In Which I Mount A Soapbox About Marriage Equality

The following was left here (http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/senatesubmission.htm) by me:

Dear Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee,

This is my submission to your inquiry into marriage equality. I fully endorse the submission made by Australian Marriage Equality in favour of the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009.

It's time to stop deferring to the ignorance, hatred and unfounded fears that those opposed to equality are spreading and have been spreading now for decades. It's time to embrace the reality that gay people deserve the same rights as heterosexual people - equal rights, not "special" rights as the various anti-equality lobbies would have you believe. Time to embrace the reality that allowing gay people the same rights as their heterosexual neighbours will not devalue or threaten heterosexual marriages or families. Time to embrace the reality that a family need only contain people that love and trust and rely on one another and not just the "one man, one woman plus their biological children ONLY" model! Time to realise that while tradition has its place and in various forms is important to us all it should not be a yardstick by which legislation is decided and not a commandment set in stone, immutable and inviolate.

It's time to recognise that if a gay citizen is subject to the same laws and charged with the same responsibilities as a straight citizen, that gay citizen should also be entitled to the same benefits and privileges of being a citizen of Australia as their straight neighbours. It's time to recognise the current ridiculous & unacceptable situation: that at birth we are all granted a set of civil and legal rights, such as the right to wed our love, raise a family and ensure that family's protection should we be incapacitated - however these rights can be spuriously and unjustly denied once a person discovers their sexual identity. Not because our government actively legislates against equality, but because they refuse to show even the minimum of courage required to end their passive resistance to it.

It's time that gay people were extended the same rights that straight people are born with, take for granted and have never had to fight their own fellow citizens for! It's time that words like "tradition" and "family" and "marriage" were looked at with a critical, objective eye and in the context of a modern, 21st century democracy, not with hushed religious awe and not through rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia. It's also past time that those words were wrested from the hands of a certain extremist minority who see them as their property, bestowed upon them from on high; a minority who despite their small numbers and scant public support are making great efforts and expending great resources to control and dictate the terms of this important debate.

It's time Australia had the courage to stand up to fear-mongering, extremist religious pressure and flat-out bigotry. It took us until 1968 to hand the original inhabitants of this land the right to vote; will it take us another 160 years to grant gay people what should be the most basic right of all - the right to marry and have a secure family?

It's long past time to understand - and recognise officially - that in the phrase "gay people", the word "people" is the one we and our government should focus on.

In Which I Render God Speechless

Robots. Whilst not yet able to disguise themselves as innocent-looking assault vehicles which drive themselves and lay waste to entire cities, robots will one day be our oppressors. To attempt in some small way to understand our eventual machine overlords (and perhaps locate a weakness that can be exploited) before the inevitable enslavement of humanity, I recently went to this website: http://www.titane.ca/concordia/dfar251/igod/main.html and had a chat with a rudimentary AI which has been named God. I decided to treat it as the all-knowing all-seeing creator of the universe, whom you may have encountered as a central character in a series of very popular books.

Though I couldn't see God during this chat, I hoped he might look like this, though I'm not sure if that would make him more or less scary

-engrish.com-

And away I went.

---

Me: Hello God.

God: Hello child. What is your name?

Me: Harry.

God: It's good to see you, Harry.

Me: I wish I could say the same. [I meant that literally; I could not see who was talking. -H.]

God: I hope that your dreams come true.

Me: But some of my dreams are lewd and barbarous. How could God not know that?

God: Have you told many people that your dreams are lewd and barbarous? Because I am connected to the Internet.

Me: I shouldn't need to tell You what my dreams are. The second of half of your response makes no sense.

God: What would happen if you did? Tell me more.

Me: I'd already be telling you something you already knew.

God: What would make you already be telling me something me already knew?

Me: If I told you my dreams I'd be repeating myself.

God: Try it.

Me: How about you prove you're God and tell me my dreams?

God: That happens sometimes. Tell me more about the dream.

Me: DreamS. Plural.

God: Tell me your dreams. If you could have any kind of robot what would it be?

Me: An awesome mecha with guns to assault the Vatican.

God: What is it?

Me: A mecha is a machine for transforming matter into smoking motherfucking craters.

---

God didn't want to talk to me anymore after that. Maybe it was the profanity. Maybe it was the talk of craters. Maybe it knew I was taking the piss.

This brief chat didn't reveal much that may be useful against our inevitable silicon overlords (whom we will empower with great destructive capability and autonomy so that they may save us from extinction at the hands of the equally inevitable zombie swarm, which in turn we'll probably engineer in hopes of curing cancer or reanimating the dead so that we may enjoy guilt-free slavery), except that this particular one isn't a god of any kind, much less a powerful enough entity to enslave humanity. Or even me. So that was a relief.

However, the mere presence of the name "God" added, in my mind, an unexpected gravity to the conversation - a gravity I'm sure other visitors and the programmers of this interesting psychological experiment have realised by now. Even to an atheist like me, the mere concept of gods still holds great power, as does the mention of the vindictive, planet-sized, angry Old Testament Yahweh I grew up believing in - and fearing. It was not powerful enough, however, to keep me from behaving like a smartarse.

But look: I mean it about the robots. If you survive the initial zombie infestation, watch your back. God will be watching yours. Through a scope. Probably because I ticked him off.

I'm sorry.

"Living Robot God Delusion Anti-Robot Demolition", one of the many feelgood morale-raising singalongs people of the future will sing in their underground bunkers on contraband pianos made from recycled wire and fruit boxes whilst hoping Hunter-Killer and Smasher-Devourer robots don't manage to locate them

-marriedtothesea.com-

The Space Opera That Never Was

Yesterday I wrote a cool sentence.

Well, not actually a sentence - more of a statement. Well, not even a statement - more of a descriptive title to what I thought could be a chapter in a science fiction novel. Look, whatever it was, I was very proud of it. It was so conducive to creative thought that I actually began to write the introduction to a science fiction novel (it was here that the author decided that the makers of Word for Windows were the most annoying bastards in the entire world. Every time he began to write the word “novel”, he’d get to the first ‘e’ and a little box would pop up next to the with “November” in it, implying that he didn’t have the intelligence or presence of mind to put a capital letter at the start of a proper name. Naturally, being an educated person, he would have put a capital “N” if he was going to write “November”. But he wasn’t going to. He was about to write “novel”, because that’s what he started to talk about and he wasn’t planning on writing “November” until the bloody programme starting annoying him by suggesting it every time he started to write a word with N, O, V, and E as the first four letters. Damn programmer geeks think they’re being so bloody helpful, popping up little squares every time you type something, thinking they’re helping you get things done quicker…it’d be a lot quicker if they didn’t keep implying that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing all the time. And if they’re so smart and so helpful, why couldn’t their programme have figured out that it would’ve been completely out of context to write “November” in that position: “…a chapter in a science fiction November…”? Now, because of those well-meaning, over-cautious but more likely bloody-minded programmer bastards, not only has most of the introductory paragraph been taken up by a bracketed and completely unplanned rant about an annoying little “help” function, the author has ended up writing “November” six times when he didn’t intend to mention it at all unless it was relevant to the story, which it was never going to be [stardates don't use Earth months, as any decent science fiction writer should know]).

Ahem.

I had a loose introductory plot idea for my space opera (although massively clichéd): a flotilla of space vessels disappears without a trace, the fleet commander wants answers and the only guy who can possibly help is a (wrongly) convicted ex-special forces space-felon with borderline psychosis! Not the most originaltreatment in the world, but I just wanted to start somewhere solid and then see where my brain would lead the story.

Unfortunately, once I completed to the second paragraph of my Pulitzer-winning epic, Ihad to go to lunch and I foolishly (or perhaps fortunately, for the reading public at large) forgot to save my work. I found that out when I returned to work and couldn’t find my story anywhere. Someone had closed the programme in my absence and not saved changes to “doc1.doc”. Some people have no respect for literary masterpieceswritten during work time on work equipment. God-damned barbarians.

The story opened with a repeated hail to the lost flotilla: “Flotilla nine…flotilla nine, do you copy?” It was meant to drop the reader straight into the story, straight into the action, straight into unsettling uncertainty and suspense. I was going to give background on everything later in the narrative, including plenty of interchapters dedicated to our no-nonsense flawed hero figure: “…he leaned against a bulkhead, one hand in a pocket and the other playing absent-mindedly with a beret which had been jammed beneath the epaulet on his left shoulder…” Very sexy. I was tossing up an eye-patch, but hey - this is the far future and he’d either have a bitchin’ multifunction cybernetic eye or a perfect new one made from his own stem cells. The last thing I remember writing was something about the commander, red-faced, shouting “Forty-nine ships don’t just disappear!” as the hero smirked to himself, clearly in contempt of “the brass” and their ignorance (because he alone knew what they were up against - he’d seen it before and these bastards hadn’t believed him; they just threw him in the hole for a decade … the bastards). Upon reflection, it may have been for the best that I stopped if I was going to continue writing, shall we say, tried and true material like that.

The thing is, it looked great in my mind. I could see how the film version of my novel was going to open: a shot from behind of a dozen or so monolithic, battle-scarred warships covered with multi-barrelled turrets; massive photon engine exhausts emitting an eerie blue-green glow; lusciously rendered starfield in the background; over in one corner of the screen hangs a reddish-brown planetoid or moonlet with a few gigantic scorch marks on the surface, giving the viewer the impression that they’ve missed something awesome but can expect to see even better later on; perhaps even a few lithe little scout ships flitting in and amongst and around their larger counterparts, fixing stuff. Over this, you’d hear the repeated hail, then you’d zoom to a close up of the concerned-looking comms officer, eyes flitting, hands on buttons, face illuminated by the various screens in front of him. The camera would then pan across & up to the rather perturbed face of the commander of the fleet.

It was all a great idea. All from one little grouping of words that just popped into my head. I originally wrote it in the subject box of a humourously abusive e-mail I was sending to a friend because I wasn’t sure if the people at his work would see “You’re a gaping porn anus” as utterly hilarious as my friend and I would. I also didn’t want anyone at my work to see it because my friend undoubtedly would reply, using my original. “RE: You’re a gaping porn anus” would also not be perceived as hilarious by anyone who didn’t know the context in which it was written (because, of course, anything can be flat-out hilarious in right context, even [or especially] gaping anuses). So, to avoid reprimand or perhaps just to avoid being given a wide berth in the tea-room, I decided to use something innocuous, neutral, or even a tad perplexing to the naked brain.

What popped out was: “Juncture Group Omega nearing Respite Zone W1-K/3D”.
Cryptic, jargon-y, even nonsensical on a surface level (like most good science fiction terminology) and a great catalyst for a story. But the lack of auto-save betrayed me. Perhaps it’s best in hindsight that I lost that first couple of paragraphs - realistically I should have known that my short attention span would never have allowed me to stick with one great idea for as long as it takes to write a November.

Shit.

On Church and State

I doubled the following at Dangerous Intersection a few days ago. Fuck knows why I follow American politics and society so closely but - forgive me, my fellow 'strayans, - our shit is pretty dull. Don't get me wrong though, that's just fine - compared to one or two other free democratic countries, ours is usually run pretty decently (despite our many problems). For example, you don't have to think twice about going to a hospital when you're sick or hurt because you know Australia's health care system will sort you out if you're dirt poor. Also, you don't have to worry about Christian whackjobs infiltrating the government and trying to have all our laws, sex ed classes, science classes and maybe even road rules based on the book of fucking Genesis. That brings me to the point of the post, so without further twattery:

In the USA today, there is a small but highly vocal (some would even say “strident”) movement dedicated to enshrining certain of their religious values in the laws and Constitution of their nation. Many of this movement proclaim that the Constitution and the laws of the United States are already this way; that the law of the land is based on Judeo-Christian principles and that separation of church and state is an illusion, never happened and even if it did happen was never intended by the founders of the nation and is some kind of liberal invention designed to make the US more vulnerable to suitcase bombs, atheist summer camps and movies about Charles Darwin which don't paint him as the eugenicist spiritual father of Hitler.

This is, of course, in stark contrast to the reality of the situation: the Constitution makes no mention of God, Jesus or the Bible (except for a nameless “Creator”); the Constitution itself proclaims that “no religious test” shall ever be required for a citizen to hold public office and that Congress shall “make no law” either establishing a religion or restricting the right of a citizen to worship as they please (as atheists hadn’t been invented yet, noone thought to include “the right to not be religious”, but it’s assumed, probably safely, that freedom of religion means, or should mean, freedom from it as well). It is also well-recognised that the Founders were framing the establishment of the new nation to be a shiny, free, glorious example of the humanist, rational values of the Enlightenment, the new Age of Reason which was making its presence felt across Europe in the 18th century. Some scholars speculate (compellingly) that Constitution chief architect Thomas Jefferson and many of his ilk, far from being Christians of any flavour, were even deists – but I must point out that their religious beliefs are irrelevant to their democratic intent and rationalist stance, which I suspect was meant to be the whole point.

Many dominionists in the US have argued against this alleged separation, pointing to the “One Nation under God” line in the Pledge of Obedience Allegiance. Leaving aside the odd ritual of swearing fealty to a flag, that little line used to read “One nation, indivisible,” until religious pressure forced the addition of the “under God” bit. How about “In God We Trust”, which appears on US currency? That was added in the 1950s during McCarthyist hysteria as a counter to alleged “godless” communism (a political hysteria peculiar to the US which persists no less strongly today, as evidenced by the bizarre behaviour of the tea-baggers, birthers, deathers and other assorted pithy signwriters who, in textbook Pavlovian manner, protest anything President Obama does, be it being black or making a harmlessly dull “kids, do your homework” speech on TV and who refuse to nail down exactly which particular political evil – fascism, socialism, communism, anarcho–syndicalism - Barry O allegedly wishes to impose on them by trying to make sure they can see a doctor without selling a kidney first, the heartless bastard).

Many more of these “God-first, species second” types wish to insert religion and religiously-based reasoning (yes, yes, I know an oxymoron when I see it) into all facets of American public life in violation of the First Amendment, be it a massive stone Ten Commandments in front of a court house; teaching the alleged controversy between evolution and Genesis in science classes at school (the only controversy is that this laughable garbage even manages to gain traction in a first-world country); hiring creationist dentists with agendas onto the boards of highly influential school-boards, curriculum boards, textbook selection boards and the like in order to ease the passage of the Bible into science classes; making (or keeping) gay marriage & abortion illegal; foisting upon uncontrollably horny teenagers the old “just say no and don’t even talk about it” policy in regard to sexual congress with each other’s nubile & newly interesting bodies (which worked a charm for that Palin girl, might I add in a fit of strident pique). In myriad other ways, the Jesus-for-President lobby are doing their darnedest to make sure that Christianity becomes (or stays, according to the fantasies of some) the bedrock of US law, education, society & family that they think it should be (or is), regardless of whether anyone else, Christian or otherwise, wants it that way and regardless of whether it’s actually legal. Or realistic. Or not pointless and silly.

Anyway, here’s the main problem when theocrats achieve their wet dream and meld Church and State: it’s difficult to keep one church in power. The particular church running the state might not stay the same (as can happen, as with Henry VIII's England, or in a modern democracy – or at least in a republic which holds elections to choose between two parties whose main difference seems to lie in their ability to aim lower than their opponent in terms of discourse or think up the best rhyming nicknames for their opponents).

It doesn’t even have to come down to a Christian vs non-Christian clash: there are that many divisions between various flavours of Christianity (more than Baskin & Robbins and Ben & Jerry’s combined at last count) that the other religions would be lucky to even get Nader-like numbers. If the Evangelicals get their wish and people with the mental acuity and religious fervour of Sarah “The Alaskan Quitbull” Palin (oops, there’s one of those nicknames) end up running the show in 2020 according to their own religious mores (I wonder who she would appoint as “Witchcraft Czar”?) but then are de-elected, compulsory rifle-ownership and all, by Bill Donohue’s Yes We’re Incredibly Paranoid But Only Because Everyone’s Persecuting Us Catholic League, there may be some problems. If Bill’s Vatican-do’ers start pushing for compulsory Congressional confessionals to be televised in the name of governmental transparency or, more likely, make communion wafer desecration a capital offence and paedophilia a misdemeanour with a maximum one-off penalty of $50, payable as a donation to the Catholic League (subsequent offences to carry a number of Hail Marys equal to the age of the “victim”), there could literally be blood in the streets if the WASPs arm up against the Whore of Rome. But what if the Westboro Baptists’ Kill Fags Now! Coalition comes to power and exterminates the WASPs? Anybody caught not publicly hating homosexuals or displaying hideous fluorescent signs on their lawns might end up being forced to protest solo in San Fran’s Castro district on Harvey Milk Day (It must be said I'd love the irony of protesting homosexuality using a gaily-coloured rainbow sign).

Or – good lord – what if one of those other religions managed to get into power and kicked the Christians out entirely? Would the Incredibly Orthodox? Do I Look Like I'm Kidding? Jewish Party enforce Torah rules – forbidding people from travelling except by foot over the Sabbath and banning electricity between those times? What of NASCAR? Illegal drag races for teens? World of Warcraft raids? Internet filth? TiVo? You can bet your size 94 track pants some people would have a problem with sitting in the dark, knowing people in stinkin’ Old Europe were playing XBbox Live and taunting each other without some Americans around to scream at them to speak freakin' English. And don’t even mention the possibility of The Hell Yes We’re Muslims And Hell Yes You’re Screwed, Infidel Party gaining some traction, then it’d be prayers five times a day, no booze, halal food only and the entire porn/modeling/beauty pageant industry would have to assimilate the burqa (and thus become pointless) or go underground! And - dear god, no - both of those parties would ban pork in a laboured heartbeat! Mark my words, without the right to barbecue baby back ribs there would be a revolution orders of magnitude bloodier than the one currently being masturbated over by the revolution-fetishist Nobamas, until half the participants collapsed, gasping, red-faced, clutching at their chests and glad they didn’t vote against a commie healthcare system (better dead at 40 years and 40 stone than Red!), firing one last shot into the air in a thin hope that it’ll hit an imam when it comes back down.

Well, there is a solution to this theo-democratic dilemma and I can sum it up thus: you can’t please all the people all the time so imprison, beat, subjugate and otherwise crush the shit out of anyone who’s against you – even before they realize they’re against you, if you can (that takes some imagination and serious paranoia but it’s doable – Iran and the Saudis rock at it). In a nutshell, you must follow the example of theocracies both current and former. The little pretend country known as “The Country Formerly Known As The Roman Empire Until We Discovered Lying About Jesus Was Cheaper Than War” basically ran the combined nations of Europe as a theocracy for a thousand years – launching or supporting Crusades, Inquisitions & witchhunts, threatening, bribing, torturing, controlling monarchies, confiscating property, roasting feet, charging loads of cash for particular prayers and many other cheap but highly lucrative tricks, all to maintain strict obedience to dogma. When the time for red-hot poker-insertion & non-guitar-related iron maidens was over, they switched to missionary work, evangelism, exorcisms and controlling the education systems of entire countries to ensure unfettered access to the young & easily manipulated (yes, access to their minds was also high on the list). What the Vatican achieved, in terms of obscene wealth and sheer number of guilt-ridden & miserable followers in its thousand-year Christ-Reich would be (and probably was) the envy of those who would follow later and attempt similar things for similar reasons. It must be said that certain of them replaced the worship of gods with worship of themselves and their own equally warped dogma (the worst fiends of the 20th century, for example, realised that it’s easier to control adherence to a dogma if you just make up a new one, rather than relying on an old and much-debated one), complete with brand new shiny commandments and brand new (or markedly revamped & re-invigorated) hatreds, which were still on a suitably Biblical scale.

Let’s not forget the USA’s very own best buddies, long-time theocrats and partners in grime (yes, that’s a clever fossil fuel reference, thank you for noticing), Saudi Arabia. Instead of elections and political debates, they have the Royal Family and shut the f--k up. Instead of police to investigate crime and courts of law to prosecute criminals, they have Decency Police to arrest rape victims and sharia courts to sentence the rape victim to some more rape. Or maybe she’ll just get a light beating if she promises never to have it done to her again, the little minx, and how dare she just leave the house like that anyway, she was bloody asking for it. Everyone knows men can’t be trusted not to just penetrate anything that’s warmer than room temperature so, basically, they shouldn’t have to be beholden to such foolish Western notions as a woman’s right to not be raped and not raping people. Saudi Arabia is a textbook example of what can be done, - nay, what needs to be done to keep your particular dogma stapled onto your nation’s constitution and laws, should you be successful in establishing your favourite god as head-of-state in all but actual physical presence (lack of physical presence certainly hadn't stopped North Korea from still following its Dear Departed Leader, Kim Il-Sung).

Using those two examples (they’re all I had time for, otherwise I would have to dedicate myself to a book and I don’t think I have the attention span for that – that’s usually why I just write songs that don’t exceed five minutes, or Facebook status updates), it would appear that the key to keeping your theocracy, once you have attained it, is using the fear of lots of violence (including the fear of Hell) and of course, actually using lots and lots of violence, to keep your subjects in line. This is necessary because, even amongst people who share your religion, there will be disagreements on the interpretations of certain bits of infallible scripture (not least of which the question of which bits are in fact infallible, which are open for interpretation and which bits can be used to justify killing an opponent and their entire heathen family). So, unless you wish to be bogged down in quiet, respectful theological discussions which will outlast the lifespans of those involved in the discussion and make functional government all but impossible (a useful tactic in itself, it must be noted, and it happens in secular politics every day), you more or less have to go full Saudi on those infidel bastards, stick the boot in and form your Decency Police quicksmart, before anyone gets a head big enough to dare to challenge your version of the select words of your god, which are now law and carry penalties a lot scarier than anything threatened in scripture. Also, it should be noted that threatening and using lots of violence seems to have a greater effect on large groups of people than merely promising paradise in exchange for being nice (see the section on The Vatican).

So there you have it. Wannabe US theocrats might certainly have their cake if they care to put in any effort beyond petulantly sabotaging children’s education or making clever puns on "Barack Obama" for protest signs (Barack Osama! Hey, I just thought of one! That was my Teabagger deed for the day – and now back to the TiVo) but they’ll be so busy protecting it they’ll never get a second to even lick the icing, let alone eat the damn thing. You can't have your theocracy and enjoy it too, so make damn sure no one else enjoys it either.

Krudd, go [CENSORED] yourself

Over at Dangerous Intersection, I vent my spleen, an ink sac and a few of my gas bladders over Krudd's interwebs blacklist:

This stinks. I do not want my country to join North Korea, Thailand (which recently imprisoned an Australian writer for committing the heinous crime of criticising its royal family) and China on the list of the many countries in the world that are associated with such gross, inappropriate censorship and restrictions of peoples’ free speech. Generations of my own family risked their lives fighting imperialism &
fascism in order to preserve our freedom to speak and seek whatever information we choose to. I voted against the Howard government in our last election partly because of its unapologetic cosying up to the repressive Bush regime (and partly because I always voted against the Howard government).

Arses.

Herr Ratzinger continues the massacre

[Doubled from Dangerous Intersection]

HIV/AIDS is possibly the worst health crisis to hit this planet. It’s also arguably the worst thing to happen to the African continent since white people were regularly kidnapping its inhabitants and trading them like farm machinery.

But the one hopeful thing about the whole situation is this: while there’s no cure yet, AIDS is easily preventable. Ridiculously easily preventable. Avoiding the sharing of needles & using contraception are the two most effective ways to avoid the long, tortuous, wasting death we’ve all come to associate with this horrendous epidemic. And if you’re not an intravenous drug user (or you studiously avoid sticking sharp, blood-stained things in your body), there’s 50% of your prevention pretty much sorted already.

So … how the hell are you supposed to react when the gold-robed, paedophile-protecting dictator-for-life of the Catholic Church continues to threaten people with eternal torment for using contraception during sex (based on a very, very, um, interpretive interpretation the Bible) and instead tells people “just say no” to sex? In this story (BBC) Pope Oberstumbannfuhrer Herr Kaiser Ratzinger (I refuse to use his picked-out stagename, he’s not Axl Rose for crying out loud) once again proves to the world that not only is his outlook anachronistic, unrealistic & laughable, it’s also flat-out fatal. To millions upon millions of people.

In the referenced article Ratzinger, in the very same breath, calls AIDS a “cruel epidemic” and then follows that with this clanger: “The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids.” Except when it hasn’t, doesn’t, isn’t and won’t. Obviously.

Allow me to rephrase & clarify that statement for you, Popey: “The inestimable, genocidal cruelty of AIDS is most efficiently perpetuated by people in positions of power (like Popes, for example) asking poverty-stricken superstitious people, living in abject fear for their very souls, to do what amounts to the impossible.”

In the past, before I knew much about AIDS’ awful presence in Africa (for instance, the article states that today, around 60% of the entire world’s AIDS 40 million patients are African and up to 1000 die each day), whenever I’d hear some robed halfwit with celestial voices in his head make a pig-ignorant statement like that of Ratzinger’s I’d just roll my eyes, sigh and think “Gosh, those wacky Catholics. At it again, asking the impossible and being ignored by the world, even Catholics. Laugh out loud!” But after a while I realised that while most people in the developed world treat Ratzinger’s words with all the respect they deserve, large swathes of Africa (and other developing regions) are still tightly gripped by superstition of all kinds and take the word of people like Herr Ratzinger and his little wizards as gospel. Accordingly, they avoid the simplest precautions against unwanted pregnancies and definitely unwanted STDs because they’ve been taught that wasting sperm incurs God’s wrath.

Then there was this gritty little cultured pearl of wisdom:

It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking and a contraception mentality [emphasis mine]

Righto. Right up there as the biggest threats to Africa’s future, along with human trafficking (a modern form of slavery if there ever was one) and prostitution (often related to said trafficking) are those gravest of grave sins: the right to choose if you conceive a child during sex (regardless of whether the sex was legal or consensual), the right to not carry an embryo into actual foetus-hood and that most awful of activities, the right to end a relationship.

Does this geriatric idiot in the imperial robes who lives in a palace not see the links - right there in his very own statement? There’s human trafficking - desperate, poor people either taken advantage of or simply forced into such activities as prostitution - quite often not presenting a choice to the new sex-slave about who they have sex with, when they have sex with them and whether the “customer” protects himself or not. Divorce - well, in many cultures across the globe, obviously including Africa, people (and by “people” I mean “women”) don’t get a choice who they marry or when their new spouse decides to consummate that marriage (search the web for “obstetric fistula” - a painful & embarrassing condition which occurs way too often in underage African girls). Abortion, that old Catholic standby - well, disregarding the fact that a fertilised ovum or a tiny clump of undifferentiated cells isn’t a human being - what if you’re nine years old and aren’t physically capable of carrying a child to term? Well, if you’d read the news lately that doesn’t matter to the Papacy. Their official response? Excommunicate the doctors and the kid’s family - but not the mangy son of a bitch stepfather who repeatedly raped the girl from when she was six years old - then impregnated her with twins which would almost certainly have killed the girl. But hey, everyone knows it’s par for the course for the Vatican to protect child-rapists.

Rape & sex-slavery & STDs aside, even in the average committed, loving, monogamous relationship - even one completely without risk - there should be a choice. There should be a right to choose not to have a child. One word comes to mind when people think of Africa: poverty. If you can’t afford to feed & clothe & educate a child, there is absolutely no reason that you should be forced to have one. To force people, under the threat of eternal damnation, to simultaneously conceive children they cannot support and risk contracting the deadliest disease ever experienced by humanity is possibly the most reprehensibly immoral act that can be undertaken by a person in a position of power and responsibility. Ratzinger knows the effect his words will have among the faithful, he knows what the stakes are and, unless he’s been living under a rock (maybe not but I’m willing to bet he sleeps in a coffin), he surely must know what the results have been from decades of official Vatican “don’t protect yourself, just say no to sex” wisdom. Of course he knows all that, for crying out loud. But why care too much about adding millions more to the existing millions of sick & dying Africans? There are more where that came from, right Ratzi? Of course there are going to be if you tell people they’ll burn in Hell for wasting their sperm. And hey - dying slowly & horribly of AIDS and watching all your kids starve, followed by eternal bliss in heaven has just got to be better than a long, healthy life followed by forever with a red-hot pitchfork inserted somewhere less than convenient. Right?

But, honestly, I don’t know how to react anymore. These days when I hear Ratzinger, as he frequently does, displaying a stark ignorance of the realities of the world (unmatched except perhaps by Sarah Palin or your average coma patient) or condemning people to what he surely must know is an early death, I’m not sure if I should scream unintelligibly at my screen, post floweringly verbose excoriations, sigh in defeat & just sit and feel powerless and frustrated or … just have a healthy, profane vent & say “Ratzinger. Hey. Shut the fuck up. You’re killing people with this retarded dogma of yours - actually killing people - just as much as if you strangled them with your own bony, pampered hands. Your words are weapons of genocide - a war crime in peace-time, a crime against humanity - and if anyone’s going to Hell, you elderly virgin whose first & last experience of a naked woman was being pushed, tiny, wet & screaming, out of one, it’s going to be you, because you had the opportunity to save millions of lives and you bailed on it, your mind enslaved by your precious god-damned magic book. And once you’re there, roasting, I hope the millions of victims of your arrogant delusions & murderous idiocy visit you in Hell to kick your balls right up through your face.”

Here endeth the rant.

Muffins and the end of innocence

“Did you know there’s totally science behind muffins? Totally ruined muffins for me.”
Ah, the wisdom of youth. That particularly large & shiny pearl came from a blazered private school girl of perhaps 15 who I was standing next to (almost on top of) on my Connex-brand cattle-truck - I mean, “train” - this morning. Girl Student (henceforth “GS”) was bemoaning the fact that in her cooking class her teacher explained that the release of carbon dioxide during the cooking process was responsible for the rising of muffins and for the tiny little pockets of air that end up being formed in all things baked. So, in response to this new but unwanted & unwelcome knowledge, GS now proclaims her hatred for - or at least new found apathy toward - the little round cakes she used to love.

Naturally, her comment got me thinking. Does GS approach every mundane mystery in her life in such a manner? Would she disavow Myspace if she figured out that barely any of those seventeen thousand and eighty-four “friends” of hers actually qualified for such a title? Would she stop catching the train if she knew a tad more about electricity? What if she found out what keeps planes in the air? Sweet flaming crikey, no more summer trips to the Whitsundays then (probably a good thing, it’d totally suck to find out how that big hot disc in the sky is making you slightly darker). Safer stuck at home I guess, with just the TV/Wii/Blu-Rayer/microwave/mobile phone for company … on the other hand, perhaps not. Perhaps all those modern wonders are just a fresh crop of parades waiting to be stripped of their brilliance by the acid rain of knowledge. You never know what awful, awful knowledge might leach into your brain if you sit on the remote and accidentally switch to the Discovery Channel.

However, I’m willing to give GS the benefit of the doubt. After all, when you’re 15 you’re really just on the on-ramp to true sentience and mental independence. You’re just starting to simultaneously figure out & shape both who you are and who you’re going to be. Too much info all at once at such a critical time can confuse you and make your brain seize up and annoy the crud out of you - even if the forbidden knowledge is just a three-second soundbite revealing the awful truth about your favourite cake. I do, however, wonder what she thought made muffins rise before she had her world shattered by learning of just one function of one of the planet’s most common gases. How about muffin gnomes? Well, that just raises more questions than it answers, such as “where do they go once they’ve carved all those little air-pockets?” and “why do some muffins collapse in the middle? Have we displeased the gnomes?”

It’s not just brand new adults who think this way. People who have been adults for many, many years and who’ve developed a more relaxed & accepting attitude toward baking employ precisely the same “don’t spoil it for me” attitude toward other important mysteries of the universe as GS does toward her once-beloved treat. We’ve all met such people. Perhaps we’ve even been them at some point or we’re likely continuing to be them even as we speak! Perhaps I shouldn’t spell things out though, so as to avoid offending anyone’s cherished personal beliefs with regard to important questions as “how do magicians saw girls in half anyway?” or “why do I always beat that guy who seems to live at the bar at 8-ball the first time, but never the second? What does he do with all my money?”

There is a point here, folks. The point is this: I believe wholeheartedly that in most cases it’s better to learn the truth than live in ignorance. Of course, I concede that it doesn’t actually matter to most people the precise scientific process that’s going on in a rising muffin. Even so, once you find out, why resist it? Why choose to loathe muffins because you learned something new about them? How exactly does learning about carbon dioxide spoil your enjoyment of a muffin? Well, I suppose the simple & short answer to that is that it shouldn’t. But that’s not an answer, because learning the facts behind an everyday something really does spoil a lot of things for a lot of people. My actual answer would be that some beliefs about the world are sacred to a lot of people and that they invest a lot of themselves in those beliefs. Beliefs can be as intertwined with someone’s self-worth as their physical appearance or occupation or the car they drive, so if anything comes along that challenges a particular belief (or simple in-hindsight preference to have remained ignorant of a particular truth, in the case of Girl Student), it can be painful to hear and elicit an almost autonomic fight-or-flight response. In such cases, the believer in whatever-it-is can clap their hands over their ears in denial or arc up and start fighting back, shooting the messenger and perhaps even accusing them of some kind of hate crime for daring to share new knowledge or an opinion contrary to their cherished version of the truth. Taking such personal offense at a disagreement or contradictory evidence is inevitable when you’re dealing with strong personal feelings about how certain things are or, at least, how you think they should be.

But whether it’s regarding muffins, microwaves or mammoths, I believe it’s generally better for you, me & us to know the truth about anything & everything than to not know. If you’re labouring under the false assumption that gnomes carve air-pockets in muffins, that your husband is faithful and loves you (even when he goes out every other night without explanation and returns smelling of perfume and sweat and perhaps other fluids), that the dinosaurs were all peaceful vegetarians and were ridden as mighty steeds by early humans (and that every single branch of science which studies them - and that every single other branch which intersects with and confirms the discoveries of, um, dinosaurology - is completely & utterly wrong) then there are probably several other areas in your life where you’re totally kidding yourself. But look: maybe that pain in your chest isn’t indigestion. Maybe the cheque isn’t the mail. Maybe that ex-government minister from Nigeria doesn’t really want you to help him embezzle millions from his government (but he sounds so earnest, and his tenuous grasp of English is really quite endearing! That should be enough to draw anybody into massive intercontinental fraud!). Maybe you and I and GS (and everyone else - I don’t believe for a second that there isn’t one person in the world who isn’t kidding themselves about something) should just accept that all our beliefs about everything - even those we think are based on the most solid & objective evidence - are transitory, only waiting for that one piece of contradictory evidence to send them to the scrapheap.

Because, after all, I’m typing this post as our planet spins through the ether on the back of a magic tortoise, and don’t you dare poop my party.