My letter to the Attorney General for what it's worth...

Dear Sir,

On April 30th, 2008 The Age speculated that there would be an end to discrimination against same-sex couples on many fronts, but whether or not they would have access to the family court was still being resolved.

In this instance, I beg that you consider the children born into this situation. They are being discriminated against for something they cannot possibly control.

I believe that denying access to same-sex couples discriminates against the children born into same-sex families. Children involved in court cases, particularly custody battles, can suffer severe stress and long term harm (I have vivid memories of my parent's court cases in the late 1970s). The Family Court now has procedures and policies in place to protect children from messy adversarial court cases. At present, children of heterosexual couples benefit from this protection whether or not their parents are married. To deny same-sex couples access to the family court is to deny children of same-sex couples the same protection children of heterosexual couples enjoy. In my opinion, this is blatant and harmful discrimination.

Without the family court, same-sex couples are forced to settle their differences in the civil courts that lack policies and regulations to protect families from damaging adversarial court cases. The Family Court of Australia requires that couples attempt alternative forms of dispute resolution before taking their case to court; appearing before a judge is a last resort and even then, a less adversarial trial is conducted with the interests of the children paramount. The civil courts are under no compulsion to give children this protection.

To deny same-sex couples access to the family courts is to expose a small portion of our community's children to a potentially stressful legal process; it condemns them to the equivalent of the dark ages of family law. Again I beg you to consider the children when resolving the issue of whether or not to give same-sex couples access to the family court.

On another note, I believe The Family Court is best equipped to deal with the additional complications that can arise in same-sex families. For example, I know a lesbian couple with two children. With the exception of gender and some discrimination they operate just like any other family. They have the same joys, trials and tribulations and will suffer the same stress and grief if the relationship breaks down. If a separation did occur, the situation would be complicated by the fact that the father is the same, yet the mothers are different (they decided to share the child bearing load and have one each). The Family Court is experienced in family dynamics and providing solutions to complex problems, therefore it is best placed to consider complicated cases such as this.

Please consider giving all families access to the Family Courts, no matter what their dynamic. For the sake of the children, please.

Yours faithfully etc.

UPDATE 12/08/08: Yey! Full access to the family courts for everyone! I like to think that I had something to do with it, but given I got a standard (albeit informative) letter in reply I rather doubt it! :-)

Denying same-sex couples access to the family court unfairly discriminates against their children.

On April 30th, 2008 The Age speculated that there would be an end to discrimination against same-sex couples on many fronts, but whether or not they would have access to the family court was still being resolved.

What on earth is the problem?  It seems obvious to me that denying them access discriminates against the children born into same-sex families.  Children involved in court cases, particularly custody battles, can suffer severe stress and long term harm (I have vivid memories of my parent’s court cases in the late 1970s).  The Family Court now has procedures and policies in place to protect children from messy adversarial court cases.  At present, children of heterosexual couples benefit from this protection whether or not their parents are married.  To deny same-sex couples access to the family court is to deny children of same-sex couples the same protection children of heterosexual couples enjoy.  In my opinion, this is blatant and harmful discrimination. 

Without the family court, same-sex couples are forced to settle their differences in the civil courts that lack policies and regulations to protect families from damaging adversarial court cases.  The Family Court of Australia requires that couples attempt alternative forms of dispute resolution before taking their case to court; appearing before a judge is a last resort and even then, a less adversarial trial is conducted with the interests of the children paramount.  The civil courts are under no compulsion to give children this protection.

To deny same-sex couples access to the family courts is to expose a small portion of our community’s children to a potentially stressful legal process; it condemns them to the equivalent of the dark ages of family law.  Again I ask: What is the problem?

UPDATE 12/08/08: Yey! Full access to the family court for everyone!

The Advertising Standards Bureau and Tell The Truth

Thanks to Shell for letting me know about this.

The Advertising Standards Bureau has issued a media release about the pamphlet distributed by the Tell The Truth Coalition.

Nice to know that it was discussed. I'd like to know how it will be dealt with now though.

Fairly balanced article on abortion - 40 year anniversary for UK

Fiona MacGregor does a nice job. I especially like the way she illustrated that most people have an hypocritical view when it comes to abortion, no matter how good their intentions. Turns out I fall firmly into the hypocritical camp.

"But while the debate over abortion rages on, it is vital we do not lose sight of the bigger picture. We live in a society where sex before and outwith marriage is the norm and where the average person in Britain has had – depending on their generation and gender – between eight and 13 sexual partners, and around half of the adult population has had a one-night stand.

And while everyone has a responsibility to ensure they have safe sex, the failure rate of contraception is far higher than most people realise. Given that, according to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, almost 60 per cent of women requesting abortion claim to have been using (or attempting to use) contraception at the time they became pregnant, it wouldn't be unrealistic to conclude most people in this country have at some point put themselves in a position that could have led to an unwanted pregnancy.

Yet women who have unplanned pregnancies continue to face prejudice and condemnation, however they deal with it. Raise your hand if you think that women who have children by several different fathers – such as Fiona MacKeown, the much-criticised mother of murdered teenager Scarlett Keeling – are immoral and/or irresponsible and should be censured by society. Raise your hand if you think abortion raises serious moral concerns and should be avoided where possible.

Finally, raise your hand if you have had more than two sexual partners of the opposite gender (now refer back to the statistics on failed contraception). Thank you for taking part in my poll on hypocrisy and mixed messages when it comes attitudes to abortion in the 21st century."

Brilliant. Call me a hypocrite. More than two sexual partners, most of whom I would not have wanted to raise a child with yet I also think that some abortions are problematic and should be avoided where possible.

Yes, I do think there should be less abortions and I'm more rabidly prochoice than most. I don't have a moral problem with abortion, I simply think it is something to be avoided if at all possible. Abortions should be avoided for the same reasons one might avoid having a tooth removed - it is painful, often expensive, and carries the chance of unwanted complications.

Experiencing an unplanned pregnancy should be like having a car accident, it should be bad luck. No one is immune to bad luck, no matter how safe their sex or responsible their driving. I'm very forgiving of terminations due to bad luck.

So why, given that I'm all fine with terminations due to bad luck, do I think there should be less abortions? Because in my early university days I knew a woman who used abortion as a form of birth control: "The pill turns me into a monster and I don't like condoms." True, it was just one woman, but this one woman was so utterly complacent and everyday about it that it got me to wondering how many other young women were terminating pregnancies rather than using contraception. Personally, I cannot fathom why surgery or poisoning is an attractive alternative to latex. I did not understand why this woman thought that removing her unwanted pregnancies was a good use of a doctor's time given the length of our public hospital waiting lists. Having gone through the experience myself, I did not understand how she could casually treat her body in that way. I still don't. I think I never will.

So, if there are women out there using abortion INSTEAD of contraception, then there are pregnancies being terminated that stood a good chance of being prevented in the first place. That's too many abortions as far as I'm concerned. As far as the publicly funded medical community is concerned it's a waste of money, time and resources. As for the woman? a termination may be marginally safer than giving birth but using a condom is better for her body by a long shot.

It's funny, but I feel judgmental and hypocritical just writing this. Don't I want abortion to be safe, legal, and free for anyone who wants one? Yes, yes I do. But I don't want it to be an alternative to contraception.

Phlogiston Theory - a very nice account.

I was refreshing my knowledge on Phlogiston when I came across this very nice explanation of it by a guy called Jim Loy. Goes into more detail than anything I've ever come across.

Google Reader defines the end of the internet.

I've been learning to use Google Reader instead of doing my thesis, and this is what happens if you have no unread items and you click on the fancy "Next" button they tell you to add to your tool bar:

"Congratulations, you've reached the End of the Internet ."

Very funny.  And if you click on their link, you get:

"The End of the Internet

Congratulations! This is the last page.

Thank you for visiting the End of the Internet. There are no more links. 

You must now turn off your computer and go do something productive. 

Go read a book, for pete's sake."

Well, I thought it was hilarious.  Particularly since I'm procrastinating.

Blonde logic infiltrates the library again.

Another genuine gripe, this time about the people who infect single user silent study carrels with their twittering coupledom.

I'll admit to not handling this one very well.  Usually when I tell people, with my smiley face on, that their whispering disturbs people they are genuinely surprised (*sigh*), apologetic, and manage to stop talking.

These people didn't bother to lower their voices when they claimed not to know that it was a silent study area and the carrels were for one person only.  The sign on the door that says one person only is fairly difficult to miss.  I mean, it could be bigger I suppose, for those undergraduates that haven't yet managed to get through "Where's Spot?" in one sitting.

So I got angry, whispered at them to shut up because some of us were here to work... yada yada..  I hate idiots.  I hate bald faced liars even more.  I probably don't need to mention that they didn't take it very well.

I return to my own carrel and the lovebirds behind me tone their conversation down to intermittent whispering.  This is almost worse.  

In this case you experience enough quiet to finally hit a psychological one-ness with your thoughts then you're disturbed by the equivalent of someone letting the air out of an asthmatic dingy next door.

Grrrr.

So I go downstairs to get caffeine and alert the library staff on the way down that there's a problem.  They tend to turn a blind eye to rule breakers unless they are disturbing people or breaking the precious books.  In this case they are disturbing me, and since I have attempted to resolve the matter on my own, the librarians are not going to give them a second chance.

I happily listen to them get kicked out on my return, getting a happy when they protest, "But we were being quiet!" and the librarian tells them that's irrelevant.

The girl knocks on my door afterwards and says, "I hope you're happy now that you've got us kicked out.  What are you, some kind of freak that just wants to study all the time?"

I close the door on her.

It should also have been obvious that if I care about maintaining a quiet study environment, I'm not about to engage in an angry verbal exchange in said environment. If she had any brains at all she'd have written me an angry note.

I have no idea what was going through blondie's head, it should be obvious that if I'm in a private carrel it's because I want to study.  So yes, I guess I'm the kind of freak who wants to study when I'm in a study carrel.  The WORDS give it away.  How on earth did she get into Uni? I sincerely hope she's not studying anything important like nursing.  Hopefully she's studying business and will join the other monkeys in suits.

I am not just a freak who only likes to study, I take grand offence at that.  I'm the kind of freak who likes to blog too!

Pain Quale = Turning random notes into actual text.

Do you know how many things would have to be different about human beings for the inverted spectrum to be possible? Colours affect more than just “what we see” they effect our appetite for example, some are perceived to be more dangerous than others, some more soothing. We have all evolved to give different emotional responses to different wavelengths. It is highly improbable that red could mean danger to one person and indigo mean danger to another. The difference in hard wiring would have to go way deeper than just the parts of the brain that process colours.

Someone else's green may be my red.
My supervisor may be possessed by aliens.

The former is more improbable.

Could I make a thesis out of investigating the impact of pain asymbolia on different theories of qualia? But some of them are STUPID…

Is there any way to introduce a thesis without sounding like a pompous pratt?

“Consciousness: The having of perceptions, thought, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of confusing consciousness with self consciousness - to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it.” (Sutherland 1989 in Chalmers 1996)

I would like to add, in a small way, to the body of literature not worth reading. Specifically I would like to present my thoughts on the “epi” in “epiphenomenal qualia”, both why it is there, and why I think there are reasons to eliminate it. I do not propose to replace epiphenomenal qualia with an alternative theorem, only to propose that epiphenomenal qualia, if viewed from the perspective of biological function, appear to be absurd. I would like to throw a spanner in the epiphenomonological works, as it were, and if not convince, at least give reason to pause for thought.

Epiphenomenalism states that phenomenological qualia do not have a back and forth relation between the brain and mind. In other words, that for phenomenological qualia, the relation is one way. According to some, qualia are an evolutionary accident, like the heaviness of a polar bear’s coat (Jackson ref).

I would like to argue that epiphenomenal qualia are not evolutionary baggage, nor are they one way and that they play an indispensable role in our lives. In order to do so, I examine Campbell's exegesis of the Mind Body Problem and his arrival at ephiphenomenal qualia as a viable solution for materialists. I note his rather blithe acceptance of mind as spirit, and that he narrows the definition of qualia to encompass only those that have problematic mystique, conveniently excluding qualia that might be involved in action. I also outline some problems I have with the notion that phenomenal qualia are one way, particularly the idea that epiphenomenal qualia are one way, yet somehow we know about them. I then argue that for pain and pleasure qualia, the one way notion is absurd, particularly within the context of evolutionary survival. Finally, I introduce the idea that the clinical condition of pain asymbolia provides an example where pain qualia exist without function. Dismissing the notion that pain qualia supervene on pain function as suggested by Chalmers.....

GOD, I am a total wanker.

Catholic response is the usual religious based rhetoric.

*sigh* my high hopes that someone with a brain might have initiated the discussion are dashed.

Here's my next, and probably last post:

QUOTE=YADA;3583924 "the abortion is not safe for the child ...a few survive, but those that do usually suffer defects from the 'abortion' procedure .... I have a friend who adopted just such a little boy some 16 years ago..... "

To say that abortion is not safe for the child is not a response to my points and is a very bad argument against abortion given that the intent of abortion is not to produce a child at all. A few children survive traumatic births with defects and are adopted out. But I wouldn't use that as an argument against giving birth, that would be irrelevant at best.

".....and it is not true that most abortions are at 8 weeks or less ..... in fact women are usually just realizing that they are pregnant at 8 weeks ..... "

This is an example of the view that women are somehow mentally wanting. The overwhelming majority of menstruating women keep track of their cycles both in their head and on paper.. Unless the circumstances are highly unusual, it does not take a normal woman 4 weeks (a whopping 28 days) to notice that she hasn't menstruated. Forgive me for assuming that you are a bloke.

For women who do not want a baby and find themselves pregnant, the abortion is carried out as soon as possible, normally before 8 weeks, definitely before 14.

"most abortions are late first trimester early scond .... but in the US Roe V Wade and it companion decision made abortion on demand the law of the land right up to the point of birth ... also called partial birth abortion where the child is delivered except for the head and then the babies brains are sucked out ..... "

Right. More graphic descriptions please, because they help your argument - not.

In the one state of Australian where accurate data is available, 98% of all terminations were conducted before 14 weeks. That is well below the threshold for pain let alone sentience. 2% of abortions might have been performed using the method you describe - might have been. That 2% of abortions are performed that way is not a good reason for prohibiting the other 98%.

"Abortion is always a moral evil ... it leads to a cheapening of all life ..."

Actually I think that enslaving children so that the rich west can eat cheap chocolate bars is a cheapening of human life. But I'm entitled to my opinion am I not?

I was hoping for a response that addressed my points, not more of the same old sentimental religious based rhetoric. I'm disappointed.

Emervents

Grrrr. "Cheapens human life." Grrrr. Grrrr. Grrrr. As though forcing a women to give birth like some sort of breeding animal dignifies human life.

To be fair, he did say, cheapens ALL life. But given his religious views, I doubt that he includes animal life in the category of "life that can be cheapened".

The Catholics want to know why Pro-Choice?

Who'd have thunk it? Curiosity about the Pro-Choice viewpoint from a Catholic site. I posted a response just to see how serious they were.

One poster who attributed their views to Peter Singer wasn't exactly made welcome, it might have been interesting if the "welcoming party" had read any Singer, unfortunately they clearly had not. Methinks they're just looking for targets... Notice Godwin's Law coming in to play? Didn't take long before the Pro-choicers were compared to Nazis :-)

Here's my post:

First, to call me "Pro-abortion" as you do in your message content is a bit like me calling you a "forced-birther". Both are inaccurate and misleading are they not?

We are Pro-Choice. This means that no woman should be forced into any reproductive action against her will.

I do not believe that a woman should be forced into having an abortion, nor do I believe that a women should be forced to give birth against her will like a farm animal. Both situations are a shameful transgression of the woman's autonomy, and are blatantly dismissive of women as moral agents.

I am pro-choice because I think the facts speak for themselves and I have not had a "sanctity of human life" ethic drummed into me since infancy.

The facts that influence my view:

It is a fact that women will seek abortions whether they are legal or not.

It is a fact that women who seek abortions in countries where abortions are illegal put their health and lives at risk undergoing backyard abortions. It is also a fact that in countries where abortion can be performed under safe conditions the risks are reduced and are lower than the risk of childbirth.

It is also a fact that an 8 week embryo (the stage at which the majority of abortions are performed) is not sentient, and cannot suffer.

I choose the route of minimal suffering, therefore I choose to campaign to keep abortion legal and safe for anyone who chooses to have one.

Emervents

Yey! Let's model our birth care on the Netherlands!

Having had to fight for a natural birth in Australia, I can imagine this woman's shock at how things are done here. Poor thing. I can't imagine how angry she must have been when she was made to lie on her back.

(For those of you who think that having a baby on your back is a good idea, next time you need to poo, lie down on your back with your feet in the air and see if it's easier to push out than if you are upright...)

Women have only been having babies on their backs for the last 300 years, and all for the convenience of doctors. Doctors who get bored when nothing goes wrong and there's nothing for them to do so they invented "managed labour". Stick with midwives I say, bring in the doctors for actual pathology.

Just yesterday I heard a woman on 774 saying, "Normally in Australia the woman gets an injection to help her deliver the placenta."

"Normally"

It made me want to claw away the car interior in frustration. In a normal birth a woman does not need help delivering the placenta at all. Mother and baby snuggle, possibly breast feed, oxytocin is released, uterus contracts, placenta comes out. Why waste taxpayers money interfering with something that is, in 97% of cases (I think that's still the correct figure), perfectly ok if it's left alone?

Grrrrr.

The unbelievable Gabriel Mercy

Just for the fun of it (and to learn more about Latin) this is the response I wrote to Gabriel Mercy's third comment on this post of Ron's. Gabriel said that foetus meant "little one" in Latin. I just couldn't let that one past:

Speaking of twaddle.

In Latin it is "fetus".

It means, when used as an adjective: "pregnant" or "newly delivered". Figuratively it means "productive" or "full of".

When used as a verbal noun, or noun:
"breeding, bearing, producing; brood, young; fruit, produce". Figuratively - "production".

That was from my Latin dictionary at home. Three web translators also failed to come up with "little one". Where do you get your information, Gabriel? Once again, nowhere credible.

Gabriel you sound as though you have been getting your information from a pulpit since infancy. I think I may speak for Stephen when I say we get our information from rather more, um, "provable" or "reliable" sources.

I speak for myself when I say that abortion cannot be depriving a person of life when there was no person to be deprived. As far as the foetus is concerned, there is no "point of view" to be had.

Your views, that a fertilised egg has a "sacred" right to life, and that we humans do not have the knowledge or wisdom to determine who is to be put to death, betray the fact that your views have a religious premise.

There are no facts in your views just as there are no facts in your "innocent prolifer" anecdotes or Latin definitions.

Just one more reason our OBs are so "caesar happy".

Without making light of this woman's tragic circumstances, she is a prime example of the reason OBs in litigious societies are so gung-ho about cutting women open to get their babies out.

Losing a wanted baby is tragic in all circumstances. But it does not necessarily follow that a tragedy has to be someone's fault. Having babies has always been risky, for both mother and child, things go wrong despite the best efforts of doctors. In this case a baby died in the womb due to having the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. When accidents such as this happen, it is natural to want someone to pay for your unhappiness. It is easier to cope if it is the fault of someone else. In this instance, believers in an interactive God have one up on us. They say it was God's doing and he had a reason, thus they move on.

Unfortunately, the rest of us tend to sue a doctor to make ourselves feel better.

As a result OBs are performing drop-of-a-hat caesarians (many of them unnecessary) because if they do that and the baby still dies they'll be able to say they've done all they can. ProLifers claim that abortions are bad for your reproductive future, well Caesarians are much, much worse. The WHO has known this for ages, Australia is still catching up.

But this women isn't complaining about an unnecessary caesarian. She is complaining about a lack of intervention. I find this, to say the least, rather frustrating.

In this case the woman is blaming the hospital for the baby's death. She thinks that if she had been regarded as high risk, if there had been more ultrasounds the problem would have been picked up.

I don't understand. An umbilical cord can become problematic in a matter of hours, did she want 24 hour surveillance of her healthy pregnancy?

True, the hospital could have been quicker, and by the sound of it they were almost criminally unsympathetic. But in this particular case it is doubtful that they could have helped even if she had been seen immediately. There is a rather large time lapse between first noticing there is a problem with your baby, going to your GP, and then traveling to a hospital. At least an hour if you're lucky and really hoofing it, and a foetus only needs to be without oxygen for a few minutes.

So why would this woman blame the hospital? (She says she doesn't, but holds them responsible, which amounts to the same thing in my opinion.) She blames them because of a myth that the medical profession has the power to guarantee us a perfect healthy baby. An ideology that states that unless you hand over the entire process to a white coat you are putting yourself and your baby at serious risk. The myth that a maximum of technological interference is a good thing for both mother and child.

When women hand over the pregnancy and birth process to a doctor (and any woman who needs a doctor to "confirm" her pregnancy comes firmly under this category) they hand over responsibility for the outcome, and get to sue if they don't like it. The natural response of doctors is to do everything they possibly can to ensure a "healthy baby outcome" usually at the expense of the physical well being of the mother.

We're stuck in a loop where parents want a healthy baby guarantee and professionals are being scared into performing unnecessary surgery to comply. Australia has one of the highest caesar rates in the world. This is a disgrace.

The only way to break this cycle is to put the responsibility back where it belongs. With parents, who need to know that some things can't be changed or avoided, and that there are very clear areas where medical intervention is helpful, and when it is not.

Until then, we'll have myopic parents placing their fate in the hands of doctors who are well meaning, but not omnipotent, and reluctant to be sued.

I like :-)

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Naughty eBay!! BAD!!!

I have just received an email stating that eBay sellers will not be allowed to offer Bank Deposit as a payment option after 17th of June. Instead we will only be allowed to offer PayPal or COD.

As eBay is the proud owner of PayPal this seems to me to be a blatant cash grab. Buyers may not have to pay to use PayPal but sellers do. This fact has already resulted in an increase in postage and handling costs for small volume sellers like me; in most cases, we pass these costs on to the buyer.

In order to take advantage of PayPal's "Seller Protection" we will have to send items by registered post, making postage more expensive. This cost will also be passed on to the buyer.

If we choose to cover the increased postage and handling costs by increasing the starting price, eBay charges us more for the ad. - yet another cost passed on to the buyer.

PayPal may be "fee free" for the buyer, but it certainly does not save them money. They would be better off paying $1 for a bank transfer.

I only sell occasionally on eBay now. However, until today I have been heartily recommending it to anyone who will listen. As of today those recommendations will cease.

I will also be looking for alternative means to sell my goods in future.

Again, I regard the prohibition of Bank Deposit and other methods of payment not PayPal to be an ill disguised profit making venture on the part of eBay that will result in a hidden increase in cost to the buyer.

*very cross*

Trainee doctors need to witness more normal births.

When I was giving birth to my daughter I allowed a student midwife to be with me throughout the prenatal period and during the birth as part of her course requirements. She informed me that natural births were rare as hens teeth, that it was very hard for student midwives to find any. I can only imagine that the situation is as dire for trainee doctors. Though I'm sure their version of normal is a long way from mine. I do not consider a birth in a brightly lit room full of medical equipment with five or six strangers present to be "normal".... but I'm funny like that.

What follows is my two cents on a lament by a Queensland Prof. that trainees could not get in to witness normal births:

As a woman who only permitted midwives and student midwives to attend her both during her pregnancy and labour (with the exception of some routine medical tests done by my GP) I can understand why women would not want a student doctor coming in at the end for a "sticky beak".

Not only is it a moment that should, as far as the woman wants it, be deeply private; last minute attendance implies that the baby's exit is all there is to a normal birth.

However, I wholeheartedly agree that not enough trainee doctors are exposed to normal births. I think that the best way to increase exposure is to have a trainee follow the whole process with the permission of the mother.

Andy's suggestion that public patients should not be able to opt out betrays a deep disrespect for the privacy of birthing women. That kind of solution is unnecessarily draconian and implies that privacy is a privilege for the wealthy.

If someone had asked me whether a student doctor could follow me through the prenatal period and the birth I probably would have said yes (I said yes to the student midwife after all). But strangers at my birth? Not unless something has gone very very wrong.

Has Margaret Tighe withdrawn her support for Tell The Truth?

The link to the Tell The Truth Coalition website has returned on Ron's blog, only this time with a new domain name (I'm not providing links in this post, sorry, as I don't want to increase the site's Google ranking).

Because I couldn't help myself, I did a whois on the new address.

Where the old web address was registered by Maraget Tighe of The Right to Life Australia Inc., the new registrant is Ron van Wegen himself.

I asked my hubby to have a look at tellthetruth.org.au when it first went offline and he said the domain name was still registered, it had just been turned off so that no one could access it (in non-geek speak).

Since the original domain name is still available, does that mean that Ron and Margaret have had a falling out over methods? It's possible. The public outrage caused by the use of US scare tactics in Australia might have made Margaret Tighe want to keep the Tell The Truth Coalition at a good distance from The Right to Life Australia Inc.

Also, one cannot help but notice that though Right to Life Australia has an ABN, the Tell The Truth coalition does not. Does this mean it is not a registered non-profit organisation? In other words, though Ron says the group consists of thousands of ordinary Australians, its possible that it could be what it looks like. Enough people to deliver a few thousand leaflets and a couple of bloggers.

Porky Pies on the AustralianProLifeConference Blog?

After I quipped in my abortion story (a comment on this post) that I was relieved not to be physically assaulted I was immediately accused of slander and asked to proved evidence of ProLife violence (because Peter Knight, who shot someone, was not a ProLifer, apparently). So I checked the newspapers and came up with:

In July 2006 Johnathon Stack, 70 was charged with making threats to kill, using threatening language in public and threatening to cause serious injury. This was at the abortion clinic where the security guard was shot.

I was roundly ticked off by Ron for not providing evidence that he had been proven guilty.

*sigh* Personally, I didn't think the police were called for hymn singing, but never mind.

Also, a certain Gabriel mercy, who has at least managed to be mostly civil, wrote:

"I happen to know all the details of that incident and the charges, which were dropped, were a complete and utter fabrication."

and

"Of course, the papers didn't report on the assault of poor old John Stack by a thug of a guard who knocked him to the ground three times. John was trying to hang on to a banner which had been snatched by a female. The case went to court as a civil action (the police refused to take action, even though the victim was bruised and bleeding) and the assault by the guard was found proved. Did the newspapers report it? Don't make me laugh!"

Ok, I thought, lets see if we can find out if ol' John Stack was convicted, and whether he instigated civil proceedings.

So I wrote to the Magistrates Court, who wrote back the very next day.

The charges were not dropped as she said, and the Herald Sun did not lie.

There was, however, no recorded conviction as both the prosecution and the defense agreed to a Diversion Program. To quote them: "Mr Stack was placed on, and successfully completed, a
Diversion Plan for a charge of 'use threatening words in a public place'. The matter was discharged (Diversion completed) on 20 August 2007."

The letter did not mention a civil proceeding at all, though I asked. I am thinking of writing again to ask them specifically but strongly feel that it might be a waste of time :-(

The fact that John Stack was dealt with under the Diversion Program does speak in his favour as it meant that he was either a first offender or considered likely to benefit from participation.

However, Gabriel Mercy's statements on the matter do not speak in her favour. At least as far as her credibility is concerned. Let's be generous and say the grandmother's memory is a little hazy shall we? So sad, she was one of the polite ones too.

If you enjoy mocking the religious right, you'll enjoy...

THIS.

Now I know why Ron remembers his conception, he was a sperm! Notice that it's the sperm that gets ensouled, not the ovum. Jeepers, could they be any more transparently misogynist?

Ok, now I'm really tired and getting gritty. Night all!