Later today I’m putting up a brilliant short story by a friend of mine, that will take our minds right away from this distasteful legal twaddle.
In the meantime, I have to moderate all your comments before I publish them, as I’ve been advised that Melinda Tankard Reist’s lawyers are monitoring the blog and twitter for any “vilification” of the lady. If any such thing appears in comments on my blog I cop another legal threat, and it will be added to the list of my crimes against MTR. On twitter, well, I guess it’s every human for him or herself.
Also, I’m not always on the blog so if I don’t moderate you for a few hours please don’t get pissed off at me.
It may be all piss and wind, but does anybody really want the hassle?
I’m also told that it is ALLEGED that MTR is backed by seriously wealthy Christian fundamentalist lawyers, and that money may not be a problem for her as it is for most of us.
Now I am going to get out of the PJ’s that I’ve been wearing for the last two days for emotional and physical comfort, and take the dog out.
Fortunately I was given a superb kimono for Xmas so I’ve been able to throw that over the PJ’s. The kimono along with my scarlet painted toenails has allowed me to keep up my usual sartorial standards despite the legal twaddle. It is so important to keep oneself looking as good as one can, no matter how demanding the circumstances in which one finds oneself.
I feel an incipient hysteria. That is, if I’m allowed to describe myself as hysterical, without incurring the awful wrath of the language police that was visited upon Justin Shaw, and to a lesser extent myself, just last week. It is amazing how many people there are in the world who want to control every word that comes out of someone else’s mouth. To be set upon by two wildly differing feminist factions within the space of three days because of what one has said, is indeed a novel experience
So far the year has been full of excitement and controversy. Pass me the gin and the chocolates.
No Place For Sheep 
Just what the world needs –
“What’s wrong with the world I’m living in,
I can tell you in a New York minute,
too many bombs and not enough playgrounds,
too many god-damned lawyers in it.”
Eduardo Tuleja
—
What would we do without the contrarians; probably lay down and worship something… Enjoying the visual feast of you in PJs, Kimono, Scarlett nails and dog smells; after two days, it must be a right corker… 🙂
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Well, i never promised you a rose garden 🙂
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hahahahaha “along with the sunshine…”
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You need a care-bear.
Don’t worry tho- rest comfortable in the knowledge that you got the truth out; belled the cat BEFORE the Keystone thought-police could get at you, to silence the truth. There will be comeuppance, as Mussolini and Hitler eventually found out- leave the thought police and their self-suffocating denialism in Plato’s Cave, where it belongs.
Someday they will step out onto the road and get hit by a bus, trying to prove there isn’t one there, simply because they’ve been told by someone one’s coming.
Then the purveyors of Reactionary Modernism will become history like the solipsistic, denial ridden Spanish Inquisition that persecuted Copernicus and Galileo rather than get off their lazy butts to accomodate reality, or the perpetrators of the Scopes trial trying to ban Darwinism, nearly a century ago.
You and the rest of us just have to outlast the ghostly tomes of “Horst Wessell lied”, in the meantime…
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I’m lucky,I have our newest baby for my care bear. Just spent a few days with him and his parents that were sublime. I felt like I was living a blessed life, and nothing since has changed that!
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My presence on your blog is proof of the existence of the Streisand effect.
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Hahaha! Thanks for that!
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Good luck, Jennifer. You’ve gone to the top of my rankings while MTR is now where she belongs, that being right at the very bottom. To hell with the bible wielding bullies.
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Done my bit on ABC Drum:
For whom the bell tolls:
The anti-sex brigades traditionally thrive in Anglo countries. They align themselves with extreme anti abortion and anti porn views expressed by very right wing dictatorial quasi ‘feminists’ who go around our schools and ‘educate’ the young about the evils of sex.
Hence, the highest levels of unwanted teen pregnancies in the OECD. Their well known abhorance of anything sexual has also expressed itself in our history littered with the bodies of Eugene Goossens, Professor Sam Orr and the more recent cases of questioning and the almost prosecutioning and censoring of Bill Henson and his art.
We remain a nation of wowsers.
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I never knew MTR (allegedly) is a fundamentalist Christian. It all makes sense now.
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Ditto. It explains her self hatred and rage towards all women. Is she married? Or closeted? Her blinkered view of the world angers me deeply and I’ve told her to stop speaking for me in her idiotic op eds on several occasions. Now I understand why she appears to be unable to look at things without bias. Her mind is clouded by a liftetime of religious conditioning. I imagine she’s deeply homophobic too, because evangelicals are programmed to hate The Gays.
I do wonder how much of her profile is thanks to US funding. I daresay she’s had lots of US evangelical training and promotion. There’s very little reason for a woman with such irrational, hateful ideals, to have such a large and public profile so quickly without it.
I am a new reader thanks to the Age reporting on this, and I’ll be sticking around. I like your work and I want to support your fight against extremists who think censorship is the answer to everything.
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Welcome to the blog, I ope you do stay around. And thank you for your support and encouragement in this. It’s about so much more than me and the blog.
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This is definitely bigger than just being about you. It’s extremists using financial clout to censor people, and it’s desperately wrong.
You might want to contact the EFA about the matter, see if they have any pertinant suggestions. And these kind people if you are located in Victoria
http://www.pilch.org.au/
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Thankyou for that, and for taking the time to comment. I really appreciate it.
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Good luck with your battle with caped crusader MTR, but I’m sure you’d rather be spending your time thinking of worthier things in the universe.
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I can still do that! Thank you.
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Why would a true believer waste her time hiding her faith behind lawyers. Is she playing a media line of, the people she is trying to reach are secular and she does not want to preach to the converted. All the threatened action will just highlight her cause in the media as a secular issue. That is the type of support she is seeking.
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I just took a bit out, Biff because lawyers are monitoring the blog and I don’t want anyone to get into trouble. But I think I’d like the answer to your first question.
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Yup! Streisand effect…that’s why I’m here. And will now follow – because I am in love with your blogs name. xox
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LOL! Thank you!
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Mind
The
Religion
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High school sex education, Catholic-style:
A group of ‘educators’ come to enlighten us, and one of their props is an incredibly unbiased film – a dramatisation of the plight of a pregnant teenage girl visiting the doctor with her mother to get some ‘advice’.
One of the doctor’s pearls of wisdom is, ‘You have no right to take the life of your baby’. Girl and mother go away, have a think, girl says to mum she’s keeping it, happily ever after…
Such realism…
Then I’m a lone voice in the one of the discussion groups we’ve been broken up into, trying to suggest that the film might have been just a little heavy handed. Jesus wept.
Dots. Join.
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I think Jesus probably wept a fair bit.
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Jennifer,
I’ve been reading your blog for the last hour, love it, keeping doing what you’re doing.
The good thing is that where ever and when ever a MTR pops up, so does a Jennifer Wilson.
The threats of legal action are very telling; the higher the monkey climbs the more you can see its bottom.
All the best,
Coach Pete
(and I could have spent that hour watching porn! Instead I was reading your blog. noplaceforsheep.com doing more for the reduction of porn viewing than xtian fundamentalists everywhere!)
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I LOL at your last comment. I’m doing her work for her then?
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Its a topsy-turvy world.
The irony is that when MTR’s lobby group spoke out earlier this year about refusing classication of certain films it only motivated me to WANT to watch them.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/12/02/banning-human-centipede-ii-infamy-lasts-much-longer-than-fame/
Only MTR can bring me to want to watch gay zombie porn! As soon as she and her ilk say I can’t watch it…. I’m all over it!
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Quite a lot of people have said the same thing – they’d never have known if there hadn’t been such a fuss about it. Or found my blog, BTW!
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Just saw the article about this on SMH and wanted to wish you the best with this frivolous threat of a lawsuit. I hope it just peters out of its own accord…
It’s fine for her to give her opinion on other people because it’s based on religion but she’s going to sue you for speaking your mind about her?
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Well, let’s hope it doesn’t get that far! Thank you for your good thoughts and wishes.
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Reading your blog for the first time. What is your ideological position? MTR is Christian, so no suprises with why she has strong views. You (apparently) are ( and I mean no offence, just trying to establish your worldview) feminist, atheist?……
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I do my very best to avoid ideological positions. I’m skeptical, uninterested in any form of religion, love a lot of the stuff Jesus apparently said, interested in eclectic variety of thinkers and philosophers, and as for being a feminist, well that depends who you talk to and what they think a feminist is.
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To say MTR has strong views because she’s a Christian is not correct. Christians do come in a million flavours and the majority are just ordinary people who offer their fellow man respect and courtesy without wanting repayment.
MTR has strong views because she’s an Evangelical and a fundamentalist. Don’t get it confused, there’s quite a difference.
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Well, I have to say Christian because she will not reveal which brand of Christian she is. She’s threatened to sue me for calling her Baptist. I know it is a broad church so to speak.
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A reactionary reacts. How droll. . . .
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I like that word. Droll.
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Thank you Jennifer, I was enraged after reading The Age piece that they hadnt outed MTRs affiliations and Harradine work. While the legal yuckiness must be nasty for you, at least its got a good press run and should bring the issue to wider public attention (so, again, sorry, but thanks!). Interesting that MTR is so averse to these affiliations being higlighted. Do you reckon she’s shaping up for Coaltion preselection and the article was a running the flag up exercise?
And what was Rachel Hill’s agenda to produce this witewash for MTR?
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I have wondered if there’s a political move afoot, but I don’t know.
Rachel Hills did ask many of the questions I said she ought to have asked, but the answers weren’t published. Why not? I don’t know.
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This is my first venture to your blog.
As you may recall from the Drum, I am thoroughly and irrevocably opposed to Taliban Christians of the sort who should remain nameless, on their knees and never be see or heard from at all. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
May I offer my moral support.
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Hello! Thank you for that, I really appreciate it. Who would have thought it would come to this!
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From the Epping Baptist Church website :
“We are excited to announce that Melinda Tankard Reist will be presenting at our next Women’s Night held at Epping Baptist Church. We invite all ladies in our community to join us for a very impactful presentation. Melinda will be speaking on the effect of popular culture on young women and girls. ”
http://newslocal.whereilive.com.au/events/story/womens-night-with-melinda-tankard-reist/
By their fruits shall you know them . . .
Brian Baxter wrote a long article on MTR in 2007 including :
“Early in the 1990s, Melinda Tankard married David Reist, with whom she was later to have four children. (An early reference to her new name occurs in her article ‘Asylum for a Second Child’, Age, 5 December 1992). The family currently attends Belconnen Baptist Church, Canberra.”
http://home.iprimus.com.au/wired11/dnbq/antichoice.htm
Interesting, no?
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Please know you have huge support Jennifer. You’re asking questions which absolutely should be answered.
Just love your work!
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Thank you Ruth. Thank you for reminding me I’m not just banging on to empty air!
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As a member of the public that agrees, in part, with the concerns MTR raises, I’m very disappointed by her lack of or reluctance to disclose the fundamental nature of her religious leanings.
Whilst I remain concerned about ‘sexploitation’ in it’s many insidious forms there is a zealotry about MTRs approach that does not sit well – now I know why. Thanks for your blog. I wish you luck with the ‘legal twoddle’. It’s bullying of the highest degree to silence someone when all they’re sharing is the facts.
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as president of a local school parents organisation, i have been asked to organise a visit by MTR to talk on her ideas re sexualisation of girls. being the proudly Feminist mother of a son and a daughter, i was interested in what she had to say, and dug a little deeper … if what i had discovered to date on her emotionally-laden abortion guilt trip wasn’t enough to put me off, her recent actions are.
maybe i should stand back and let the parents make their own decisions, but i will not personally be supporting her appearing at my school, and i will not be putting my name to anything that suggests i support her stance.
thank you for everything you are doing. xt
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Good decisions. This is exactly why we need to know where someone is coming from before we trust them.
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hmmm, about that. I have been digging around the net about MTR. She states that she has ‘worked with World Vision’. Guess who may be losing my support? Yep, Tim Costello launched her book. Big oops Tim. Perhaps World Vision can sue MTR for damage to reputation.
I will be questioning them about this, and her role in the organisation, and will be letting people know.
And, her initials are the same as our conservative, reactionary radio station – Melbourne Talk Radio. Spooky 😛
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