Same-sex marriage
The activists in the debates about same-sex marriage, and the gender-based “Safe Schools” program, make much of the idea of “diversity”. In their view sexual relationships are constrained by the emphasis on binary definitions.
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An immediate difficulty is that when demanding “diversity” they do so from the position of defining themselves through same-ness. A same-sex union is a celebration of a confining physical sexual similarity. It insists on human sexual insularity.
By contrast heterosexual unions have an expansive sexual complementarity. They celebrate human diversity and human creativity. It seems to me that the "discrimination" same-sex supporters see is their own reflection, not one being imposed from outside - certainly not at present with recognised same-sex unions protected under current law.
This notion of binaries is a well-established understanding throughout human history. Followers of the Judeo-Christian faiths know their significance. In the Holy Bible the book of Genesis makes the understanding clear. God created heaven and earth, the seas and the dry land, the air and physical matter, and male and female.
The final book of the Holy Bible, Revelation, makes the point even more firmly. In the words of the eminent theologian, Tom Wright: “The last scene in the Bible is the new heaven and the new earth, and the symbol for that is the marriage of Christ and his church”. He sees it all as “an entire narrative which works with this complementarity so that a male-plus-female marriage is…a signal about the goodness of the original creation and God’s intention”.
The complementary pairs are intended to work together in all life on Earth. Of course, people who simply consider marriage as social and sexual arrangements have assumed a simplistic postmodernist and unproductive position, which ignores understanding of human history and of human reality itself.
The same-sex activists are stepping up their attacks on people with a more transcendent approach to human understanding. They are trying to remove people of faith from their positions, their employment, by browbeating Australian employers.
We are rapidly approaching a tipping-point in our understandings about our society, and it is clear that nothing we have valued in our lives and our history is safe from the activists’ attacks.
Bruce Watson,
Kentucky
Anzac Day celebrations
Any corroborated terrorist threat targeting Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli in two weeks time must be reported on by all sections of the mainstream media without fear.
Australians intending to be present at Gallipoli must be given forewarning about any potential terrorist threat, no matter how miniscule or hypothetical such a threat may be or is likely to be.
That said, it's just as vitally important that the media's reporting on the terrorist threat is kept in perspective and sticks to simply relaying what the department of Foreign Affairs and foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop makes public, based upon corroborated intelligence.
Very troubling, but one would imagine that such foreknowledge will allow Australian, New Zealand and Turkish intelligence agencies to stay three steps ahead of the would be terrorists and make Gallipoli on April 25 a safe place to be, no matter what stringent security measures have to be enforced there on the day.
Would be terrorists can chat amongst themselves all they want, but to actually carry out a terrorist attack, they have to succeed in not only planning one and talking about one, but executing one.
Intelligence agencies appear to have their measure.
Tim Badrick,
Toogoolawah