The threat posed by religious intolerance… High Court Justice, the Hon Michael Kirby, delivered a thought-provoking address on religious tolerance to an international Conference at the Sidney Myer Asian Centre at Melbourne University last Monday. Following is an edited transcript of the address. He argues that unless society curbs religious fundamentalism “the mixture of religious intolerance and weapons of mass destruction will be a great threat to the world and every one in it”. [more]

Join a discussion about this paper here.

Other speeches by Justice Michael Kirby on the Salt Shakers Web.

Justice Michael Kirby from ABC Brisbane

Justice Michael Kirby from Perth OUT

]]> http://cultureboy.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/justice-michael-kirby/feed/ cultureboy Avatar http://cultureboy.wordpress.com/2008/07/05/ad-multos-annos-for-another-bishop-robinson/ http://cultureboy.wordpress.com/2008/07/05/ad-multos-annos-for-another-bishop-robinson/#comments Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:36:50 +0000 cultureboy http://cultureboy.wordpress.com/?p=62

Mark Andrews (left) and Bishop Gene Robinson with celebrant Ronna Wise.

I wish to add my congratulations and best wishes to Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Church who has celebrated a civil union with his partner of 19 years, Mark Andrews.

It’s an unfortunate photo isn’t it? Looks as if everyone has just forgotten what comes next. Apparently it all went off “without a hitch”. LOL

They do make a nice couple I must admit. And full points for not “dragging out” a stack of purple for the big event Gene!! A very low key affair in comparison to your investiture.

Not sure where the honeymoon is happening, but it seems the good Bish is doing a tour in the UK taking in everything except a gig at Lambeth.

Bishop Geoff Robinson

You are invited to an evening with

BISHOP GEOFFREY ROBINSON

Wednesday August 6 2008
5.30pm for 6.00pm

The Queensland Terrace
State Library of Queensland
Cultural Centre
Stanley Place, South Bank, Brisbane

Cost: $20( includes light refreshments)
(If cost is a problem please contact us for concession rates)

RSVP: St Mary’s House 3844 9122 (for catering purposes)
E: micah@merivale.org.au

Calling for conversation, not confrontation, over the issue of clergy sexual abuse in the church, retired Auxiliary Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Sydney, has recently completed a 15-city U.S. speaking tour The bishop’s visit coincided with the U.S. release of his controversial book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus.

Meeting and speaking with abuse survivors and their families convinced him that the roots of clergy abuse lay in fundamental church attitudes toward power and sex, and that the only solution was first to examine and then to change those attitudes.

“Sexual abuse is all about power and sex, so to counter abuse, we must be free to ask serious questions about power and sex in the institution of the church,” he said. “Without this freedom, we would be attempting to respond to abuse while handcuffed and blindfolded.”

This event is hosted by The Esther Centre.
The Esther Centre (Centre for Addressing Abuse in Human Services and Faith Communities) provides support for people who have experienced physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse in church institutions, faith communities and human services.

• Bishop Geoffrey Robinson Web
• John Garrett Publishing Book Notes and Lioks
• Blogs about Bishop Geoffrey Robinson’s Book
• Bishop Pat Power support for Bishop Geoffrey Robinson
• Video Interview Bishop Robinson on Faith Matters Now
• Bishop Robinson confrontation leaves unfinished business

Sunday July 13, 2.30 pm
Pitt Street Uniting Church, Sydney

264 Pitt Street, Sydney (just up from Town Hall)

On the eve of World Youth Day, GLBT people of faith, and their friends, gather in the heart of Sydney to celebrate our lives and offer witness and challenge to the Church and to our society. Join Lesbian and Gay elders from the four major Christian traditions, as they dialogue with young queer people about faith, grace and spiritual wisdom:

Hosted by Pitt Street Uniting Church Moderated by David Marr

Presiding Minister: Rev. Andrew Collis
Speakers:
Rev. Dorothy McRae-McMahon
Minister-in Association with South Sydney Uniting Church, Co-editor South Sydney Herald, author and liturgist
Michael Bernard Kelly
Gay Catholic educator, author, Convenor of the Rainbow Sash Movement, spiritual activist, retreat leader
Anthony Venn Brown
Former Assemblies of God leader and founder of Youth Alive (NSW). Now Gay Ambassador, Author & Co-convenor of Freedom 2 b[e]
David Reeder
Long-time parishioner, Christ Church St. Lawrence Anglican Church, Lecturer in Information Science at Sydney TAFE
and a panel of young LGBTQ people from various Christian churches.

Co-sponsored by Pitt Street Uniting Church, the Sydney Star Observer, the Uniting Church GLBT Network, the South Sydney Herald, MCC Sydney, Freedom 2 b[e],
the Rainbow Sash Movement
Enquiries: Pitt Street Uniting Church, 02-9267-3614

Dial a Homo-Con By Andrew M. Potts lead columnist at the Sydney Star Observer newspaper is a devastating and informed expose of the tabloid press gay pin-up boy, John Heard who blogs as Dreadnought. While it is one of the more attractive gay blogs complete with “eye-candy’ from the covers of DNA Magazine, the content has flaws as Potts demonstrates.

Heard posted a response to Potts. However his true colours as somewhat arroagnt and dismissive  show in his final comment:

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to respond to messages here. If readers have any remaining (genuine) questions about my writing, and ideas - or they want to constructively discuss any point further - please send me an email direct. Details on DREADNOUGHT.- JH

I should declare a personal interest in this issue as John Heard made an anonymous reference to me in a biarre comment on an image of people, from St Mary;s Community In South Brisbane.

This pic appears on a liberal/communist crank’s website which links to - inter alia - the New Internationalist Workers’ Cooperative and was also linked from the parish webpage.

One of the great weaknesses with Heard’s prolific blogging is his failure to check links that drop off. I hope he gets around to correcting that old link of mine someday.

The great and the good of the world’s fashion industry crammed the Paris church of St Roch yesterday for the funeral of designer Yves St Laurent.

The UK Daily Telegraph reports French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his First Lady, Carla Bruni, attended the service. Miss Bruni, who wiped away a tear as she left the church, wore a black trouser suit in tribute to the designer, who is credited with introducing women to the style in the 1960s.

Actress Catherine Deneuve, for whom Saint Laurent created the outfits she wore in cult film Belle De Jour, read a Walt Whitman poem at the service, which was relayed to the crowds outside via a giant screen.

More than 1,000 people thronged the streets outside the baroque church to pay their last respects.

The 90 minute Mass was broadcast on giant screens outside the church, where throngs filled the streets around the Louvre near the church, New York Magazine says. When Saint Laurent’s casket was carried in, thunderous applause erupted but the crowd was silent during the service.

Many of the biggest names in fashion attended including Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Valentino, Hubert de Givenchy, Sonia Rykiel, Kenzo Takada, and Alber Elbaz. Many women in attendance wore trouser suits in homage to Saint Laurent’s revolutionary design.

Saint Laurent died of a brain tumour on Sunday, aged 71. A shy and reclusive figure, he retired in 2002 after four decades at the top of his trade.

Pierre Berge, his long-time personal and business partner, paid a moving tribute to the designer.

“These are my last words to you, Yves. You cannot hear me, you cannot reply. You were the greatest designer of the last half of the 20th century. On your marble plaque, I have had engraved above your name the words, ‘French couturier’.”

He added: “You could have slid into fashions at times, but instead you remained faithful to your own style, and you were quite right for that style is now everywhere… in the streets of the whole world.”

Saint Laurent had long battled depression and Berge acknowledged this in his funeral speech. “You belonged to this magnificent and tragic family of highly strung people who are the salt of the earth. All that is best comes to us from the highly strung.”

Fr Roland Letteron, who conducted the service, said that Saint Laurent “changed couture through his art.”

As a mark of respect, YSL shops around the world closed for two hours while the funeral took place.

SOURCE

Yves Saint Laurent: Fashion world says farewell to designer (UK Telegraph, 5/6/0

Over 1,000 Attend Yves Saint Laurent’s Funeral (New York Magazine, 5/6/0

Fashion bades farewell to its ‘prince’ Yves Saint Laurent (AFP, 5/6/0

Fashion Remembers Yves Saint Laurent (Updated)

LINKS

Yves St Laurent (Wikipedia)

YSL

Yves Saint Laurent’s Greatest Moments (New York Magazine, 5/6/0

MEDIA RELEASE

May 15 2008

Brisbane Gay Catholic advocate, Tony Robertson has called on the Catholic Bishops of Australia to include May 17 the International Day Against Homophobia in diocesan, parish and school calendars.

Mr Robertson first made his appeal to the Bishops in 2005, when the International Day Against Homophobia was launched to commemorate the removal of homosexuality from the General Assembly of the World Health Organization(WHO)list of mental disorders on 17 May 1990

Mr Robertson said that he was encouraged to continue his campaign following a visit to his old school, St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College in Geelong during 2007 where he was able to address a Year 12 group of students who had just completed a unit of study on homophobia.

“It was encouraging to speak to young students as a gay man in a safe environment” he said.

Mr Robertson said: “Sharing my experience as a young gay man in a very different era at the college gave me an insight into the important role of mentoring that Gay and Lesbian Catholics can provide in our Church Community”

However, Mr Robertson said he is also aware that homophobia continues to appear in much of the conversation about sexuality in the Church. In 2007 Mr Robertson lodged a complaint of sexuality vilification against an online discussion forum sponsored by the Catholic Church. As a result of the complaint the Church published an apology to Mr Robertson

“ My experience as a participant in online discussion forums about faith and sexuality has raised my concerns about a culture of homophobia which is evident among some of the contributors to such forums.” Mr Robertson said.

“The inclusion of the International Day Against Homophobia in Church calendars will send a clear message to those in the Church who fail to understand that the dignity of the human person is a core Catholic teaching which challenges homophobia in our community” he said.

——————————————
PO Box 3525
South Brisbane Qld 4101
M: 0417792509

Guerilla Queer Church: a response to Pope Benedict

Re: “Gay Catholics to protest pope’s visit” (news, April 11)

The nation’s straightest bars are no longer safe for beer farts, fantasy football, pleated khakis and other hallmarks of heterosexual waterholes.

The first Friday of every month, for example, Boston Guerilla Queer Bar (BGQB) organizers target an unsuspecting traditional straight bar. They notify 1,000 Facebook “friends” from all over eastern Massachusetts of the designated hetero-venue. At the appointed hour, gay and lesbian masses pack the bar rail and dance floor and transform an establishment heretofore notorious for testosterone into an instant queer club.

Although the takeover yields a space where it’s safe to exhibit a non-straight sensibility, the participants typically don’t stage protests or drape themselves in the rainbow flag. They just dance, flirt, ogle, dish, drink, laugh, tip well, and at closing head home. If they’re lucky, they have company.

Each month, BGQB targets a different straight bar. Washington, Detroit, San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle and other American cities have been doing this for years. “We want to fully inhabit the city we live in,” explained a San Francisco Guerilla Queer Bar organizer.

The imminent arrival of Pope Benedict XVI gives us a chance to expand the concept. Benedict, of course, is famously hostile to gays. Not only has he condemned homosexual activity and made prohibiting gay celibates from entering the seminary a priority of his papacy, but he also demands that the civil law conform to Catholic doctrine. He frequently fulminates against gay marriage, gay adoption and even laws protecting gay people from being fired because of their orientation. Before he became pope, then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that, “Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil” and that letting same-sex couples adopt children “would actually mean doing violence to these children.” Some observers expect him to highlight these themes during his U.S. visit.

And gays are not his only targets. Benedict heads the Church of Exclusion: the divorced and married men and women with a call to priesthood are similarly marginalized.

In light of these papal sentiments, it’s no surprise that meetings with openly gay Catholic leaders and female priests are not on the pope’s agenda. So I make this modest proposal: Let’s skip the papal Mass in Nationals Park and instead kick-start the Guerilla Queer Church. Here’s how it will work:

We’ll post a Facebook page for each American diocese. One Sunday per month, we’ll target a particular “traditional” parish in the diocese and a particular Mass. Notified by e-mail, the gay Catholics will descend en masse and take over the front pews.

We’ll sing, we’ll worship, we’ll be indistinguishable from our straight friends in the pews, except perhaps for the ferocity of our love, our same-sex kiss of peace and the fact that we would leave petitions in the collection basket in lieu of dollars to avoid contributing to a corrupt hierarchy. Members of the gay Catholic group DignityUSA will be invited. So will the Romancatholic Womenpriests, and members of the group Corpus, an organization of married priests. We’ll bring our families, however constituted, and our partners and cherished spouses.

Guerilla Queer Church won’t be an act of civil disobedience or profanation (depending on your view) similar to the protests staged by the advocacy and awareness group ACT-UP in the 1980s in which Mass was disrupted and the sacred Holy Eucharist spilled on the floor of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Rather, Guerilla Queer Church will be a celebration, an exercise in ordinary inclusive worship with all its glorious earnestness, awkwardness, false starts, distractions, simplicity, ritual, incense, adoration, amazement and radical transformation. Catholics are called to build the church. But we queer Catholics, gay and otherwise, should also feel free to take back what is ours and fully inhabit the religion we live in.

SCOTT D. POMFRET
Boston

Editors’ note: The writer is the author of the forthcoming “Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir.”

A discussion on how much personal morality should intrude into public policy… Catholics, led by Augustine and Aquinas, have traditionally been more liberal than the Protestants, regarding public social policy. One could argue that arch-conservative Catholics want to change that today. Peregrinus re-visits some important principles considered in depth by Augustine and Aquinas as to how personal morality should impact on public social policy. It is always a vexed area of discussion as the current situation concerning a public park in Amsterdam illustrates very well. [more]