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[personal profile] tcpip
Arrived in Wellington having yesterday for Multicore World having taken the midnight to dawn flight from Melbourne. With little else open at that time, we had a long buffet breakfast at Chameleon before making an early checkin at The Setup which can be recommended; whilst the rooms are small, it's inexpensive, modern, comfortable, and in an excellent location. After a typical visit to the excellent Arty Bees bookstore, joined a number of others at the pre-conference drinks at the Foxglove Bar (thank you Nvidia). To say the least Wellington harbour is quite beautiful on a summer sunset. Actually, Wellington is pretty nice all the time; it's thoroughly charming and despite its rather low population it is quite dense with an excellent mix of modern and historic buildings.

Only a completely different tangent, organised an interview with a Syrian refugee in Turkey. Like many like him, he's found himself in a situation where he's effectively a stateless person, a rather desperate situation to be in. In the meantime, there is an agreement between the major world powers for a cessation of hostilities, which has been rejected by the Syrian government, as Turkey continues to attack Kurdish positions.

In Australia, increasingly lagging behind the rest of the developed world, a continuing issue is marriage equality. A Federal MP, Andrew Broad, has recently raised the thoroughly weird argument for opposition: "I can put the rams in the paddock and they might mount one another but no lambs will come out." I could not help but write to the member seeking elaboration on this principle. Whilst obviously opposition to marriage equality is increasingly perplexing and bizarre, as is the proposal for a non-binding plebiscite. What can be suggested as a clear observation that whilst opponents of marriage equality are inevitably going to lose this debate, they're doing their very best to delay and determine how they lose.

Date: 2016-02-16 01:33 am (UTC)
leecetheartist: A lime green dragon head, with twin horns, and red trim. Very gentle looking, with a couple spirals of smoke from nose. (Default)
From: [personal profile] leecetheartist
I misread your title as "Manticore World in Wellington" and got all excited.

Date: 2016-02-14 10:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] i-amthecosmos.livejournal.com
A lot of the time, the opponents to marriage equality betray how boring and conformist they think marriage should be. Especially when they say "you marry for procreation". So? I'm married, we're both childfree, one of us is fixed. Should my marriage be illegal? I'm sure some of these ding-dongs would say yes.

This guy seems to think gay people can't be parents, when gay people are parents all the time. Argh.

Date: 2016-02-14 11:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com
The tortured explanations of opposition to marriage equality lead to more and more ridiculous positions which are increasingly difficult to defend (and easier to ridicule). This is why that politically, they simply cannot win in the long run because they lack a well-grounded justification for their opposition. I've been asking around for a while now for an actual well-grounded argument against marriage equality and the best I've encountered is that the state shouldn't do marriages at all!

Date: 2016-02-15 09:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com
OK, they're trolling us now. There's no other explanation.

The head of the Australian Christian Lobby, who have the conceit that they can speak for all Christians, has said the problem with allowing gay marriage is that people will think he's gay because he's married.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/15/with-gay-marriage-people-could-think-im-gay-says-christian-lobby-head

Date: 2016-02-16 03:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] i-amthecosmos.livejournal.com
Oh wow. I read a gay news blog (Joe.My.God), and the comments are roasting that guy.

I mean, just because he's insecure in his identity doesn't mean other people shouldn't have rights.

Date: 2016-02-16 10:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com
A logical elaboration: "The problem with gays being human is that there if I'm human people might think I'm gay!"

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