The Magpie Said

CANTA is the magasine put out by the compulsory student union at the University of Canterbury. In the 25/May 09 issue of CANTA the political commentator Hayden Munro (aka the Magpie) wrote an article entitled "Ok, this could get kind of tricky" which he has also posted on his blog. In his article he discusses minority politics in general, the "Christian Right" and more specifically, myself. It is essentially a response to an article of mine that was published in the previous edition of CANTA which discussed abortion law in New Zealand. Hayden is not only on the ball when it comes to discussing this subject, but he does so in an impressively balanced and reasoned way. I'll let you have a read of the article - all I want to do here is address one or two comments in the article which Hayden's thrashed out onto the keyboard perhaps a wee bit too quickly.

"Andy is... strongly against any gay marriage"

As far as I know I haven't stated this anywhere. Just to be clarfiy though, I believe homosexuality is immoral, but if two homosexuals wish to enter into a civil union - to be officially recognised as a couple before the State, I have no problem with this. However the issue of gay marriage is so convoluted that I will not deal with it right now.

yellow card: that's not on!

"...even intelligent, dedicated activist’s [sic] like Andy can slip into really rabid rhetoric. Insinuating that Helen Clark shouldn’t try to save a dieing [sic] friend, since she believes in abortion, is not going to win you any friends amongst moderates."

That's just bad logic. One thing I try hard to avoid is rabid rhetoric, character slurs, exaggerations and the like. Helen Clark should be commended for attempting to resucitate her dying friend. However I was questioning the inconsistency in her actions rather than implying that she should have left her friend to die.

My major ideological disagreement with Hayden in this article though, deals with the issue of homosexual couples adopting children. He states that legislating against this would "deny them the chance to raise a family, one of the fundamental joys in life". Heck yeah, I completely agree. But that's their problem. I stand by my comment on 4 May, "It is empirically evident that two homosexual adults are unable to provide children with the stability and security that is essential for every child as he or she grows up." Raising children isn't a flippin' game or an experiment or a right. Rather, it is a privilege.

But what's with the magpie? Hayden's weekly column is named "Quardle Ardle Oodle Wardle Ardle Doodle" and is a reference to a famous New Zealand poem. Flicking through the glossy colour pages of half-clothed drunken students, bizarre and disturbed cartoons, screeds of large advertisments and (almost always) boring opinion pieces is Hayden's political column which is more often than not a good read in a particularly mind-numbing lecture. Anyway, oneday the overpaid staff at CANTA may get their act together and regularly upload Hayden's column which you should be able to find here.

Children Need Mum and Dad

The Supreme Court in the State of Iowa in the US has recently passed into law an act allowing for homosexual marriage. The Court's review of the law blatantly ignored concerns regarding the implications for children brought up by two "parents" in a same-sex marriage, relegating the issue to a footnote, saying:

“The research appears to strongly support the conclusion that same-sex couples foster the same wholesome environment as opposite-sex couples and suggests that the traditional notion that children need a mother and a father to be raised into healthy, well-adjusted adults is based more on stereotype than anything else.”

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., writing for NCRegister.com responded,

The court offers no citations to any evidence in support of this remarkable claim. If we took that statement out of the context of the same-sex “marriage” debate and applied it generally throughout society, we would create enormous problems. But put that point to one side for now. Just realize that the Supreme Court of Iowa did not do the public the courtesy of citing a single source in support of this claim...

...The debate over marriage hinges in large part on what people think is the subject: Advocates of genderless marriage believe it is about fairness and equality. Advocates of conjugal marriage believe it is about the role of marriage. By dismissing testimony so obviously germane to the functions of marriage in society, the Iowa courts prejudged the case and tacitly declared equality to be the only issue.

What an utterly ridiculous, amateur and unfounded assertion for the Supreme Court to be making; that in terms of raising children, "same-sex couples foster the same wholesome environment as opposite-sex couples". It is empirically evident that two homosexual adults are less able unable to provide children with the stability and security that is essential for every child as he or she grows up.

Girl, 12yrs speaks on Abortion

Watch this (highly popular) 5 minute speech where a bright young twelve-year-old girl speaks out against abortion - her own opinion, and very well expressed. She covers a wide range of topics and arguments surrounding the issue - and sure, she's had a bit of help from her mum and dad - but what children don't get a hand when they're preparing a speech for school?

5/5 stars for this up-and-coming pro-life advocate!

An Australian Crime

I hold my head in my hands.

This is absolutely disgusting, a 12-year-old girl was left without food or water to die in the backyard of her foster home, delirious with pain and unable to move.  Give me a break, she was just 12 years old!  Below is an excerpt from the article (30 July) at www.theaustralian.news.com.au,

"Mr Coates said Ms Reynolds was a "stubborn" woman who insisted the child had sustained a sports injury which would improve with exercise. When the girl refused, Ms Reynolds would "smack her leg with a stick".

"(The child) was unable to stand unassisted and when she was forced to she would just fall to the ground," Mr Coates said during opening submissions.

"When assistance was not forthcoming to help her to the toilet she would urinate and defecate in her clothes where she lay."

Mr Coates said social workers who visited the three-bedroom Palmerston home - which housed 17 people - the day before the death found the child lying on the kitchen floor crying.

When she was told to have a shower she struggled to walk and had to use the walls for support. Mr Coates said the jury would also hear evidence that, hours before her death, the girl was "punished" for soiling her clothes and taken out to the backyard.

"The children were told they were not allowed to help her get food or drink," he said.

"You will hear evidence from children who were out playing in the yard that later in the day (the girl) began to talk about fairies and witches and she said a limousine was coming to pick her up ... (The girl) said yeh, I can see the light now, and she just stopped breathing."

From what I understand of the story, there were fifteen foster children housed in a home, looked after by two sisters (Toni Melville, 43, and Denise Reynolds, 42) in Palmerston, Australia.  It is painfully obvious that they were incompetent as carers, and this tragic situation should have been intercepted much earlier.  The frustrating irony is the cases where good foster parents have been refused foster-children due to their stance on homosexuality, child-discipline or the like.

This case brings to mind the 2007 film, An American Crime an eerie portrayal of exactly this kind of abuse.  And the recent case of the murdered Kahui twins, where at the end of lengthy court proceedings and public outcry, no-one was ever charged for the death of these poor little boys who never got a chance.  I thought the Anti-Smacking Law was supposed to sort out New Zealand's child abuse problem...

"Ms Bradford [sponsor of Anti-Smacking Law] says parents need to accept that it is no longer legal to hit children. She remains confident her anti-smacking laws will change what she describes as a culture of violence." - Newstalk ZB, 15/01/08

However, Bradford said back in 2007,

“The epidemic of child abuse and child violence in this country continues – sadly. My bill was never intended to solve that problem.” - National Radio - 21 Dec 07

Instead of the growing international trend to criminalise good and loving parents for giving their child a smack, let us rather crack down on the real child abusers.  While governments persist with their totalitarian, socialist, nanny-state agenda, the number of child abuse cases can only increase as increasingly, good parents are pushed out, setting the scene for horrific new cases of child-abuse and neglect to mar the front page of your morning paper.

(hat tip, NZ Conservative)

The Family

The two dolls chatted as the six-year-old girl looked on. Different dolls they've got these days. The two Barbie-esque dolls sported little clothing, and a professional tan. Entirely immersed in her imaginary world, she reposed on the floor, in the departures lounge of Christchurch airport. Her four-year-old sister ran restlessly here and there, climbing up onto one of the blue chairs and then complaining about something, perhaps that her sister was playing with dolls, and she wasn't. Something small like that, like little children do. Early forties and grey hair balding, Dad sat, all but dead to the activity around him, filling out slips of paper and slotting them into the passports for each member of his family. Mum leaned back in her chair, nodding occasionally at her youngest daughter, enjoying her few moments of relative rest. It's not everyday you see the dad organising stuff. The two matching backpacks lay on the ground, and it appeared that each of these was full of dolls and a blanket.

Mum got up and walked the few paces into the center of the lounge to throw something in the rubbish-bin. The youngest girl followed, and in the long, drawn-out fashion well-known by mums all around the world, informed her mother and the everyone else in the room, that she “needed a drink”. “I'm thirsty Mum”, she complained. Despite her desperate, heart-rending plea, her mother patted the child on the head as she walked back to her seat. Dad was still busily writing away, the very epitome of orderliness.

Muffled words came over the loud-speaker, would passengers in seats thirty to eleven please board now. Mum and the two girls got out of their seats, the girls crouching down, and Mum crouching down behind them, pointing over their shoulders at something interesting at the back of the room. What are they looking at? A middle-aged flight-attendant was walking up the high-durability carpet towards their end of the room. Big sister skipped off to play with her dolls again as Mum had a word with the four-year-old. “When we get on the plane, people aren't going to be very happy if you're screaming”, she warned her.

Back at the seats now, Dad wrapping up his task, and Mum pulled Teddy from out of one of the bags. Moth-eaten and thread-bare, patches of fur missing, the large pink teddy-bear was hardly brand-new. Head and limbs coming off with just the string inside holding them all in one piece. Masterpiece. Dad stacked up the passports and dropped his parker into his shirt pocket. Mum ensured that the girls had all their dolls and blankets tucked into their backpacks. The girls had a brief discourse over whose backpack was whose. The family was mobilised, and with mum and dad in the lead, the two girls took up the rear-guard as they headed for gate 19, somewhere behind those postered room-dividers. Teddy held on tight to the little hand of the four-year-old girl, and as the family disappeared around the corner, waved me goodbye.