Funny Because They're True?

Avoiding work today I cruised the cartoon section of TruthDig...

These are some of my favourites...

Wake Up and Smell the Police State

Well Well Well....

Bet you thought that this stuff only happened in South America or Iran or the Eastern Bloc.

While we sit around smugly self-satisfied and ruminate on our avowed mission of bringing the Holy Grail (aka Western Democracy) to the miserable oppressed buggers of the world, we pay precious little attention to what is happening here...

It is time to wake up and smell the police state.

Bill Henson, certainly a confrontational artist has had his exhibition in Sydney suspended, 20 of his 41 photos seized and it looks like either he or someone else will be charged with publishing an indecent article. To contextualise, Henson takes photos of young pre or early pubescent children and they are nudes.

Which apparently means porn... kiddy porn.

Not that he hasn't been open about the subject matter; not that it isn't consensual and by that I mean he talks with and gets consent of his models' parents; not that his pictures don't sexualise children... nudity and sex are not the same thing.

Unless you are a conservative philistine or Kevin Rudd (which may be the same thing we have yet to see). In which case naked children are always sexual, always pornographic, always "revolting".

Here's me thinking that that attitude says more about their depravity than Henson's.


Just to note on the day this story broke your favourite newspaper and mine, the Daily Telegraph was running an online poll about this. Over 75% of Tele readers said that Henson's work was porn and if you thought differently you were warped (their phrasing not mine), which is all the proof I need dear reader to declare that Henson's pics MUST be art!

I now pronounce you....

Well aren't they full of surprises? The labor government has pulled another rabbit out of it's hat with a raft of reforms to redress the appalling, institutionalised discrimination faced by same sex couples (you know.... homosexuals) in Australia.

Huzzah! And about time too.

Frankly I am constantly amazed at the importance placed on ones sexual predilictions and wonder why who we all sleep with has such an impact on our lives...

Fortunately this will finally be redressed.... or will it?

In the SMH yesterday, I read this:
"Same-sex couples will continue to be denied marriage, adoption rights and IVF despite the government's decision to remove discrimination against gays in a range of commonwealth laws."

Right... So really what is being said here is, you can have all of the legal rights and responsibilities but we don't really think you all should be raising kids, having kids or getting married... those things are for straight people.

I am sorry but I don't get it. Am I stupid, why are two women or two men worse parents than on of each? Why should a woman be denied the chance to reproduce because she would rather come home to a woman than a man, and why for God's sake does the state feel it has any say in who can and cannot get married. Seriously if the Catholicc Church says that they will not conduct marriage services for same sex couples then whatever, but I cannot see any reason at all why a same sex couple can't be married in a civil ceremony...

How freaked out are we? Will the institution of marriage crumble crumble if two men can proudly and legitimately say they are married? Is that even a bad thing.

I totally support the changes to legislation that allow all people to be treated the same regardless of who they sleep with. But the real foundation of this discrimination will not be addressed until people are treated equally no matter who they go home to at night.