I’ve been invited to speak to an audience of 13-25 year olds on Joy 94.9 FM’s youth program, Generation Next, tonight.

Joy is an independent station serving Melbourne’s diverse lesbian and gay communities. It has an audience of over 200,000 people in Melbourne and more online.

The focus of the interview will be the STFU article I wrote in response to the Victorian’s bishops’ shameful pastoral letter opposing same-sex marriage. But, we’ll also be speaking about how the GLBTIQ community are not the only targets of narrow-minded religious bureaucrats and fundamentalists.

But, as I thought about what message I really wanted to leave with Melbourne’s GLBTIQ youth, it was the simple message, “Get up and DO something” that came to mind.

It’s so easy to think that, as an individual, you can’t do anything to change the world.  You feel powerless. If you’re in a minority group, I can imagine that you feel even more powerless. It’s very easy to think, “Well, nothing I do is going to make any difference, so I’ll just do nothing.”

The thing is, we’re not powerless. And, today, young people have a resource that people of my generation never had – the internet. But they’re not yet using it to full effect.

In the 1960s, even without the benefit of the internet, young people managed to change the culture of the world. They marched against the Vietnam war. They agitated for civil rights for African Americans and indigenous Australians. They campaigned for women’s rights. The environmental movement started in the 1960s.  These movements inspired the gay liberation movement which has seen a huge change in attitudes towards homosexuality – although we still have a long way to go.

Without the aid of the internet to spread the word, they used other instruments of popular culture.  Pop groups and folk groups sang about things that mattered to them – not just lame songs about ‘lerve’. Young people began to produce magazines and newspapers.  Art, movies, even comics carried the message that the world had to change.  Kids got out and marched on the streets. They staged ‘sit ins’ at universities.  They changed the way people thought about things, and in doing this, they changed the world.

The world that most of the listeners of Joy’s Generation Next were born into is far different to that of their grandparents, and that’s because the young people of the 60s got up and DID something.

Of course, the world still isn’t perfect. We have a long way to go. But young people can make a difference, just as they did way back then.

It’s true, an individual has little power. But lots of individuals working together can have enormous power.  That’s where the internet comes in.

How easy is it to form networks of friends on Facebook, Google, Twitter or other social networking sites – friends who share the same interests as you?  Once you have a network, you’re no longer operating as an individual. You have the potential to reach thousands with your message.

Remember, you don’t need thousands of friends. Think of the internet as a pond. You throw a pebble into it and a ripple moves out to the limits of your friend network. But then they pass the word and the ripple starts extending until eventually, it spreads right across the pond.

With a potential influence on thousands, you can change the result of a newspaper poll. You can have a politician bombarded with emails. You can protest effectively against almost anything.

In Queensland, last year, a billboard company took down a safe-sex ad, targeted at the gay community, because it received just 220 complaints.  That’s how sensitive companies can be to public opinion.

When the models who posed for that Rip & Roll ad mounted a social networking campaign in protest , word spread rapidly. Soon, there were over 25,000 people signed up to the Rip & Roll  Facebook support group and the company quickly reversed its decision.

In Brisbane, an anti-vaccination campaigner was booked to speak at the Woodford Folk Festival. A Facebook group which opposes her dangerous message sent messages of protest to the organising committee, festival sponsors and the government. They sent out media releases and got themselves into the newspapers and on to radio and television to explain why this woman shouldn’t be able to spread her dangerous misinformation and endanger the lives of children. Under enormous pressure, the festival organisers relented and  agreed to have a medical doctor and a professor of immunology join her on the stage to counter her anti-vaccination message.  This was all achieved by a small group of Facebook friends, working together.

But social networking can work on an even bigger scale. Last year in Egypt, 85,000 people signed up to a Facebook group planning a demonstration against that  country’s oppressive dictatorship. As a result of that campaign, Egypt’s government fell and the dictator, Hosni Mubarek was sent into exile. Individuals working together on Facebook changed the direction of politics in the Middle-East. Soon protests began in other countries, and other dictators began to fall.

Even as an individual, there’s so much you can do. Write an email to a politician about why you want a policy changed. Tell them your story to help them understand how their policies effect real people.

Sign a petition. How long does that take? A minute?

Last year I was invited to sign a petition which called on the government of Uganda not to proceed with an anti-homosexual bill which included the death penalty for gay people caught in homosexual acts.

I was horrified, but I thought, “What good is signing a petition going to do. It’s not going to change anything!”

But 1,685,515 people just like me signed that petition. In addition,  tens of thousands of people wrote to their governments asking them to put political pressure on Uganda.  Ultimately, the bill was shelved. We did that.  People power did that.

So, tonight, my message to the listeners of Joy’s Next Generation will be, “Don’t just sit there, get up and DO something … anything! You have way more power than you think!”

Find something you’re passionate about and become an activist for it. It doesn’t have to be gay rights. Just make sure whatever you get involved in is a force for good.

Build a good network.

Start talking back to politicians. They work for you.

Do what you’re good at. Don’t underestimate the power of popular culture. Write songs, start a blog or an online newspaper. Draw cartoons and put them up on your own blog if no-one else will publish them.  Make movies and put them on Youtube. Make art, design a logo, help design a website.

And if you’re not an artist, use whatever skills you have. Groups always need organisers, webmasters, IT experts, treasurers, people to help raise money, strategists, and just plain foot-soldiers.  If there’s a politician who supports the things you believe in, offer to hand out campaign flyers for them at the next election. What does it take? A morning’s work? And just a few extra votes can change an election result.

Join a group – any group!  Just adding your name to something you believe in means that you can be counted.  Politicians respond to numbers.  If a group can say, “We have 2000 (or 20,000 members)” that adds to their impact. And all you had to do was add your name!

The world needs changing and while we old hippies are still working hard, we need the next generation to join in.

Chrys Stevenson

Listen to Chrys on Next Generation tonight, Monday, 9 April on Joy 94.9 FM Generation Next 7pm to 8pm  with Emma O’Connor.  

Options for listening live online or from your i-phone are available here.  A podcast of the latest program usually goes up within 24 hours and can be found here.

The ‘facts’ seem pretty clear.  Penelope Dingle died of rectal cancer.  It’s very likely she’d still be alive today if she had taken the advice of her doctors and not a homeopath called Francine Scrayen.

You see, instead of accepting conventional treatment for her cancer, Mrs Dingle accepted Ms Scrayen’s reckless and medically inexpert assurance that she could cure it homeopathically.

And yet, now, Mrs Scrayen has seen fit to issue a legal threat against blogger ‘Dan Buzzard’ for doing little more than echoing the findings of the Coroner’s report into Mrs Dingle’s death.

In his report, the WA Coroner considers contentions that:

•  Mrs Scrayen was Mrs Dingle’s primary health advisor at the time of her death.
• Mrs Scrayen was aware that Penelope had been suffering rectal bleeding for approximately 12 months before she recommended a visit to a medical practitioner.
• Mrs Scrayan assured the deceased that she could cure rectal cancer using homeopathic methods alone and that the deceased would not require surgery, chemotherapy or radiation treatment.
• The homeopath repeatedly assured Mrs Dingle that the treatment was effective (curative) and encouraged her to persist with homeopathic treatment.
• She discouraged Mrs Dingle from taking pain relief, saying that the relevant medications would interfere with her monitoring of the disease and the effectiveness of the homeopathic treatment.
• Even when Mrs Dingle was in unspeakable pain as a result of a bowel obstruction, and her life was hanging in the balance, Ms Scrayen tried to dissuade her from having emergency surgery.

It was claimed, says the Coroner,

“that it was only as a result of a graphic description of the circumstances in which the deceased would die within hours given by the registrar at the hospital which caused the deceased to finally agree to surgery in spite of the advice of the homeopath. Unfortunately the cancer by that time spread to her liver, lungs and bones and treatment from time onwards was effectively palliative.”

In her own words, Mrs Scrayen assessed her understanding of medical issues as ‘relatively poor’.

The Coroner found that:

“the number and extent of [Mrs Scrayen’s] contacts [with Mrs Dingle] was grossly excessive for any legitimate professional interaction and provided evidence of an increasing unhealthy dependence of the deceased on Mrs Scrayen and her homeopathic remedies and treatments.”

He found that Mrs Scrayen was, indeed, purporting to treat Mrs Dingle for her rectal cancer.

He confirmed that Mrs Scrayen was well aware that Mrs Dingle had been bleeding from the rectum.

Mrs Scrayen’s own notes begin recording bleeding in October 2001 and it is not until November 2002 that she writes the mild comment ‘perhaps see a doctor’. There is no evidence that she pursued that vague thought with Mrs Dingle.

The Coroner believed that Mrs Scrayen’s claim that she had not told Mrs Dingle to avoid conventional treatment, “was entirely inconsistent with the account of the deceased as recorded extensively in her diaries”.  Personal correspondence written by Dingle to Scrayen confirms that Mrs Dingle was firmly of the opinion that Mrs Scrayen opposed conventional treatment.

Indeed, Mrs Dingle later wrote to Mrs Scrayen:

“You told me, however, that I must use the homeopathy alone, or you would be unable to prescribe your treatment accurately. You told me Dr Barnes’s protocol would interfere with the homeopathy, as would the intravenous Vitamin C, I was having. As would painkillers. Even our suggestions of other treatments such as massage, chiropractic, reflexology, herbalists and other protocols to run concurrently etc were rejected by you. You also prescribed the diet I was to follow.

I believed you and cancelled all my other treatments. Unlike you, the other practitioners never said they could cure me.
If you had said homeopathy might give me a cure and it might not, that it was impossible to tell, do you really think I would have risked your protocol? I would not have. I would have considered homeopathy as a support therapy only, as I had originally intended.”

Letter addressed to Mrs Scrayen dated 29 November 2004

The Coroner did not accept Mrs Scrayen’s claim that she was not treating Mrs Dingle for her rectal cancer. Damningly, he added that, he did not generally regard Mrs Scrayen to be ‘a witness of truth’.

Later in his report he repeats this charge:

“I make the observation that having observed Mrs Scrayen give evidence I did not consider her to be a witness of the truth in respect of these matters.”

Despite Mrs Scrayen’s denials, the Coroner accepted the testimonies of numerous witnesses that she had, indeed, tried to discourage Mrs Dingle from agreeing to potentially life-saving surgery.

The Coroner says:

“In my view Mrs Scrayen’s advising against surgery in these circumstances was an outrageous thing to do. Mrs Scrayen had minimal medical knowledge and was giving dangerous advice on matters in respect of which she had no expertise.”

The Coroner accepted that:

“Mrs Scrayen discouraged the deceased from receiving appropriate pain management and that she did tell the deceased that she was imagining much of her very real pain.”

In fact, the Coroner found that in some of her advice, “Mrs Scrayen was not [even] acting in accordance with the Australian Homeopathic Association Code of Professional Conduct”.

Reading the Coroner’s report, he does not appear to have accepted any of Mrs Scrayen’s half-baked denials that she was not responsible (at least in part) for the death of Mrs Dingle.

Recently, it has been announced that Mrs Dingle’s sister is taking civil action against Mrs Scrayen.

Mrs Scrayen and her legal attack dogs appear to have taken issue with two posts of Dan Buzzard’s:

Scammed to Death: How Francine Scrayen Killed Penelope Dingle

and

Homeopath Francine Scrayen in court for the death of ‘her patient’

As a result of these posts, Dan  has been threatened with defamation action if numerous statements made in his posts are not retracted.

Honestly, I have read the coroner’s report and Dan’s posts and as far as I can see every statement to which Mrs Scrayen’s lawyers refer in their letter is borne out by that report. If I were Mrs Scrayen I would not want to have the truth of these statements further tested in a court of law – I seriously doubt she would come out of it any better than she emerged from the Coroner’s report.

There is perhaps, one statement of Dan’s with which I’d take minor issue.  In one post Dan says that Mrs Dingle died “after giving up conventional treatment in favor of the witchcraft that Ms Scrayen sold”.  Obviously ‘witchcraft’ is meant metaphorically and I think it could be strongly argued that readers could reasonably be expected to interpret it in that way. My only comment is that perhaps Dan should have put scare quotes around the word “witchcraft”.

What Mrs Scrayen did to Mrs Dingle was despicable. According to the Coroner, she is a dishonest person of questionable character. Mrs Scrayen’s ego was so overblown that, despite admitting that her medical knowledge was ‘poor’ she took total control of Mrs Dingle when she was at her most vulnerable, treated her with nothing more than sugar pills and bad advice, and actively discouraged her from seeking pain relief or conventional medical care. As a direct result, Mrs Dingle died where, in the absence of Mrs Scrayen and her influence, she would almost certainly have lived.

I believe Mrs Scrayen must know that all of the statements made in Dan Buzzard’s blog posts are well-borne out by the evidence. Yet, she has chosen to compound her misdeeds by trying to hush him up with threats and intimidation.

There is far too much of this going around. We saw the same kind of shameful intimidation recently used by Melinda Tankard-Reist against blogger Jennifer Wilson in the #MTRSues scandal. The Burzynski clinic has used the same tactic to try to silence critics of its shonky cancer treatments.

When ‘The Despicable’ cry, “Defamation!” bloggers are increasingly choosing to stand their ground. Any one of us could be next, and it is imperative that we band together against these attempts to curb our freedom of speech.  Of course, we have a responsibility not to make false accusations against individuals, but in the cases of Dan Buzzard, Jennifer Wilson and Rhys Morgan it seems very clear that the legal threats are designed purely to scare them into silence. It is schoolyard bullying of the worst order.

The best defence is to invoke the ‘Streisand effect’ against this kind of vexatious bullying.

By all means check the facts yourself. But, if you are satisfied that the blogger has reported on an issue truthfully and responsibly and that a defamation threat has been invoked purely for the purpose of restricting their freedom of speech, then spread the word. Those who make vexatious defamation claims should be aware that it’s likely to have an effect quite opposite to what’s intended.

Lawyers might also like to consider that most of us bloggers are so poor we don’t have a pot to piss in, and that financially, suing us is rather pointless exercise.

Have a look at Dan’s posts and make up your own mind.  If you think he’s in the right and he’s being unjustly bullied, use some ‘people power’ and spread the word.

If it comes to legal action against, Dan, I for one will be putting my hand in my pocket to help get him the very best lawyer we can.

Chrys Stevenson

Some brilliant bloggers have suggested that Ms Scrayen and her lawyers should refer to the precedent of Arkell vs Pressdram 1971.   For the edification of my beloved readers, here is the lowdown on the case from Wikipedia.

“An unlikely piece of British legal history occurred in what is now referred to as the “case” of Arkell v. Pressdram (1971). The plaintiff was the subject of an article relating to illicit payments, and the magazine had ample evidence to back up the article. Arkell’s lawyers wrote a letter which concluded: “His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply.”

The magazine’s response was, in full: “We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell’s attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.”

In the years following, the magazine would refer to this exchange as a euphemism for a blunt and coarse dismissal: for example, “We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram”. As with “tired and emotional” this usage has spread beyond the magazine.“

You learn something new every day, don’t you?

Following my speech at DWD NSW I felt I really had to do more to ‘get the message out’.

End of life law reform is such an important issue, supported by an overwhelming majority of Australians. So, it’s astounding that people aren’t joining their local Dying with Dignity organisations in droves and throwing money at the cause.  Few things are more important in life than a peaceful and dignified death.

Of course, we’re bombarded with VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES all the time and although we might give ‘lip service’ support, it’s only on the odd one or two that we’re likely to write a letter to a politician, join in a street march, or put our hands in our pocket to help lobby for change.

Ultimately, dying is going to effect every single one of us – gay or straight, religious or atheist, male or female, Liberal, Labor or Green.  There are so many things that divide us, but death is the one thing that should unite us.

So, why aren’t more people actively supporting the DWD groups in their states?  I think, maybe, it’s because they just haven’t thought about it.

In the week prior to my recent speech to Dying with Dignity in Sydney, I’d seen Neil Francis of Your Last Right and my dear friend, Dr Jim McDonald (then the Greens Candidate for Noosa) give compelling speeches in favour of voluntary euthanasia at DWD Maroochydore. Then, when I was on the plane, flying to Sydney, I had a very emotional chat with the lady sitting next to me.

I felt I’d been privileged to hear some stories that needed to be told – and I’d heard a ‘cry for help’ from DWD NSW that needed to be answered.

So, I sat down on my return and wrote an article which, I’m delighted to say, has been published today on The Punch.

Take Control of Your Own Death, Before It’s Too Late

What  this issue needs is circulation. So I’d like to ask that you share this link with your own networks and make the point that joining your local DWD  (SAVES in South Australia, WAVES in Western Australia) is a ridiculously small investment in your end of life choices.

Please, also feel free to comment on the article on The Punch.  There are sure to be many myths and a truck-load of misinformation trotted out to counter the article. Have your say!

If you’re interested in joining your local DWD lobby group, there’s a comprehensive list here.

Chrys Stevenson

My friend Lucas is having a tough time. Like many of us in our ‘middle years’ he finds himself ‘going through the motions’ of life and wondering what the hell it’s all about.  You go to work, pay the bills, pick up the kids from school, do the shopping, do the housework, watch television, go to bed – and then the next day you wake up and it starts all over again.

Not all of us can be (or want to be) someone who has demonstrably ‘changed the world’. But too often, we get to thinking that just living our lives isn’t enough. We think that, for our lives to be of any value, we should achieve something earth-shattering – and instead, we’re stuck in the frozen food aisle at Woolies wondering whether there’s enough in the bank to cover this week’s shopping.  It’s very easy to feel that, in comparison to some, we are leading very small lives; lives, perhaps, that are just not worth very much.

My brother died of a brain tumour a couple of years ago. He was nine years older than me, but I was always the ‘big sister’ and he was my ‘little brother’. Like Lucas, he struggled with his self-worth. He wanted to be rich – and, oh,  there were so many network marketing scams just waiting to exploit his ambitions. He wanted to invent something enormous. He had visions of grand engineering and architectural and maritime schemes that would revolutionise the way we live. He wanted to save the world. The fact that he didn’t really achieve any of these things made him, at times, angry, depressed, bewildered and sad.

When he looked in the mirror he didn’t see the same person I saw. I saw someone whose life was a success, he saw a failure.

I looked at him in comparison to me. I was single, childless and penniless. He had achieved everything I hadn’t.

Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t all doom and gloom. I had a lovely relationship with my brother. He was, for the most part, happy and funny and loving and generous and he did appreciate his great good fortune in having a long and successful marriage, great kids and grand-kids, a loving family, a nice home and financial security.  He just wanted more.

The problem was (at least as I saw it) that wanting more compromised his ability to fully rejoice in what he already had. He was pining for ‘success‘, and failing to realise he already had far more real success than 99.99 per cent of the world’s population.

My brother didn’t waste his life, but he often felt as if he had. I’m trying to think how to put this. Perhaps it’s like being a hypochondriac. Imagine having all the advantages of good health, but never being able to fully enjoy it because you are constantly concerned that you’re really a physical wreck. Or perhaps it’s like having the kind of body dysmorphia that leads one to see their perfectly healthy sized body as morbidly obese.

When my brother died, I had just one overriding thought; that I wanted to honestly address his life-long concern that his life had not been a success. I’d never really managed to convince him of that, but I hoped I could use his death to to make those he left behind really think about the true ‘meaning of life. And no, Lucas,  it’s not 42; although it’s almost that simple.

Have you ever really listened to what people talk about at funerals?

When you’re lying in your coffin with your friends and family gathered to say their last goodbyes, do you really think someone’s going to pull out your bank statement and say, “Ah, Joe, what a fine fellow. Look, $2.5 million in the bank and another $3 million in shares!”

The fact is, when you die, the people who love you – the ones who really matter – aren’t going to give a rats arse about how much money you made or your brilliant career achievements. They’re going to talk about the most mundane and pedestrian of things – because they’re the things that matter.

“Remember the time he ….”

“Wasn’t the funny the day we ….”

“I loved how he always ….”

Ultimately, when your time is up, it turns out that what was important wasn’t the world-changing widget you invented, but the time you lost your boardies in the swimming pool at Aunty Maud’s 70th birthday party and had everyone in hysterics.  Like it or not, that’s the story that’s going to bring you immortality – and that’s a good thing!

When you go, when everything is stripped back to bare bones,  if you’ve lived a successful life your family is simply going to say: “We loved him, and he made us laugh.”

It’s taken me a while to be ready to do this, but I think now is the time. For Lucas, here is the eulogy I wrote for my brother.

To make this public has been a bit of a difficult decision. I feel honour-bound to say that as a devout Christian, my brother would not approve of this blog or the causes I support on it. I was always very cranky when he tried to drag me into his ‘schemes’ and I want to be careful not to draw him into mine.

So, to draw a respectful ‘distance’ between him and my activism, and to protect the privacy of his family I’ve removed identifying names from the eulogy.  Otherwise, it’s pretty much as it was spoken at his funeral.

Maybe it will help my dear friend Lucas, or maybe someone else, realise that what changes the world is not grand schemes and achievements, but little people, just like us, living and loving and learning and, most importantly, laughing together.

The greatest legacy that anyone can leave is joy.

Neither money, nor great works, nor brilliant inventions are a proper measure of a person’s worth.

When we come to the end of our lives, our value will be measured, not by our professional or material success, but by the love and the laughter we brought to the world.

Those are gifts which are not extinguished by death.

Joy is eternal. When a truly fine human being dies, they live on in the smiles and laughter their memory brings to all who knew them.

By this measure, my brother, was a truly fine human being .

My brother was a seeker.  He was always  seeking “success” and I think he always felt it eluded him.  Our mother summed it up in a letter she wrote to him some years ago:

“My tender, loving, son.  I like you because you are so vulnerable.  You care for the whole human race and find it difficult to accept there are those who are less than perfect.

Like your dad, you love to be loved and you return that love a thousand-fold.  I see the joy and pride your family brings to you and I know you are deeply devoted to them.

Although you have two married sons, to me, you are still my ‘little one’ who needs all the love and comfort life can bring.

You struggle so hard to find what you term ‘success’, but don’t realize you have gained this already as a wonderful, caring human being.”

I know his family will agree that, for all his seeking, my brother already had all the success that matters:

A loving wife whose devotion and care for him through some very difficult times, went far beyond the call of duty.

Two fine sons who, following his example, are devoted to their wives and children.

Two beautiful grandchildren, who will grow up with their own wonderful memories of times spent with Grandad.

And parents and siblings who adored him.

That kind of success is precious and rare.  And the legacy of my brother’s success is the love and laughter which his memory brings to us.

Mum smiles when she remembers him as a little boy.

She says, “He loved to help me at home and would regularly clean out the kitchen cupboards.  The trouble was, he was so meticulous, it would take most of the day.  After about half an hour he would say, “Cup of tea, Mummy?” and we’d sit and have our tea and cake and rest a while.

She also smiles tenderly when she remembers how sensitive he was.  She says, “I would suddenly realize things were too quiet and I’d think, “Where is he?”  After a hunt, I’d find him fast asleep rolled up in the mosquito net at the back of his bed.”

Mum says, “Obviously I’d said something to upset him and he’d hidden away to ‘lick his wounds’.  But a cuddle and a kiss soon fixed everything.”

Mum also recalls that, after my brother was posted to Western Australia for his navy training, she received a telegram saying:

“Starving!  Please send bread pudding!” (a family favourite).

She made the pudding and wrapped it up but she says, “When I paid the postage, I realized it would nearly have been cheaper to fly over with it myself than to pay the cost of sending a 4 kilo pudding by airmail from AirlieBeach to Western Australia!”

Perhaps the memory which most encapsulates my brother’s humour, endearing personality and ability to deal with adversity is the story of the haircut.

Feeling the heat in Darwin, my 14 year old brother took himself off to the barber and asked for a trim.  The villainous barber spun the chair around from the mirrors and gave him a crew-cut.  He was horrified when he saw himself in the mirror.  He slunk home, donned a baseball cap and curled up on the sofa in a fetal position, refusing to speak to anyone.

After a while, though, he started to see the funny side of it and, with the twinkle back in his eye, he removed his cap, pulled a face like a monkey, let his arms hang loose, and began loping around the living room, chattering and shrieking like a chimpanzee.  Poor thing! He received monkey themed birthday cards for the rest of his life.  His boys even bought him a pair of gorilla  slippers with eyes that lit up when he walked – and he wore them!

As a little girl, my brother was always by my side.  In Darwin, he famously took me out for a Sunday walk in my very best dress.  When we had not returned after an hour or two, Mum and Dad went looking for us – and found us picking over rubbish, looking for treasures,  at the local tip.

When he was diagnosed with brain cancer his strength and humour helped us all cope.  I remember him showing us a sketch that his doctor had done to show him where the tumour was in relation to his brain.  There had been some additions to the sketch, though – his oldest son had got hold of it, added ears and a tail and transformed it into a drawing of a mouse.  He thought that was hilarious.

Just last year, he arrived at our Christmas-in-winter celebration with a fake tattoo on his head, drawn by his son, featuring a train-track inked over his surgical scar, complete with a jaunty train and the words, Polar Express.

During my last conversation with my brother, we talked about all the silly things we’d done together and he said, “We were always the best of friends.”

He is gone now, but what is important will never change.  I will still love him, and he will still make me laugh.  That is his legacy.

I hope when I go – and when you go – love and laughter will be the gifts we leave behind.  And what’s more, to  his children and grand-children – let your memories of him remind you of the real meaning of life, and live your lives in pursuit of what is really important.  When you die, if people talk about how much love and joy you brought to their lives, you have done your job.  You, like him, will have left the world a better place, and your life, like his, will have been a success.

 Chrys Stevenson

This week, bishops from the Victorian Catholic Church distributed 80,000 copies of a pastoral letter, condemning same-sex marriage. I have never read such a load of bigoted, small-minded, passive-aggressive drivel in all my life.

The letter reveals the Catholic Church in all its hatefulness, pettiness, out-dated, wrong-headed, unsupported thinking and purely evil desire to control the lives, not only of its followers, but all of us.

Who the hell are these bishops that they think they have a right to demand our government continue to discriminate against a group of Australians who desire nothing more than to be able to marry the person they love in a civil ceremony?

With this letter, the Victorian bishops have brought their church even further into disrepute. Australian Catholics should be ashamed to be associated with this cabal of pre-historic homophobes.

The smiling, paternalistic – yes, even smarmy – tone of the letter just makes its contents more vomitous.

Bishops, representing a church which demands the right to numerous exemptions from Australia’s discrimination (and tax!) laws – including the right only to appoint male priests –  have the hide to align themselves with the  ‘great value on human rights and protecting others from unjust discrimination’ which exemplify our Australian democracy. They do not consider that, in a democracy, every citizen is (or should be) considered equal.

The bishops then remind us that we are all  disgusting sinners who God, inexplicably, loves very much. This reveals the psychologically twisted position from which these people view their fellow human beings; the demeaning dogma which degrades every person to the role of ‘sinner’, therefore elevating the church (and its bishops) to the exalted position of the glorious redeemeers of humanity. It’s transparently about psychological mind-games, designed explicitly to give power to the church and make us low, filthy sinners feel grateful for their obscene wealth and power. Well, I just won’t play – and neither should you.

The bishops go on to assure us that their homophobic, discriminatory stance against gay marriage comes from a place of compassion and justice. My fat fanny, it does! It comes, very clearly, from a position of self-entitlement, delusion and a deep-seated hatred of those who express their sexuality in a way that threatens the moral authority of the church.

In her recent book, Dishonest to God: on keeping religion out of politics, Baroness Mary Warnock, a member of the British House of Lords rails against the tradition which presupposes the clergy has some kind of ‘moral expertise’ to which politicians should defer.  It’s ‘smoke and mirrors’, and snake-oil chicanery on a Wizard of Ozian scale.

The bishops believe that proponents of same-sex marriage seek to ‘alter the very nature of the human person’. No, we are seeking to accept the very nature of these human persons. We are seeking to treat them with love and compassion and give them the equality and justice they have so long been denied.

“We are all blessed by God with the gift of our sexuality,” the bishops intone. ” The design itself comes from the Creator of Life. We all have a responsibility to follow that design.”

Who says? Throughout human history there have been same-sex attracted people – many, many of them in the Catholic priesthood. If God so despises this small design modification, why does he allow it? What kind of sadist ‘designs’ men and women and then sets some up some who, at the deepest level of their being, are drawn to members of the same-sex – and then directs his church to vilify and discriminate against them? To paraphrase Stendahl, the only excuse for such a despicable God is that he does not exist.

The bishops eagerly share with us their ‘church’s’ concept of marriage. It is, of course, grossly inaccurate. It is reminiscent of those who look back to the halcyon days of the 1950s and 60s, remembering only the ‘Leave it to Beaver’ idealised world of the sitcom while ignoring the many social and political injustices that blighted that period of Western history.  Just so, the bishops completely ignore the history of marriage as a misogynistic property exchange of women; human cattle who were considered no better than chattels for the purpose of producing heirs. The bishops, of course, are entitled to their fairytales; but they are not entitled to  impose them on the rest of us.

The idea that marriage is (or ever was) about religion is laughable. It was ever about property, and power, and possession and lust, and keeping the wealth safe within kinship groups. Just like the church which seeks so desperately to keep control of it, marriage was always more about money than religion.

In modern day Australia, marriage has long since been divorced from religion. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, civil marriages have outnumbered religious ceremonies since 1999. Although marriage is increasingly popular in Australia, church weddings are increasingly unpopular.

The Bishops may reflect on why the vast majority of Australians now choose not to sanctify their union in a church. Could it be – let’s take a wild stab here – that most Australians don’t believe getting married has anything to do with God, or the church, or a bunch of outdated, narrow-minded, purse-lipped bigots in frocks? Can it be that most couples would prefer their marriage to be about love, and don’t want it tainted by the small-minded, petty hatred that emanates daily from the churches?

The bishops believe that marriage is all about breeding. Yet, Alan Hayes, of the Australian Institute of Family Studies confirms that, in the last 30 years there has been ‘nothing short of a revolution’ in the institutions of marriage and family with a ‘surge’ of babies (more than a third) born outside of wedlock in 2008. In America, the figure is 40 per cent. Nearly 80 per cent of Australians who get married have lived together first – and often had their children prior to the wedding.

This is particularly prevalent in Gen Y, says Rebecca Huntley, from Ipsos Mackay Research. Home-ownership and kids come first. The wedding comes later.

“For their parents’ generation a wedding was the licence to buy a house and have the children.”

For Gen Y, it’s the opposite and a wedding has no religious significance whatsoever – it’s a big party with 150 friends.

What the Bishops fail to fathom is that they have already lost control of marriage. The horse has bolted. Modern marriage has nothing – nothing – to do with their outdated preconceptions.  They may as well chase moonbeams.

“Children are best nurtured by a mother and father,” say the bishops – as if that simple statement definitively proves their argument.

I learned a new word this week – ipsedixitism. Ipsedixitism is a dogmatic statement which assumes that no supporting evidence is needed.  It assumes that the assertion will be taken ‘on faith’.  It doesn’t mean a statement is true, it means the propagandist assumes that if they say it, nobody will bother checking the evidence. But, not being under the thumb of the Catholic bishops,  I have checked the evidence and it shows that children do best in stable, peaceful families among people who love and nurture them. There is no credible evidence that children ‘do best’ when nurtured by a mother and a father. In fact the scholarship shows that children brought up by same-sex couples do every bit as well as children raised by heterosexual couples.  There is one quite notable difference though:  children raised by same-sex couples tend to be more tolerant of difference.  Perhaps the Catholic Church would be a respected and thriving institution today if more of its leaders had been raised by gay couples.

“Gay marriage’ is impossible,” say the bishops.

Well, no – it’s very possible. It’s a bit like saying gay sex is wrong because the ‘bits’ don’t fit together.  In fact, gay couples seem to get their ‘bits’ to fit together very well!

Gay marriage is now as inevitable as civil rights and Aboriginal citizenship were in the 1960s.  Why? Because there are more good, kind, tolerant, compassionate, loving, intelligent and reasonable people in the world than there are Catholic bishops. And the bishops can stick their fingers in their ears and hold their collective breaths until their heads explode. It’s not going to change the fact that gay marriage is going to happen – eventually – whether they like it or not. They may as well try to stand in front of a freight train. In fact, that idea is increasingly appealing.

Perhaps the bishops can take some advice from Frank Zappa:  “Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be.”

The bishops deny that ‘discrimination against other’s human rights’ is implicit in their edict – which transparently attempts to do exactly that.

“Nor does it mean we fail to understand the complex nature of human sexual identity and desire,” they insist, while totally ignoring every piece of credible research which confirms that sexual identity is neither chosen nor changeable.

“It implies no lack of respect for people who identify as ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’.”

The hell it doesn’t. The whole tone of the letter is condescending, belittling and dehumanising. Then, then, they have the hubris to follow with a quote which hearkens back to the old chestnut, “I’m not homophobic – some of my best friends are gay.”

Truly, at that point I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or just stick my fingers down my throat for a damn good purging.

The bishops want us to think they’re saving the world: “our concern is for the future of our whole society.”

Well, bishops, given the support for same-sex marriage may I politely suggest that most of society is asking you to ‘sod off’.

The only ‘ramifications’ of same-sex marriage is that the church will be seen to be more and more hateful, discriminatory and out of date that it ever was. And, I’d venture to say, the decline and fall of the Holy Roman Church could only improve society. The Church is a rotting, hateful, diseased and corrupt carcass that should have been put out of its misery and buried in Gehenna years ago.

The Catholic Church has ruined far more lives than same-sex marriage ever will.  It has tortured, it has robbed, it has killed and murdered, and it has wrought untold psychological damage upon its adherents. It has taken children (both indigenous and causasian) from their mothers.  It has cruelly imposed life-long celibacy upon naive young men entering the priesthood. For many, this has locked them into sexual immaturity and led to the hebephilia which results in the widespread sexual abuse of so many innocent children.  What’s more, this institution which now seeks to preach the immorality of homosexuality, has been complicit in covering up these abuses, protecting the perpetrators and manipulating its finances to ensure the Church does not have to pay fair compensation.

The Catholic Church has preached against condom use in AIDS-torn countries – imposing untold suffering and death upon millions. It has ruled against contraception, condemning Catholic women in developing nations to risk their lives and financial stability by having large families they have no hope of supporting in order to conform with church teaching.

And now the bishops of this ghastly institution have the unmitigated gall, the heart-stopping hypocrisy,  to suggest that same-sex marriage will have negative social consequences!

“Hypocrite! First take the beam out of thine own eye, and then you will see clearly how to take the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

The bishops conclude their homophobic rant by suggesting that, “Catholics, as responsible citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia, have a duty to remind their political representatives that much is at stake for the common good in this debate.”

I would suggest that, as responsible citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia, Catholics have a responsibility to tell their bishops to ‘shut the fuck up’.

Chrys Stevenson

Post script:  I will agree with the bishops on one point.  It is important that decent, loving, fair-thinking Australians complete the on-line survey set up by the Federal Government at their website: www.aph.gov.au/marriage. The closing date for responses is Friday, 20 April 2012.

The bishops helpfully explain:   “The survey contains three statements with which you can agree or disagree. It then asks if you support the proposed changes to the two separate Bills, to which you answer yes or no. If you choose you can simply answer these few questions in less than one minute. The survey also provides space (maximum of 250 words) for you to explain your views.”

If you have not yet completed this survey, please, for the sake of human decency, take a moment to do so.

Related Posts

Breaking News:  Church leaders back calls for same-sex marriage bills

“TWENTY faith leaders have signed a letter urging people to declare their support for same sex marriage to two federal parliamentary inquiries on the issue.

The move follows six Victorian Catholic bishops writing to their parishioners to tell them allowing gay couples to marry would be a ”grave mistake” and would undermine the institution of marriage.”

You may also like to read the following blog posts.

Mike Stuchbery: The Catholic Same-Sex Marriage Letter Decoded

Bruce Llama: Pastoral Letter from Australian Catholic Bishops

Russell Blackford: Chrys Stevenson flays a pastoral letter from Catholic bishops

And from my dear friends Michael Barnett and Gregory Storer:

Ipsedixitism

As so many have taken a liking to this unusual word, I feel honour bound to reveal the source of my inspiration. While researching my recent speech for Dying with Dignity NSW, I found it an a scholarly work on euthanasia law in Europe, in which John Griffiths, a professor of sociology of law, vents his frustration at the “[i]mprecision, exaggeration, suggestion and innuendo, misinterpretation and misrepresentation, ideological ipsedixitism, and downright lying and slander (not to speak of bad manners) …” typical of the [religious] arguments against voluntary euthanasia. It’s a damning assessment, especially when the vast majority of the ‘ipsedixitists’ speak from a position of religious faith.

I’m very honoured to announce that I will be the guest speaker at Dying with Dignity’s NSW AGM and Conference to be held from 2pm – 4pm on Saturday, 24 March at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts at 280 Pitt Street Sydney.

The topic of my speech is:  “The Debate on Assisted Dying: Distortion, Misinformation and the Influence of the Religious Lobby” . However, I will not be focusing solely on voluntary euthanasia. I’ll also be talking about dominionism and the impact of religious propaganda on a range of socially progressive issues, including VE, gay rights, women’s reproductive issues and more.

My argument is that campaigners for these issues are fighting discrete battles within a larger ‘war’ – an international war against secular government and policies. The organisation, resources, international networking and sheer rat cunning of the religious right – together with the astonishing volume of propaganda they produce – makes it difficult for any single group to combat their onslaught.

In my speech I will suggest that it’s time for greater interaction between socially progressive activists (whether Christian or secular) to expose this campaign of disinformation from the religious right, shame those who uncritically disseminate such propaganda, and demand that politicians be far less credible in accepting ‘evidence’ from religiously biased sources.

My speech is not ‘anti-Christian’. Indeed, the majority of Australian Christians are at odds with religious bureaucracies in supporting socially progressive issues. Christians should, of course, have a voice in the public square and should, of course, have the right to hold a range of views on social issues. My contention is simply that they have the right to base their views on reliable information and that religious lobbyists have a public and ethical responsibility not to weight their arsenals with pseudo-science, political spin, urban myths, anecdotal ‘evidence’ and other scare-mongering strategies. In doing so, they not only harm the causes they oppose, but deceive their own followers and do untold damage to the reputation of the religion they purport to represent.

Of particular concern are organisations which conceal their religious bias behind secular sounding ‘fronts’ and individuals who claim academic neutrality but whose work is clearly methodologically flawed and ideologically biased.

My speech will run for about 40 minutes with question time afterwards.

If you’re in or near Sydney, please come along. I’d love the opportunity to meet as many of my readers as possible.

If you have your own contact networks, please consider spreading the word – we’d love a packed house and voluntary euthanasia/assisted dying is such an important subject for all Australians.

Entry to the event is free and afternoon tea will be served.  I will, of course, be mingling after the event and might even be persuaded to adjourn to a nearby pub!

There’s more information on this flyer or you can contact DWD NSW here.

Chrys Stevenson

Dr Jim McDonald, Greens candidate for Noosa in the forthcoming Queensland state election says he believes that people who are living with a terminal illness should be able to make informed choices between palliative care and ending their life with dignity. If elected, Dr McDonald says he will support legislation to that effect.

Dr McDonald and Neil Francis, Chairman and CEO of Your Last Right will be speaking in support of assisted dying at Dying with Dignity Maroochydore (Qld) on Wednesday, 21 March at 2pm. DWD Maroochydore meets in the CWA rooms directly opposite the Maroochy RSL. For more information contact June or Alistair Henderson on 0402 989 433 or at vessq at bigpond dot com.

Anna Bligh and deputy premier, Andrew Fraser were clever enough to decline the Australian Christian Lobby’s invitation to attend a pre-election political forum this week. But rookie would-be premier, Campbell Newman, waded in where angels fear to tread.

By all accounts it was a huge night with a sell-out crowd of 60 – yes, six-oh –  people knocking down the doors to hear how many pork-barrels Newman would roll out to purchase the Christian vote.

And Can-Do Campbell did his best to please the tens of Christian Lobby supporters who flocked to the forum .  Yes, it seems, he is a believer. He has ‘faith’.  Not enough, mind you, to bother going to church. But, says he, struggling to find a point of common-ground with the happy-clappers, he says grace before every meal. It’s a tenous connection with an evangelical crowd of Christian zealots, but desperate times, apparently, call for desperate measures.

Despite being on record as a supporter of same-sex marriage, Campbell Newman happily put aside what he knows to be right in the cause of political pragmatism. If it’s possible, he said, his party will rescind the civil unions legislation passed by the Queensland Parliament late last year.  That’s tantamount to someone who publicly supported Civil Rights saying he’ll reinstate segregation if it’ll buy him a few redneck votes.

What are we to think of a man whose ethics are so shallow he’s willing to cast them aside to win the leadership of a conservative party and the backing of a fringe group of unrepresentative Christian extremists?

What are we to think of a man who’ll cast a blind eye to the homophobia, Islamaphobia, and despicable divisiveness of this coven of Christian kooks to indulge their aspirations to political influence?

And what does it say about Newman’s judgement that he’ll indulge the wowserish pretensions of 60 evangelicals while alienating thousands of Australians who support a secular government untainted by the tea-party politics that is rapidly destroying America?

Add into this mix, the man most likely to be appointed Education Minister in a Newman-led government – Scripture Union Queensland boss, Tim Mander.  Mander, who has gleefully led the invasion of evangelical chaplains into Queensland’s secular state schools, must be salivating at the chance of co-opting the resources of Queensland Education into converting all those unchurched Queensland kids.

Will Newman stop to consider that Mander’s agenda is completely at odds with a secular education system? Or will he further pander to the Christian right by appointing Mander to the Education Ministry? I’d be willing to lay bets he will – and to hell with those parents who want a secular education for their kids.

Newman increasingly reminds me of  Woody Allan’s Zelig – a nothing man who’ll morph into anything to gain approval. He seems to have no convictions of his own – no ethical stances that aren’t on sale for votes.

Those who are planning to vote for Newman would do well to consider what he stands for. He stands for same-sex marriage – but will cast that commitment to equality aside for votes and the approval of his party.  He stands for Christianity – but can’t be bothered going to church.  He’s not a wowser, but will lend credibility to a group of whingeing wowsers if he thinks it might score him some brownie points with the religious right.  A jellyfish has more principles than this man.

I’m no great fan of Anna Bligh. She’s also thrown secular education to the wolves and lied point-blank to Queenslanders by swearing that our education system is secular while knowing full-well the word was expunged from the Queensland Education Act in 1910. In all her years in power, Bligh has done nothing to rectify this.  What’s more, former Education Minister, Geoff Wilson, stated in writing that the Queensland Labor government had no intention of reinstating the word ‘secular’ to the act – effectively denying our kids the secular education system intended by our founding fathers.

So, my animosity towards Newman is not driven by any love of the Labor party.  I like to think of myself as an unaligned equal opportunity ranter.  Bligh has been no friend to secular education, but Zelig Newman and his happy-clapping tea party of ministerial missionaries threaten to turn the clock back in Queensland so far you’ll think you’re living in the dark ages.

Can you really respect someone who so readily casts aside his personal principles for political point-scoring? Can you really cast a ballot for someone who’ll cozy up to the group that exploited ANZAC day and our war veterans to hammer home their divisive homophobic, Islamaphobic propaganda?

Like me, you may not be particularly enamoured of Bligh, but think very carefully before putting Queensland’s fate in Newman’s hands. As Lord Mayor, he may have been ‘Can Do Campbell’ but as premier, I predict he’ll be “Nowhere Man Newman”.

Chrys Stevenson

Let me begin by stating my unequivocal support for Aboriginal rights, equality, reconciliation, and the improvement of health, welfare, education, work and leisure opportunities for Indigenous people.

I’ve been to Canberra several times and I’ve seen the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.  I think it’s an important reminder of how bad things used to be, and how much has yet to be done.

Is the Tent Embassy an untidy blot on the carefully manicured Canberra landscape? Yes, indeed. But our treatment and neglect of Indigenous Australians is a far more untidy blot on the carefully manicured historical landscape of this country.  The Tent Embassy is an important symbol of that.

When we have taken so much from the traditional owners of this country, I think it is petty and churlish to deny them the right to their embassy.  If politicians want the embassy dismantled, they should work harder (and smarter)  to fix the problems it is there to remind them of!

That said, I am sickened and appalled at what appears to have been an attempt by some Aboriginal activists and their cohorts to bully and frighten Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday.  Apparently,  some intemperate remarks from Tony Abbott, earlier in the day,  caused anger.  As a result, a group of protestors decided to take their grievances to a restaurant where the politicians were dining.  According to news reports, a group of approximately 200 angry agitators gathered outside the restaurant. Some banged on the glass sides of the restaurant building in sufficient numbers and with sufficient force to raise security concerns. Some activists chased the politicians’ car down the road, banging on its roof and bonnet while others threw plastic water bottles at the vehicle.  Whether there was ‘actual’ violence is a moot point – a climate conducive to violence was created by the intimidatory and provocative action of trying to accost the Opposition Leader, using a disorganised protest at a public venue. I stand firm in condemning this.

I am no fan of Tony Abbott and I find his remarks about the Aboriginal Tent Embassy ill-timed, ill-considered and insensitive. I am also no fan of Julia Gillard or her party who appear to have given little but lip-service to Indigenous issues.  Saying “sorry” was a grand and necessary gesture, but it was not followed with meaningful, practical action.

However, despite my strong sentiments in favour of the Indigenous antagonists in this melee, I simply cannot sit silent and implicitly support their actions yesterday.  To be blunt, storming a restaurant, threatening the property of those not even involved in the dispute, frightening patrons who very likely support your cause, trying to make your point through physical intimidation and belligerent behaviour, and causing the Prime Minister of this country to cower in fear as she is rushed through a street brawl is thuggery pure and simple. I will not condone it with my silence.

Indigenous Australians have every reason to be angry. They have every reason to defend their embassy. But this is Australia and, whatever our history, whatever the mistakes of the past, here, today, we do not fight political battles with physical violence.  I don’t care whether you’re black or white. I don’t care what your grievance is.  This is not how we do things in this country and unless those of us who support social equity, progress and human rights stand up and condemn this action, we are a part of the problem.

I do not ever want to see an Australian Prime Minister (or any other person), male or female, having to be dragged from a building in fear again.  I don’t care what your cause may be; this is not the way to address it. No matter how angry you are, no matter how provoked you feel you have been, you do your cause no favours by resorting to mob violence (and, yes, the threat of violence is still violence in my book).

I live by the maxim:

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

What happened yesterday was good people with a good cause doing evil.  And I will not stay silent.

Chrys Stevenson

Gillard, Abbott escorted under guard amid Aboriginal Tent Embassy protest, The Australian

See also Australia Day by Mike Stuchbery, the sentiments of which I heartily endorse  – 

Extract:  “You can sit me down and discuss radical means of action. You can talk to me all you want about not falling into line with the hegemony, that you’re not there to look good for the cameras.

Fact is, you’re in Canberra. It’s Australia Day. The focus, whether you like it or not, is on you. Any aggro and there will be newsvans down there within minutes to provide fodder for a fortnight’s frenzied headlines.

Use your bloody heads, as well as your hearts.”

I’ve used this technique before, but I think Margaret Court’s latest rant on homosexuals and same-sex marriage in today’s Herald-Sun warrants another reality check.

Sometimes a different ‘spin’ on an argument helps us recognise just how cruel, outdated, hateful, ignorant and just plan batshit crazy it is.

In the following article, based on Margaret Court’s opinion piece in the Herald-Sun, the words highlighted in red are mine, and not Margaret Court’s.

I have used the basic structure and logic of Court’s  article, not to argue against homosexuals and same-sex marriage (as she does in the original) but, in this case, to argue in favour of treating mental illness with exorcisms (as carried out by Jesus).  If this seems a rather bizarre idea, remember that exorcisms are still performed today and that, not so long ago, Hillsong-aligned Mercy Ministries was exposed for conducting exorcisms on young, vulnerable girls admitted to their program with the promise of comprehensive medical and psychological support for depression and eating disorders.

The Herald-Sun should be ashamed for printing this disgusting drivel from Mrs Court.  Mrs Court has every right to her obscene opinions, but the Herald-Sun has no more obligation to give her a platform for her views than some raving racist who wants to tell the world that Indigenous Australians are biologically inferior to caucasians, or that all Muslims are terrorists.  By giving Mrs Court a forum, the Herald-Sun is complicit in adding to an anti-gay culture which results in unacceptably high rates of youth suicide, self-abuse, self-harm, psychological distress, alcoholism and drug abuse.  They should be ashamed.

If you’re as disgusted as I am, contact the Herald Sun and direct your remarks to the editor:

Phone: (03) 9292 1226
Fax: (03) 9292 2112
Email: news@heraldsun.com.au

An argument in favour of exorcisms ‘in the spirit’ of Margaret Court

Court’s original argument against homosexuals and same-sex marriage is here.

NB: This is a satirical re-write of an article by Margaret Court. Words marked in red are mine.

Matthew 17:14-18: “There came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed…And Jesus rebuked the devil “

WE live in a blessed nation but Australia is on a steep moral decline.

Everywhere you look we are making excuses for a sliding lifestyle and more people are blind to it than ever before.

Our Constitution is based on biblical principles and our nation is great because of it.

We are a country with a moral fabric and families … But increasingly our kids are being taught that anything goes. Today, more and more Australians are afflicted with mental illness, and, as the Bible tells us, this is not due to chemical imbalances in the brain, or psychological trauma, but demon possession.

As a society we are losing touch with fundamental Christian values, as our leaders lean towards an agenda of political correctness, spreading the myth that mental illness is something other than a punishment for one’s sins or spiritual weakness.

We live in a world of moral values. Even those without faith know what is right and what is wrong. We all have a conscience and so many people get trapped in the pattern of saying something is right when deep down they know it isn’t.  Deep down mentally ill people know they are sinners and that God has inflicted this as punishment upon them.  Effectively, they have chosen mental illness, and by submitting to an exorcism they could choose to be free of this affliction.

… Looking back, you can see that there has been a steep decline, especially when it comes to the issue of mental health. There is so much scripture within the Bible that points to the cause of mental health problems.

Let me be clear. I believe that a person’s mental health status is a choice. In the Bible it says that mental health issues are inflicted as punishment for sin. It is not something you are born with, or something which occurs because of physiological or psychological causes. Mental illness is caused by sin or spiritual weakness; by demon possession.

Do not be wise in your own eyes; 
   fear the LORD and shun evil. 
This will bring health to your body 
   and nourishment to your bones.

– Proverbs 3:7-8

My concern is that we are advocating to young people that it is OK to suffer from mental illness; that it’s not their fault and they shouldn’t be stigmatised. But I truly believe if you are told being mentally ill is not your fault, it will  impact your life and you will never see the need for repentance. If somebody is told mental illness can be helped by drugs and cognitive therapy, they may start to believe it. Acceptance is ultimately unkind.

We are living in a society that takes the easy way out. Drugs and cognitive therapy, are the soft option; only exorcism can drive the demons from your soul!

Exorcisms are traumatic. But people suffering from mental illnesses need exorcisms – and I think we are losing sight of this.

We are led by politicians and mental health ‘experts’ who lie and spread deceit. They no longer accept the Bible as the last word on health issues and that affects us all, as a nation. Lies that demons don’t exist, and don’t cause illness,  just don’t seem to matter much any more.

There is so much deception in the world and it’s getting worse by the minute. The Gospel of John speaks of a mad man being possessed by demons so there is the proof. … We have lost our way and have been deceived by the secular view that illness is not supernaturally imposed for sins against God.

It worries me because I fear our next generation will lose all direction and become more possessed by demons than ever before.

I can’t understand, if we are a blessed nation under a biblical Constitution, why there is such a push to send people with mental health problems to psychiatrists and psychologists?  Indeed, our church coffers would swell significantly  if mentally ill people were forced to attend churches for exorcisms. We could provide these at exorbitant prices and pay no tax on the profits. My own church could certainly do with the cash …

That is why I believe we need to stop all government subsidies for mental health treatment because mental illness is God-ordained and only exorcism in a House of God can set you free.

The New Testament is the greatest book on psychology. It shows you how to live victoriously. It’s our TV guide to life. It has everything in there for every facet – even how to run a nation…

A nun at my primary school once held my head under water for several minutes in order to drive demons of disobedience from me.  It was one of the best experiences of my life. She could see the potential in me long before I did.  I just had to get rid of those d****d demons! She gave me a grounding for the future, for which I remain grateful … That’s what our kids need right now: people who are willing to physically abuse them into submission, people who will make them submit to exorcisms if they suffer from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or depression. This is what the Bible prescribes …  in a world where we have become far too scared to reject unbiased research, scientific and medical consensus and the rights of individuals to be treated with dignity, respect and acceptance.

Margaret Court is a pastor and a current world No.1 fundamentalist, homophobic, bigot.

Chrys Stevenson

See also Mike Stuchbery’s: Margaret Court, Translated

Court’s original op-ed piece in the Herald-Sun is here.

Furious Purpose’s, Stirring the Pot for Shits and Giggles contains the brilliant quip:

“The former Catholic turned fundie evangelical who runs her own church in Perth should have stuck to hitting tennis balls. Her intellectual stamina is to her forehand what Tony Abbott is to Plato.”

Margaret Court’s views increase gay suicide risk: health advocate, The Australian