ME THINKS THE BELLS TOLL FOR THEE SENATOR BERNARDI

JANUS is the month I look back and plan forward, making the most of my life for 2014. Resolutions include:

I must not turn the ABC news on before I've written some of my novel set in London during Cromwell's Commonwealth in the 17th century; working title - Love in an English Republic. link here to
More Info about Providence or Love In an English Republic

I must not turn the ABC news on until Noon and I've e-mailed branch members to ask their thoughts on organising something special for International Women's Day 2014 - Saturday March 8th.


Ideas for V.I.P. speakers - have to be invited A.S.A.P. before the social fabric of  Brisbane sets their schedule with little time for our humble gathering of comrades in the Brisbane Valley.

In default mode I bend down to switch on the voice of South Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi heading the ABC news at 6 a.m.

So, Senator Bernardi - is trying to sell his new book about a "Conservative Revolution".He claims his rhetoric is common sense. He stimulates his ignorance from listening to the hateful U.S.Republican right-wing "Tea Party"(who are funding African Pastor/Politicians who are legislating homosexuals to death). 

He calls Humanist women like me pro-death mongers, yet he was a warrior against Labor's Carbon reduction and Responsibility Schemes which countenance death for all species on Earth and Sea!

As kids being bullied we would return their name-calling with "You are what you say to us!" Like the LNP Queensland Parliamentarians Senator Bernardi has not learned why the separation of Church and State was vital to our Westminster system of Parliament.

He has no qualms fighting against pollution taxes which are threatening his and our children's existence.The truth is in the Bible not the evidence of the Sciences that created our medicines, technologies or understanding of how we have to work with Nature not destroy it.
Bernardi is so close in character to the Puritans I am studying. Their new society is one moral code fits all and it's moral policeman is Cory not Cromwell and Co.

The Godly Senator preaches adherence to the God of Abraham he was brought up with, then castigates his cousin Islam. Cory is Adam to procreate with the Divinely cursed Eve. All her pain and suffering and unwanted pregnancies are a burden to bear as punishment for her eternal sins.

As the son of Adam, a man is the dick- Head and decides a woman's conscience about her health. Even though she manages her reproductive state from 10 to 60 years!

Senator Penny Wong(ALP) with family 2013

Labor MP Anthony Albanese rightly responded the Senator is divisive. Leader Bill Shorten said it's offensive to denigrate non-traditional families.

As a woman I am certain the termination of a pregnancy was the best thing I did 25 years ago. My battle against the Catholic doctors on the board of a public hospital in country Victoria were minuscule compared to the life-time sentence of my grandmothers forced to pregnancy.

They were forced to stay reclusive and pregnant and give their babies up with despicable and unnecessary consequences. I say to Senator Bernardi and your kind - the conversation, the policies, the funding of reproductive health choices in Australia(and in foreign aid) is not your problem!

As the placards aptly say: keep your rosaries off my ovaries!

So, Senator you are a tool...of your “Conservative Revolution” . The P.M. Tony Abbott drew his “Battle Lines” before his official campaign for the Prime Minister position.I wouldn't purchase or read for nothing these books - I know what kind of Patriarchal(and misogynist politicians you are, and that you will dismantle what progress has been made.

We are free-born individuals but whereas you were nurtured and not abused in the nest of Roman Catholicism and devout parenting, the Priest looked at my bastard mother’s nativity scene and told her I was “illegitimate” according to Canon law because she had married an Anglican!

You want no separation of powers of State and Religion. You want Devolution! Cory, you may have special needs for your learning difficulties.

The Liberal Senator who is not really a Liberal is typical of those who are selective in their humanity.

Does he worry about the children and people in the concentration camps in our names, off the Australian mainland? Do their precious lives already here, count in your sanctity of Life by creating another Hell on earth driving people to suicide?

You seek the headlines without acknowledging the rights of women you seek to impose your Godly will upon. You come from a very shallow policy base, where the wholistic life-journey of

females doesn’t include extra affordable public housing, domestic violence refuges, more secure, less casual employment and training opportunities(you know, Work Choices) and a livable wage rate.

With the ego-mania of B.A.Santa Maria, mentor to Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell you are claiming to be a revolutionary. Former ALP leaders Bill Hayden and Gough Whitlam were revolutionaries when they brought in policies to enhance the lives of women by introducing the Single Women’s Pension and Medicare in 1972.

You are an anti-Life politician because you are an anti-rational, anti-scientific mouthpiece against the ecological sustainability for life on Earth with the willful blindness described by David Suzuki on the evidence of global warming.

Terminating a pregnancy is not evil, Senator or by implication the woman who has one. I can remember thinking even if I would consider allowing a baby to develop and give birth I could not rely on the Church or Government to look after it in a good way with a duty of care.

My mum was put in a Catholic Orphanage because her unmarried mother had to earn a living in the munitions factory during World War 2. When they were full she was put on a ship to Australia.

The under-staffed, exploited nuns tortured, not nurtured...Mum wasn’t a fee paying private school girl. She was made for cheap labour. The boys could add to a population of conscripts in times of war. Even today with all this nonsense by the not very Honourable Senator he is not demanding investments in a sustainable life-time for the children of today and tomorrow. Tell me when at any time of history a government doesn’t begrudge any decent amount of money for children in their guardianship.

The Royal Commission of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse findings shows that the hierarchies of men protect the arses of other men in their ranks, so my political passion looks towards International Women’s Day 2014 preserving values and traditions laid down for us from the Leveller women of the English Civil War to the Suffragettes and Union women continuing the work for equality and Pro-choice dignity of life.

Sally Neighbour's perceptive and factual article is here:

http://www.themonthly.com.au/cory-bernardi-conservative-warrior-all-about-cory-sally-neighbour-4327

Senator, in reply to your desire for everybody to return to the traditional institutions and superior values you hold your ignorance astounds me. THEY DIDN'T WORK! They discriminated and hurt many children and women in particular.

Your values are about control and excluding people. They endorse wars like against Vietnam and Iraq - spending billions of dollars which could have been creating services to suit the needs of it's population.
Your institutions were responsible for policies and practices that caused generational rifts in families, ruined people's lives like the thousands of children in orphanages or work-houses.
Those Christian politicians who passed laws to steal babies from their mothers or force them to be pregnant when they had been raped acted from their own selfish agendas. 
Look back and you will discover our society was only as good as class and gender allowed it to be. Only Science and Suffrage brought about our democracy, and opportunities for girls and women. 
After much resistance from men like you who say the traditions which stood the test of time are written in stone, I say your argument and public utterances are an oxymoron and totally narcissistic. 


Lest we forget the women who fought the war against women's rights and liberation. These are pictures to show what a real revolutionary looks like.

A dvd worth watching.

Abortion, Corruption and Cops - The Bertram Wainer Story

Synopsis

Duration: 1 x 52' In 1967 a young woman came to Dr Bertram Wainer's Melbourne surgery seeking emergency medical treatment after a backyard abortion. She was desperately ill yet too afraid to go to hospital. For Wainer this was the start of a long, hard struggle to overturn laws that made abortion an offence punishable by up to 15 years in jail. In the process he uncovered a web of corruption involving highly paid doctors, backyard abortionists, high-ranking police and power-broking politicians. It would lead to attempts against his life and the first major public enquiry into a state police force, as he fought to make abortions accessible, affordable and safe.

Duration: 1 x 52'

In 1967 a young woman came to Dr Bertram Wainer's Melbourne surgery seeking emergency medical treatment after a backyard abortion. She was desperately ill yet too afraid to go to hospital. For Wainer this was the start of a long, hard struggle to overturn laws that made abortion an offence punishable by up to 15 years in jail. In the process he uncovered a web of corruption involving highly paid doctors, backyard abortionists, high-ranking police and power-broking politicians. It would lead to attempts against his life and the first major public enquiry into a state police force, as he fought to make abortions accessible, affordable and safe.

Senator Bernardi says single parents will have daughters who are promiscuous and sons criminals.First They Came for the Jews, attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

                                                

Abbotts-bitterest-foes--his-coalition-colleagues links to story about the challenge of Senator Bernardi to his own comrades.

Marriage Equality in Australian Law

I appreciate the tireless work of my ALP comrade and Federal MP for Blair Shayne Neumann, but like in any family there are shades on the spectrum of opinion and identity born of lived experiences, and mine are in synch with Rainbow Labor.

Australia Day long weekend 1984
Two poms find each other in the Edinburgh Gardens ,
North Fitzroy, Melbourne with an ex-Labor, Richmond Mayor as civil celebrant.

15th century French manuscript(Brit.Lib)

I had assumed The Australian Constitution with it's secular principles would be the guide and foundation for which the  Marriage Act(1961) could be changed to include any consenting couple. Easy. No problem.

In a dubious argument my MP said in a speech to Parliament he didn't think our founding fathers would have considered framing  anything other than marriage between a man and a woman (subtext Adam and Eve). They didn't consider women's suffrage either, or indigenous autonomy.

Educate me why we still have a law that discriminates against homosexual couples based on the Genesis creation myth of patriarchal religion I learned at Sunday school.

Lovely story, and imaginative, but it has been  superseded by our scientific knowledge and evolution!                        

Dear House of Common Lawyers et al - revise your faith with the facts of Life: In the beginning Life begins as Female. Only after 7 weeks will a flush of hormones change a fetus to a Male. (Is this in the new National Curriculum?)

If only my MP was persuaded by the truth in his colleague's speeches: Labor Senators Penny Wong(SA), Doug Cameron(NSW), Claire Moore(QLD) and Jan McLucas(Qld).
transcripts at LGBTLAWblog

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is an enigma on this issue. She promised a conscience vote after the ALP National Conference when it was changing it's policy platform to support same-sex marriage, but stubbornly maintained the view of the status quo.

She knew how many MP's pray in parliament together and it would not pass. To keep in power herself,
Julia Gillard could prove to the Religious Conservatives in the Parliament and the electorate that even though she is an atheist, she is no threat - their world will not turn upside down with the State sanction of gay marriage?

Ben Eltham at New Matilda sees the irony in the fact that the numbers of MPs who voted against change to the Marriage Act is the same percentage in the polls who are fine with it! I wonder how many tight-lipped M.P's have been brought up to read 'The Holy Code' literally?
If you have been persuaded and/or believed from your family the Bible is the true Word of the God of Abraham, then I fear our Australian Parliament is imposing Religious doctrine on the wider public. It is Catechism by stealth, except for Senator Barnardi!

I think I know what Senator Barnardi was reading with his cornflakes: Leviticus 18:21-23

21  Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.
22  Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.
23 Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

http://newmatilda.com/2012/09/20/bernardi-mounts-his-last-raid

So, our 21st century Secular legislature is being hijacked by patriarchal biblical based politicians who are  increasingly participating and networking via parliamentary prayer groups and the like. They have a harsh human rights record on refugees - Malcolm Frazer says its racism and now our supposedly fair go, knowledgeable, pollies with a purported egalitarian ethos are homophobic.

If their God is Love, they said No to homosexual love and comittment.
98 MP's and 41 Senators against

When they ought to know better about the separation between the State and Religion, we have fundamentalist Christian chaplains in State schools who no doubt if asked will say the Bible says homosexuality is deviant.

The Marriage Act(1961) as it stands is discriminatory - how come it bypasses all the Anti-discrimination laws? The Australian Constitution says we can be free of religion, so how come these MP's have the power to impose laws based on religion?

I have been an Australian Citizen since 1985 and assumed we live under a Secular rule of law.

In his maiden speech Blair MP Shayne Neumann said he was a Christian and knew the difference between Church and State, but then comes away from the recent Parliamentary Committee on Social Affairs saying he would vote against same-sex marriage because this would be against cultural customs and tradition.

Well, for a lawyer that's a crap argument.
Anybody knows that Marriage is a cultural construct and was mainly used for property and family bonds, with the husband being sure that his wife was having his babies and heirs. She could be assaulted, raped, have her children taken from her and have little access to divorce.
It wasn't until women achieved the vote did we start getting changes and amendments to the notion of how marriage could treat women better!

1967

I grew up learning you didn't have to conform - my mum was brought up to be a Roman Catholic and only saw oppression. She rebelled. Mum married a Protestant which made me a bastard in Canon Law! Whose the bastards?

Interracial unions were in the public conversation when I was growing up. The challenge to the Marriage legislation in the USA was whether you could marry someone of a different colour skin.

All the Prophets of calamity and divine punishment for changes to marriage laws were lame, like the fears over a carbon pollution tax!

So, it all comes down to heterosexual superiority, and ingrained homosexual hatred.
It's about picking and choosing from religious texts.

I am with you Senator Doug Cameron on every word you expressed at last weeks debate; another Leftie who has been happily married for years, and would wish the same for our gay comrades, kith and kin.

It seems to me that our elected representatives not only need to declare their financial assets for conflict of interests in dealing with legislation but also declare their active religious affiliation and beliefs, fair dinkum!