buggery.org

Anyone who still doubted that blogging has entered the consciousness of the wider world need only have been working on yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald cryptic crossword:

24 across: We belong pointlessly to key journal (6)

Cryptic crossword fans will have no trouble with this. The rest of you can read the extended entry.
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Brent and I are joining the State Emergency Service. Last night we went along for the preliminary orientation/information night, next week we’re going back to sign up and start training.

We decided we wanted to do this a while ago, as a means of getting involved in our community a bit more and, as they say, “giving something back”. What we’ll be giving, in the short term, is our Wednesday nights from here until goodness-knows-when. The SES will be giving us a spiffy orange uniform, unlimited tea and biscuits, and training in such useful skills as first aid, chainsaw operation, climbing about on roofs during storms, and flood boat operations.

Fun fact: With their bright orange uniforms, the SES are known in some circles as “jaffas”.

The orientation evening was fun. We were shown a video about the SES, had the training program explained to us and had a tour of their local headquarters. The SES people, all of whom seemed like very amiable, grown-up boy (and girl) scouts, seem to take their work very seriously and seem to delight in the blokey activities (sandbag filling, roof tarping, chainsaw wrangling) that make up the average SES volunteer’s occasional call to duty.

Whether there are any homosexuals in the local unit I do not know. There will be soon, so let’s hope they’re cool with that.

I have been inundated with messages from people kindly pointing out that it is inconceivable that I could agree with Andrew Sullivan. I concur — plainly I was drunk, or deluded, or precaffeinated, at the time I wrote my last post. I’m better now.

I am quite energised by this week’s developments on same sex marriage and have been trying to find time to follow the global discussion. Unfortunately I have a magazine to publish (next week), so time is somewhat limited.

It seems to me, notwithstanding the quite legitimate debate about whether marriage should be our defining political struggle, that we may be approaching a kind of “Stonewall Moment,” a tipping point in the struggle for queer rights.

I realise that it’s quite possible — likely, even — that the US Constitution will be amended to prevent same sex marriage. But whether that happens or not, it feels like we may be about to galvanise around this issue. Do I dare talk about a “movement” for queer rights? (There’s a word no-one’s used for twenty years or so).

Are the middle class queers discovering that the right is not their friend? Are we getting political again? Is this the (post-AIDS) last push for the summit, lads?

And are we doing it because we want to throw bridal showers for ourselves? No.

Marriage is only the vehicle. Equality is the destination.

… you find yourself agreeing with Andrew Sullivan:

The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land.
…
Not since the horrifying legacy of Constitutional racial discrimination in this country has such a goal been even thought of, let alone pursued. Those of us who supported this president in 2000, who have backed him whole-heartedly during the war, who have endured scorn from our peers as a result, who trusted that this president was indeed a uniter rather than a divider, now know the truth.

The news this morning is distressing. George Bush is going to try to amend the US constitution to enable him to treat queers as second-class citizens. While he’s at it, he might want to insist that we travel at the back of the bus, too.

Tyler has expressed his outrage more eloquently than I can at this early hour:

I have been on the edge of tears for most of the day. I am physically ill. George Bush just declared open warfare on gays and lesbians. He has asked that the full machinery of the state be brought to bear against a group of its citizens.

This development is scary, but hardly surprising. Hate is a powerful emotion, and queers are the last frontier of hate for the conservative “religious” right. The same people who once argued that negroes should not use the same bathrooms as whites, who tried to deny access to contraception and abortion to women, who forbade miscegenation, who argued in favour of slavery, are coming after us.

It’s not going to be pretty.

James is measured and reasonable, as always:

I consider neither the right to marry, and certainly not , for that matter, what I think of as the dubious privilege of performing military service, to be the first priority for gay rights activists when Queers still have no protection for the most basic rights of employment or residence in most parts of this benighted nation.

Are we going to see [the 3000+ San Francisco gay] unions declared dissolved, “divorced”, when California’s forces of reaction, led by an ex-terminator, are able to regroup? And will that be followed by the still more disastrous blow of a 28th Amendment to the federal Constitution, for the first time removing civil rights?

I think there’s going to be a very big fight.

Barry can see the battle lines being drawn:

Do not trust the mainstream media to tell you the truth about this.

One last thought. The Democrats’ (including Kerry and Edwards but not Kucinich) position on this, one of “we don’t support gay marriage but we don’t support the amendment either” is bullshit. This kind of splitting hairs is revolting when we’re talking about civil rights, and they’re going to be painted as homo-loving liberals by the GOP no matter what they do. Why not take a principled position rather than some stupid focus group-created one? I will hold my nose and vote for the Democratic candidate, but I can’t say I’m excited about it, unless a miracle happens and we get Kucinich.

More to come, no doubt.

For the third month in a row, buggery.org has exceeded it’s hosting allowance, incurring extra costs. While this costs money, and that’s annoying, on another level this is good news — people are visiting my site. I should be happy, or so I thought.

This from this month’s log file:

65.54.188.39 is MSN’s searchbot. It is a glorious testament to the talent of Microsoft’s programmers that, over a 48-hour period, they crawled and recrawled my site so recursively that they managed to suck 252Mb of data off it. The whole site, by the way, weighs less than 18Mb. My monthly data allowance is 1000Mb, so fully a quarter of that data went into Bill Gates’s black hole.

In what way is this not a DOS attack? I should send them the excess traffic bill.

Fucking Micro fucking soft.

A thank-you to the several people who’ve enquired after my health in the last few days. I’m not dead, I’m just very busy with work and other commitments so it’s hard to find the time to post.

No word on the immigration front yet, but it could happen any day now.

I’ll try to find the time and inspiration to drop a few posts in today, so the front page doesn’t look quite so austere.

The buggery.org online store is now a much better deal for shoppers in Australia — the T-shirts are being printed locally so the postage won’t break the bank. Any T-shirt will cost just A$26.95 plus $4.00 for registered post anywhere in Australia. It’s a better deal for me too — I might actually see some cash one day.

To celebrate, I’ve unveiled two new designs — Tasty Bugga and Bleeding Heart. Check ‘em out in the Shop.

I’ve had two letters in the Herald this week, one on the Free Trade Agreement and one on Politicians’ Superannuation. Regular readers will observe that they both are based loosely on buggery.org posts from the same day..

Howard has given another indication that he plans to use gay rights as a wedge issue in this year’s election, speaking out against gay adoptions in Launceston:

“I respect people’s choices about their own lifestyles — that’s their right, and I don’t seek to discriminate against them — but I have a view that gay adoption goes against what the community regards as the traditional family formation, and that is a mother and a father.

“Therefore, I don’t support gay adoption and I regret attempts to achieve it in parts of Australia.”

For folks out there that don’t “get” this, I recommend substituting the word “black” for “gay” when politicians talk about family issues:

“I respect people regardless of their race, and I don’t seek to discriminate against them — but I have a view that adoption by black people goes against what the community regards as the traditional family formation, and that is a white mother and a white father.

“Therefore, I don’t support black adoption and I regret attempts to achieve it in parts of Australia.”

History will judge you, Howard.