spine (chiropractor)

Yummy foods I make like: curry

Zodiac sign: I ignore the Zodiac;

Zealous about (added): the local church (most of the time)

There is another very safe and simple way of escape when the dull mood begins to gather round one, and that is to turn as promptly and as strenuously as one can to whatever work one can at the moment do. If the energy, the clearness, the power of intention, is flagging in us, if we cannot do our best work, still let us do what we can--for we can always do something; if not high work, then low work; if not vivid and spiritual work, then the plain, needful drudgery.

When it is dull and cold and weary weather with us, when the light is hidden, and the mists are thick, and the sleet begins to fall, still we may get on with the work which can be done as well in the dark days as in the bright; work which otherwise will have to be hurried through in the sunshine, taking up its happiest and most fruitful hours. When we seem poorest and least spiritual, when the glow of thankfulness seems to have died quite away, at least we can go on with the comparatively featureless bits of work, the business letters, the mechanism of life, the tasks which may be almost as well done then as ever. And not only, as men have found and said in every age, is the activity itself a safeguard for the time, but also very often, I think, the plainer work is the best way of getting back into the light and warmth that arc needed for the higher. Through humbly and simply doing what we can, we retrieve the power of doing what we would.

--Bishop Francis Paget. The Spirit of discipline. London: Longman, 1891.
Picture: Francis Paget (1851-1911), Bishop of Oxford. Watercolour by Sir Leslie Ward, 1894.

Of course, one could always try something like this (from Savage Chickens):

I like to get my exercise by walking in the Australian National Botanic Gardens -- at least on holidays, weekends and in the summer. The Main Path is good for a short vigourous walk. Near the Main Path is an armillary sphere sundial, of silicon bronze, half a metre in diameter. A plaque gives time corrections for reading the sundial.

Armillary sphere sundials, modeled on the celestial or terrestrial sphere, are constructed from three or more interlocking rings which provide support for the rod-like gnomon, which forms the axis of the sphere, and casts the time-telling shadow on the equatorial ring. The equatorial ring carries hour lines marked at 10 minute intervals from dawn 'till dark. The gnomon is set at an angle of 35° to the horizontal (corresponding to the latitude of Canberra) so that its upper end points at the South Celestial Pole.

The ANBG sundial was made and installed by Sundials Australia in Adelaide, which has been commissioned to install sundials in a number of important locations around Australia. John Ward and Margaret Folkard of Sundials Australia have published an interesting article (part 1 and part 2) based on their book Sundials Australia.

Always searching for more sunshine, the British have The British Sundial Society whose site is a mine of information.

Stand Up and Walk, by The Rev. George Clifford, Episcopal priest and retired U.S. Navy chaplain, in The Living Church 9 Apr 2006.

The Episcopal Church and much of the Anglican Communion suffer from a paralysis caused by long-simmering controversies brought to a boil by the consecration of an openly gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions. These controversies increasingly dominate conversation and agendas -- both formal and informal -- in parishes, dioceses and the Communion.

Like the man in John's gospel who was paralyzed for 38 years, we desperately need to hear Jesus' words: "Stand up, take your mat, and walk" (John 5:8). Sometimes, a sick bed or a paralytic's mat tragically becomes the sick person's comfort zone. The cost of healing -- abandoning that comfort zone to re-enter the everyday world with all of its uncertainties and strenuous demands -- exceeds the allure of health. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion act as if they prefer the comfort of the current controversies to the riskier and more demanding health of serving Christ.

Healing will begin only when we realize the full extent of our plight. No one is going to come by to lift us out of our misery and place us in a pool of healing waters. We must recognize that reaching a consensus, or even finding a compromise with which a significant majority can agree, is, like the quest for the Holy Grail, an impossible quest.

Our persistence in this struggle reflects the exaggerated importance many people on both sides attach to the issues. But the energy, time and resources invested in these controversies that have paralyzed much of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion also indicate how comfortable we have become with these issues. Recent expressions of this myopic and paralyzing focus include the Eames Commission's Windsor Report with its recommendations for restructuring the Anglican Communion; the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops' response, To Set Our Hope on Christ; initiatives by other provinces; numerous diocesan resolutions; countless parish debates; and advocacy within the Church by lobbyists, networks and others. Sharp divisions, fixed opinions and the conviction that God is on one's side preclude consensus on these controversies in the foreseeable future. Further votes will create more winners and losers, exacerbating the paralysis.

Jesus commanded the paralytic to stand. All the paralytic had to do was to obey. Christianity has never taught that any definition of sexual purity or particular sexual orientation constitutes a litmus test of whether or not one is a Christian. The only litmus test of Christian identity with which I am familiar is the one articulated by St. Paul and St. John: Do you acknowledge Jesus as Lord? Anglican Christianity's "big tent" is thus defined not by anyone's views on any of the current controversies but by whether one has stood in obedience to Jesus' healing command: stand up and walk.

Refusing to acknowledge a bishop's authority because of the bishop's stance, pro or con, on consecrating an openly gay bishop or blessing same-sex unions is tantamount to declaring that the bishop is not Christian. That refusal is without historical warrant as the early Church wisely recognized that the validity of a sacrament is not contingent upon the holiness or even Christian identity of the one administering the sacrament. Similarly, refusing to be part of a communion of disparate views and practices with respect to those issues either means ignoring Jesus' prayer that his disciples be one or implies that those with whom one disagrees are not Christian.

Indeed, John's gospel reports that Jesus told his disciples, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." The New Testament repeatedly echoes that injunction. Yet no serious commentator could characterize the present animosity and divisiveness within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a good faith effort to love one another after the pattern of Jesus' love for us.

Instead of paternalistically attempting to take responsibility for the acts or faith of others, no matter how abhorrent we may find their acts or beliefs, each of us must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. That was good advice when it was written, and it remains good today. Obedience is the only answer to Jesus' command, "Stand up."

Jesus' command to the paralytic finds fuller expression in the parable of the Good Samaritan, his call (not an invitation) that those whom he has healed become instruments of healing for others. Confined to our mats, masochistically choosing paralysis over health, deafened by our laments and blinded by our pain and discomfort, we are like the priest and Pharisee in that parable, unable to hear the cries of others in pain or to see the dying.

In a world torn by strife and division, a world in which millions starve to death because they have no bread -- spiritual or physical -- to eat, a Church that stands together and walks in Christ's name would make a powerful witness. Anglicans have always found their unity as a Church that prays together, not as a Church united by common doctrines or structure. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion could make a dramatic difference in the quality of life for others (loving neighbor) and a dramatic testimony to God's love in Christ (loving God) by walking together in health and agreeing to disagree about the issues underlying the current controversies.

As a priest and naval chaplain, I preached and taught on a wide variety of social issues, including homosexuality. Once every few months someone would ask me about the current controversies. But several times each day people would come to me for help with failing relationships, for moral clarity on the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, and in search of a meaning for their life that would give them peace and joy. Parish clergy who are not obsessed with the current controversies share similar experiences with me.

Now -- not next year, not in 10 years, but now -- is the time for us to stand and to walk together as God's faithful servants, united in our disagreement, ministering to the hurting and dying in our badly broken world.

Exactly so. This is verymuch inthe spirit of the Collect for the commemoration on 3 November of Richard Hooker 1554-1600, priest and theologian.

O God of truth and peace, you raised up your servant Richard Hooker in a day of bitter controversy to defend with sound reasoning and great charity the catholic and reformed religion: Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Click any picture to see an enlargement and open the slideshow.

I don't like Good Friday; I never have; maybe I'm not supposed to. This year, I stayed away from the Good Friday three-hour service.

We are commanded to preach Christ crucified. But the contemplation of agony and torture doesn't ring true. The blood and guts of the crucifixion cannot be other than repugnant.

Yet it is precisely because of the death and resurrection of Christ that I'm not fearful of my own death.

I am utterly grateful for the achievements of the cross. But I find it overwhelming. Yes, I seek to live repentantly and in the power of the resurrection -- but this I try to do daily. Good Friday adds nothing. There's nothing to add to what Christ has done but silence. And thankfulness.

I resonate strongly with the Archbishop of Canterbury's Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 yesterday, Good Friday, (14 Apr 06).

A novelist, some years back, put it very well when he described what it was like to arrive in the empty hallway of a monastery in Yorkshire for the first time; 'There is an impression of intense activity elsewhere'. That's a phrase that comes to my mind, sometimes, when I'm in a church towards the end of the Good Friday services. We've had all the readings, we've sung the hymns, we've tried to summon up the appropriate emotions for this overwhelming day, the day on which the whole history of the world depends. And now the services are nearly over, there are no flowers or decorations, the church has been stripped of everything that might make it look attractive. An empty hall. We've run out of things to say and do. Yet it often feels just like the empty hallway of the monastery: intense activity elsewhere.

At the end of a Good Friday service, we get to the point where nothing we do will be or feel adequate to what's being remembered. And that's completely right, because what matters on this day is what's done elsewhere, done by God, somehow using the stark injustice and horror of the execution of Jesus to turn around the way the world works. Intense activity elsewhere; as if you could hear faintly a workman hammering steadily away at the blank surface of human self-satisfaction and self-deception, and an irregular sound of plaster dropping to a distant floor.

And it's not an intimidating feeling. It's not that we've got an appointment we mustn't miss and we don't know which door to walk through or which staircase to go up. In this empty hallway, there's nothing expected of us at this moment. The work is out of our hands, and all we can do is wait, breathe, look around. People sometimes feel like this when they've been up all night with someone who's seriously ill or dying, or when they've been through a non-stop series of enormously demanding tasks. A sort of peace, but more a sort of 'limbo', an in-between moment. For now, nothing more to do; tired, empty, slightly numbed, we rest for a bit, knowing that what matters is now happening somewhere else.

Read it all, carefully

"This overwhelming day . . ." I think we make it too overwhelming -- inaccessibly so.

"At the end of a Good Friday service, we get to the point where nothing we do will be or feel adequate to what's being remembered." This time, I didn't really need to feel more inadequate than I already am; so I stayed away. But yet, "[T]hat's completely right, because what matters on this day is what's done elsewhere, done by God ..."

"The work is out of our hands, and all we can do is wait, breathe, look around. . . . For now, nothing more to do; tired, empty, slightly numbed, we rest for a bit, knowing that what matters is now happening somewhere else." Thank God; I'm glad that God's work in me is being done elsewhere than in busyness and anxiety. God's work is not 'elsewhere' from us, even when we cannot sense God's work.

The proper and natural effect, and in the absence of all disturbing and intercepting forces, the certain and inevitable accompaniment of peace (or reconcilement) with God is our own inward peace, a calm and quiet temper of mind. . . . Still we must be cautious not to transfer to the Object the defects of the organ, which must needs partake of the imperfections of the imperfect beings to whom it belongs. Not without the co-assurance of other senses and of the same sense in other men, dare we affirm that what our eye beholds is verily there to be beholden. Much less may we conclude negatively, and from the inadequacy or the suspension, or from any other affection, of sight infer the non-existence or departure or changes of the thing itself. The chameleon darkens in the shade of him who bends over it to ascertain its colours. In like manner, but with yet greater caution, ought we to think respecting a tranquil habit of inward life, considered as a spiritual sense, as the medial organ in and by which our peace with God, and the lively working of His grace in our spirit, are perceived by us. This peace which we have with God in Christ, is inviolable; but because the sense and persuasion of it may be interrupted, the soul that is truly at peace with God may for a time be disquieted in itself, through weakness of faith, or the strength of temptation, or the darkness of desertion, losing sight of that grace, that love and light of God's countenance, on which its tranquillity and joy depend. But when these eclipses are over, the soul is revived with new consolation, as the face of the earth is renewed and made to smile with the return of the sun in the spring; and this ought always to uphold Christians in the saddest times, namely, that the grace and love of God towards them depend, not on their sense, nor upon anything in them, but is still in itself, incapable of the smallest alteration.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge Aids to reflection (1825)

(Photo by Kenneth Arnold. The Philosopher's Path, Kyoto.;)

Anglicans online writes in its editorial this week:

For most active Christians, Holy Week is a Busy Week.

For bishops, priests and deacons, there are all of the usual duties of pastoral life in addition to planning for some of the most intricate services of the church year, writing extra sermons, acolyte practice, finding the crotalus, hearing confessions, preparing leaflets and rehearsing the Exultet one more time. For servers, ushers, vergers, greeters, webmasters, flower arrangers, secretaries, organists, singers, sextons, caterers and worshipers of all kinds, the key word this week is More.

It is safe to say that most people reading this essay will be exhausted by the end of Good Friday, if they aren't already today after a full round of Palm Sunday observances. If our experience is any guide, it is grace and not just human energy that carries us each year through to Holy Saturday, the Great Vigil and on to the resurrection joy of Easter morning.

Until then, in place of the More that so many of us will be encountering this week, for our part we would like to urge some effort at Less over the next seven days. Less time at keyboard-and-monitor, less television, fewer text messages, less noise and less internet discussion with all its politicks and knavish tricks. We are far from advocating a complete tuning-out from the web and mass media. (This would be impossible for starters given our day-jobs, but we learn and gain so much of religious value on the web in any case that a complete turn-off would surely constitute an interruption of our lives instead of an enrichment.)

Rather we hope that by engaging in a bit less of these things we will be able to turn down the barrage of information that generally meets our senses. Such a momentary cutting-back should not be difficult, but we suspect it will be. It will allow us to meet the scriptures, liturgies, hymns and ceremonies of Holy Week in sharper contrast against the usual sounds and meanings of our lives. We hope it will enable us to better enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts of God we will relive this week. Join us if you can in saying Less to some things while so much More is taking place, the more carefully to do all things well and in godliness.

Sound advice, which I am about to follow. No more of this journal for a week at least. Meanwhile, an Easter offering:

A Chorale, by James Agee (1934)

Who, knowing love must die or live free-fated,
Free in your heartsearth headlong man created:
Who manly died and scaled from all perdition
Our ill condition:

Your crown not God nor your great death retains you:
As you are man so man for man ordains you:
Who reign in man's regard O much forsaken
Dear Christ awaken!

Range the blest hordes that rest in you around you:
Look down kind prince on treason to astound you:
See now sweet farmer what a wasting shadow
Takes your green meadow:

How, love of self, fact, state, dream, art much prizing,
Men move in manners of their own devising:
How they kill truth to find out truth more nearly
That's mortal merely:

How knowledge muffles wisdom's eye to danger:
How greed misrules: how greed's enraged avenger
Swears greed the equal prize for man's pursuing,
And your undoing:

How many ways men build up man's disaster:
How all are armaments against man's master:
How surely soon comes toward without atonement
Your disenthronement:

How cowardly those few that still exalt you
Worship their death while wildly men assault you:
How not one dares who knows what men intend you,
Die to defend you:

Though you outreign our time which is an hour,
Yet you in us have put you in our power:
What God man builds in God His truth is ended
Not well defended:

O Godsent Son of God our allsalvation,
Is faith so sickly slow to indignation
Your murderers against? Then faith betrays you:
Your friends destroy you:

Your faith who gave your heart for our safekeeping,
Your love who sweated blood while we were sleeping,
If so these waste within this generation
Death is your nation:

The time is withered of your ancient glory:
Your doing in this dear earth a pretty story:
O noblest heart fare well through the conclusion
Of all delusion.

Great God kind God the deep fire-throated fountain
Of earth and funneled hell and hopeful mountain:
Of ghosted Gods the eversame survivor:
Of shoreless strength of peace the prime contriver:
If this your Son is now indeed debasèd
Among old effigies of Gods effacèd,
Blaze in our hearts who still in earth commend you:
Who through all desolation will defend you:
For we are blinded all and sick are swervèd
Steep among many Deaths who still would be preservèd.

-- James Agee Permit me voyage, Yale University Press, 1934.

In "What's Left? The Death of Social Democracy", the latest issue of Quarterly Essay (No. 21, 2006), Clive Hamilton, Director of the Australia Institute, argues for a new form of progressive politics. The social democracy of old is dead, he argues -- with its strong unions, public ownership of assets and distinct social classes. Prosperity, more than poverty, is the dominant characteristic of Australia today.

As part of his discussion, Hamilton advances Ten theses on consumption. I find them challenging personally, including as a Christian.

The last three decades have witnessed a dramatic change in the forces that govern society. In the case of capital, modern firms are driven less by competition through cost-cutting and more by product differentiation and marketing. The spread of affluence and the transition to consumer capitalism have meant that identity now has less to do with one's work -- where one is placed in the production process -- and more to do with one's consumption choices, including consumption of cultural products.

This view of the world can be represented in the following ten propositions. They apply only to affluent countries, although the consumption behaviour of rich consumers in poor countries has some of the same characteristics.

Ten theses on consumption:

1. In rich countries, the principal purpose of consumption spending is no longer to satisfy needs but to find and express a personal identity.
2. For a large proportion of consumption behaviour, the act of buying and the act of consuming have become distinct and need to be understood separately.
3. Marketing, including advertising, is designed to get us to buy, not to consume, and where possible prefers us not to consume but to discard.
4. There is an inexorable process of converting wants into "needs" and this results in and reflects a ratcheting up of expected standards of living, one in which expectations always stay in advance of incomes.
5. Because of the limits to consumption capacity, this ratcheting-up process inevitably results in more waste.
6. The rise in expectations or aspirations puts pressure on people to work longer and harder and this comes at the cost of their personal relationships.
7. Whereas growth in consumption was once necessary to improving wellbeing, in rich countries increased consumption is now associated with declining wellbeing.
8. Improving wellbeing today requires a partial withdrawal from the market and a distancing from its influence, including an active resistance to the market values of materialism, competition at the expense of cooperation, individualism and the money-metric.
9. The trend towards voluntary reduction of incomes and consumption, known as downshifting, is a reaction against the pressures of consumerism.
10. A shift to a society based on a downshifting ethic and the associated rejection of consumption as the basis of lifestyle and self-definition is the only way to gain an authentic identity and, incidentally, protect ourselves from severe environmental decline.

It is my contention that these ideas provide the basis for an alternative progressive politics, one which resonates with the life circumstances of citizens of affluent countries by building on an understanding of how consumer capitalism has transformed the world and how it has influenced the way we think about ourselves and our lives.

Along similar lines and drawing on the work of the New Economics Foundation, the Australia Institute is sponsoring a Wellbeing Manifesto and is inviting people to sign up online. This is an extract:

The manifesto for wellbeing

Australians are three times richer than their parents and grandparents were in the 1950s, but they are no happier. Despite the evidence of a decline in national wellbeing, governments continue to put economic interests first. The obsession with economic growth means other things that could improve our wellbeing are sacrificed. There is widespread community concern that the values of the market -- individualism, selfishness, materialism, competition -- are driving out the more desirable values of trust, self-restraint, mutual respect and generosity. Many people feel alienated from the political process; the main parties seem too alike and think of progress only in material terms. The challenge of our age is to build a new politics that is committed, above all, to improving our wellbeing.

Wellbeing

Throughout history sages have counselled that happiness is not a goal but a consequence of how we live, that it comes from being content with what we have. Today, we are sold a different message -- that we will be happy only if we have more money and more of the things money buys. Human experience and scientific research do not support this belief.

Our wellbeing is shaped by our genes, our upbringing, our personal circumstances and choices, and the social conditions in which we live. Our collective wellbeing is improved if we live in a peaceful, flourishing, supportive society, so promoting wellbeing should be a public as well as a personal task.

We often think of wellbeing as happiness, but it is more than that. It is about having meaning in our lives -- developing as a person and feeling that our lives are fulfilling and worthwhile. Wellbeing comes from having a web of relationships and interests. Family and friends, work, leisure activities and spiritual beliefs can all increase our wellbeing. The intimacy, sense of belonging and support offered by close personal relationships are of greatest value. Material comforts are essential up to a point, and there is no doubt that poverty remains a serious problem in Australia. But for most Australians more money would add little to their wellbeing.

What can governments do?

Governments can't legislate to make us happy, but many things they do affect our wellbeing. Industrial relations laws can damage or improve the quality of our working lives; government policies can protect the environment or see it defiled; our children's education depends on the quality of schools; tax policies can make the difference between a fair and an unfair society; and the cohesiveness of our communities is affected by city design and transport plans.

This manifesto proposes nine areas in which a government could and should enact policies to improve national wellbeing. [The full text has a couple of paragraphs for each of these.]

1. Provide fulfilling work
2. Reclaim our time
3. Protect the environment
4. Rethink education
5. Invest in early childhood
6. Discourage materialism and promote responsible
7. Advertising
8. Build communities and relationships
9. A fairer society
10. Measure what matters

Towards a flourishing society

The question for Australia in the 21st century is not how we can become richer: it is how we can use our high standard of living to build a flourishing society -- one devoted to improving our wellbeing rather than just expanding the economy. Many Australians are anxious about declining moral standards. We worry that we have become too selfish, materialistic and superficial and long for a society built on mutual respect, self-restraint and generosity of spirit. The changes proposed in this manifesto would inspire healthier communities, stronger personal relationships, happier workplaces, a better balance between work and home, less commercialisation, and greater environmental protection. A flourishing society is not a futile hope. Australian democracy offers people the opportunity to shed their cynicism and commit themselves to creating a better future.

So much for government action. What about individual action? Downshifting Downunder is a move towards this. "A majority of Australians could afford to escape the rat race by downshifting economically, enhancing happiness and social capital, while reducing consumption and environmental damage. In the last decade at least 20% of the Australian population have downshifted, that is, they have voluntarily decided to change their lives in ways that mean they earn less and consume less."

Australia's most feted (and often controversial) art prize is the Archibald prize for portraiture. But the oldest major art prize is the Wynne prize. This year's Wynne prizewinner is John Beard, for his painting, The Gap. I like it.




This is another of Beard's works, Headlands 2 (2004).

First awarded in 1897, the Wynne Prize is awarded annually for the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours, or for the best example of figure sculpture by an Australian artist. I have a strong sense of place and a love for landscape, seascape and townscape. Many of the winning paintings have become classics of Australian landscape painting, including (below, clockwise from top left) Russell Drysdale's Sofala (1947), Lloyd Rees', The Harbour from McMahons Point (1950), Arthur Streeton's Afternoon Light, Goulburn Valley (1928) and Hans Heysen's watercolour Summer (1909).



More recent well known winners include Fred Williams, Brett Whitely and William Robinson.

A windy chilly day signals that Autumn is definitely here. (Grevillia in the Botanical Gardens)



Surfing on a very cold Lake Jindabyne, far from the sea (today's Canberra Times front page)

Speech by the Hon. Jon Stanhope, MLA, Chief Minister and Attorney-General of the Australian Capital Territory, presenting the Civil Unions Bill 2006 to the ACT Legislative Assembly. Debates of the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory [Hansard] 28 March 2006 pp. 655-59.

---

I am pleased to present the Civil Unions Bill 2006. This is a very significant piece of legislation and a major step forward for equality for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex members of the ACT community. It is clear, from both the submissions received by the government in response to its discussion paper and from the letters received since I announced in December 2005 that the government would be moving to introduce this legislation, that a great many people are keen to take the opportunity to have their relationship formally recognised. The passage of this legislation will bring the ACT into line with a growing number of jurisdictions worldwide.

The United Kingdom Civil Partnership Act commenced in December 2005 and New Zealand enacted its Civil Union Act in 2004. A number of European countries, including Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and France now provide for formal recognition of same-sex relationships, as do Canada and a number of US states. Here in Australia the Tasmanian Relationship Act scheme for registration of personal relationships, including same-sex relationships, has been in operation since 2004.

The Civil Unions Bill is a reflection of the government's commitment to the principle that all people are entitled to respect, dignity and the right to participate in society and to receive the protection of the law, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The right to equal protection of the law is also stated in section 8 of the Human Rights Act 2004, which prohibits discrimination in law or in practice in any field regulated by public authorities, including on the grounds of sex and sexual orientation. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has stated in its general comments that the term "discrimination" in this context means, "... any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference, which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by all persons, on an equal footing, of all rights and freedoms."

There is increasing recognition in human rights jurisprudence that the right to equal protection of the law includes positive obligations to ensure equal treatment. The Supreme Court of Canada, for example, in the 1997 case of Eldridge v the Attorney-General of British Columbia said that discrimination can accrue from a failure to take positive steps to ensure that disadvantaged groups benefit equally. Same-sex relationships must be treated equally unless there is an objectively justifiable reason to do otherwise. The ACT can find no such objectively justifiable reason to treat same-sex relationships other than equally. I ask anyone who may have concerns with this bill to ask themselves that question: what objectively justifiable reason is there to treat same-sex relationships any differently from loving, committed heterosexual relationships?

The Civil Unions Bill will ensure equal treatment under ACT law. It will allow a couple to establish a domestic partnership by making a formal declaration of their intention to do so. A civil union will be treated in the same way as marriage under territory law. A civil union is not a marriage but will, so far as the law of the ACT is concerned, be treated in the same way. The government is of the view that this is preferable to providing an alternative form of marriage that would not have equal recognition to commonwealth marriage. The civil union is a new concept that can be used by anybody, regardless of gender. It will give couples functional equality under ACT law with married couples but does not replace or duplicate marriage.

Why is this legislation necessary? The law reform that has been undertaken to date has accorded people in same-sex domestic partnerships the same status as unmarried, opposite sex domestic partnerships under ACT law. This is because there is currently no provision in Australian law for two people of the same sex to legally marry. In the absence of the option of marriage, the law must rely on the objective approach of the nature of the relationship two people have, as opposed to what they might have if the option of marriage were available. Thus the law reform the government undertook during 2003 and 2004 relied on the functional definition of the relationship-ie, two people, whether of different sexes or the same sex, living together as a couple on a genuine domestic basis. The term "domestic partnership" is now used as a universal term in ACT legislation to refer to this functional relationship.

Although laws no longer distinguish significantly between the effect of being in an informal domestic partnership and a formal marriage, there remains a difference in the capacity for parties to establish the fact of their relationship. By marrying, parties gain immediate recognition of their domestic partnership. Parties to other domestic partnerships need to provide factual material to support their contention that they are in a domestic partnership and, in either a practical way or because of a direct statutory requirement, a certain amount of time must pass before that effectively can be done.

It is clear that two people who want to establish a domestic partnership are at a disadvantage if they cannot marry. Although the nature of the relationship is the same, a couple who cannot marry are deprived of the capacity to immediately establish that they are in a domestic partnership, complete with indisputable evidence of the existence of that relationship. The purpose of the Civil Unions Bill is to provide a formal means of ascertaining the intentions of the two people involved so that particular consequences may then flow from that statement of intention. The other aspect of this is, of course, the social aspect of providing for formal recognition of civil unions. This will make a real difference to a great many people. I would like to briefly share with members some of the sentiments of people who have written in support of formal recognition of same-sex relationships. I quote:

The ACT is now providing an excellent example to other states in its recognition of the human rights of gays and lesbians. This move is important in demonstrating that love should be celebrated not stigmatised and that everyone deserves dignity and respect regardless of the family form. I join with the entire gay and lesbian community their friends and families in thanking you.

The following is from a mother who wrote in support of civil unions. It says:

My daughter is in love with a wonderful woman, whom I now consider as part of my family. She is totally in love with my daughter and has made my daughter, finally, happy and fulfilled. They share a relationship and live their relationship like any other heterosexual couple.

It has taken me a long time to finally find acceptance in my daughter's sexual preference; I also believe that everyone in life has a basic right to be happy and to be loved to the fullest, regardless of their sexual orientation.

I hope that my daughter and her partner have a long, fulfilling, loving and stress free life. It would also be nice if they receive the same rights as any loving couple in this nation, without discrimination.

How will this civil union scheme work? The Civil Unions Bill sets up a scheme which will provide for qualifications on who may enter into a civil union, set out the process for entering a civil union, specify how a civil union may be terminated and specify the consequences of entering a civil union. While it must be acknowledged that this bill will have most application to same-sex couples, the legislation will be non-discriminatory and the option of entering a civil union will be available to any two people, regardless of their gender, subject to meeting other eligibility requirements. A person may not enter into a civil union if they are already married or already in another civil union.

The rights and obligations flowing from a civil union are premised on a primary relationship and this requirement recognises that there can only be one primary relationship at any given time. In addition, a civil union will automatically terminate if one of the parties marries. A person cannot be in both a civil union and a marriage. An ACT civil union will always give way to a commonwealth marriage. A civil union scheme in the ACT will not alter the meaning of marriage. The bill also specifies particular age requirements for entering a civil union. A person must be 16 years of age or older to enter a civil union. A person who is 16 or 17 may only enter a civil union with the consent of a parent or guardian or, alternatively, with an order of the court. This is consistent with, although not the same as, the commonwealth Marriage Act and also reflects the age of consent specified in the Crimes Act for the sexual component of any such relationship.

There is currently no prohibition on a person who is 16 forming a relationship but only in having that relationship recognised. To deny such a person equal access to the law solely on the basis of their age is discriminatory and contrary to the human rights set out in the Human Rights Act 2004. The bill does not require that people be resident in the ACT in order to have their relationship formally recognised in the ACT. The basis on which a birth, death or marriage is registered by the ACT Registrar-General is simply that the event happens in the ACT. Similarly, a civil union will be entered on the ACT register if, and only if, it happens in the ACT.

The process for entering a civil union requires that the parties first give notice of their intention to an authorised celebrant. This notice must be given at least one month before the event. The parties then make a declaration to the effect that they are entering into the civil union with the other person and that they are doing so of their own free will. This declaration must be made before the authorised celebrant and at least one other witness.

The bill also provides for termination of a civil union. This does not require an order of the court, although it may be done by an order of the court. The usual method would be to give notice to the Registrar-General, with this notice taking effect automatically 12 months after it is given, unless it is withdrawn within that time.

Whilst I am satisfied the ACT is doing all it can to afford equal protection under the law to all people regardless of their sex or sexual orientation, it must be recognised that, without changes in the federal jurisdiction, this equal treatment will be limited to the ACT. My challenge to the federal government is to end its discriminatory treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex Australians and to amend federal laws so that relationships of same-sex couples are treated in the same way as relationships of opposite sex couples.

Today the government moves to eliminate one of the last remaining legal impediments to the full equality of gays and lesbians in our community--a process begun in our first term of government and now in its final stages. It has been an important journey for a community that is committed to equality and respect for the basic human rights of others and an acceptance and celebration of diversity. Conferring equality on those who have historically been discriminated against under the law does nothing to diminish the rights of those who have always been protected by that law. If anything, it heightens the value of that protection by highlighting the importance of extending rights to all, not just a chosen few or a chosen majority.

The equality conferred by this bill is not only functional and practical but also highly symbolic. A civil union will not simply be evidence of a loving, lifelong commitment between two people, with a piece of paper as proof; it will create the relationship being recognised. It is a distinction some may find subtle but to the many same-sex couples who will use this law I suspect it is anything but subtle; it is critical. I commend the Civil Unions Bill to the Assembly.

Following a meeting in Switzerland between the Director of Changing Attitude, Colin Coward, and the Director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, Davis MacIyalla, further facts and allegations emerge in three press statements:

• Davis describes his work in the Nigerian church, especially with Bishop Ugede, showing that Davis is known to senior church officials and plainly putting the lie to denials by the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) that it could not identify him as a church member;
• Davis expresses fear of arrest; and
• Changing Attitude notes the introduction into the Nigerian Parliament of the new anti-homosexuality law

In his 20 December 2005 press release, Canon Akintunde Popoola maintained that he had consulted over 6,000 clergy and none of them knew of Davis MacIyalla.

Changing Attitude now asks Canon Popoola whether he had contacted those named in Mr MacIyalla's report, including Archbishop Akinola and his wife. "Canon Popoola's denial that Davis was a member of the Anglican Church is all the more remarkable given Davis's deep involvement in the life of the Church of Nigeria from his earliest years and more recently in the Diocese of Otukpo."

Related earlier posts (newest first):

• A cagey Nigerian game
• Nigerian church turns to policies of the Inquisition
• Dr Williams, please act now
• Compelled to ask whether the global Christian community has lost not only its backbone but its moral bearings
• Mwamba's message of maturity
• Open letter from Changing Attitude to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, to the ACO and to ACC officials
• Signaling the existance of gay Nigerians
• Nigerian disgrace
• Changing attitudes
• Stoning and power

Bright autumn sunshine is perfect for a Sunday afternoon walk in the Australian National Botanic Gardens, on the side of Black Mountain, close to our home.

The Gardens are devoted exclusively to Australian native plants. Some displays are organised by plant type: Eucalypt, Acacia, Banksia, Hakea, etc. But there are areas where complete systems have been established, as in a Tasmanian rainforest, or Southern Queensland forest.

Banksia (pictured) was one of the few varieties in bloom, but the array of textures, colors and shapes is always fascinating. A lovely place for an hour or three of fresh air and relaxation.

I did not expect to see buggery in a cartoon in the conservative Weekend Australian newspaper this morning. Condemned by all and sundry, the cartoon is apparently a response to the one below, published earlier this week in Indonesian paper Rakyat Merdeka and likewise adjudged tasteless. It depicts Mr Howard as a dingo mounting Mr Downer, also as a dog, with the prime minister saying: "I want Papua!! Alex! Try to make it happen."



All this is in consequence of Australia's decision to grant refugee visas to 42 asylum-seekers from Indonesia's Papua province. Meanwhile, Australia's government has warned travellers that there have been protests outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta because of the decision to grant the temporary visas.

Howard said "In relation to the cartoons, well I've been in this game a long time, if I got offended about cartoons -- golly -- heavens above -- give us a break!" he said. A good response!

Hopefully Australia and Indonesia can get down to some serious talking about the harm that Indonesian is doing through denial of freedoms to its West Papuan 'citizens'.

Postcript:

The Australian government, yielding to Indonesian protests has reversed earlier policy and decided that all illegal arrivals on the mainland will go to mandatory offshore detention. So Howard has indeed allowed Australian freedoms to be buggered.

On 3 April Australia's official Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission will launch an enquiry into federal, state and territory laws that deny same-sex couples (and their children) the financial and work-related entitlements and government payments that heterosexuals enjoy.

The Same Sex: Same Entitlements inquiry will be co-chaired by the federal Human Rights Commissioner, Graeme Innes, and the commission's president, John von Doussa, QC. The inquiry is expected to finish by Christmas and then make recommendations to the federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock. Its launch comes at a provocative time, with Mr Ruddock this week warning the Commonwealth could legislate to override the ACT's civil union proposals.

The inquiry will include discrimination in workplace leave entitlements, social security benefits, tax concessions, Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, superannuation entitlements, workers' compensation, veterans' pensions and entitlements, and inheritance.

The Commission has previously heard of gay people being denied promotions or being unfairly dismissed because of their sexuality, of compensation being withheld from same-sex partners because they are not spouses, and gay partners being denied bereavement leave. The commission has previously criticised the Australian federal goverenment's ban on gay couples international adoption of children as a potential breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. On the other hand, the Commission praised a federal government decision to grant servicemen and women in same-sex relationships the employment entitlements available to those in heterosexual relationships.

I welcome the enquiry but I am entirely sceptical that it will achieve anything; it's recommendations are likley to be completely ignored by the Howard government.

Issues of discrimination for gay men and lesbians include:

• Employment: Issues include denial of promotions, unfair dismissal, harassment, breaches of confidentiality and refusal of overtime and higher duties.
• Superannuation: Recent changes to law provide that a member of a same sex couple can nominate their partner to receive their superannuation benefits when they die, and that the tax free status for superannuation benefits also extends to same sex couples, but federal public employees are excluded.
• Compensation: Same sex partners do not fall within the definition of 'spouse' in most employee compensation schemes.
• Leave and other entitlements: Same sex partners are often denied bereavement leave, carers leave, compassionate leave and travel and transfer benefits because of narrow interpretations of 'family' and 'spouse'.
• Education: There have been documented cases of both teachers and students being victimised because of their sexual orientation.
• Accommodation: Gay men and lesbians have been denied access to housing by landlords and/or estate agents on the basis of their sexual orientation.
• Health: Gay men and lesbians have been refused treatment because of their sexuality. Gay men in particular experience discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived HIV/AIDS status. Same sex partners have been refused hospital visitation rights or the right to give medical consent.
• Age of consent laws: state and territory laws on the age of consent to sex are inconsistent.
• Vilification and violence:Many gay men and lesbians experience physical and verbal abuse.
• Recognition of same sex relationships: immigration is one area where there has been some progress in the recognition of same sex relationships. However, despite limited progress the law generally refuses to recognise same sex relationships. In addition to those areas noted above, discriminatory laws continue to apply in areas such as taxation, social security, insurance, family law and intestacy and wills.

The Economist (9 March 2006) argues that the longevity of John Howard as Prime Minister has been partly luck, "in the form of an economy that was starting to grow as the result of earlier reforms, and has never stopped growing since" but, as well, because of his government's "singular achievement" in careful management of that growth, producing low unemployment and inflation and a succession of budget surpluses that enabled Mr Howard to shower money on voters at election times.

As The Economist notes, opinion polls show that the government's strength derives overwhelmingly from economic management. For the polls also show that majorities of Australians believe their country has become meaner, disapprove of the federal government's squeezing of public health and education spending, and consider that sending troops to fight in Iraq was not in Australia's interests.

I would add that yet more Australians are angered by the government's anti-democratic labour law 'reforms' and are scandalised by well-substantiated allegations of that the government turned a blind eye to a government-supported wheat exporting monopoly paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government. But the 'children overboard' scandal has almost been forgotten, despite the clear culpability of the government. And the horrendous mal-administration of immigration, with Australian citizens being deported or held in detention and refugees mistreated, will soon be forgotten by the short memories of Australia's beer-and-circuses voters.

In a recent piece, The Economist writes about "The rebirth of outrage" in U.S. politics. One Australian institution currently at outraged by the Howard government's behaviour is the ACT government, angry at the federal government's inteference in the territory's plans to secure the human rights of its gay and lesbian citizens.

A few years ago there were huge marches in support of reconciliation between Australia's indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, in which even some of Howard's minister took part, but the greatest recent occasions of political outrage in Australia were the protest against Australian participation in the Vietnam conflict, which was instrumental in the election of a Labor government in December 1972, and the anger expressed by many when the same Labor government was dismissed by the Governor-General on 11 November 1975. "Maintain the rage", the Labor party urged the people. But in the ensuing election, the people did the opposite, giving the conservatives a massive parliamentary majority.

Why? Because, as Bill Clinton has (in)famously said, "It's the economy stupid" and, in just three years (with some justification), the people had lost confidence in the Labor Party's ability to manage the economy.

Prime Ministers have key phrases with which they are associated. For Chifley it was the "light on the hill", for Menzies, "the forgotten [middle class] people" and for Whitlam, "It's Time". Malcolm Fraser said that "Life wasn't meant to be easy", but for Howard, "relaxed and comfortable" was the buzz-phrase, at least until the post-9/11 security scares.

Howard has succoured this "relaxed and comfortable" notion well, by personally appearing at events of national jubilation and self-congratulation and in times of national mourning, sidelining the head-of-state, the Governor-General. Despite a frequently demonstated generous public spirit, it seems that Australian definitely prefer "comfortable" and maybe "relaxed" as well. A desire for justice and ethics seems to have little place in our politics. Rather, the attitude is to suggest that aggrieved minorities "shut up, get on with it, and quit wingeing", while 'majority' groups complain endlessly about lack of government funding.

I suspect that only economic disaster will tip John Howard out of office, though lack of confidence in his eventual successor may cause the Liberal and National parties to falter in time. I hope I am wrong, but I suspect the Australian people will tolerate any outrage as long as they feel comfortable. And they will feel comfortable as long as unemployment, inflation and interest rates are low and wages growth is maintained.

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says he is prepared to establish separate Territory civil union celebrants to overcome Commonwealth objections to the proposed law. Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has declared that federal government is not prepared to allow marriage celebrants to officiate at civil unions as this would make the civil unions too similar to marriage. "We've made it very clear to Mr Stanhope that if he persists with the legislation that he has in its present form, that he seeks to portray civil unions as marriages, then we will use the powers we have in relation to marriage and the powers we have in relation to territories to ensure that is undone."

Mr Ruddock is also reported to have said that Mr Stanhope had been "duplicitous". "He has said 'we're dealing with civil unions . . . it's not a marriage', and yet if you go through his bill, time and time again you will find references to a civil union being equated with marriage,", Ruddock said.

Prime Minister John Howard says the ACT is using its civil unions bill to give same sex relationships the same status as marriage. Mr Howard says under the plan, the civil unions would be marriage in every way but in title. He says that would contravene the Marriage Act. "There is a special place, Australian society for marriage, the institution of marriage as historically understood and we do not intend to allow that in any way to be undermined."

Mr Stanhope says he believes the objections are a smokescreen for the Government's real intentions to oppose gay and lesbian unions anywhere in Australia. "We will now look at the implications of creating our own roll of civil celebrants for the purposes of the civil unions act that will overcome the stated or identified objection," he said. (ABC news 30 March)

"One has to pose the question of whether or not the real reason (for Mr Ruddock's stance) is that there is no place in John Howard's Australia for homosexuals," Mr Stanhope said.

Stanhope said Thursday he was "both outraged and deeply saddened" by the federal government's threat. "Why does the federal government believe that loving and committed same-sex relationships are any less deserving of society's recognition and the law's protection than loving, committed relationships between men and women?"

ACT Liberal Senator Gary Humphries says it is only fair that the Federal Government step in and override the territory's civil unions bill. He rejected a call by the ACT's Labor senator and Labor MPs to support the plan and says that there does not appear to be any difference between marriage and what the ACT Government is proposing as a civil union.

"To that extent I think it [the ACT] is going beyond its power as a territory, it's going beyond the power that any state would have to legislate in that way and if that's the case the Commonwealth is quite within its rights to say, 'you're not entitled to do this, you won't be allowed to do it'," he said.

The peak body representing Australia's civil celebrants fears the range of services offered by their members may be eroded if the Federal Government overrides the ACT plan for civil unions. The Federal Government says the bill contravenes the Commonwealth Marriage Act and it does not want civil celebrants to officiate at the civil union ceremonies. But the president of the Australian Federation of Civil Celebrants, Roger Thomson, says he is concerned the Commonwealth will move to impose further limits. He says many celebrants already conduct commitment ceremonies for same sex couples. "The Federation's rather concerned that the Attorney-General may be looking to limit some marriage celebrants as being the ones registered with the marriage celebrant section," he said. (ABC news 31 March)

Press statements by the Hon Jon Stanhope, MLA, Chief Minister and Attorney General of the Australian Capital Territory

---

30 March 2006

Civil unions to deliver equality, not sameness

Legislating to ensure that civil unions were accorded the same protection under law as marriages was not the same as seeking to make civil unions and marriages identical or indistinguishable, any more than legislating for legal equality between men and women rendered men and women identical, Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said today.

"It is preposterous for the Federal Attorney General to say that just because the ACT's civil union Bill openly states that civil unions are to be treated equally under the law with marriages, it follows that we have somehow changed or challenged the meaning of marriage," Mr Stanhope said today.

"How on earth could the ACT be expected to deliver functional equality under the law for same-sex couples without setting out the thing -- namely, marriage -- with which you seek equality?

"The purpose of the Bill is to extend the same legal rights and legal responsibilities to all types of domestic partnership, not to conflate those different types of partnerships, or to homogenise them. The Bill is concerned with the legal effects of marriage, not with the institution of marriage itself, which remains a matter wholly for the Commonwealth, and which the ACT has no desire to change or challenge.

"Surely the Federal Attorney General must understand that according different groups of people equal rights does not make those groups identical."

---

30 March 2006

Threat to nobble civil unions outrageous, sad

An apparent threat by the Federal Government to legislate to change or overturn the ACT's Civil Union legislation was both outrageous and saddening, Chief Minister and Attorney General Jon Stanhope said today.

"I am both outraged and deeply saddened by the apparent threat of the Federal Attorney General to stymie legitimate legislation, legitimately introduced by an Australian jurisdiction," Mr Stanhope said today.

"The Federal Government has complained that that the legislation now being considered by the Legislative Assembly would create a parity with marriage. Civil Unions are not marriage and I have been at pains throughout the debate to make that point plainly. Legislating for marriage is the province of the Commonwealth, not of the States and Territories. The civil unions proposed for the ACT would, however, deliver functional and legal equality with marriage under ACT law -- a fact from which I do not resile for one instant. That is the intent of the law, and that will be its effect, once it is passed.

"I am still uncertain which provisions of the ACT Bill the Federal Government believes are unacceptable and I keenly await more explicit information from the Federal Government on this question.

"I also call on the Federal Attorney General to articulate the Federal Government's real concerns with offering equality under the law to same-sex relationships. Why does the Federal Government believe that loving and committed same-sex relationships are any less deserving of society's recognition and the law's protection than loving, committed relationships between men and women?

"In what way does extending the protection of the law and the recognition of society to one group of individuals diminish or erode the protection and recognition that is already extended to another group? It does not. It cannot.

"It is astonishing that the Federal Government would threaten to take legislative action to prevent celebrants officiating at ACT civil union ceremonies. It borders on the unbelievable that it could threaten to go even further, suggesting that it may legislate to overturn the ACT's civil union scheme entirely."

Mr Stanhope said the ACT's proposed legislation was not remarkable legislation by any measure. It was in line with legislation now in force in a number of jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, many European nations, and a number of states in the United States.

---

Joint media release by ACT Senator Kate Lundy, Bob McMullan, Member for Fraser and Annette Ellis Member for Canberra
30 March 2006

Humphries must support the ACT

Bob McMullan, Member for Fraser, Annette Ellis, Member for Canberra, and Senator Kate Lundy [all of the Labor Party] have today called on [Liberal Party] Senator Gary Humphries to support the ACT government against the attempts of Attorney-General Ruddock to intervene in ACT affairs. The three local ACT representatives are outraged by what they see as unwarranted interference by the federal coalition government in the ACT.

"We support the moves by the Territory government to recognise same sex partnerships. We believe it is discriminatory and contrary to human rights obligations not to formally recognise these relationships. As the Chief Minister has said, a civil union will allow a couple to establish a domestic partnership by making a formal declaration of their intention to do so.

"Under Territory law, a civil union will be treated in the same way as a marriage however the Chief Minister has made it plain that a civil union is not a marriage. It will give couples long needed functional equality under ACT law. This is a very significant piece of legislation and a great step forward for equality for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex members of the ACT community. In proposing this legislation, the Territory government is in agreement with many other jurisdictions worldwide.

"We are particularly outraged by the arrogance of the Attorney-General in giving his letter -- which threatened the ACT government with a federal veto -- to the media before sending it to the Chief Minister.

"This arrogant, highhanded and bullying behaviour should not be tolerated. We want to know what [Liberal Senator for the ACT] Gary Humphries is going to do to represent the views of the ACT community that elected him. It will require legislation for the Commonwealth to override the ACT measure. We call on Gary Humphries to speak out against the actions of the Attorney-General and to support the legislation of the majority elected government in the ACT.

---

Nicola Roxon MP, Shadow Attorney-General
Thursday, 30 March 2006

Media release: Ruddock rides roughshod over ACT

News that Mr Ruddock is interfering again in the law-making of states and territories comes as no surprise in a bad week for the Government. Instead of answering the concerns of working Australians, Mr Ruddock has flagged his intention to override the ACT Civil Union Bill -- introduced only on Tuesday and not even law yet.

It seems the Howard Government is not content to ride roughshod over just the federal parliament -- it wants to ride roughshod over the states and territories as well.

Labor's starting point is that states and territories should be allowed to make their own laws for their own communities. And they don't need the Howard Government interfering in their law making process. I'm sure Liberal Senator Gary Humphries, a former ACT Chief Minister, will agree with us and he should pull his Government back into line.

---

Last week, the Australian Capital Territory's (Australian Labor Party) Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, kept his promise to bring into the Legislative Assembly a new law for same-sex and opposite-sex civil unions. This is part of his government's work to systematically enshrine human rights in territory legislation. The Civil Unions Bill 2006 is expected to be debated and passed into law in May.

In the ACT a civil union will be a "legally recognised relationship that . . . may be entered into by any 2 people, regardless of their sex." It is "treated for all purposes under territory law in the same way as a marriage." (This includes both statute and common law in the Territory jurisdiction). However civil unions are not marriages and will not be recognised under federal law (at least while the present conservative government remains in power). The extent of recognition in other Australian states and territories will vary.

Each party to a civil union must be unmarried and neither an ancestor, descendant, sibling, nor half-sibling of the other party. The parties must give a month's written notice to an authorised celebrant. The civil union ceremony will include a simple formal declaration before the celebrant and at least one other witness. The civil union will be registered with the Registrar-General (who also registers births, deaths and marriages, land titles, etc.).

The Canberra Times newspaper commented that,

[T]here appears to be broad community acceptance of the need for legal equality for homosexual couples, which has probably firmed since the Liberal-National Party Coalition used its constitutional powers to disallow same-sex marriages in 2004. With the sanctity of marriage now seemingly protected, there seems little reason why fair and right-minded people, and governments like the ACT, should wish to continue denying homosexual couples the rights and privileges now taken for granted by other Australians.

Interestingly, an "authorised celebrant" of civil unions will be anyone who is an authorised celebrant under the federal Marriage Act 1961. Besides civil celebrants and assorted state and territory officials, this includes ministers of religion who are authorised to perform marriages (which is most of them). How many ministers of religion will feel able to perform a civil union ceremony? At its 2004 General Synod, for example, the Anglican Church of Australia decided that

34.7 - Recognising that this is a matter of ongoing debate and conversation in this church and that we all have an obligation to listen to each other with respect, this General Synod does not condone the liturgical blessing of same sex relationships.

James and I would obtain many advantages from a civil union, but we are not certain yet that we want more than the simplest official ceremony. After nine years of committed life together, anything more would seem a little redundant.

Meanwhile, the Canberra Times (30 March) reports that the federal government is threatening to veto the civil unions legislation. It can do this as the ACT is a federal territory, the self-government of which can be overrulled by the federal parliament. The federal parliament has only overturned laws in an Australian territory once before, when it blocked the world's first voluntary euthanasia legislation in the Northern Territory in 1997.

In a written rebuke to Chief Minister Jon Stanhope last night, federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock warned that the legislation would be blocked unless it was redrafted to distinguish civil unions from marriage.

Mr Stanhope reacted to the threat with "outrage and deep sadness" and demanded a further explanation. [. . .]

In his letter, Mr Ruddock wrote that although the Federal Government usually considered issues concerning same-sex relationships to be matters for the states and territories, he would oppose any legislation that reduced the status of marriage. Because the draft ACT laws allowed celebrants who are authorised under the Commonwealth Marriage Act to perform civil union ceremonies, Mr Ruddock said the legislation implied an "equality or parity of civil unions and marriage".

"If the Bill were enacted as it is presently drafted, the Government would take appropriate action, including the introduction of legislation to prevent this from occurring," he wrote.

The Chief Minister angrily rejected the claim that his proposed laws confused civil unions with marriage and called on Mr Ruddock to explain his "real concerns".

"Civil unions are not marriage and I have been at pains throughout the debate to make that point plain," Mr Stanhope said. "Why does he believe loving and committed same-sex relationships are any less deserving of society's recognition and protection than loving, committed relationships between men and women?"

He said he was astonished by the Federal Government's threat to prevent celebrants from officiating at civil unions.

"It borders on the unbelievable that it threatens to go even further, suggesting that it may legislate to overturn the ACT's civil union scheme entirely," he said.

The issue has caused division within the federal government polical parties. Queenslander Warren Entsch, supported by several others, intends to introduce a private member's bill seeking to enact civil unions into federal law.

Last Friday, 24th June, was the 20th anniversary of my migration from Melbourne to Canberra. I was recruited to join the Parliamentary Library as Chief Information Specialist, Science, Technology and the Environment. At that time, the Library was still in what is now the 'Old' Parliament House; we moved to the new building in 1988.

The old building was extraordinarily cramped as it had been built in 1927 as a temporary home for a much smaller and simpler Parliament. The upper picture shows the main reading room of the Library; my 'office' was a desk crammed into the alcove shown in the lower picture. The old library is now used for the National Portrait Gallery, which will also soon have its own permanent building.

After several years, I moved on to another job, but I'm glad I've stayed in Canberra. It's a fine place to live.

Recently we saw the NGA's Constable: Impressions of Land, Sea and Sky.

The show has only a small number of John Constable's large pictures, including Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds (1822-23), A boat passing a lock (1826) and The Vale of Dedham (1827-28). But it has many of his quick, on-the-spot sketches, such as Rainstorm over the sea c.1824-28 and a large group of his sky studies, each with the time of day, date, wind direction and weather conditions under which they were painted.

Sebastian Smee reviews the show in The Australian (18 March). "When you look at a Constable", he says, "you are not just looking at a picture, you're looking at the making of a picture. It is something alive, like the weather it responds to, in a state of flux and continual becoming."

Of the large pictures, I especially like this one, The Vale of Dedham. Once there were many kitsch reproductions of Constable's work -- literally on chocolate boxes, as well as on shortbread tins and such. But most of the prints I've seen are murky and dark. There's so much fine detail in the Constable's big landscapes, some details just a couple of millimetres in scale, within of a two metre picture. As well there are dark areas that are luminous when seen 'in the flesh' but dull in reproduction. So with The Vale of Dedham; there's wonderful life, movement and detail, far reaching perpective and intimate, close, human detail.





Frequently provocative commentator, Humphrey McQueen writes in The Bulletin (7 March) that exhibition of 108 works "will appeal to those who turn to art for reassurance."

Yet Constable's work, McQueen notes, was innovative and his subject matter,

which now looks tranquil, was at the intersection of political, economic and religious upheavals. . . . Moral purpose saturated Constable's landscapes, which were propaganda for Tory landholders in their struggle against the Liberal free-traders to remove the duties on grain imports. His cornfields are therefore not innocent pastorals but assert the rights of the squires, including his own brother. Constable sided with the landowners against the riotous labourers and with both against urban capitalists. Similarly, his treatment of cathedrals affirmed his attachment to church and crown, in opposition to the emancipation of Papists.

. . . The pleasures from Constable are both visual and intellectual. His canvases tell us stories about the elements and of social conflict. Yet his storms and rainbows were never symbols for revolution and peace, but reminders that all is flux.

I had never thought of Constable as being political!

Meanwhile, the conservation of the Vale of Dedham and Stour Valley as an area of natural beauty is very much an active project.

These some of my choices of interesting athletes at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne -- my home city. Despite all the hoopla, however, James and I found the opening and closing ceremonies too long, too full of irrelevancies and tedious as a result.

Matthew Cowdrey, winner of two gold medals for EAD swimmers
John Steffenson celebrates victory in the 400m
Mathew Helm and Robert Newbery competing in the men's synchronised 10m platform final.
Kerry McCann, gutsy Marathon winner.

Australian competitors won about 30% of the medals on offer, including about 34% of the gold medals, many more than the English (15%), Canadians (12%) and Indians (7%). This is more than can be accounted for by 'home ground' advantage. What puzzles me is why? Why do Australian sportsmen and women do as well as they do on the international arena? (Australia didn't win any medals; countries don't win sports medals, people do.)

Years ago, I had the privilege of working for two years as an Australian Volunteer Abroad, as Head of the English Language Division of the Sabah State Library [ Perpustakaan Negeri Sabah ]. It was a wonderful, life changing experience. Information technology was almost non-existent. But now the library is automated and Sabah is on the web.

Kota Kinabalu City Library

Sabah Tourism Low's Gully, Mt. Kinabalu Kota Kinabalu

Titusonenine recently posted an extract from "Climbing Brokeback Mountain with the Anglicans", an opinion piece in the Orlando Sentinel by Professor David C. Steinmetz, of Duke University's Divinity School. His words included this observation:

Although the argument in Anglicanism centers on matters of principle, the atmosphere in which it has been conducted has been toxic from the start. Liberals and conservatives have all too often been eager to believe the worst about each other. They have frequently parodied and mocked each other's deeply held convictions, shown scant respect for consciences that differ from their own, and even attempted to impose unacceptable solutions from the top down on unwilling parishioners.

I said in a comment on Titusonenine that,

"this is the essential cause of our problems . . . a pervasive lack of humility, an unwillingness to even consider the slightest possibility that one may be mistaken."

Obadiahslope commented in reply: "At one level it is easy for me as an evangelical to concede I may be wrong. My reading of the bible is always provisional, I must be open to someone pointing out that I have misread the scriptures. But for you as a gay man, my fellow Australian, it must be more difficult to say "I might be mistaken"?

On the contrary, I am quite willing to say (and replied to Obadiah) that I may be mistaken. I believe, hope and pray that I am not entirely wrong, but I it is is unlikely that I am infallible! I must try to walk conscientiously in the Spirit and according what I understand to be right, trusting that our Lord will be gracious and merciful where I am mistaken. I must "take chance on God", in other words. What I should not do, is despise those who disagree with me, simply because they do disagree.

Obadiah's response: "In general perhaps. Yet if I am mistaken on sexuality I do not have a relationship I would have to break. So I guess it would be harder for you to say "I am mistaken" on whether gay relationships are sin than I to recant my opposite view. That being said, from across our diocesan boundary, you are not despised. far from it." Thanks Obadiah.

Presbyterian Church of the USA's Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church recently completed its final report. The Task Force found that its study of human sexuality "yielded several major insights":

• The theological and biblical literature on human sexuality in general and same-gender sexuality in particular is diverse, subtle, and complex. It could not readily be divided into the two categories--either approval or disapproval of same-gender relationships and practices--that are assumed to anchor much of the conflict in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) today. In one session, a member of the task force offered a typology of six positions. Each position conveyed a distinctive view of sin, reconciliation, and redemption. We acknowledged that other analysts might approach the material differently and provide alternative interpretations.
• Methods of biblical interpretation, theological traditions, and policy conclusions did not line up neatly in the work we studied. As the resource, "Same-Gender Relationships in the Church: Six Theological Viewpoints", demonstrates, scholars and writers who reached different conclusions often based their work on similar theological premises. [The forthcoming paper, "Same-Gender Relationships in the Church: Six Theological Viewpoints," will be posted on the Web at www.pcusa.org/peaceunitypurity.]
• Further, opinions about ordination and sexuality did not always correlate precisely with particular theological positions. Writers associated with a particular theological perspective sometimes reached conclusions different from what is often assumed to be their party's "line" on the witness of Scripture; the morality of covenantal, same-gender relationships; and the permissibility of ordination. For instance, some writers who believe that same-gender relationships are wrong nevertheless believe pastoral acceptance should be extended to gay and lesbian couples; some writers who believe that the full witness of Scripture supports the possibility of covenantal relationships between persons of the same gender nevertheless acknowledge that where Scripture speaks explicitly of same-gender acts it disapproves them. These were only two of a number of combinations and permutations of theological, biblical, and polity perspectives on the broad topic of sexuality and the narrower one of same-gender relationships. (520-546)

[. . .] [W]e were all able to agree that perspectives on questions of sexuality, ordination, and same-gender covenantal relationships are rich and complex, and our fellow task force members who hold these views are sincere, faithful, and guided by Scripture. Therefore, we believe, the church should seek constructive, Christ-like alternatives to the "yes/no" forms in which questions about sexuality, ordination, and same-gender covenantal relationships have been put to the church in recent decades.(602-607)

If we can deal with our arguments as well as this Task Force has done, acknowledging each other's genuineness and letting irreconcilable disagreement rest with God, we will do well.

The Prayer of the Bee

Lord,
I am not one to despise your gifts.
May You be blessed
Who spreads the richness of Your sweetness for my zeal . . .
Let my small span of ardent life melt into our great communal task;
to lift up to Your glory this temple of sweetness,
a citadel of incense,
a holy candle, myriad-celled,
moulded of Your graces
and of my hidden work.
Amen.

-- from Prayers from the ark by Carmen Bernos de Gasztol, translated by Rumer Godden. New York: Viking, 1962.

In ancient time Xerxes, the king of kings, looking down upon his myriads, wept to think that in a hundred years not one of them would be left. Where will be [the] millions of today in a hundred years? But, further than that, let us ask, where then will be the sum and outcome of their labour? If they wither away like summer grass, will not at least a result be left which those of a hundred years hence may be the better for? No, not one jot! There will not be any sum or outcome or result of this ceaseless labour and movement; it vanishes in the moment that it is done, and in a hundred years nothing will be there, for nothing is there now.

-- Richard Jefferies. The story of my heart (1883)

This is the view from my office, but I won't be seeing it for a few days, as I'm taking a break from everything (including this journal); back in a week.

It's interesting when personal acquaintance opens a window on international affairs, in this case Thai politics. Watching at a distance the present political upheavals in Thailand, I remember a friend of over twenty years ago, Professor Kriengsak Chareonwongsak PhD. He is Executive Director of Thailand's Institute of Future Studies for Development and an opposition Democrat Party member of the Thai Parliament.

Here he is campaigning for re-election, accompanied by his younger son, Pete. It's unusual in Thailand for a Christian leader to also be a politician. Kriengsak has made trenchant criticisms of the present government's spending policies.

The Hope of God movement began in 1981 when a Kriengsak returned to Thailand after completing a doctorate in econometrics at Monash University. While studying in Melbourne, he became a Christian and in time became an inspiring leader and an elder of the Waverley Christian Fellowship, where I had the honour of working with him for several years. Kriengsak set out to plant churches, beginning with the Hope of God church in Bangkok and affiliated churches in Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur. Soon there were many churches in many places, including dozens in Thailand. In this picture he is preaching at a conference in Melbourne in the late 1980s.

Meanwhile, Kiengsak launched an academic and business career as well. I think Professor Chareonwongsak is the smartest and hardest working person I have ever met. I wish him well.

It being Lent, I thought I might again try to read T.S. Eliot's 1930 poem, Ash Wednesday.

"And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain

. . . food for thought for journal keepers!

I like part I of Ash Wednesday (below). But the remainder of the poem, parts II to VI, I still find completely impenetrable. I appreciate fine poetry, including much of Eliot's, but wonder why it is that poets sometimes write as though they deliberately want the reader not to understand.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

-- T. S. Eliot Ash Wednesday; part I (1930)

Perhaps my greatest problem is anxiety. Not panic, just constant gnawing anxiety. The little white pills help, and I don't need many. Prayer is important. Sheer quiet is wonderful but meditation is impossible. I can't relax enough. The intellect says "All is well". Faith says, "All is well." But the the tension is always, always, there. It never, ever, goes away. As Australians used to say, I'm wound up like a two-bob, 20¢, watch.

We always used to think it was one of the elementary rights of man that he should be able to plan his life in advance, both private life and professional. That is a thing of the past. The pressure of events is forcing us to give up 'being anxious for the morrow'. But it makes all the difference in the world whether we accept this willingly and in faith (which is what the Sermon on the Mount means) or under compulsion. For most people not to plan for the future means to live irresponsibly and frivolously, to live just for the moment, while some few continue to dream of better times to come.
But we cannot take either of these courses. We are still left with only the narrow way, a way often hardly to be found, of living every day as if it were our last, yet in faith and responsibility living as though a splendid future still lay before us. 'Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land', cries Jeremiah as the Holy City is about to be destroyed, a striking contrast to his previous prophecies of woe. It is a divine sign and pledge of better things to come, just when all seems blackest. Thinking and acting for the sake of the coming generation, but taking each day as it comes without fear and anxiety that is the spirit in which we are being forced to live in practice. It is not easy to be brave and hold out, but it is imperative.

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer (d. 1945) Letters and papers from prison (ET, 1953), p.24f.

Following a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) on 22-25 February 2006, presided over by the Most Revd Peter Akinola, the Committee issued a "message to the Nation". It includes a number of excellent statements against corruption and supporting democracy and economic justice. But the message also says:

The Church commends the law-makers for their prompt reaction to outlaw same-sex relationships in Nigeria and calls for the bill to be passed since the idea expressed in the bill is the moral position of Nigerians regarding human sexuality.

"Prompt reaction" to what?

Should an "idea" and a "moral position" alone be sufficient grounds for criminalising a personal relationship?

Curious this, as I believe that it's not long ago that Arcbishop Akinola said that there were no homosexuals in Nigeria.

After some doubt as to whether the Church officially supports the oppressive views expressed by some of its senior members, it has now nailed its colors to the mast. On the other hand, in this statement at least, the Church does not comment on the provisions of the proposed legislation that deny freedoms of speech and assembly to gays and lesbians. Yet again, if the Church was opposed to those provisions, it could have said so.

On 2 March 2006, commenting on a post at Thinking Anglicans Canon Akintunde Popoola ('Tude'), spokesman for the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), disputed another person's comment alleging that Archbishop Akinola "recently threw his prestige and resources behind a new law . . . .". In hios 2 March comment, Canon Akinola said that the Archbishop "had not done that." "Do you have reference to such?" he asked. "Very soon, Abp. Akinola may make out time to address the issue. Everyone knows where he stands but it is still wrong to make the assumption into a fact."

Meanwhile, on 22-25 February 2006, the Standing Committee had made its decision, which was subsequently published in an undated announcement over Archbisop Akionola's signature and using his letterhead.

A cagey game is being played here.

Related earlier posts (newest first):
Nigerian church turns to policies of the Inquisition
Dr Williams, please act now
Compelled to ask whether the global Christian community has lost not only its backbone but its moral bearings
Mwamba's message of maturity
Open letter from Changing Attitude to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, to the ACO and to ACC officials
Signaling the existance of gay Nigerians
Nigerian disgrace
Changing attitudes
Stoning and power

Stabat Mater by Giovanni Pergolesi will be performed as part of our Good Friday worship this year at St Philip's Anglican Church, O'Connor.

Stabat Mater is a thirteenth-century hymn in Latin attributed to Jacopone da Todi. Its title is an abbreviation of the first line, Stabat mater dolorosa, "The sorrowful mother was standing". One of the most powerful and immediate of extant medieval poems, it meditates on the suffering of Mary, Jesus Christ's mother, during his crucifixion. Read the text and English translation Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736) was an Italian composer, violinist and organist. His setting of Stabat Mater is his best-known sacred work.

There are reports that Scottish activists will protest the ban by ScotBlood, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, on the donation of blood by gay men. Similar campaigns have taken place in other countries this year. Some reports say that the ban in Australia has been lifted. This report says that gay men are banned onlt "temorarily".

Both are wrong, unless you regard a qualifying period of 12 months celibacy as "temporary". Controversy continues in Australia. The Australian Red Cross Blood Service says that it does not accept donations from men who have had sex with men in the previous 12 months.

State and Territory legislation and requirements of the Code of Good Manufacturing Practice for Human Blood and Tissues mandate donor selection on the basis of certain risk behaviours. The exclusion of men who have had sex with men in the past 12 months is based on the statistically higher incidence of some blood borne diseases amongst such groups, and on the existence of 'window period' infections. In this context, the 'window period' is the time between contraction of a disease and the capacity of testing to detect it in the human body. Such deferrals are in accordance with international practice.

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service is motivated only by the requirement to supply the safest possible blood to the Australian community. There is no other judgement being made, and we urge all who are precluded from participating as blood donors to consider other ways of serving the community through voluntary activity with the Australian Red Cross.

Hmm. I'm perfectly happy to keep my O+ blood. But some of it might be useful to someone in need.

I've made a few entries in this journal about the war service of my forebears. This does not mean that I admire war, but to understand one's parent and grandparents, nonetheless, one does need to know what they went through. Yet war has its own curious fascination; its complexity, its drama, its risks and challenges, victories and defeats.

Otto Dix was one who understood this ambivalence. He was both horrified and fascinated by his experiences of the 1914-18 war. The National Gallery of Australia is currently showing its copy of Otto Dix's war portfolio Der Krieg of 1924, a collection of 51 etchings with aquatint -- a truly great twentieth century masterpiece, which the gallery acquired in 2003. This is Zerfallender Kampfgraben [Collapsed trenches] (30cm x 24.4cm plate on a 47.5cm x 35.3cm sheet).

"Consciously modelled on Goya's equally famous and equally devastating Los Desastres de la Guerra. [The disasters of war], the portfolio captures Dix's horror of, and fascination with, the experience of war. It mixes the nightmarish and the horrific with a strange sensuousness in a work that has been described as one of the most powerful anti-war statements in modern art."

Dix's terrible images reminded me of this photograph, which won first place for Stephen Dupont in the Magazine spot news category of the 2006 Pictures of the Year International. Titled War on the mind, it shows members of the U.S. 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade burning the bodies of dead Taliban fighters following an ambush on their convoy outside Gonbaz village in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan on 1 October 2005. While the bodies burned, anti Taliban/Islam messages were broadcast.



War is always horrific.

It's amazing the attention generated by the withdrawal of Ian Thorpe from Australia's Commonwealth Games team, due to severe illness. (Grant Hackett is another popular figure unable to take part, in his case due to injury.) Even the Prime Minister has commented sympathetically. Thorpe is no wimp and thoroughly merits every good wish for his quick recovery.

I'm glad that publication of the a transcript makes it possible to consider in more complete context what the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams, said in an interview with Sir David Frost on the BBC's Heaven and Earth Show on 5 March.

David Frost: It does look [as if] to bring those two points together does seem to need a miracle really. Now, there's no one better at miracles than God, obviously, but, but what can you do?
Rowan Williams: Well you pray a lot.
David Frost: Yes.
Rowan Williams: I can try, I think, to find ways, as long as possible, of getting these two sides to make sense of themselves to each other. The biggest problem is people don't listen very much. ... [T]hat's human nature, and the church is no exception. And so long as people are still trying to -- so long as people are aware that they've enough in common to disagree, rather than just to tear it all up, so long as that's true, it's worth working at. Now the point may come where people say well we no longer have enough in common and we may reach that point -- I don't know. Meanwhile, my first priority is to try and keep the conversation going, to say, "Do you understand why this matters?"
David Frost: And, as you say, it may, it has to walk apart, as one quote said. And I mean, if in fact this issue led to a situation where a new formula was created that, let us say, was more of a federation, more of where each country, in addition to the freedoms they have now, would have a doctrinal freedom as well and Nigeria could have a different doctrine, perhaps, definitely, than American or whatever ... Now would a federation, or an umbrella, be practical?
Rowan Williams: I think we have to wait and see on that. There are other world churches, the Lutheran Reform Churches, which get on with a federal pattern. There's always been, I think, a higher expectation in the Anglican Communion, that we, we have more, more at stake than that. And of course what that means is that if there is rupture, it's going to be a more visible rupture, it's not just going to settle down quietly into being a federation. And, I suppose my anxiety about it is that if the Communion is broken we may be left with even less than a federation.
David Frost: Even less than a federation.
Rowan Williams: And there will have to be an awful lot of bridge-building, absolutely decades to restore some sort of relationship there.
David Frost: Yes. . . . at the moment is that . . . majority of the Anglican Communion are quite clear that active gay relationships should not be blessed in church and actively gay clergy should not be ordained and that these are unwelcome new developments in America. I mean that would be the common view, wouldn't it?
Rowan Williams: Very much the majority view and I think on a matter of real substance like this, a matter that effects the interpretation of the Bible, the discipline of clergy and lay people, what actually the Church will bless in God's name; for a change on that I think we would need, as a Communion, to have a far greater level of consensus than we in fact have. Which is why the American determination to go it alone is, is worrying.
David Frost: And is the, is the convention in June likely to be that moment of decision?
Rowan Williams: A lot rides on that and people have projected lots of expectations. I'll wait and see.

I very much agree with what Revd Tobias Haller BSG says about this. He says that Archbishop Rowan is wrong in saying that people aren't listening. Rather, the point is that many have listened carefully and with understanding, yet still disagree with each other.

Where the Archbishop is 'spot on' [Haller says] is in the question of how we deal with the disagreement. This is where we can choose to act in a gospel fashion, or not. Do we have enough in common to hold the church together in spite of strong disagreement about the rightness of same-sex relationships, and, whether right or wrong, how important is this particular aspect of a person's life in terms of ordained ministry? Can those who disapprove accept the full participation of those of whom they disapprove in the church -- in all orders of ministry? -- that is the question for the "reasserters." The question for the "reappraisers" is not (or ought not to be) "Will you stop doing this?" but "Can you live with this lack of full approval -- is acceptance enough?" In short, can we maintain our unity in spite of a difference of opinion: even if it means various impairments in the communion, and juggling of episcopal oversight to accomplish it?

Ultimately, we have no control over others accepting us, only over who we accept. The Gospel way, for me, is the way of acceptance, not of "being accepted" -- in fact, Jesus promises rejection in the short run for those who follow him. And it seems this is precisely what we are seeing: churches that are welcoming and accepting are getting a tongue lashing for not being restrictive enough. And if we criticize those calling for restriction for being restrictive -- they say we don't "accept" them!

What can we do in response? I say, keep preaching the Gospel! And remain open and welcoming even to those who disagree -- that is crucial, I think. I can say, "I hear what you are saying, but I disagree with you; but you are welcome to worship with me -- if you want to."

Acceptance in this sense need not mean approval -- on either side. Rather we should acknowledge that we are all to some extent in error, but "accept one another as Christ accepted us" -- with all our imperfections, and not as a sign of approval, but as an act of salvation.

Yes, yes and Amen.

I am not entirely convinced that the very existence of an "Anglican Communion" is all that important.

It could take centuries to reach a common understanding on homosexuality and faith. We may never reach a common understanding. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." (Prov.13.6) Therefore we must find ways to be in fellowship (as in ecumenism) despite permanent disagreement. I would prefer this. But if it is not possible, then let's call it quits now and go our separate ways as amicably as possible.

Arhbishop Rowan Williams has told the BBC that the Anglican Church faces a fundamental "rupture" on the issue of homosexuality. He said he feared any split could take decades to heal. He said: "If there is a rupture, it's going to be a more visible rupture, it's not just going to settle down quietly into being a federation. I suppose my anxiety about it is that if the Communion is broken we may be left with even less than a federation."

This affords opportunity for some awful puns on 'rupture' and 'rapture', but I'll refrain.

The Archbishop's remarks were made in a long interview with Sir David Frost on the BBC, broadcast on 5 March 06. The Times' writer Ruth Gledhill has posted the full transcript. See also the reports in The Telegraph and in The Guardian.

I have the greatest respect for Dr Williams, but as to the fate of the world-wide Anglican communion, I'm not sure that I care any more. Sigh.

In the words of David Lewis, writing in the Courier Mail and elsewhere, "Forget the floats and feathers of Saturday night's gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, the most eye-catching show in [Sydney] town was the grand final between Sydney FC and Central Coast Mariners."

Sydney defeated the Mariners 1-0.

I'm not a great sports fan. But I'm happy that the A League has restored sucess and sanity to top-level football in Australia. Next, the World Cup!

Since there's no Canberra team, I am a bit sorry that the Melbourne Victory ended up second-last on the ladder. (New Zealand Knights were last and Adelaide topped the home-and-away series.)



But you'd have to say the Mardi Gras parade had its moments, too! (SMH photo.)

My thanks to the ever-alert compilers of Thinking Anglicans for spotting an article in The Vanguard (4 March 06) discussing the Nigerian government's recent actions against homosexuals. The article quotes David Mac-Iyalla, founder of Changing Attitude Nigeria and also quotes at length the views of various Muslim and Christian religious leaders. What is dangerous in their statements, is their call on the state to enforce what they believe to be the law of God. That takes us back to the Inquisition, where heretics were burned, not by the church, but by the state at the insistence of the church. It might just be possible to mix theology and politics if the theology is sound and the politics humane. But in Nigeria's actions against gays and lesbians, the theology is foolish and the politics are brutally cynical.

The Vanguard asks:

. . . do homosexuals not have the right to make their choices as to who they want to spend their lives with as husbands and wives, or as boyfriends and girlfriends even if they are of the same sex? Or how should the government handle this matter that is catching on globally and threatening to tear the entire world apart?

The Anglican Bishop of Lagos, Dr. Ephraim Adebola Ademowo responds:

As a matter of fact, we commend the Federal Government for the bold step it has taken thus far on the issue and we hope it will go the whole hog to make the National Assembly complete the process by enacting it into law which will be completed to the letter.

It is an unhealthy practice and every normal human being will boldly tell you it is not part of the traditional African culture. But above all, the Bible is very clear on the issue. It described it as an abberation and should not be seen among men who are called of by the name of God.

So, we totally commend the Federal Government for its initiatives and we will continue to pray that the National Assembly will enact the law and the judiciary will follow suit to interprete the laws when the time comes in order to forestall any breach of the law.

In a piece on the website of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) the Rt. Rev. David Onuoha, Bishop of Okigwe, trots out the usual arguments based on Leviticus and Romans and badly misunderstands Genesis 19. Much more dangerous, however, is his advocacy of action by the state to enforce his (and the Church's) ill-formed views.

There is no doubt that advocates of gay marriage are motivated by the need to preserve the rights of those who are inclined to live perversely. There is nothing wrong in preserving ones right. Human right ensures that man lives as he ought to and not as he likes to.

It is very clear that if everyone is allowed to live as one likes to live, there will be chaos and anarchy. This is why the law is there to guide ones life as one ought to. Man, at creation, has his freewill which guarantees freedom of choice and action. He is free to choose between good and evil, right and wrong etc.

Since man is created in the image and likeness of God and is also dependent on Him, his laws must be derived from those of God. When therefore there is a conflict between 'human right' and 'God right', the former must judge and redefine itself by and from the latter in order to live in true freedom.

Our conclusion therefore is that same sex union in whatever guise it may manifest -- homosexuality, lesbianism, sodomy, sexuality, gay, civil partnership -- is unnatural, unbiblical, unreasonable, unethical, ungodly and unAfrican.

The rights and wrongs of faithful same-sex relationships can be debated until the end of time. What is at stake here, however, is whether the Christian church should be encouraging the state to enforce a code of morality in a way that violates internationally established norms of civil and political rights.

The question is not simple. We would accept a church exhorting the state to legislate against child abuse, child pornography, rape, etc. In the Nigerian case, however, the church is asking the state to punish consenting unharmful activites between adults (presumably in private). Further, the Church is supporting the Government's proposal to make illegal any organised meeting of gay and lesbian people, completely removing their rights of assembly and free speech. The onus is on the Nigerian churches to make out a much better case for this than it has done so far. In fact, I believe, it is impossible morally and ethically for it to justify its stance.

The leaders of the church of Nigeria are entitled to say what they believe Scripture to mean. I may disagree. I may even think their interpretation to be contrary to the Gospel. But they are entitled to express their views, subject to the disciplines of the church of which they are members -- it's called free speech.

However the disciplines of the church require those who proclaim the word to do it well and do it faithfully. I genuinely doubt that the Nigerian leaders are rightly dividing the word of truth.

Archbishop Akinola and his fellow leaders have every secular right to say that that gay relationships are sinful, (though I may disagree by saying that not all gay relationships are sinful). What they should not do in the name of the church is advocate denial of free speech and free assembly to people who are merely supporting a moral opinion that differs from their own. Nor should they advocate punishment by the state of those who simply differ from them in their opinions.

The state should only punish those who impose objective harm on others. One cannot say in fairness that consenting non-violent sexual behaviour in private between two adults is imposition by one of objective harm on the other.

Picture of the Year International has some wonderful pictures, often stark and upsetting, frequently beautiful.



Because of my connections with Korea, I am attracted to a series of twelve photographs of North Korea by Christopher Morris of VII and Time -- "The Hermit Nation". Alongside regimented aspects of North Korea's closed society, Morris catches ordinary folks, like these North Koreans fishing on the outskirts of the capital Pyongyang.

There are more of Morris's pictures of North Korea on the VII site (click the features tab and then select Christopher Morris).

The Canberra Philharmonic Society is presenting a new local production of Les Misérables, directed by Dianna Nixon. James and I enjoyed the show last night.

It was the first time I'd seen or heard Les Misérables which has been showing in London for over 20 yrs.

There was a some fine singing. Yet I was restless for much of the performance. The plot was long and complex, and I had to read the program notes to follow it -- but that's no different from many operas. The seats were too close together and uncomfortable -- but that's no different from many concert halls. I like almost every kind of music, though I haven't seen very many musicals -- perhaps five or six. I prefer concerts.

I agree with City News reviewer Jorian Gardner who found the stage direction to be "flat" but I also agree with Gardner's praise of the singers, especially the stand-out performance of Michael Politi as Javert. Fiona Sullivan as Fantine and Daniel Wells as of Marius were also superb.

I'm used to hearing good singing without electronic amplification. During the large production numbers, it was hard to tell which person was singing. All the voices seemed to come from all the speakers. In some scenes, it almost seemed as if the singers were miming, though I'm sure they weren't! It didn't sound any different from a recording. For the same reason, I find it difficult to see the point of a pop concert. The recordings always sound better and the artists are so far way you can hardly see them.

However, I eventually figured out that Les Misérables didn't quite gell for me because I wasn't comfortable with serious, even heavy, ideas portrayed in light music.

The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired this untitled 1977 55cm x 75cm landscape by Fred Williams (1927-1982), Australia's finest C20th landscape painter. It depicts the low rounded hills of the Yass area, dotted by eucalypts, and the vast open sky. Yass is near Canberra. I love Williams' work as I have a deep love of the Australian landscape.

Open letter sent by Inclusive Church raising the position of Changing Attitude Nigeria and Integrity Uganda

The Archbishop of Canterbury,
Lambeth Palace, London SE1

21st February 2006

Dear Archbishop,

Inclusive Church and its Partner Organisations welcome the establishment of Changing Attitude Nigeria and as legitimate voices of gay and lesbian Africans within our Anglican Communion. We are deeply concerned at the hostility and aggression that those who belong to, and those who support these organisations, have met from their respective Anglican Churches and ask that they be affirmed as members of the Anglican family with the right to be heard and respected.

Successive Lambeth Conferences have called on the Anglican Communion to engage in dialogue with gay Christians and to listen to their experiences. Integrity Uganda and Changing Attitude Nigeria provide ways of responding to this call. We believe that all Anglicans should welcome the establishment of these groups and seek to assist them in their difficult and dangerous situations. To deny them a legitimate place in the life of the church is reject the call of the Lambeth Conference resolutions.

We are deeply concerned that in Nigeria in particular the Anglican Church appears to be encouraging the State to engage in active persecution of gay people and those who speak for them. We hope that you will encourage all Anglicans to support these vulnerable Christians and to encourage the Churches in Nigeria and Uganda in particular to recognise the members and supporters of these groups as part of our Anglican family, and to desist from denigrating them even denying their existence as committed and active Anglicans.

We recognise how very difficult it is to raise this concern in the current climate of conflict within the Anglican Communion but the dire situation of these Anglicans can not wait for the Anglican Communion to resolve its internal difficulties, the physical dangers that they face are, we believe, being exacerbated by the actions of our own church. We earnestly hope that you will be able to recognise their situation and encourage all concerned to cease the campaign against them and recognise the Christian duty to protect, not persecute, these vulnerable Christians.

Yours sincerely,

Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser, President
Rev. Giles Goddard, Chair

Nicola Roxon MP, Shadow Attorney-General
Tanya Plibersek MP, Member for Sydney

Joint media release, 1 March 2006

Labor recommits to gay and lesbian law reform

This week the Labor Caucus endorsed a plan to actively campaign on gay and lesbian law reform and pursue the Howard Government on its failure to make good its promises.

As part of Labor's campaign, Nicola Roxon will introduce a private members' bill to combat discrimination, harassment and incitement to violence based on sexuality or gender identity. Parliament needs to send a strong message that homophobic violence, intimidation and discrimination are unacceptable.

Labor will also step up pressure on the Howard Government to fulfil its promise to end discrimination against same sex couples in the area of public sector superannuation.

Further, we have committed to making sure that same sex couples are included when the Family Court jurisdiction is extended to cover property disputes of de facto couples, a change which is expected this year. The Howard Government has indicated that it will limit the extension to heterosexual couples, leaving same sex couples the stress and expense of negotiating both state and federal courts in the event of family break-up.

Labor will commence consultation on the models for a system of formal recognition of same sex relationships, such as civil unions. We look forward to discussing this issue with gay and lesbian groups across Australia.

Federal Labor looks forward to building on our achievements and working constructively with the LGBT community to bring an end to discrimination.

At last some action. The ALP is still light years behind the Australian Greens on these topics, but better than the Government.

Jimmy Somerville is in Australia for shows in Melbourne and Sydney. The Age has three articles about him, on 23 February, by Michael Dwyer, 26 February, by Guy Blackman, and 1 March 2006, by Steve Dow. Somerville is worried that gay people these days are taking their hard-won freedoms for granted.

Jimmy was interviewed by the excellent Phillip Adams on the award winning Late Night Live show on ABC Radio national on 20 February. (You can get a podcast, MP3, or streaming audio from the LNL site.)

The 1990 Singles collection is so well known that its almost a cliché but, even though he's an atheist, Jimmy Sommrville's songs were very encouraging to me around the time when I was puzzling over the The Big Red Pill

Brokeback Mountain, the movie, must be seen as an example of cinematic art, not a pro-gay (or anti-gay) polemic.

I read Annie Proulx's short story in the 1997 New Yorker original. (It's also in her collection of fourteeen short stories, Close range: Wyoming stories (Scribners, 2000).)

"Brokeback Mountain" is a spare story, economically written. It made me feel that the film story might be rather gloomy -- as it was in parts -- and I don't like gloomy movies. I was reluctant to see it. But I was completely convinced by its skill, beauty and economy as cinema, even while I felt dismay and frustration at the content of the story. The flat, dry, physical and spiritual emptiness of the plains towns and ranches where Jack and Ennis live with their families contrasts with the greenness and beauty of the mountainscape where they find each other's love.

One needs to separate the film's achievement as a work of fine film making from opinions of the morality or otherwise of the film's characters. Brokeback Mountain superbly portrays two men who are romantically and erotically attacted to each other (without once mentioning 'love') and their struggle to understand. But the film does not celebrate their adultery, unfaithfulness and lies. Rather, it shows the harm done and the social and emotional pressures that brought them to do these things in social circumstances oppressive of gay men.

I like Anthony Lane's review in the New Yorker (12 Dec 05).

The Advocate runs an interesting Associated Press interview with Annie Proulx about the short story and the film.

"I thought [the performances of Ledger and Gyllenhall] were magnificent, both of them. Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist . . . wasn't the Jack Twist that I had in mind when I wrote this story. The Jack that I saw was jumpier, homely. But Gyllenhaal's sensitivity and subtleness in this role is just huge. The scenes he's in have a kind of quicksilver feel to them. Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I'm concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable."

Yesterday, in the Australian Senate, Senator Nettle (Australian Greens, New South Wales) moved:

That the Senate --

(a) notes:
        (i) that the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors will meet on 6 March 2006 to consider the resumption of aspects of Iran's nuclear program,
        (ii) the recent media reports that suggest the United States of America (US) and Israel are considering a military strike on Iran, and
        (iii) the recent report by the Oxford Research Group that found that as many as 10,000 people could die in such an attack; and

(b) calls on the Government to:
        (i) support diplomatic initiatives to prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons,
        (ii) encourage all parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue its requirements for nuclear disarmament, and
        (iii) rule out Australian support for a military strike on Iran by the US or Israel.

I am astonished that only the Australian Greens supported this resolution. The Government and the Australian Labor Party joined together to vote it down and the Australian Democrats abstained. How could Australians possibly support further extension of conflict in the middle east?

Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, which begins Lent. It is a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as the last chance to feast before Lent begins. In Britain it is popularly known as "Pancake Day".

This year, it fell on 28 February, my birthday. So I decided to learn about it and the famous Olney Pancake race. Similar races are now held in many places, especially in Liberal, Kansas

The English term "to shrive", means to hear confessions and grant absolution. It is found in the Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiastical Institutes translated from Theodulphus by Abbot Aelfric about A.D. 1000. "In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him . . ."

Lent is a time of abstinence, so Shrove Tuesday was the last chance to indulge oneself, and to use up the foods not allowed in Lent, such as meat and fish, fats, eggs, and milky foods. So that nothing was wasted, families would feast on the shriving Tuesday, to eat all the foods that wouldn't keep until the end of Lent. The need to eat up the fats gave rise to the French name Mardi Gras; meaning "fat Tuesday". Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with just the addition of flour.

The oldest and most famous Shrove Tuesday pancake race has been held in Olney in Buckinghamshire since 1445. According to the story, a woman was busy cooking pancakes in her kitchen on Shrove Tuesday and lost track of the time. Suddenly she heard the church bell ringing to call the faithful to church for confession. She rushed out of her house and ran to church, still holding her frying pan and wearing her apron. Only women wearing a dress (no slacks or jeans), an apron and a hat or scarf, may take part in the race. Each contestant has a frying pan containing a hot, cooking pancake.

The race starts at the market square at 11.55 am. The starter orders competitors: "Toss your pancakes -- Are you ready?" and then give the starting signal. At the finish of the winding 415 yard (375m course) the winner is required to toss her pancake before being declared the winner and being greeted with the words "The Peace of the Lord be always with you" spoken by the Vicar of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul and the traditional prize of a kiss from the Verger. All who finish the course are expected to attend the Shriving Service during which the prizes are presented. The record is 63 seconds, set in 1967.

A few towns in England continue the tradition, dating from the 12th century, of Shrove Tuesday football ('mob football') games. At the Westminster School in London, there has been the annual 'Pancake Greaze' since at least 1753. The school cook tosses a huge pancake over a high bar and the boys scramble for a piece. The scholar who emerges from the scrum with the largest piece receives a cash prize from the Dean. The cook also gets a reward, as is only right and proper.

In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, there is a service of "Commination or denouncing of God's anger and judgements against sinners" to be used on Ash Wednesday. It includes this prayer:

O Lord, we beseech you, mercifully hear our prayers and spare all those who confess their sins to you; that they, whose consciences by sin are accused, by your merciful pardon may be absolved, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Titusonenine quotes Andrew Carey (Church of England Newspaper 6 Jan 2006,) who has some proposals on how to behave when we are facing a stand-off about sexuality (or anything else) in church debate.

Mr Carey is to be congratulated for building bridges rather than burning them. We must find ways to continue our witness to the truths of the Gospel of Christ despite disagreements among ourselves. Mr Carey said:

Firstly, the chief protagonists on each side should make attempts to form relationships with each other. They meet across tables in radio and television studios but rarely know each other any better than that. There's no element of compromise in 'getting to know your enemy'. And a friendly debate, however strongly our differences are communicated, is surely a better witness than a shouting match.

Secondly, [Archbishop] Dr Williams suggested to Simon Mayo that we will all have to make some 'sacrifices' if we are to avoid schism. [. . .] In this kind of debate there are no winners -- only losers. When Jeffrey John pulled back from becoming Bishop of Reading, under immense pressure, that certainly didn't feel like a 'win', because it was such a wounding blow to a very decent and talented man. When in November 1992 the General Synod voted to ordain women I was standing between two women. One, a young reporter on the Sunday Times, felt elated that she had seen history change for her gender. But the late, great Betty Saunders of the Church Times, though professional as ever, was crushed by the decision. Any win, for either side, leaves losers. And any decent Christian will feel that loss.

And thirdly, I'd like to see some practical agreements between the parties to this dispute. Let's start with our situation in the Church of England. Many liberals and conservatives have one common frustration -- that bishops they know to be sympathetic to their viewpoint do not give a lead. Well here's an initiative for those bishops -- invite some of the leaders of the main groupings together (perhaps under the auspices of umbrella networks such as Inclusive Church and Anglican Mainstream) and try to hammer out some pointers and questions for future debate and behaviour.

Avoid attacking people rather than the issue.

To what extent can we all oppose human rights abuses against homosexual people, including parts of the Communion where Anglican leaders are at their most opposed to homosexuality? Can we ensure that the proper Synodical processes are used for continuing this debate among us -- that sleight of hand, planting facts on the ground, and acting alone are not strategies that we encourage?

Can bishops and parishes, at ground level, who are at odds with each other, find ways of loosening their ties without fully breaking communion with each other?

What degree of communion can we actually have with each other? And what would it take to fully put us out of communion with each other? Can we have the highest degree of communion possible, for as long as possible, while this debate about human sexuality, the Windsor Report, and the communion-wide process unfolds?

I hope and pray that we may.

Many, even of the authorities, believed in Jesus. But because of the pharisees they did not confess it, for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God. (John 12.42-42)

Churches in the West have been curiously silent in the face of the Government of Nigeria's appalling proposals for anti-homosexuality laws which not only prohibit same-sex relationships but deny freedom of speech and assembly to groups of homosexual people. To its shame, the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) vociferous supported the legislation and other Nigerian churches have also supported the laws.)

Now, to his great credit, the Rt Revd John Bryson Chane, Episcopal bishop of Washington, has published a critique of the Nigerian church's actions in the Washington Post Sunday, 26 Feb, 2006. Comments (hopefully in support!) can be made on the Diocese of Washington's blog.

Prelidium and Salty Vicar are two bloggers to congratulate the Bishop and respond to his comments. Comments at Thinking Anglicans are interesting, too. On the other hand, David Virtue offers a strongly worded refutation of Bishop Chane. Earlier, Giles Fraser wrote wrote in the Church Times.

But despite pleas to act, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have (to my knowledge) said nothing.

This is what Bishop Chane wrote:

A Gospel of Intolerance

It's no secret that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are engaged in a bitter internal struggle over the role of gay and lesbian people within the church. But despite this struggle, the leaders of our global communion of 77 million members have consistently reiterated their pastoral concern for gays and lesbians. Meeting last February, the primates who lead our 38 member provinces issued a unanimous statement that said in part: "The victimization or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us."

We now have reason to doubt those words.

Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, primate of the Church of Nigeria and leader of the conservative wing of the communion, recently threw his prestige and resources behind a new law that criminalizes same-sex marriage in his country and denies gay citizens the freedoms to assemble and petition their government. The law also infringes upon press and religious freedom by authorizing Nigeria's government to prosecute newspapers that publicize same-sex associations and religious organizations that permit same-sex unions.

Were Archbishop Akinola a solitary figure and Nigeria an isolated church, his support for institutionalized bigotry would be significant only within his own country. But the archbishop is perhaps the most powerful member of a global alliance of conservative bishops and theologians, generously supported by foundations and individual donors in the United States, who seek to dominate the Anglican Communion and expel those who oppose them, particularly the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Failing that, the archbishop and his allies have talked of forming their own purified communion -- possibly with Archbishop Akinola at its head.

Because the conflict over homosexuality is not unique to Anglicanism, civil libertarians in this country, and other people as well, should also be aware of the archbishop and his movement. Gifts from such wealthy donors as Howard Ahmanson Jr. and the Bradley, Coors and Scaife families, or their foundations, allow the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy to sponsor so-called "renewal" movements that fight the inclusion of gays and lesbians within the Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches and in the United Church of Christ. Should the institute succeed in "renewing" these churches, what we see in Nigeria today may well be on the agenda of the Christian right tomorrow.

Many countries have laws restricting marriage on any number of grounds. Some of these, such as age, kinship and marital status, for instance, are prudent, while most of us believe other sorts of restrictions, including race and religion, are oppressive and indefensible. Our global community has certainly achieved no consensus on the issue of same-sex marriage or the related issues of civil unions.

But the Nigerian law has crossed the line in several important respects. Its most outrageous provision deals not with marriage but with "same-sex relationships" and prohibits essentially any public or private activity in any way related to homosexuality. It reads in part: "Publicity, procession and public show of same sex amorous relationship through the electronic or print media physically, directly, indirectly or otherwise are prohibited in Nigeria."

Any person involved in the "sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly" is subject to five years' imprisonment.

The archbishop's support for this law violates numerous Anglican Communion documents that call for a "listening process" involving gay Christians and their leaders. But his contempt for international agreements also extends to Articles 18-20 of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which articulates the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, association and assembly.

Surprisingly, few voices -- Anglican or otherwise -- have been raised in opposition to the archbishop. When I compare this silence with the cacophony that followed the Episcopal Church's decision to consecrate the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, a gay man who lives openly with his partner, as the bishop of New Hampshire, I am compelled to ask whether the global Christian community has lost not only its backbone but its moral bearings. Have we become so cowed by the periodic eruptions about the decadent West that Archbishop Akinola and his allies issue that we are no longer willing to name an injustice when we see one?

I also feel compelled to ask the archbishop's many high-profile supporters in this country why they have not publicly dissociated themselves from his attack on the human rights of a vulnerable population. Is it because they support this sort of legislation, or because the rights of gay men and women are not worth the risk of tangling with an important alliance?

As a matter of logic, it must be one or the other, and it is urgent that members of our church, and citizens of our country, know your mind.

Last November, Islamic fundamentalists had forced the closure of the Jakarta CP biennale because of the work of two artists, Agus Suwage and Davy Linggar, demanding their prosecution for 'blasphemy' or 'pornography'.



This installation Pinkswing-Park, 2005 by Agus Suwage and Davy Linggar was what caused all the fuss. I don't like it much (Some of the other works at the Biennale are most elegant.), but that's not the point. Suwage in particular is an important and valuable creative spirit, who should not be crushed by fundamentalist ignorance. Nor should Indonesia, a free spirited nation of diverse and talented artistry, be crushed into a bland conformity. Indonesia, home to more Muslims than any other nation, is emerging into democracy after decades of near-dictatorship. Must she now succumb to the fanatics?

The groups who protested over the press cartoons of Muhammad are targeting pornography in their battle to make Indonesia more strictly Islamic. The Indonesian parliament is expected to introduce a sweeping anti-pornography law. Expected to be passed by June, it imposes a rigid social pattern; couples who kiss in public will face up to five years' imprisonment, as would anyone flaunting a "sensual body part" -- including their navel -- and tight clothing would be outlawed. Most women's groups are horrified, entertainment industries believe it could destroy them.

The Islamic Defenders Front spearheads the anti-porn protests. Mainstream Islamic organisations, warning of moral decay, are supporting the law and politicans are caving in. In Jakarta, police have seized hundreds of thousands of "erotic" magazines and DVDs -- anything showing some skin -- following an direction by the police chief to "eradicate pornography".

One of Indonesia's leading contemporary artists, Agus Suwage initially trained as a graphic designer at Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). His work explores the contradictions of human nature -- how violence and pain are inextricably linked to joy and pleasure.

Born to Javanese and Chinese parents in Purworejo, Central Java, Indonesia in 1959, Agus Suwage spent his youth in the city of Yogyakarta before studying graphic design at the Faculty of Fine Art and Design of the ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology), in Bandung, from 1979 to 1986. He then moved to Jakarta and took up work as a graphic designer and illustrator.

While he may be biologically Chinese, Suwage's cultural consciousness is essentially Javanese. He is comfortable with displacement and paradox, the outcome of the convergences of his surroundings. This gives rise to a sense of the unexpected in his work, allowing him to be provocative yet cheeky, humorous but darkly so.

Agus Suwage's solo exhibitions include: the H Block Gallery in Brisbane, Australia (1996); the Lontar Contemporary Art Gallery in Jakarta, Indonesia (1997); Galeri Padi in Bandung, Indonesia (1998); the Cemeti Contemporary Art Gallery in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (1998); and the Millenium Gallery in Jakarta, Indonesia (1999); Ough--Nguik!, a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Indonesia and Countrybution, the 7th Yogyakarta Biennial in 2003.

His group exhibitions include: the 2nd AsiaPacific Triennial (1996), Awas! Recent Art from Indonesia (a touring exhibition to Australia, Japan, Germany and the Netherlands, 1999-2000) and Man + Space at Gwangju Biennale (2000), Phillip Morris Indonesia Art Award, ASEAN Building, Jakarta, Indonesia (1996); Current Art in Southeast Asia, Glimpses into the Future, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (1997); Sixth Biennale of Havana, Havana, Cuba (1997); Imagining Selves, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (1998); Media dalam Media, National Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia (1999). He was an artist in residence at Queensland University of Technology, in Brisbane, Australia (1996), and at Saitama Modern Art, in Tokyo, Japan (1999).

(sources: Valenitine Willy and The Legacy Project)



Suwage is an artist of substance. He is definitely not a pornographer. Legacy Project curator Jim Supangkat writes:

Suwage is a good example of "the right man in the wrong place." Born in Central Java of Javanese and Chinese parents, he grew up in a Javanese environment with a strict Catholic education. After working as a graphic designer and illustrator, he decided to dedicate all his time to creating artworks. Married to a Moslem Sudanese woman, Suwage is an example of an individual who continually goes through a process of negotiation regarding his own identity in a plural culture. While Nindityo Adipurnomo created a cynical work entitled Who is Afraid of Javanese, Suwage seems to say, "Who isn't afraid of being Indonesian Chinese?"

Self Portrait demonstrates the psychological tension in Suwage's life. The 24 self-portraits he paints show his face revealing many different personalities in many different situations. The unpleasant sensations the portraits reveal -- pain, suffer, disgust-- are related to deep psychological pain, hatred and anguish that have their roots in destiny and represent Suwage's search for self. Since he has a Chinese heritage, he feels Chinese and has discovered that being Chinese in Indonesia is unpleasant because of the threats to the Chinese minority.

Even while working as a graphic artist, Suwage sketched and drew on every scrap of paper he could find. Even now he has hundreds of little pictures piled in his cupboard. He begins work on his creations by developing the sketches recorded on those scraps. Suwage did not study oil painting on canvas, or the other traditions of painting; he is much closer to everyday media including photocopies, photography, pencils, charcoal, ballpoint pens, poster paints, and even coffee grounds, which he uses to color his sketches. Although he now uses oil paint and canvas, Suwage continues to explore different uses of non-standard media and equipment.

Mark Forbes writes in his piece in The Age.

Suwage believes his work captured attention because one of the models, Anjasmara, is a popular soapie star. The two models, photographer Davy Linggar and the curator of the biennale, Jim Supangkat, are also facing criminal charges.

Supangkat declined to be interviewed and Suwage is increasingly bitter at his reaction to the protest.

However, a detailed interview with Jim Supangkat has been published on a webpage about the biennale.

After hundreds of demonstrators had descended on the exhibition, a panicked Supangkat ordered the offending panels to be covered with white cloth. Other artists draped their own works in solidarity and Supangkat closed the biennale, permanently.

Suwage believes his prosecution is linked to pressure to pass the anti-porn law and the desire of fundamentalists to impose Islamic rule. Afraid of prison, Suwage says he is determined to fight. "Maybe it's good for me and Davy to become the victims, maybe we need martyrs," he said.

Based out of a small cafe gallery in Jakarta's backpacker precinct, Suwage and a motley collective or artists are mobilising against the new law. "From this case, we make a manifesto for art against the pornography bill," he said. "It's very dangerous for freedom of expression but it also threatens other aspects of society."

Meanwhile, Bali's embattled tourist authorities are alarmed at the prospect of sunbathers being arrested. (Bali is Hindu and animist more than Muslim.) Are we going to see Donald Friend's works, such as this Red Interior stripped from the walls of Balinese galleries?