Confessions of a Former Christian Homophobe

Sometimes you’ll come across articles where people talk about how they used to be religious but then untangled themselves from the shackles of faith and walked out to be bathed in the sun of logic and reason while a choir of Angel’s didn’t sing as they don’t exist. Then they point out that they were children at the time and my lip curls in disdain. Way to rub it in.

I was a fully fledged adult when I finally slipped out of religions paws. Reason wasn’t enough for my desertion. Hey, reason couldn’t dent the years of fear that had been indoctrinated in to me. “If you are lukewarm God will spit you out” was a phrase I often was told about God’s appalling table manners and my ever imminent descent to hell. I was a doubt away from being cast out of God’s love in to a lake of sulphur. I’ve been to Rotorua, this was not an eternity I wanted.

I first got a taste of Christianity in primary school because of a teacher who pushed it during Easter and Christmas with colouring in of manger scenes and other religious imagery. If I signed up there was a life of chocolate eggs and presents ahead of me and what kid doesn’t want that. Also there was the promise of an omnipresent Parent who would always love me. Religion can be awfully Freudian and the appeal of pleasing a parent figure is an innate drive in all of us. 

That was my first hit. My second, and when I became an addict, was as a teenager in High School. I answered an ad looking for volunteers to participate in a school play. No mention was made that it was for the school’s Christian group, and by the time I found out I had already been lured in with the promise of the lead part. And everyone was super friendly! That’s because they wanted something from me, but still, friendly! Being new in town and lost in a sea of scowling teenage faces this promise of instant friendships was enough to get me signed up.

First of all it’s the best feeling ever. Love from God, love from your fellow believers, but once they’ve got you hooked they start reeling out the next phase: fear. Now, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Ten Commandments but the first four are pretty much setting up the faith as the one and only. You’re in the club, or you’re doomed, you slip up and you’re doomed. This is all about maintaining compliance; are you with us, or are you against us? You’ve got to be in it to win it. Wait, I think that’s Lotto.

What effect does this have? Well, religious leaders have a hell of a lot of power. If they tell you that homosexuality is a sin, you believe them, no independent research required, especially when you’re a teenager. Conformity is the goal and this is one of the reasons why otherwise good people can do evil things if they’re told that evil things are in fact godly. You should feel guilty for having sexual feelings, for not being devoted enough, for listening to Crowded House because they were satanic…there was a lot of confusing, weird, guilt.

I was a good Christian girl, and as such because I had been told this was the case, I believed that homosexuality was a sin against God. Jesus was a champion of the underdog and was invested in helping the poor and the suffering, but our High School group followed the adult who led us instead. I am sure during that time I made homophobic comments. I am also sure that in all probability I had made a homophobic comment in front of someone that was gay. I am deeply, deeply ashamed of my conduct. I am ashamed that I let other people’s prejudice become part of my worldview, I am ashamed that I felt I was right in exhibiting a behaviour that was hurtful, that was toxic, and that sought to marginalise people for nothing more than for who they were. I am ashamed that because I was too scared to think for myself that I allowed myself to become part of a culture that harmed others.

After High School I moved from small town NZ to the Big Smoke, attended uni, and having escaped that environment, and with the tools to now think for myself, realised just how horribly wrong I had been. Ironically some of the best and closest friendships I have made in my life have been with people who are gay; how horrifying to think that I could have lost out on that because of something as stupid as prejudice. How much less of a person I could have been.

Some homophobes want to have power and control others, some because they’ve fallen under the influence of others, but there is hope that people’s thinking can be changed. I’m really, really proud of the younger generation of New Zealanders who are a lot more forward thinking and inclusive of their fellow human beings. There is hope that people can change if the thinking behind it is challenged and if common human decency is championed. Think before you hate because the harm you can do to other people is real.

Nothing good ever came out of intolerance and hatred, except maybe chocolate eggs.

ETA: Submissions for the Marriage Equality Bill close off tomorrow and can be made here: http://ht.ly/eKg27

Colin Craig: We Don't Just Hate Gays, We Hate Doe-Eyed Children As Well

The Children of Delinquent Parents Shouldn’t Get Lunch

Wednesday, 24 October 2012, 10:12 am
Press Release: Conservative Party PRESS RELEASE
23 October 2012
The Children of Delinquent Parents Shouldn’t Get Lunch

Recent discussion over the effect of lunchlessness (a word recently created by conservative think tanks over a grueling six days), on educational outcomes arising from Auckland University’s research misses the point says Colin Craig, Leader of the Conservative Party.

"The issue is not whether lunchlessness is detrimental to learning. Rather the issue is a parents’ duty to provide for their children," says Mr Craig. "It should be noted that I didn't actually read the research, but I'm outraged that people are expecting charity and kindness which I can proudly say that the Conservative Party is certainly not about."

"Where a child is regularly sent to school without a lunch, the parent is being delinquent. Proposed solutions such as state funding of school lunches, which Bill English says the Government is open to, will only encourage this delinquent behaviour by allowing the child to survive to go on to have children of their own. Such programmes are noble ideas, but end up being another pathway into government dependency, and an ever-growing cost to taxpayers. We want these children to learn the best way possible by starving their young developing brains of important fuel and nutrients. That will show them."

"We recognise that it is entirely inappropriate to encourage other bad behaviours. We don’t encourage people to take illegal drugs, or to drink too much or to encourage young children to eat when they're hungry. Instead we recognise the appropriate response is intervention. Intervention holds a person to account and demands a change in behaviour and the only socially humane way of doing this is to cover our ears with our hands so we can ignore the cries of a child who has a hungry stomach and no way to fill it, dependent as they are on others."

"While free lunches sound appealing" says Mr Craig, "They are actually a way by which the government enables the continuation of delinquent parenting. Such proposals are an unwitting, well meaning, but destructive response. A much more constructive response is to let children who have poor parents suffer horrifically as a means to teach them a lesson that you should never expect kindness or decency from within the household, or within society at large. I can't wait to meet the adults that these children turn in to."

"We need to recognise there are no ‘free lunches’. ‘Free lunches’ are a case of responsible New Zealanders picking up the tab for delinquent parents. If a child falls over on the street breaking their leg and their parent does nothing, the only thing to do is to step over the crying mangled body of the child and continue on my way."

"The proper response to delinquent parents is to charge them the cost of rectifying their bad behaviour so if a child does come to school hungry because the parents don't have enough money for food we will help them by fining them. As a country we need to start expecting people to be responsible for themselves and their families or letting these children starve in the streets. We need to stop a continuation of the culture of entitlement and only letting generations die of hunger will put an end to this. It's what a modern caring society would want."

How to Be a Tobacco Industry Apologist

“Boo hoo, tobacco causes suffering and premature death,” sack cloth wearing hippies shriek. “Government is merely enforcing the will of the people by legislating against these death merchants,” they hand wring. “If Government knew then what it knows now it would never have been a legal product,” they high-pitch warble while playing hacky sack.

Nobody likes a hippy, so here’s a guide on how to be an apologist for the tobacco industry.

Let’s face it, trying to put together an argument for tobacco is hard work, so don’t bother. Slippery slope your argument into easy street and make connections that don’t exist so you can argue for that instead. Confused? Don’t be!

Take the lead from Family First – the idea of two adults of the same sex being able to get married might not bother the average reasonable person, but the idea of incestuous poly marriages just might. Link the two things and before you know it you’ll have someone who is pro marriage equality trying to defend the concept of an unholy cousin-brother-sister alliance turning up at a church doorstep demanding for the local priest to de-basterdise their brood of blobby web-fingered children.

So don’t be silly enough to try and argue for tobacco, instead drag wine or fast food in to it and make it about that instead. If you eat a burger or consume a glass of wine as recommended there is no undue health effects, in fact you might even get some vitamins and antioxidants. If you consume tobacco as intended there is a high probability that you will get sick and die prematurely. BUT if someone ate a lot of burgers and drank a lot of wine there would be a chance of health problems, so link them, now skip the part about tobacco, and make this an argument about people trying to stop you enjoying a glass of vino and wanting to run into a children’s birthday party and stab Ronald McDonald in the head. How is THAT reasonable?

If you legislate for marriage equality you are legislating for poly-incest web-fingered babies. If you legislate against tobacco you are legislating against children’s clowns and your god given right to enjoy a frosty beer on a hot summers day. What a compelling argument! Yay, you’ve won!
On a side-note if someone tries to do the opposite and equate tobacco with addictive substances such as heroin or cocaine be incredibly indignant and say that they’re nothing alike and they’re trying to derail the argument. That should put them in their place.

Also talk about rights a lot. People like those. Damn it, as an adult you have the right to be able to smoke and make informed decisions! See what I did there? I made this not about passing legislation so that brandings can’t be displayed, I’m making this now about important information being withheld from you and rights, the rights of an industry that purposely harms it’s users, to keep profiting from it, and what’s more important than that? The right not to be harmed by a product that kills half its users? I don’t remember seeing that in the Bill of Rights, you human loving, corporate hating, weirdo! Also try and make it sound like it’s not just branding being removed, but somehow imply that government is trying to ban the sale of it, or that smokers will no longer be able to remember what brand of cigarettes they smoke because of artery damage in their brai…no, wait, skip that bit.

And the tobacco industry has a right to use its branding. It’s spent money and research on specific colours and fonts to create an image for people to want to identify with so that they’ll become loyal. And with all those addictive chemicals thrown in they have the potential to be pretty damn loyal – high five!

Who are those adults making these informed decisions? Well since most smokers don’t jump brands, the industry is worried about their bottom line when it comes to attracting new smokers. After all they’ve spent a lot of energy equating smoking cigarettes with being aloof, cool, sophisticated and rebellious – and coincidentally enough the group that this would most appeal to is the group that are the ones that start smoking in the first place – teenagers.

Most smokers are around 14 when they first started smoking, and knowing this (hey, they’re super child friendly, from hiring policies to advertising ones) and  it’s important these kids are kept informed as to whether they want to be seen as a sophisticated gold pack smoking Benson and Hedges customer, or a happy go-lucky Holiday smoker. With plain packaging cigarettes will have their veneer stripped away and will only be seen as what they actually are – a container filled with pieces of paper which has had plant material and chemicals rolled in to it. And with reminders of what the product actually does to you (tumours, black lungs, death, despair, misery) teenagers who otherwise think they’re immortal, and whose brains aren’t fully formed yet for the best decision making, might have another psychological reason to take up smoking removed. Which would certainly be bad for tobacco’s right to make a multi-billion dollar profits from their pre-mature deaths, which we can all agree would be wrong.

So to sum up: pretend that the argument you are making is for something else entirely, something that’s easier to argue for. Talk about rights and freedom to try and give yourself a moral platform to speak from. Because most users tend to be the most vulnerable in society, if you’re going to be a spokesperson for tobacco try to be a white male of privilege to add balance. And remember, never, ever acknowledge the reality of what the tobacco industry is or that it knowingly sells an addictive substance that maims and kills its users, because people might become repulsed by that and think that you’re an amoral douchebag who smells funny.

National: Youth Wages Are Just the Beginning

National have announced on the back of their Youth Wage policy a new financial incentive to hiring more employees that harks back to the days of old. Key explained that it had come about from discussing the job creation potential that would ensue from paying young people only 80% of the minimum wage. “We realised that if employers could now afford to hire 1.2 people that there was room for real economic stimulation to occur if only we had the drive and the vision to push this even further”.

The second rollout from the Youth Wage will be entitled the No Wage. Employers will instead be incentivised to take on more workers by not having to pay any wages at all. “Obviously employers will be legally required to cover board and food,” Key said, noting that workers would no longer be able to pay for such things from their weekly wage of nothing at all. “Planet Key isn’t the kind of place where we would just leave people to starve on the street, because then there is the additional expense of retraining another set of workers which is financially inefficient.”

Key suggested that the ratings success of such programmes as Downton Abbey meant that the public had a hunger to embrace the ways of the past and this new policy would prove popular. “With No Wages, employers will now be able to build large stately manors that will also entice more tourists to travel here to take photos of these and the serfs happily toiling in the fields below.” 

Key further noted that with Government expecting lower tax revenue the privatisation of public assets would be accelerated. Offers had already been received from Hollywood for using the Beehive as a backdrop and this was scheduled to be blown up for James Cameron’s new blockbuster being filmed next May.

Jetstar: We're Sorry You're Easily Offended

         PRESS RELEASE 

Jetstar Spokesperson Mr Albert Cummings

Jetstar have been in the press on more than one occasion lately, and it’s not been for reasons that the company would like. Clocks not being adjusted for daylight savings meant some flights had to be cancelled, and two pregnant women were asked to disembark from flights despite Jetstar having been happy to fly them to their destinations. Adding to Jetstar’s public relation woes a woman was recently asked to produce a medical certificate before boarding, despite the fact that she was not pregnant.

A spokesperson for the airline said that crew were asked to request a medical certificate “if they have reasonable belief” that a passenger was pregnant. Mr Albert Cummings from Customer Care has since issued an apology in relation to this recent incident. “Obviously the passenger was most likely fat and we sincerely apologise if any offense was taken by pointing that out in front of other passengers that her grossly rotund belly looked like another human being was gestating inside of it when it wasn’t”. Mr Cummings was also quick to note that fat people were more sensitive to taking offence even when none had been meant. “Customers should also take responsibility by having a medical certificate if they are fat or wearing unflattering clothing just so all bases are covered.”

Management at Jestar have met with staff and a new policy will be implemented requiring all people at the gate to state whether they were fat or pregnant before boarding the plane, while baggage handlers would rate their clothing out of marks of ten. Passenger could then expect to sit on the tarmac for four hours because the pilot forgot to set their alarm clock. There had also been discussions around halting the practice of spitting on customers, but a final decision would be postponed until the AGM in early November.

Air New Zealand were reported to be busy spinning around in their chairs and flinging their arms up in delighted glee.

English: Oh No, I Forgot to Blame This On Something!

From here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10836388 like the parasitic blogger that I am. Cheers Herald!

In August Deputy Prime Minister Bill English signs a Ministerial Certificate giving the all clear to GCSB to intercept the communications of Kim Dotcom and his acquaintances. He believes, in his heart of hearts, that it's legal, and why would his heart lie?

Meanwhile: Prime Minister John Key eats hotdogs, watching his son play baseball in the US, where sadly they do not have cellphone or internet access. A stack of papers remains unread as he gazes off into the distance, a blank look of peace on his face.

The Police are questioned in Court on whether the raids undertaken in January were illegal.They are further questioned about a meeting that was held prior to the raids and the role of the GCSB is uncovered.

Key gets picked up by English at the International Airport. They embrace and English helps Key with his luggage after receiving his duty free Toblerone. They talk about baseball, talk smack about Banks, and though English wants to tell Key about what's been happening in his absence, which he needs to do since there was no way of contacting Key, what with the US poor communication infrastructure, Key's holiday anecdotes are so interesting that English gets caught up in the magic and forgets to say anything.

It is discovered (when?) a bit of an oppsie doopsie has been made and spying on a New Zealand citizen or resident is completely illegal. English's heart has lied. He stares out of a rainy window and weeps. But how were they to know that Dotcom was a resident even though the fact of his residency was splashed about the National media back in March? That was MONTHS ago, and who knew that a Government spy agency could use Government access bases to find such information out. If only there was a manual.

Meanwhile: A man in Auckland gazes lovingly into a bucket of water where an Eel name Gladys glides sinuously about. "Soon, my lovely," he croons. "Soon."

Five days go past. The GCSB are nervous that they'll get yelled at and try to come up with something, like, they were really busy, or their cellphone coverage is terrible, you guys!  They then shuffle off to the PM's Office and scuff their feet on the floor and explain their illegal oppsie doopsie to the PM. They'd put it in writing, but you know how that goes.

Who asked the GCSB to spy on Dotcom and others? Key refuses to say. Was the FBI involved? Key refuses to say. What happened to all the information gathered? OMG, leave him alone you guys! This is just about the Government overstepping it's mark, acting above the Rule of Law, and abusing it's powers to invade the privacy of it's own residents. Or as English would say "an administrative procedure related to the court''.

An inquiry is initiated by the Prime Minister. Who is on the inquiry? Who knows. But sources suggest that it may be John Key, Bill English, John Banks and the remaining squares of the Toblerone bar. 

Mr English said couldn't recall the details of the document. "Everyone in the current Government is suffering from a severe case of dementia. I'm surprised we're capable of dressing ourselves in the morning."

Mr English said he preferred not to comment on whether he should have told Mr Key about the certificate earlier or other aspects of the matter. "As Deputy Prime Minister I don't believe it is my job to inform the Prime Minister of the goings on of the nation while he is attending sporting events overseas."

"It's all being dealt with by inquiry, it's a matter before the courts. LEAVE ME ALONE. I WISH I'D NEVER SIGNED THE STUPID DOCUMENT AND I HOPE KEY ENJOYED HIS STUPID BASEBALL GAME!''

Rodney Hide: Bugger off Poor Kids

Rodney Hide: Poverty claims show welfare system failure

By Multi-Millionaire Rodney Hide

Giving families more money isn't going to make parents care as much as I will if my taxes go towards them; hands off my money, poor people! Photo / APN

"Child poverty's terrible! Kids hungry! It's getting worse!

"270,000 poor kids. And government? Doing nothing!"

But hang on. All kids are poor. Children typically don't own much beyond a few toys. That's true in poor families. And it's true of rich families. Has anyone thought of the destitute children living inside the mansions of the rich? No, but I have. This is why redistributive tax systems are evil and must be halted already so that the futures of our destitute rich kids can be secured.

  

And yet we have a report boldly titled Child Poverty. That tugs at the heartstrings and makes great newspaper copy but it's wrong. The report should properly be titled family or household poverty which doesn't tug on the heartstrings because rightly nobody cares about poor adults. In fact the report should have been titled Unemployed Chimney Sweeps.

But even that's misleading. The 270,000 "child poverty" figure refers to relative poverty. Your children suffer in "poverty" if your household's net income is less than 60 per cent of your equivalent household's median income. The cut-off income for a couple with four children is just over $1000 a week. Net.

It's no wonder that one child in four lives in "poverty" - $1000 a week in the hand is well above any lack of comfort let alone starvation. But for the experts, that's "poverty". Of course it is in fact $990 a week, but over $1000 makes my arguement sound better. In fact lets say it's a million dollars a week. A MILLION DOLLARS?! And the "experts" say that's "poverty". I just threw up over my imported tailor made Italian suit. I could have also picked a smaller household, but a six person household gives me the biggest number and it's harder to automatically gauge what that means in spending terms, instead you just see a big number. A 27,000,000 person household would probably also get just over $10,000 million a week. Net. How are these mulch-millionaire households poor? Exactly.

A windfall that doubled all incomes wouldn't budge the child "poverty" figure. There would still be 270,000 poverty-stricken children. That's because experts define "poverty" in reference to the middle income. So say everyone started making a million dollars a week, but "poor" people were making 600k a week, that's not poverty. Poor people are too rich in this country and we need to start giving them Government bailouts. Wait, sorry, I'm thinking about Corporations, which are also legally people, but the right kind of people, because they're businesses. Experts might say I was "drunk" when I was writing that, but relative to a person who has drunk 60 vats of pure ethanol I would be considered sober.

Making people richer doesn't fix relative poverty so lets not redistribute incomes so that poor people are no longer poor because they're relatively rich. The only fix is to narrow the spread of income, even if that makes everyone poorer. That's right, poor people will steal all of your money so that they can be rich.  That's why experts recommend taking even more income from families above the median income to give to those below it. Not the 1% rich who hold the bulk of wealth in this country, but the median income holders, the Mums and Dads, the people most likely to vote. That's right, fear the poor for they are after your money.The fix follows directly from defining "child poverty" as household inequality.

News reports now link the poverty report to children turning up to school hungry. But even the gloomiest estimates don't have 270,000 hungry kids and if they don't hit that target then you have to question whether there are hungry kids at all.

Labour leader David Shearer quoted a 2002 Ministry of Health survey to say 83,000 children aged 5 to 14 "sometimes or often went to school without breakfast". That's well short of the 270,000 "living in poverty" and is 87,000 thousand hungry children anything to worry about? Not compared to 270,000 it isn't.

But even the 83,000 figure is exaggerated. The survey found the equivalent of 83,000 kids in the previous week "not" or "sometimes not" eating or drinking at home before school but 76,000 "usually" or "sometimes" eating or drinking on the way to school. Presumably, they are many of the kids who didn't eat at home and you have to wonder whether that isn't a choice. Who knows with kids today. 12,000, there's another number. We've now gone from 270,000 to 12,000 without anybody actually doing anything. Zero. There, solved.

The survey found that the older the child the more likely they were not to eat at home and the more likely they were to eat on the way to school. Also, girls were more than twice as likely as boys not to eat at home. The sex and age differences suggest forces other than poverty at work. It's not poverty. It's girls on their fad diets. All those thousands of children not eating, it's just females wanting to look good and this should be encouraged, but not with my tax money.

Further, although children from poorer households were more likely not to eat at home before school, they were also more likely to drink Coke and eat chips and be fatter. This is why we need more children not eating, because when they do eat they get fat and nobody likes a fattie.

Poverty can't be the cause no matter what the "experts" say. A bowl of porridge costs 10 cents and though  I never eat porridge, because that's poor person food, I'm sure that you can buy single serve helpings at 10c a pop. And if you're running out the door to your third job I'm sure the Nanny can help serve the children as I found mine most helpful growing up. The most nutritious food on the planet is liver. It costs 70c a serve and is available from stray animals that roam the housing estates. The second most nutritious is an egg: 50c. The third most nutritious is human excrement: free.

I have nourishing bone broth for lunch. The marrow bones for a good brew cost $10 or at least that's what I threw at the mother as I stole her toddler out of the pram. That's 50c a meal. Good nutritious food doesn't cost much. It certainly doesn't cost much compared to a Coke, a bag of chips or a burger. I think we should be judgemental about these so-called "poor" people who are time poor, or uneducated, or are suffering from depression bought on by living lives on a million dollars a week.

The lack of breakfast is not caused by a lack of money. It's caused by a lack of care. That lack of care can't be fixed by giving parents more money and even if it did I don't care enough to give them said money because I don't care about them. Handing parents more money doesn't make them care more. I have lots of money and don't care about anybody other than myself which is case in point.

The welfare state is more than 100 years old. It's been constantly expanded and enhanced. Some might say to changing conditions, some might say because society cared enough not to see it's members suffering, but that's why gated communities were developed.

The original framers would be astonished and appalled by its depth and width and I know this because I just read it after I wrote it. And yet, thousands of children arrive at school hungry because their parents care about them as much as I do, which is not at all.

The fix is invariably seen by experts as more welfare. The Government should supply breakfast and perhaps lunch and then, no doubt, dinner. Also morning tea, and after fives, and tea and cakes and maybe a god damn mint on their pillow when they go to bed, the greedy fat poor bastards. Stop taking my money because you want to eat.

But hungry kids prove that welfarism has failed, or that it hasn't been applied rigorously enough, but that doesn't work with my narrative. Welfare has made the Government increasingly responsible for children and parents less and less so. Governments are now burping babies while parents run off to have fun on their millions of dollars.

Poverty has become an excuse for parents who send their children to school hungry and the Government's job now is not only to provide those parents with an income and a house but to cook their kids' breakfast as well. As a  responsible citizen I say fuck the hungry kids and get your greedy little hands out of my Italian calfskin wallet. If it means that Government has to do it lets leave the little urchins to starve to death in the streets like the good old days. That will teach the poor not to be poor.

The question of the proper fix comes down to what we call the experts' report. Is it "Child Poverty"? Or "Child Neglect" but either way I want to make it clear that I don't give a damn, and hopefully so that we might have a brighter future, you wont care either.