The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > The slippery slope to homophobia > Comments

The slippery slope to homophobia : Comments

By Rodney Croome, published 7/6/2012

Blaming gays for some hypothetical slippery slope to multiple-partner marriages is misleading.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All
One of the more interesting things about the campaign for gay marriage is that the more people argue about homosexuality -- and polyamory -- the less scary it seems to become. My feeling is that simply getting these sexual preferences out in the open and letting people talk and write about them objectively is probably doing more for the gay cause than anything else. In fact the religious right may find themselves hoist by their own petard: they can't talk about liberalising marriage without discussing sexual activities, and they can't talk about sexual activities without making their more enlightened supporters think: "Well, what's actually wrong with that?"
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 7 June 2012 7:54:02 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
If the homophobic community ran out of excuses for their own peculiar predilection or pernicious perversion? They'd invent one or even several dozen? Just so they can keep discriminating against gays or gay bashing?
To be sure gay bashing is not always a physical beating, but can take many other forms, such as discrimination, or (partly) withheld medical care, diagnoses and or medicine withheld?
Roll on the electronic conversion of medical records, which may well identify those few medicos, who have covertly practised this rare form of medical care, except say when the patient turns up in "their" hospital?
Where the question might well be put. "Do you have an undisclosed "medical condition"?
Putting the onus of proof on the hapless and or medically ignorant patient?
Just prior to 1986 there were 142 registered haemophiliacs in Australia. Since then each and every one of those patients have died from medically acquired aids!
The reason?
Well aids was primarily a "homosexual' disease; or a condition that dare not speak its name?
Hence suffers, straight blood or blood product recipients and gay, were all put in the same basket of medically categorised discrimination?
Some Dr's may be able to delete records which clearly demonstrate they were party to this type of discrimination?
What however, that can't be deleted, is people's memories.
Gay bashing is very much alive and well and includes any number of straights, who unfortunately acquired a "medical condition" by medical means.
If you would contact the medical ombudsman you first need to see the health professional and identify your complaint; which gives any offender, time to shred/delete any paper/electronic proof?
It is time for all the discrimination to end and those practising it openly or covertly, be brought to book and asked to account for and or pay for their ILLEGAL participation.
In closing let me say, very persuasive and cogent article any fair-minded person would simply have to agree with? Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 7 June 2012 10:48:04 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I think it hypocritical that the author is obviously pro gay marriage but wants society to continue to discriminate against other minority groups who would also like to get married. Whilst the anti gay marriage crowd may well be raising this issue as a scare mongering tactic, that does not change the fact that polygamists have as good an argument to be allowed to marry as gays do. In fact polygamous marriage at least has historical precedents in many societies, unlike gay marriage.
The main good argument for gay marriage is that consenting adults should be able to marry whoever they like, and the government has no business poking their nose into the marital affairs adult Australians. This applies as much to polygamous relationships as it does to monogamous ones be they heterosexual or homosexual.
Posted by Rhys Jones, Thursday, 7 June 2012 12:44:21 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
This is a political debate, aimed at hijacking another perfectly good word for the sole reason that it suits the homosexual political agenda. I am sure that it is an activist agenda, to build political leverage, and not shared by the general homosexual population.

It has nothing to do with freedom. You are free to marry anyone, so long as they are a member of the opposite sex.

If you want a word for your relationships with the same sex, which are not marriage, then invent a word for them, and stop trying to inflict your fabricated views on a society which does not share them.
Posted by Leo Lane, Thursday, 7 June 2012 4:20:45 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
those who deny the slippery slope arguement shut their eyes to history and are naive enough to believe that a flood of porn in a community doesnot lead to increase child abuse. Commonsense will not prevail when the selfishness of a small percentage of individuals takes precendence over the common good of society.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 7 June 2012 5:13:54 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
runner, the worst child abuse in history took place in the Victorian era, when children of three and four were sent up chimneys to clean them, or down mine shafts that were too small for adult men to stand erect. And the Victorians also had the strongest and most stringent moral standards of any major society in history. Coincidence? Or is it just that when you're working hard on your own moral impeccability you don't have the time to consider what other people are up to?
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 7 June 2012 5:58:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Good point, Jon J,

...or set to 14 hour working days in stifling hot factories - locked in, beaten and flogged or deformed by restrictive work while their bodies needed fresh air and freedom to grow. Children were often procured for this type of toil from orphanages in the cities by that very "moral" class of factory and mill owner that attended church every Sunday and sat piously in the front pew.
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 7 June 2012 6:56:21 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
So-called 'slippery slopes' have being around for a long time, runner…

I'm sure you'll recall 1833 – that was the year that slavery was abolished in England – for which, as I recall you have credited Christianity despite it being the mainstream religion there for onwards of 1500 years before it finally happened.

That same year saw the introduction of the Factory Act. An enlightened piece of legislation which prohibited children under nine from working in a factory - up to 14 they could only work eight hours a day matched with two hours schooling, a 60 hour week in other words.

Of course from 14 they were rightly expected to work full-time!

You might wish to also learn about the Ragged Schools, and don't forget to check about the Poor Law Institutions.

Such widespread piety, such widespread child abuse – and apparently not a same-sex marriage in sight.
Posted by WmTrevor, Thursday, 7 June 2012 7:41:02 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Heh, a blogger I follow recently claimed that a real man would want to live in a society where the Symposium could be written, not one in which it would be burned.
He also imagined a drunk Alcibiades lurching aside Mitt Romney, elbowing him in the ribs, winking lasciviously and saying "Well done on the gay marriage thing, but you know that sort of thing is strictly between a man and a boy ..right?".
So do we get to make whip cracking noises to all the married Homosexuals, once they've been duly Christianised by the institution of marriage?
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Thursday, 7 June 2012 7:57:34 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
'runner, the worst child abuse in history took place in the Victorian era, '

actually Jon J at least they had a chance to live unlike tens of thousands in the womb today.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 7 June 2012 8:18:25 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
runner,

"...at least they had a chance to live unlike tens of thousands in the womb today."

That is a cop-out. Here's a sample of the situation from John Fielden MP, from "The Curse of the Factory System" - titled, "Dismal Solitudes of Torture."

"...The small and nimble fingers of little children being far the most in request, the custom instantly sprang up of procuring "apprentices" from the different parish workhouses of London, Birmingham, and elsewhere. Many, many thousands of these little hapless creatures were sent down into the North, being from the age of seven, to the age of thirteen or fourteen years old.
The custom was for the master to clothe his apprentices, and to feed and lodge them in an "apprentice house" near the factory; overseers were appointed to see to the works, whose interest it was to work the children to the utmost, because their pay was in proportion to the quantity of work they could exact.....cruelties of the most heart-rending were practiced upon the unoffending and friendless creatures who were thus consigned to the charge of the master-manufacturers; that they were flogged, fettered, and tortured in the most exquisite refinement of cruelty; that they were in many cases, starved to the bone while flogged to their work, and that even in some instances, they were driven to commit suicide to evade the cruelties of a world, in which, though born to it so recently, their happiest moments had been passed in the garb and coercion of a workhouse."

(Taken from "Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution in Britain")

You can bet your bottom dollar that those "master-manufacturers" were "God-fearing and pious churchgoers" - not to mention the "parish' authorities who sent their charges off to such conditions.
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 7 June 2012 8:47:08 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
'That is a cop-out. Here's a sample of the situation from John Fielden MP, from "The Curse of the Factory System" - titled, "Dismal Solitudes of Torture."

Not really Poiret it just shows how cruel people who have not got God's love in their heart can be. Theyn have more in common with secularist who are comfortable with slaying babies than the happy clappy's whom you seem to despise.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 7 June 2012 9:20:16 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
runner,

These lions of early industrial industry in Britain weren't some itinerant bunch of faux worshipers. They were the middle-class epitome of moral turpitude. Their behaviour represented a standard to be imitated by the lower orders. They considered themselves and their example as a benchmark for morality in an industrially advancing society. Their piety was unquestioned.
That they were almost demonically hypocritical in the their conduct concerning their workforce is instructive of the cant that ensues when self interest and self-righteous affectation are frosted in piety and divine consent.
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 7 June 2012 11:28:54 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Obviously "moral turpitude" should read "moral rectitude"

Grrrrr.....
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 7 June 2012 11:34:22 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The standards for judging morality are indeed in need to be considered carefully. Unfortunately, there are a high number of people who do take these standards for granted, and that's what makes the people who create them so powerful. Criticism can make progress in that respect and should be exercised more strongly.
Posted by josephine, Friday, 8 June 2012 1:48:08 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hopefully the author does not represent the majority of same sex orientated people on this. In my view he sets their cause back with this article.

I'm supportive of a broadening of marriage but not on the terms the author proposes. Sorry but same sex marriage is not going to be part of marriage as it now is which seems to be what you are wanting. Right now it is a heterosexual pair bonding thing, I don't happen to believe that it should stay that way but saying you want to be part of it as it is does not work.

My support for same sex "marriage" is on the basis that the government should get out of the business, that consenting adult humans should be able to make their own choices and be afforded similar legal protections, responsibilities within those choices.

The authors approach attacks most of my resasons for supporting same sex marriage while failing to provide any new ones.

As I've pointed out earlier I'd rather see the government right out of the business of registering relationships but I can't see that happening anytime soon. In the meantime there should be no mandated discrimination.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Friday, 8 June 2012 6:49:14 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I'm surprised that conservatives haven't brought
up the subject of the "carbon Tax," regarding this
issue. They usually blame the carbon tax for everything.
Posted by Lexi, Sunday, 10 June 2012 4:42:57 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy