Vol 28 No 20

07 October 2018

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AUSTRALIA

Religious freedom is not a zero-sum game
- Joshua Badge
- 18 October 2018
12 Comments
Religious freedoms extend only so far as they do not contradict the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. While all Australians should enjoy religious freedom, they also bear the right to non-discrimination and to the highest attainable standard of health. It is also unclear how positive discrimination is related to practising a religion.
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RELIGION

The religious freedom of LGBTIQ Christians
- Sean Slavin
- 17 October 2018
16 Comments
Both secularists and religious implicitly endorse the premise that homosexuality and Christianity are incompatible. This indicates to LGBT Christians that they are anomalous, tolerated at best, and to same sex attracted young people raised in faith traditions that they must choose between their sexual orientation and their faith.
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EDUCATION

Homophobic prejudice casts a long shadow
- Barry Gittins
- 17 October 2018
7 Comments
Next month, it will be two years since Tyrone Unsworth took his own life. He was 13. What makes his case stand out is that his suicide followed years of homophobic bullying, and occurred in the midst of the same sex marriage debate and conservative attacks on Safe Schools. Suicide does not occur in a vacuum.
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INTERNATIONAL

Challenges to respect in the Kavanaugh case
- Andrew Hamilton
- 17 October 2018
4 Comments
The charge brought against Kavanaugh invites reflection on what past actions and allegations should disqualify a person from holding public office. And in a society where increasingly traces of our past actions will be indelibly recorded, what scope should there be for remission and wiping the slate clean of past offences?
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INTERNATIONAL

PM is trading Palestine for Wentworth
- Na'ama Carlin
- 16 October 2018
12 Comments
While the Australian Jewish population is about 0.4 per cent, they constitute about 12.5 per cent of the Wentworth electorate, with Christianity the largest group overall (43.8 per cent). It is highly likely the LNP is counting on the embassy stunt to result in more votes in the Wentworth by-election. But the political ramifications are much broader.
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EDUCATION

Catholic schools' quest for LGBTIQ inclusion
- Jo Hart
- 16 October 2018
8 Comments
Various bishops and Catholic educational leaders last week assured their communities and the Australian public that Catholic schools do not exclude the enrolment LGBTIQ young people. In actual fact, Catholic schools are being encouraged to do more than not exclude.
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CARTOON

The white stuff
- Fiona Katauskas
- 16 October 2018
1 Comment
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AUSTRALIA

A parliamentary route through Uluru impasse
- Frank Brennan
- 16 October 2018
16 Comments
Despite what Turnbull and Morrison have said, I reject the classification of the First Nations Voice as a third chamber. Still, given that the proposal has been rejected by three Coalition prime ministers over the last three years, the question now is: what is the best way to proceed?
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ARTS AND CULTURE

More lies about imaginary Mexico
- Gabriella Munoz
- 15 October 2018
3 Comments
The more than 53 million people living in poverty in Mexico are being insulted in every episode of the new Netflix reality show Made in Mexico. Nine socialites of Mexico's one per cent are the protagonists of a reality show that can only be described as a mishmash of The Real Housewives and Beverly Hills 90210, catty moments included.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Prior to Christ
- Aaron Lembo
- 15 October 2018
3 Comments
He wandered through wilderness, dined on locust thorax and cuticle, slurped from jugs of honey and preached; to his following he said, 'The end is nigh.' He dunked their heads in rivers. At broods of vipers he screamed. He sang of another man ...
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INTERNATIONAL

Men need to be stronger for each other
- Devana Senanayake
- 12 October 2018
6 Comments
Men need to understand that other men in their close circles are capable of behaving in a manner that they have not seen first-hand. They need to retrain themselves to exercise doubt and then act on it to encourage a fairer, more thoroughly investigated outcome. It is a question of morality and duty rather than interpersonal loyalty.
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ENVIRONMENT

Opera House ads are not 'food for everyone'
- Francine Crimmins
- 12 October 2018
5 Comments
There are a few ways an individual can interact with a public space. The first is to sit in or walk through it while crunching an apple. The second is to inhabit it, grow an apple tree and share it with others. The third is to grow the tree, pick the apples behind your neighbours' backs and sell them to Woolworths for a profit.
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AUSTRALIA

The confused politics of freedom of religion
- John Warhurst
- 12 October 2018
24 Comments
The discussion is widely framed as a conflict between secular and religious Australia, as if such entities existed, with secular Australia defending the rights of the LGBTIQ community and religious Australia wanting to shore up its right to discriminate against others on the basis of their sexuality. But it's not that cut and dried.
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EDUCATION

How our universities are failing new teachers
- Tim Hutton
- 12 October 2018
8 Comments
Data published by the ABC has revealed the shockingly low threshold for entry into tertiary teaching programs. On one hand, there are some legitimate concerns here. But the problem isn't with who gets accepted to university; it's with what happens to them while they are there.
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AUSTRALIA

The incoherence of MPs' migration mentality
- Fatima Measham
- 11 October 2018
7 Comments
New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian's call to halve the state's migrant intake, and Federal minister for cities Alan Tudge's proposed a mandatory five-year regional settlement scheme for migrants, have both left policy observers scratching their heads. And with good reason.
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INTERNATIONAL

Kavanaugh and men's sexual assault hypocrisy
- Catherine Marshall
- 10 October 2018
12 Comments
Where many saw a woman smearing the name of an upstanding member of the legal fraternity, others saw a successful professional putting her reputation on the line to expose the harm done by a man being considered for one of the country's highest offices. Her allegations are believable to us precisely because they are so common.
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CARTOON

Shining a light
- Fiona Katauskas
- 09 October 2018
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MEDIA

Our media's vested interest in racism
- Celeste Liddle
- 08 October 2018
8 Comments
Most of the requests wanted my slant on the racist cartoon, the blackface incident or the girl who wouldn't stand for the anthem. They weren't interested in delving into the systemic issues which led to most of those other situations. Most wanted Aboriginal opinion for the purposes of producing clickbait.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Scenes from Tamborine Mountain
- Jena Woodhouse
- 08 October 2018
1 Comment
Here on pristine Tamborine, the rainforest became the haunt of avian ventriloquists, birds more often heard than seen, whose raised tail plumes would simulate the contours of an ancient lyre, companion to the poet's voice when Sappho lent words to desire in lyrics of such eloquence that hearts of listeners caught fire.
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ECONOMICS

Trump's thuggery is changing world finance
- David James
- 05 October 2018
5 Comments
That Trump is a narcissistic braggart was never in doubt. The more intriguing question was always how a businessman would behave once he became president. His administration sees business-style standover tactics as a thoroughly good option. The system-wide shifts that are resulting may have a lasting impact.
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RELIGION

Towards credibility and a clean conclave
- Gail Grossman Freyne
- 05 October 2018
26 Comments
The numbers show this is not a witch hunt, merely the tip of a conclave. Any man who becomes a seminarian, then a deacon, then a priest, then a bishop, then a cardinal, will almost certainly have bumped into, bounced off or blindfolded himself to the endemic problem within the Church of the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable persons.
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AUSTRALIA

Why no compromise on Manus and Nauru? Pt 2
- Andrew Hamilton
- 04 October 2018
12 Comments
This is not a matter of holding the moral high ground but of remaining grounded. Refugee advocates should support campaigns to bring people to Australia from Nauru and Manus, but as part of a more universal and explicit commitment to respect people who seek asylum.
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Vol 28 No 20