Tim Trainor spends every waking moment finding out what's all the gay rage in Perth right now. Events, culture and random bits and pieces from Perth, Australia.
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Viewing posts tagged ‘gay marriage’
July 18
Eye on parenting
Same sex parenting is clearly on the rise in WA, and has today made its way into the pages of the West Australian. New parents Leonie and Marnie Woodley and Josh O’Keefe, along with their son Quinn Silas Woodley-O’Keefe are featured on pages 2 and 23. Josh is the biological father of Quinn, who was created with an egg from Marnie and carried by surrogate Leonie. Josh will stay an active donor as Dad and help raise Quinn with his two mothers.
The feature gives great insight into the hardships, difficult decisions and determination involved same sex parenting; issues often overlooked by those who oppose, and indeed the wider general public. While trying not to drag the four of them into becoming a case study for political debate, the sharing of their journey gives ammunition in dispelling the many myths surrounding same sex parenting.
At first glance, this family flies in the face of many who argue that a child born, or adopted, to gay parents is at a disadvantage because of the lack of a male or female role model. … “We’ll raise our child with open-mindedness and we expect others to do the same and treat his family with the same respect that we expect our son to treat other family units” [said Marnie].
“At the end of the day we love Quinn more than anything,” says Josh. “Quinn is the priority and his wellbeing is number one… what form the family takes is irrelevant.”
All fantastic messages to be promoting. A personal annoyance of mine is the gap in justification between drugged up bogans from Rockingham, Gosnells, wherever, who can end up with an unwanted mistake pregnancy and be able to carry the baby, and committed same sex couples who really are dedicated to the raising of a child, but have to jump through many hoops to do so. Both are extreme ends of the spectrum but the point remains. The West Australian’s feature story also makes a few opposing argument grabs, and you know, I may be a seething atheist, but opposition to this topic always comes from religious family groups. (Keep reading after the cut).
June 18
Same sex marriage in western australia
A few events have pushed same sex marriage back onto the public agenda this week. Mainly, the Australian Marriage Equality association releasing survey results stating 60% of Australians favour same sex marriage. According to the survey, Gen Y’ers and Greens voters are most likely to support it… whaddaya know I happen to be both of those things.
Western Australia, always lackluster in progression, has the highest opposition to gay marriage in the country, with 40% either disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. Are we surprised? Tiffany Fox at The West Australian wrote a blog post about it today:
Equal recognition of same-sex relationships is long overdue. It seems crazy that WA allows gay couples to adopt children, but won’t allow them to get married.
I’m not going to go all politico ranty on you all because I’m sure you’re sick of it. Instead, I’m going to share this absolutely fantastic piece of information with you, taken from The West blog comments:
Craig Says:
June 18th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I wonder how many of these anti-gay folk know that our state’s fauna emblem, the Black Swan, is well known for homosexual activity. It even extends to the point where two males swan form a lifelong pair and rogue females lay eggs in the pair’s nest for the males to raise.
How insulting to the human race that Black Swans are far more advanced in gay surrogacy than us!
May 25
Two bears from the burbs
Hah, in your face every major religion in Australia. Last night 60 Minutes had a great piece on two Melbourne bears who are the first gay couple in the country to have children via commercial surrogacy. Earlier this month they became fathers to twin girls. It all came at a hefty price; they paid a total of $40,000 for their sperm to be inserted in a donor egg, then implanted into an unrelated woman in India. Surrogacy like this is currently illegal in Australia.
Unfortunately Channel 9 haven’t put the video up, but you can read a transcript of the story on their site. Looking from the most cynical perspective, current affair stories like these are great at helping dispel the myth that same sex couples are too promiscuous and too unstable to care for kids in the long term. You can tell these guys really are committed to their new family. It only reiterates my feelings that if drunk hetero bogans can have a sloppy one nighter, end up with a mistake foetus and carry it to full term all the while feeling it’s a burden, same sex couples who really will care for their kids should have the right to conceive.
Some interesting comments from Gautum Allahbadia, the doctor who oversaw the surrogacy (and also pinged on my gaydar).
I believe every human being has a right to procreate and as long as I’m practising medicine within the purview of Indian law I would offer this service to anybody
Liz Hayes also asked a Muslim woman, who had previously been a surrogate, how she’d feel if her baby went to a gay couple:
I would rather do it for a couple who’s really looking for children
It’s going to take a while to change attitudes like these, in both India and Australia.
May 24
Religion is confusing
Political advertisements in the US are so ridiculous I like to watch them and imagine the type of backlash they’d get if they were played on Australian television. Take for example this pile of garbage from Nation For Marriage:
After watching this video I’m very glad that schools, universities and the internet don’t teach kids new ways of thinking… phft! It only leads to increased confusion when the kids go home and their fundamentalist parents scar them with the death, destruction and incest of The Old Testament. What is more confusing… Two people loving each other and getting married as a symbol of their love, or a virgin giving birth?
These children were only confused after the ranty voiceover started talking, so kids, to clear things up here are the answers you seek:
Boy #1: If grandpa was a girl, he would have gone through a lot of stress following the gender reassignment surgery, please be extra nice to her.
Ranga girl: Hell yes giiiiirrrl! I like your attitude.
Boy #2: What the bible doesn’t say is that Adam actually was ‘Anna’, using a very primitive strap on.
Boy #1 again: If your dad married a man, you wouldn’t exist right now. Try not to think about it too much.
Confused boy: If you feel you are bi-curious, there are many resources available at the Freedom Centre.
May 18
Kochie: if two people love each other does it really matter?
Did you watch Sunrise this morning?… Uh, you didn’t? Well I don’t blame you, the show does make me nauseous. This morning they took a break from discussing the potential cost savings of buying home brand toilet paper and decided to heat it up with a little gay marriage debate. Yes, you totally heard me correctly!
After stuttering their way through a run down of what’s happening with gay rights in the US they opened the floor to a Peter Furness, Australian Marriage Equality Convener who did a really good job of civilly explaining the reasoning behind the need for gay marriage rights in Australia. I was impressed because Sunrise didn’t just round up a gay rights nut job - the type who constantly screams ‘prejudice’ well after everyone’s stopped listening. Instead they round up a nut job for the opposing argument: some guy from the Australian Christian Lobby. Major lols ensured.
You can watch the whole segment here (10 minutes). Big round of applause for host David Koch who at one point totally shut down the Australian Christian Lobby panellist for implying that gay couples abuse their children. If you can’t be bothered watching the video here are some of the fantastic things we learnt from the Australian Christian Lobby today:
- If gays are given marriage rights in Australia, people will be able to demand the right to marry their cat
- Gays don’t believe in monogamy or longevity of relationships (he tells this to Peter who has been with his partner for 16 years)
- Preventing gays from getting married is the same principle as telling smokers they can’t smoke in no smoking areas… that um, totally makes sense… uh.
April 20
News bites
The St Mary’s Catholic Community in South Brisbane today left their resident church building after being excommunicated by the Brisbane Archbishop. St Mary’s Parish Peter Kennedy was removed from the Roman Catholic Church for “unorthodox” views, namely supporting same sex partnerships and the right for woman to preach. To add salt to the nine inch nail wounds, the Roman Catholic Church said anyone who continues to follow Kennedy will be condemned by the Church.
Gosh, Roman Catholics are just the most delightful and loving bunch of people. The nice part of this story though is St Mary’s continues to push on, finding a new headquarters for its followers just down the road from the church house they were evicted from. You can download and listen to a really interesting segment on Triple J’s Monday Hack program. The story features some of the progressive Catholics in exile who still support St Marys.
Media loudmouth Perez Hilton has gone a bit ape at Miss California after she stumbled through a question about gay marriage during the Miss USA Pageant. As the video above shows she basically doesn’t agree with it. Afterward Perez had a big video blog rant calling the contestant a “dumb bitch”.
This is where things get a bit cloudy: he clarifies she is dumb because she didn’t answer the question politically (ie. sitting on the fence like a good Barbie Doll should do), not because of her actual views. Fair enough, and fair enough that she doesn’t believe in gay marriage. I don’t know if everyone on the extreme left and right wing are going to see it that way though. The righties will use it as a pin up for freedom of speech while the lefties will call foul for public homophobic. Funnily enough, my article in next month’s WAX Magazine looks at this very topic. Way to go, shameless self promotion!
Even if you’re not politically minded have a watch of the video - you can have some real fun pinpointing the exact moment when her Barbie Doll smile starts to crack and she thinks “oh, shiiiit”.
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