Safe Schools Coalition Australia is a national coalition of schools dedicated to creating safe and inclusive learning environments for same-sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, school staff and families. The aim of the program is to prevent bullying.
Hard to see what anyone could find problematic about that. Nobody wants kids bullied, right?
Wrong. The Australian Christian Lobby’s Lyle Shelton is once again prophesying the falling of the sky, as is his wont whenever the issue of anything other than heteronormative sexuality and the traditional family unit is publicly raised. Safe schools is “prematurely sexualising our children” he declared, and a whole bunch of good Christian women pulled their kids out of schools.
Shelton is now being supported by Cory Bernardi, a man of such astounding ignorance that he yesterday expressed outrage that children “as young as eleven” are encouraged by the program to contemplate issues surrounding LGBTQI people, a group of which some eleven-year-olds may be part.
This, Bernardi trumpeted, is indoctrination. I find the allegation a bit rich, coming from a religious zealot who teaches children there is a universal imperative to believe in a sky fairy from birth.
We do not send children to school to be indoctrinated, bellowed Bernardi, a statement of such breathtaking hypocrisy it momentarily left me gasping on the kitchen bench like a dying cod.
Bernardi has obviously forgotten the outrageous school chaplaincy program, a venture that consumes millions of dollars in the pursuit of religious indoctrination of infants and upwards in secular schools.
Bernardi’s ignorance about the sexuality of eleven-year olds reminded me of Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen’s equally ignorant observation, made at the time of Scott Volkers’ alleged crimes against children, when she declared it was ridiculous to think a thirteen-year-old girl could have an orgasm when fingered by a male swimming coach, and besides, Ms Cunneen went on, girls that young and younger don’t even have breasts for men to fondle.
Ms Cunneen is apparently a special friend of the Reverend Fred Nile, Christian Democrat and religious zealot in the NSW Upper House, who may have the deciding vote on whether or not the ICAC is gutted when the current parliamentary committee concludes its investigation into that organisation’s efforts to investigate Ms Cunneen on the matter of her son’s girlfriend’s accident in Ms Cunneen’s car.
Yes. I know.
I don’t know what cylinder is not firing in the brains of these people, but I do wish they’d get it attended to instead of projecting their neuroses onto the entire community.
Prime Minister Turnbull, whom Paul Keating has described as “one of those red bungers you light on cracker night, all hiss and fizz then it burns out” or words to that effect, has now proclaimed an enquiry will be held into the Safe Schools Program.
The wankpuffins are on the march, friends. Gird your loins.
So to speak.
It’s quite possible that my views are wrong.
Ever wonder if that thought has ever troubled Bernardi, Nile et al?
I’d have more respect for them if I believed it did. But, I could be wrong.
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I doubt they ever question their views, because they believe those views come from god, and if they question god….
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The only protest I have seen this morning is coming from the assembly of god US cult, who believe they are the chosen ones. Society has moved on from the 1950s thank goodness. These children can no more chose their sexuality than they can chose their natural hair colour.
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There it is. The conditioning. Bernardi is like Henderson, deeply indoctrinated and deeply conditioned, cramped to dysfunction through his limited and conflicting emotional responses.
Margaret Cunneen seems to be the gift that keeps giving. The Nile thing is interesting, also. With a name like Cunneen, could she be pals with Devine?
The stuff about thirteen yo’s is a bit strange. Kids are at different stages of maturity, some won’t be active till they are older, with others the hormones are up and firing early.
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If god was finding the problem so urgent, would (s)he not have issued an all points bulletin for public consumption?
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I must object. The puffins are innocent! Surely these people are Wankvultures.
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LOL, yes, I wondered if puffins were being unjustly singled out
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And ducks.
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The puffins will have to take one for the team.
They can console themselves with the thought that wankpuffins aren’t representative of the species, just as the bernardis of this world are not of humans.
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I opened my email, saw the title of this post, and nearly spat my coffee out. Snorted, sniggered, chuckled, got myself under control.
Right then. Crikey’s editorial comment was about this yesterday, too; as they pointed out, kudos to Simon Birmingham for his response, and brickbats to Turnbull for caving to the likes of Bernardi & Christensen.
I have a son in year 8, and personally there’s just no comparison between what Safe Schools could do for kids, and the depressing, terrifying, and actually dangerous potential of the chaplaincy program.
Grammatically awful, I know, but I’m angry… I’ll go back to giggling at ‘wankpuffins’ now.
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Thanks, Mish, I agree with you on the horrible contrast between safe schools and the chaplaincy program. Turnbull has no courage
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He certainly is the cowardly Lion.
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I was bullied at school for no other reason than wearing glasses in 1961 as an 8 year old singled me out as different.
I learnt to read and sat under the stairs while everyone else played at lunch and recess. I was also a tired, scrawny little thing with the first unnoticed symptoms of Chrohns disease and coping with being sexually assaulted by father and beaten by both parents.
I had two friends kill themselves for being gay and tortured in the early 1970’s.
Bigots like that racist coward Bernardi and his fellow rwnj travellers make me sick.
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Marilyn – this kind of heartbreaking story is exactly why the whole Safe Schools ‘controversy’ is so infuriating. Programs designed to combat bullying will obviously never undo the hurt and damage that was done to those of us who were targeted in the past, but they will hopefully result in fewer kids suffering in the future.
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Wearing glasses was/is a serious crime, almost as bad as being fat ( my crime) or having freckles or a birthmark.
I gather you must have watched Bernardi’s antic with Shorten’s interview. Interestingly, Shorten had the right retort, but you doubt whether Bernardi would have heard it let alone thought about it.
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Bernardi would be so much happier and less internally-conflicted if he would only let himself go. Can’t you see the knot directly behind his forehead? I prescribe a dose of ayahuasca followed by, dare I say it, a good rogering*-)
At least the kids in Newtown are OK: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-23/australian-christian-lobby-condemns-sydney-school-uniform-policy/7191908
But more importantly, Jennifer do you often make a practice of slaughtering cod on your kitchen bench? What is in fact the most humane way of killing a fish? – as it seems to me we lump more suffering on those creatures than just about anyone else!
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I have never in my life slaughtered a cod or any other fish, Sam, I was just imagining what the process might look like.
Not that I am particularly proud of not knowing how the fish I eat are treated before I eat them.
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Yeah no, it’s a hard one. I’m an advocate for fish insofar as it seems to me that being hauled into a hostile environment by a hook through your cheek or a net full of panicked compatriots is at least 9/10 on the scale of unpleasantness. But at the same time whenever I’ve seen cattle being slaughtered either by brain-spike or throat-slitting a la halal I’ve invariably thought that it seems such a nice and peaceful way to go that I was almost tempted to line up for my turn.
Ultimately, humane killing of fish is something I suspect is under-researched. Hmmm perhaps I could google it…
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I just want you to know that this post has started a Twitter hashtag trend: #corybernardiwankpuffin
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I shall have to investigate this “Twitter” one of these days…
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You know you want to…
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Oh and hey, puffins eat fish too!
Now I get it…
Well it’s certainly a moniker that suits him. Let’s see if we can get you listed in the Macquarie by the end of the year!
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Oh, now THAT has made my day!!!! Well done 🙂
(I’m going to mutter this hashtag to myself over, and over, and over….)
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ACL once again projecting their sexual anxieties onto everyone else.
What is it with these tossers and sex? They didn’t receive enough cuddles while growing up?
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Yes diannart- nailed it in a couple of sentences. It is actually very sad, when you think about it, that people are caught in such a cultural trap, where reactivity is the operative feature…that’s not freedom.
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Their god has oppressed them
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Yep. God is such a convenient patsy. Like a good fellow, doesn’t talk back or point out the truth when I’m mansplaining, won’t contradict me when I say it was everyone else’s fault, most of all, god’s.
Mind you, god is always a useful last resort for sucking up to when a person is in a shit and needs to be got out of one. Then all people suddenly are suddenly very amenable to this being who is usually such a pest.
I’m not going to laugh at god, for all I know there is no god, although, there might be.
I am going to laugh fit to bust at human nature.
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God is a human projection and the type of human determines which kind of god he or she projects. There. Tells you everything you need to know about the BACWSA, is that what DQ calls them?
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Just read his comments below…he does grasp the essence of reactionary modernism and the unpleasant place from whence it derives.
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In a week where the government and its omniscient and infallible leader have severely fucked up, all they find to discuss in their Party Room is the activities of a few schools’ programs.
Of course, what the conservatives/reactionaries really want is to control the syllabus, to ensure that there own narrow BACWA (Banning and Censoring Wowser Agenda, for the newcomers) views are the only ones presented to indoctrinate the kiddies.
They want this with a passion, and the intelligent fools like Turnbull will roll over to give it to them, to shut them up.
There’s precious little Turnbull can do about substantive social issues, because he promised the right wingers he wouldn’t so they would agree that he could roll Abbott. This seems to be one issue where he might actually do something useful – so he won’t.
Pathetic.
Vote them out next election. Labor are far more amenable to progressive social policy.
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Turnbull could do what he liked if he had the courage. Nobody’s going to roll him in an election year, and if they win they won’t roll him either
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Mmmm, see Ross Gittens’ article in the SMH today on that very topic. He’s one I’d recommend as your economic advisor for when you become President.
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Nice people give links…..:-)
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Ohww, I was using my silly phone and couldn’t figure out how. but here you go: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/malcolm-turnbull-is-losing-his-chance-to-be-a-great-prime-minister-20160222-gn0u2g.html
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Perhaps he could; but he probably remembers what happened when he staked his leadership on the climate change agreement (ie he lost the leadership to Abbott).
The Bernardis of this world are still a tiny minority even in the Looters Party, but they make a lot of noise as they pretend to speak for the majority. A determined minority can sway a distracted majority; Godwin’s Law looms large over the example that springs to mind.
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Wrong, DQ, there are too many Bernardis in the Looters Party, and that’s their problem, and ours of course too, because they are in the government.
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One is one too many!
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Jennifer , too right, a man of no courage, that’s Turnbull to a T.
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I think it is turning as it turned for Gillard after Rudd was rolled. Turnbull had his chance and wouldn’t take it. It is all a repeat of four or five years ago, but the msm won’t hammer away because as DQ pointed out they wanted Labor out and feel that the Coalition remains their first choice. People are tired of politicians talking big then running for cover on real issues once the public is won over.
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I woke up thinking politicians are the lowest form of human life. I don’t know why I should have that as my waking thought
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Because some of them are good at lying and hypocrisy but the others aren’t quite so adept.
However the only thing worse than a lying hypocritical politician is a conviction politician – certain he or she is right and determined to enforce that view on everyone.
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Gawd I wouldn’t like to have to choose
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Blistering barnacles, I caught a sniffle today so didn’t go to a panel discussion that the Griffith Review was putting on at Usyd on the theme that “the system is broken”. Interesting to note though that this isn’t a concern exclusive to sheep. You can buy the publication for $27.95! Which sound like a lot but then the alternative (bottle of Jonnie Walker) is even more these days…
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Will Australians become so disillusioned by politicians that even a former game-show host is a preferred leader?
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Will it make any difference, though? That’s the worry
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Am hoping the possibility of Trump (Wankpuffin) as president will prompt a Democratic victory for the USA.
Just because Abbott has gone, doesn’t mean another wankpuffin (as much as I think puffins are adorable – this moniker just has that certain je ne sais quoi) – not while there remain so many little w*nkers in the Libs.
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corybernardiwankpuffin seems to have gone viral. If it hasn’t, make it so!
LOL
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Apologies to all for coming back rather late – you may already be aware of this, but there have been arguments raging back and forth all day in the comments over at The Conversation re the Safe Schools program: https://theconversation.com/safe-schools-coalition-what-is-the-christian-right-afraid-of-55296
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You aren’t late – this ting will go on for some time yet…
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