Nothing In Particular

This may appear to be a typical Friday night blog post from me, but it's nothing that special.  I have three-quarters of an hour or so before I embark out for an evening of catching up with one of Sue's friends over Mexican food.  Anyhow, that's all incidental to what has indeed been an interesting week in our land.

It started with a Senate hearing where Liberal party senator from Tasmania, Mark Bushby decided to interrupt Senator Penny Wong with cat call and was roundly put in his place by Ms. Wong, in no uncertain terms. 

Following this on the same day we had the campaign by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) to remove an advertisement they deemed offensive.  The poster and billboards in question show a gay male couple hugging and holding a condom and promoting a safe sex message.  The ACL, in the guise of concerned citizenry complained to Adshel, the company responsible for bus shelter advertising, who duly, on the complaints of no more than 30 people we are told, started to remove the offending ads.  The response to this was a surge of outrage from people across the nation who bombarded Adshel with protests and angry e-mails.  In the end it became obvious that those who complained were part of an orchestrated campaign by the ACL, which has been pushing for G-rated billboards across the nation.  The grassroots groundswell of genuine complaint about the advertising company giving into the vocal minority resulted in the end in the decision by Adshel to reinstate the billboards, a decision that no doubt left the ACL and their spokesperson Wendy Francis with egg on their faces, and fending off public anger, if not public abuse and ridicule.

Also in the news this week the government of this nation continued to push their "Malaysia solution" for the stream of asylum seekers arriving by boat on our north-west coast.  This basically involves the sending of these 'boat people' to Malaysia in exchange for refugees from Burma who have already crossed the border into Malaysia and found themselves detained in often very poor conditions.

So how does these two things relate?  I was having a chat with my GP this afternoon about the history of mental health treatment in our society, and the way before effective medication existed the mentally ill were often unable to be dealt with by their families or society at large and were locked away, often subjected to treatments that would be considered brutal or barbaric in this day and age, such as insulin therapy, electro-convulsive therapy, frontal lobotomy, ice water baths, and then locked up in wards, often the violent in with the non-violent, often left in their own filth, or brutalised by orderlies.  In other words, institutionalised and often not given the path to healing and rejoining the world at large.

In the same way our successive governments seem to be unable to find a solution to the problem of asylum seekers, and instead of allowing them to feel a part of the society many of them have sacrificed all to try and join, we instead lock them away in detention centres, away from society, often for years at a time while their claims slowly progress through the bureaucracy.  They are virtually prisoners, not detainees, and yet we react with outrage when they behave like prisoners and riot.  A prisoner at least has the luxury of knowing when they will be released, an immigration detainee often has no such luxury, their lives are put on hold and they are left at the sometimes tenuous mercy of the system.

In the case of the ACL then, we see the same desire to not deal with things, in this case we have a group who have difficulty accepting that they live in a world where people do not share their worldview, but nevertheless have an imperative to impose that worldview on the surrounding society.  It may be a fundamental tenet of Christianity to share its message with the world, but it does not necessarily follow that if the world chooses not to accept that message, that they should endeavour to force their worldview on society.  This attempt to live in denial of the realities of existing in a pluralistic, secular society is their great disadvantage.  They refuse to acknowledge that homosexuality is found in nature and is the natural predisposition of a certain percentage of the population.  The assumption that it is a lifestyle choice and that it goes against basic nature is a mistake.  It may have made sense in ancient societies that relied on procreation to survive and prosper in the face of wars and famine and infant mortality, it may have made enough sense to present it as a religious decree in order to ensure the existence of a group.  It certainly is an outmoded notion in the modern age of excess population and the pressures it places on our environment.  It is certainly a denial of people's right to freely express their sexuality, just as Christians have a right to freely express their religion.  It doesn't mean I have to agree with their message, any more than I choose to agree with any religion or ideology.

So then, if we choose to see our society as egalitarian, as welcoming, as the place where everyone gets a fair go, then lets start acting like it.  Let's not play the race card on asylum seekers, when all it really boils down to is that it's just too hard to deal with for most of us (politicians included).  Let's not shun and ostracise people on the basis of their religion or sexuality because we find their lifestyle confronting or too different to ours.  I have probably said it before but I will say it again, if we want to all live on this planet we have to learn to share it and live together.