Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
Deveny has made a career out of bungee jumping between the chasms of good taste, good writing and good sense. She's never been content to accept societal hypocrisy, and that's an occasional strength in her novel The Happiness Show. It becomes increasingly hard though to separate the author from her lead character, Lizzie. Thanks to an overly generous sprinkling of sex scenes, this quickly goes from disconcerting to downright awkward.
Catherine Deveney was right to point out that power, not homosexuality, was at issue in the case of Cardinal O'Brien, who resigned amid accusations of sexual misconduct. A new film by American director Steven Soderbergh also reflects on relationships based in power, and the ethical obligation of the party with the greater power not to act against the interests of the other.
Recently Catherine Deveny tweeted that my claim to be a Catholic and a feminist showed I was 'suffering serious cognitive dissonance'. Many gay Christians are confronted by a similar lack of understanding from non-believers who can't understand why they would embrace a Church that rejects them. Friday 8 June
The voices shouting down Jones are almost certainly not those of his listeners; the people most offended by his actions, it seems, are those who have never tuned in to his show. This debacle is steeped unashamedly in politics, with the outcry reinforced by various Labor politicians and dripping with as much contempt for Abbott and his party as Jones' diatribes do for the left.
They stop short of calling it Go Back to Where You Came From: Celebrity Edition, but it's hard to escape the view that SBS is going out of its way to top the ratings success of the original series. There's not much insight to be gained from watching Catherine Deveny and Peter Reith snipe at each other, fun as it may be.
Recently Catherine Deveny tweeted that my claim to be a Catholic and a feminist showed I was 'suffering serious cognitive dissonance'. Many gay Christians are confronted by a similar lack of understanding from non-believers who can't understand why they would embrace a Church that rejects them.
Some regional Australians may be enjoying the political day in the sun of rural independents Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott. But despite the prominence of the NBN and the Murray Darling Basin, flippancy and apathy dominate metropolitan Australia's attitude to regional and rural issues.
Julian Assange claims to be fighting for freedom of speech and government transparency — ideals that feminists also hold dear. But Assange has been arrested on rape charges and many feminists will find it hard to reconcile their defence of him with their support of rape victims.
Catherine Deveny's sacking smells of hypocrisy. Some will say that those who live by the sword die by the sword. But in this case it appeared that those who provided her with the sword and encouraged her to use it liberally, stabbed her in the back with it.
Australia's first Global Atheist Convention will feature such speakers as Richard Dawkins, Philip Adams and Peter Singer. I look forward to it with the same tempered gloom that would descend upon me if a convention of Christian evangelists came to town.