[...] "Openness about sexuality helps to destroy the foundation for prejudice and discrimination," he has written in a new collection of essays.So Mr. Justice Kirby says that
"One day there will be a big parliamentary apology . . . to gay people for the oppression that was forced on them and the inequalities that were maintained in the law well beyond their use-by date. Just like the delayed 2008 apology to the Aboriginal people of our country."
Justice Kirby, 71, has contributed to a collection of essays about justice issues, distributed to secondary schools and universities.
Future Justice is published by the Future Leaders initiative, with essays by Julian Burnside QC and Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty.
[...] "I also do not doubt that, in a comparatively short time, Australia will move towards same-sex civil unions and gay marriage," he writes.
"No one has satisfactorily explained how my 40-year loving relationship with my partner Johan in any way affects (still less undermines) heterosexual marriage.
"If Australians are now more homophobic than racist, as some recent public opinion polls suggest, this is because Australians have lacked good leadership on this issue."
He says that just as Australians overcame racism by "getting to know" people of different races, "we would all overcome homophobia more quickly if every gay person were open and felt able to say without fear of violence and discrimination: 'This is me. Get over it. It is no big deal!'." [...]
[my square-bracketed interpolations,
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/we-should-apologise-to-gays-says-former-justice-michael-kirby/story-e6freuy9-1225842095659]
[n]o one has satisfactorily explained how [his] 40-year loving relationship with [his] partner Johan in any way affects (still less undermines) heterosexual marriage.
The Future Leaders website has a section devoted to Future Justice, and while the Publications section confirms that the document is targeted at youngsters ("A free copy available for every secondary school"), apparently it is not available to the wider community. Pity. I would have liked to see what other perverted notions of justice, in addition to those peddled by Mr. Justice Kirby, positivists are trying to inflict on impressionable schoolchildren.
Here are the choicest of the comments at the on-line versions of the News Limited articles:
From http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/we-should-apologise-to-gays-says-former-justice-michael-kirby/comments-e6freuy9-1225842095659:
john Posted at 9:05 AM March 18, 2010
why not just be sorry for being white hetrosexual tax paying christians, this way we've covered all bases..
Comment 5 of 17
JohhnyG of Sydney Posted at 9:38 AM March 18, 2010
If you were to say "Australians are homophobic" you would be racist.... right?
Comment 8 of 17
Paul of Melbourne Posted at 3:57 AM March 18, 2010
How can you compare people's not exceptance of homosexuals with racism? This article states that recent public opinion polls show people are not excepting of homosexual practices due to poor leadership. Wot the!!!! The poll shows exactly what it shows. The silent majority are saying they don"t accept homosexual behaviour, don' you get it!!!!!
Comment 2 of 49
Barry Jones of Balnarring Beach Posted at 5:45 AM March 18, 2010
I would have thought it more appropriate for gays to apologize for their part in inflicting aids on the hetrosexual community.
Comment 6 of 49Sean Posted at 6:08 AM March 18, 2010
Gay people should receive an apology. Sooo, to all the gay people out there..."I'm sorry you are gay". I hope that makes everyone feel better, particulary those anti-homophobes...
Comment 9 of 49
Father of 4 Posted at 6:20 AM March 18, 2010
Sorry??? What for??? They chose that unhealthy, immoral lifestyle, it wasn't forced on them
Comment 10 of 49
tommy of melb Posted at 7:40 AM March 18, 2010
NO WAY
Comment 24 of 49
Rob of Melbourne Posted at 7:51 AM March 18, 2010
Justice Kirby is a fool. I will never apologise to sinners engaged in "unnatural" and depraved behaviour. Homosexuals need to apologise to God and repent of their sinful lifestyle.
Comment 29 of 49
William of Carlton Posted at 8:40 AM March 18, 2010
Sigh . . . looks like my time has come. I'm a middle-aged, white, Anglo-Celtic heterosexual male who has raised a family, works hard, eschews government welfare, tries to get on with everyone and sometimes attends a Christian church service. So all you perpetually aggrieved whingers, line up over there and I'll dispense my apologies as genuinely as possible.
Comment 43 of 49
Stevo of Yarrambat Posted at 8:40 AM March 18, 2010
Gays should be apologising to US for rubbing their sexuality in our faces!!! Get this idiot off the bench!!!!!
Comment 44 of 49
No more sorriesDisappointing. It's good that The Herald Sun doesn't support Mr. Justice Kirby's mooted apology, but that newspaper fails to discriminate between just and unjust discrimination. I am not aware of any official unjust discrimination against sodomites in Australia at any time between colonisation and the present, though of course there has been plenty of just discrimination. Mind you, some laws regarded as discriminating against 'G.L.B.T.' folk did nothing of the sort; the matter of so-called anti-homosexuality laws, for instance, was acts, not orientations, and applied to sodomites regardless of whether they were homosexual or heterosexual and to catamites regardless of whether they were male or female.
From: Herald Sun March 18, 2010 12:00AM
FORMER High Court judge Michael Kirby believes there will be "a big parliamentary apology" to gay people.
But the question is, should there be?
As reported in the Herald Sun, Justice Kirby has contributed to a collection of essays on justice issues to be sent to secondary schools and universities.
He says Australians "are now more homophobic than racist" and likens a gay apology to prime Minister Kevin Rudd's "sorry" in 2008 to Aborigines.
But many Australians will question Justice Kirby's analogy.
It represents a collective guilt to which most of us would plead innocence.
How many times are we to say "sorry" and for how many injustices, real or perceived?
What is more important is to recognise discrimination and remove it, not seek to lay blame.
[http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/editorials/no-more-sorries/story-e6frfhqo-1225842055438]
So, with a Parlimentary apology to the so-called gay community (properly the gay contingent, since the members of a community, by definition, strive after a common good, not after vice) in the not-too-distant future, one wonders: Will Australia's gay precincts start to hold Welcome to Queer Country ceremonies at events like Sydney's annual Sodomites' Parade?! Stay tuned, though for all I know something of the sort happens already!
Reginaldvs Cantvar
8 comments:
Those comments are classic!
Actually, strictly speaking it's not so much the buggery (although that is bad). The main reason is that marriage is intended as the best situation for children to be raised in and they require their mother and father.
We know from various experiments, tht gaymarriage does actually lessen the amount of people taking up traditional marriage. It is not quite clear to me either why that would be the case, but apparently it is. It is not in any case worth the risk to traditional marriage. Marriage is much more than just the precious feeeelings of the two people concerned. It is - in almost every culture - the one thing which society is built upon and therefore necessary to civilisation itself.
Why exactly should any of us give a damn about Kirby and his precious "partner"'s feeeelings? It's not like they care about ours.
"The main reason is that marriage is intended as the best situation for children to be raised in and they require their mother and father."
Procreation and the rearing of offspring is, of course, the primary end of marriage, but since it is an end, and therefore extrinsic, rather than something contained within the couple itself (which would be intrinsic), I didn't mention it; I wanted to focus on how same-sex pairings in themselves undermine marriage in itself, or in other words, what there is which is intrinsic to a same-sex pairing which undermines what is intrinsic to real marriage. Though you're right that, by undermining the primary end of marriage, it also undermines marriage, but that's something extrinsic.
(Further explanation: Of the four Aristotelian causes, namely material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause, the first two are intrinsic and the second two are extrinsic. The four causes are applied analogically in analysis of societies, including marital/conjugal society, in which the formal cause--an intrinsic cause--is the bond of marital love, involving the transfer of right to acts proper to procreation, and one of the final causes--an extrinsic cause--is procreation and rearing of children. Since, by the very nature of a same-sex couple rather than by any defect of nature, there can be no transfer of right to acts proper to procreation, one need only point out the lack of this necessary intrinsic element without going to extrinsic considerations. Thus 'gay marriage' undermines real marriage by implying that marriage can be founded on natural-law-defying behaviour.
So both the behaviour involved in same-sex couplings and their inherent sterility and unsuitablity for child-rearing (as even a secularist and feminist like Naomi Wolf can acknowledge, at least implicitly) are valid reasons for why gay couples undermine marriage, but since the former is intrinsic, I regard it as the main one.)
I suppose what confuses me a little is that sodomy is not something which lesbians can practice (with their own bodies). IOW, it's not just sodomy, but the fact that men should not be sexually involved with men and same for two women. What, IOW, is the main objection to lesbian sex? Anal sex, in any case, is bad for health reasons, but lesbian sex need not be so.
"IOW, it's not just sodomy, but the fact that men should not be sexually involved with men and same for two women."
True, of course, and so sometimes, e.g. in my previous comment, I speak generically of 'natural-law-defying behaviour' rather than speaking of specific behaviour, though I did so in the post in order to deal with the particular kind of relationship in question.
"What, IOW, is the main objection to lesbian sex?"
Venereal pleasure is the exclusive privilege of married couples, and may only be sought when it is expected to terminate in acts proper to procreation. Lesbians do what they can have no right to do, and since they have no right, there can be no transfer of right, which is the essence of a contract, and since marriage is a contract, there can be no 'lesbian marriage'.
Correction: Change
"and since they have no right"
to
"and since they can have no right"
Right. Thanks.
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