For better or for worse

AHHH! They're devaluing my institution! *shakes fist*

Gay marriage is, depending on how you look at it, either unimportant or very important. It's unimportant in that there are other more pressing social issues. It's very important because there are people who are being discriminated against at an institutional level for no reason at all, and it would take very little, and hurt no one, to change the situation.

The issue is simple. Gay people exist. Gay people aren't allowed to get married. That is unfair. The debate is complicated because people make it complicated. I've never heard an argument against gay marriage that I haven't instantly dismissed. I'm not gay, I don't have any close friends who are gay, and I don't have an "agenda" (a word that appears altogether too often in this debate, which is, or should be, about human rights and not politics).

Many people who oppose gay marriage are religious to some degree. It's not unreasonable to suggest that many such people are not only opposed to the marriage aspect, they are opposed to homosexuality itself. It's not just marriage that is between a man and a woman, it's same-sex relationships full stop. The religious arguments range from old-testament craziness - as seen in various letters to The West Australian last week - to relatively progressive "I support equal rights for gays but please don't change the definition of marriage" arguments.

Of course, religious people are entitled to their opinions - I wouldn't have it any other way - but I fail to see how allowing (or not allowing) homosexual people to get married affects anyone, apart from homosexual people. To say or imply that allowing gay people to marry devalues heterosexual marriage or the traditional family unit is inherently homophobic and unfair, and it's a shame that such people are part of this debate.

The faithful often (correctly) point out that marriage began as a religious institution, and for some people that is what it still is. Fine. However, I daresay for that many, many more people than that - and this is a point that has been made countless times - marriage is simply a commitment between two people who love one another other so much that they want to grow old together. No matter how many times the religious right shriek that Australia was founded on the principles of Christianity, Australia is a secular society. I've never even been to a wedding in a church. The only weddings I've been to have been outdoors, performed by female civil celebrants licensed by the Government. My own mother is a marriage celebrant and happens to be an atheist.

The Prime Minister and other senior Labor ministers such as Penny Wong have been accused by the Greens of lacking courage in their refusal to engage in the debate. It was refreshing and surprising to hear Labor Right faction heavy and Roman Catholic Mark Arbib call for a conscience vote against the general party line - and definitely against the Right line - earlier this month. He's been accused of cynically kowtowing to the Greens, which may be true - the man knows politics after all - but it's certainly a positive step. Two weeks ago Labor backbencher Stephen Jones publicly supported Greens MP Adam Bandt's successful motion to allow MPs to seek the views of their electorates on the issue, and other prominent ALP MPs such as Anthony Albanese are on the record as being in support of gay marriage.

Conspicuously silent on the issue had been Penny Wong, until this week when she finally spoke in favour of changing the Labor platform next year at the ALP National Conference. Many had been disappointed that a half-Asian, openly gay senior Labor minister - who by her own account has had first hand experience of discrimination - refused to publicly speak against her party's stance. Her reasons were of course political, as she explains in this clip: (Check out Graham Richardson springing to Wong's defence at 4:45)



Wong was clearly biding her time.

With more and more senior Labor people from both factions going against the party line, it seems that the Prime Minister is under growing pressure to revise her own and the ALP's position on the issue, which is good news for gay people and fans of common sense.

Still, the debate continues to get mired in irrelevant and infuriating non-points. Consider this recent article by Australian journalist Christopher Pearson, which starts off with the line:

THE most obvious thing about arguments for same-sex marriage is their shallowness.

Wait - arguments for gay marriage are shallow? He's pulled the old switcheroo! Pearson goes on to describe arguments in favour of gay marriage as specious, "vulgar inevitabilism", before claiming that he is pro-gay after all:

Few have argued more consistently over many years than I have done that same-sex partners should get a fair deal on superannuation and other entitlements of that kind. Labor's reforms in the last parliament mean that couples are treated pretty much equally except in the matter of marriage.

Sounds like token and insincere political correctness, but I'll allow it. Besides, there's a good chance he is sincere on this point, more on that later.

But the few remaining privileges reserved for matrimony are there for sound, practical reasons.

Here we go.

Most men are not naturally disposed to be monogamous, for example. One of the purposes of marriage is to bind them to their spouses and children for the long haul and to give the state's approval to those who enter such a contract and abide by its terms.

Well, that is contentious at best, and even if it's true it is certainly not an argument against gay marriage. If two guys want to get married, isn't the monogamy problem (if we accept it) twice as bad? If we let guys get married there's less chance they can run amok spreading gay everywhere!

Another of the purposes of marriage is to affirm that parenthood is a big, and in most cases the primary, contribution a couple can make, both to their own fulfilment and the public good.

Couples whose biology does not allow them to have children should be banned from being able to marry. I'm not even going to point out the obvious problem with that, because it has been written about so many times already.

It follows that societies which want to sustain their population size, let alone increase their fertility level, should positively discriminate in favour of stable, heterosexual relationships...

It's discrimination, but it's positive. I've never heard anyone argue that gay marriage will destroy our population growth before. I mean, what is the percentage of homosexuality in a given population? I was told once that it's about 10%, a figure which I have always felt to be about right. A quick Google search suggests that it is significantly lower than that, although there has never been a definitive study performed. In any case - and I'm sure I don't have to point this out - there is absolutely no way that allowing gay marriage would affect population in any way at all. That kind of conclusion can only be reached if you believe that homosexuality is not just a choice, but a disease that can be spread.

...and assert the preferability of adolescents making a normal transition to heterosexual adulthood.

There it is. Heterosexuality is normal and homosexuality is abnormal. Again, this has been written about so much it's almost clichéd at this point, but that kind of thinking is outdated, unrealistic and unhelpful. You can't guide a child into heterosexuality. Gay people just exist. Gay people have always existed, it's part of the human condition, get over it, move on.

It should be obvious to unprejudiced observers that, while there are plenty of well-adjusted gays who manage to lead satisfying and productive lives, rational people do not of their own volition choose to be homosexual.

This is a badly-structured and ambiguous sentence, but what I think he is saying given the context of the article is that gay people should not choose to be gay because that is irrational. Stop being irrational, gays. Make the right choice.

This seems like as good a time as any to point out something that might surprise you if you didn't already know: Christopher Pearson is - and I'm being serious here - gay. He's also religious - Catholic to be specific - but you might have already guessed that.

Among the reasons the Greens are so keen on same-sex marriage is that they want to reduce the population and drive down national fertility. Their refusal to discriminate positively in favour of heterosexuality and uphold the distinctive value of normal marriage shows their political project yet again for what it is: a dead end.

If the Greens think that gay marriage is a good way to reduce population growth then they are even more dangerously misguided than The Australian thinks they are. Pearson is really stretching here. Next thing you know he'll bring up abortion.

Speaking of dead ends, some American bishops have recently given a persuasive account of why same-sex marriage has come to look like a modest reform. They put it down to a culture where contraception and abortion are so widely practised that the crucial differences between a fertile couple, a couple childless by choice and a gay couple have been largely obscured and each partnership is seen as morally equivalent. They also lay some of the blame on a UN version of entitlement, in which marriage could be reduced to an unqualified abstract right.

!

Pearson goes on to claim that Labor should not change its stance on gay marriage because they would lose "faith based" votes, and questions the validity a recent study that found the majority of Australians support gay marriage.

See what I mean about muddying the waters? Pearson is a gay man who (unsurprisingly) fully supports equal entitlements for same-sex couples, yet at the same time his conflicting religious conservatism forces him to split his brain in half just to be able to form an opinion. Not surprisingly, his arguments come across as rambling and confusing.

I am too often a fence sitter. Too often I'll look at all sides of an issue then throw up my hands and say "well there are a lot of grey areas" and go do something else.

I don't see any grey areas in the gay marriage debate.

There's Something About Mares

As you either know or don't know, well-regarded Perth gourmet butcher Vince Garreffa was recently granted a licence to sell horsemeat for human consumption, a move that has perhaps unsurprisingly led to a good deal of controversy and, according to an ABC report, death threats. Some animal rights activists have seized the opportunity to grab some publicity (and who can blame them, they are after all right - more on that later), but most of the outrage seems to have come from regular Joes like you and me - Joes that like nothing more than a rare steak, or a good lamb souvlaki, or a whole extra-hot Nando's chicken in one sitting - Joes that simply cannot countenance the notion of eating horse but lack the words or wisdom to properly explain why. Someone who doesn't lack words and knows exactly what he's doing with them is Cormac McCarthy. Let's go to him now:

He spoke of his campaigns in the deserts of Mexico and he told them of horses killed under him and he said that the souls of horses mirror the souls of men more closely than men suppose and that horses also love war. Men say they only learn this but he said that no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold. His own father said that no man who has not gone to war horseback can ever truly understand the horse and he said that he supposed he wished that this were not so but that it was so.

Lastly he said that he had seen the souls of horses and that it was a terrible thing to see. He said that it could be seen under certain circumstances attending the death of a horse because the horse shares a common soul and its separate life only forms it out of all horses and makes it mortal. He said that if a person understood the soul of a horse then he would understand all horses that ever were.

They sat smoking, watching the deepest embers of the fire where the red coals cracked and broke.

Y de los hombres? said John Grady.

The old man shaped his mouth how to answer. Finally he said that among men there was no such communion as among horses and the notion that men can be understood at all was probably an illusion. Rawlins asked him in his bad spanish if there was a heaven for horses but he shook his head and said that a horse had no need of heaven. Finally John Grady asked him if it were not true that should all horses vanish from the face of the earth the soul of the horse would not also perish for there would be nothing out of which to replenish it but the old man only said that it was pointless to speak of there being no horses in the world for God would not permit such a thing.

All The Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy

To Cormac McCarthy horses are mystical, beautiful creatures that share an enigmatic and profound affinity with humans. In All The Pretty Horses the bond between horses and certain people – such as the protagonist John Grady – is born of both natural instinct and otherworldly providence, and horse and man need and complement each other in a sort of spiritual symbiosis. Read this description of John Grady:

The boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he’d been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyway. Would have known that there was something missing for the world to be right or he right in it and would have set forth to wander wherever it was needed for as long as it took until he came upon one and he would have known that that was what he sought and it would have been.

Grady breaking in a wild horse:

The horses were already moving. He took the first one that broke and rolled his loop and forefooted the colt and it hit the ground with a tremendous thump. The other horses flared and bunched and looked back wildly. Before the colt could struggle up John Grady had squatted on its neck and pulled its head up and to one side and was holding the horse by the muzzle with the long bony head pressed against his chest and the hot sweet breath of it flooding up from the dark wells of its nostrils over his face and neck like news from another world. They did not smell like horses. They smelled like what they were, wild animals. He held the horse’s face against his chest and he could feel along his inner thighs the blood pumping through the arteries and he could smell the fear and he cupped his hand over the horse’s eyes and stroked them and he did not stop talking to the horse at all, speaking in a low steady voice and telling it all that he intended to do and cupping the animal’s eyes and stroking the terror out.

The interesting thing in this passage is that to Grady wild horses are not horses at all, they're nothing but animals, and to achieve that special and holy level of existence of equinity they require communion with man, and only man. The implication is that humans and horses are unique in that they are part of the animal world yet above it, and the kinship that each were destined to share elevates them further.

McCarthy's hypnotic and powerfully simple prose makes it easy to find oneself nodding inwardly and saying things like "Yeah, I guess I do love horses a bunch" and "I agree, the shared soul of horsekind is the one path to gnosis" but obviously the reality is that he's talking a whole lot of bullshit.

But there is truth even in fiction, and the simple fact is that there is a connection between horses and people, and if nothing else All The Pretty Horses serves to illustrate just how deep that connection can be.

Now let's turn to some guy called Paul:

I wish to express my disgust at the Government allowing butchers and restaurants to sell horse meat. How dare they do this to such a noble beast. Horses have been man's best friend long before the dog. Here's why. Did we ride a dog into battle during the war? No. It was the Light Horsemen, not light dogmen. Did we ride a dog into town for shopping purposes? No. Did a dog plow our fields? No.

Horses have served man well over the times. We even had one as a hero in the 1930s. Anybody remember Phar Lap or Makybe Diva – three times Melbourne cup winner? To this day the noble horse still serves man well and does not deserve to be on a menu at a restaurant. I will not support butchers, supermarkets or restaurants that support the sale of horse meat. I hope everyone will do the same.

Paul Smyth, Munster (The West Australian letters to the editor July 17, 2010)

A bit of a change in terms of quality of writing I know but give the guy a break will you? He's a Munster, not a Writer (that or Munster is a place and he's from there, but this is beside the point). On first reading Paul Smyth, Munster seems to be arguing that horses have worked damn hard all their collective life in service of their human masters and he'll be damned if they deserve such shoddy treatment as being killed and eaten after all they've done for us. Like, that is what he's saying, however I can't help but feel that Paul has more than just a soft spot for horses, he wants to express something similar to Cormac McCarthy and just lacks the words.

The fact that he objects so stridently to eating horses obviously suggests that he considers them to be above the status of animals. He refers to horses as noble (twice) and heavily implies that they more than mere pets by comparing their achievements with that of the dog.

I thought dragging the canine community's good name through the mud was a bit unnecessary at first but he raises an interesting point - horses are generally used as, er, workhorses and don't exist solely as objects of affection the way that pets do, yet the love for horses and the aversion to eating their meat is arguably as great or greater than it is with say, dogs. (Incidentally, I'd like to take this opportunity to nominate "Did we ride a dog into town for shopping purposes?" for national Sentence of the Week).

Of course this taboo is far from universal and generally only exists in English-speaking countries. We don't get upset about other people doing it though, I guess if the French want to eat their cheval all the damn day then it's their own business. That's all the way over there, there's nothing we can do about it. As vile and disgusting as we apparently regard it it's just not worth going to war over. I mean Jews and Muslims don't write letters to the editor complaining about people eating swine - they just don't eat it themselves. People only get upset about things that are in their own backyard, which is obviously a very common phenomenon.  But as soon as Australian horses start getting killed for people to eat the uproar starts.

In fact, Australia already has a horsemeat industry and has done for decades - it's just not for domestic consumption. Vince Garreffa claimed in the ABC article I cited earlier that Australia has the sixth largest horsemeat export market in the world. I tried to verify this but only got Wikipedia and a bunch of old broken links, so I suspect Vince did too. This was meant to be a short opinion/rant and not an investigation - maybe later?

Obviously, despite some people's McCarthy style spiritualism, the aversion to eating horsemeat is nothing but a cultural taboo - meat eaters haven't really got a rational leg to stand on when they complain about it. Animal liberationists however do, and they are two vast and trunkless legs of stone.

The philosopher and author of the Animal Liberation bible Animal Liberation Peter Singer rejects the idea of absolute rights when it comes to the treatment of animals, and that the assumption that humans are superior to animals on the basis of intelligence is discrimination on par with human racism. He argues that intelligence is not a logical boundary between humans and non-humans – for example young children and severely mentally disabled people might have equal or lower intelligence to some animals – therefore intelligence doesn't present a basis for affording animals less moral consideration than children or disabled people.

Instead he argues from a position of preference utilitarianism: that the ability to suffer should be the primary concern when dealing with the treatment of sentient beings, and given that there is no absolute divide between humans and non-humans, the interests of any two animals, human or otherwise, should be afforded equal consideration. A man and a goat both have an interest in not having their throats cut and their blood drained into a bucket, because both would suffer as a result. When considering their respective interests there is no moral or logical justification for not considering those interests equally. Singer argues that the extent to which a being can suffer is the crucial factor.

Singer doesn't absolutely argue that we shouldn't kill and eat animals if we make sure they live and die without suffering, but since this is rarely the case the only logical step is to become vegetarian.

It gets more complicated and his system is not without problems (also I'm far from being an expert on this) but you get the picture: he's really got us on the ropes, at least as far as I'm concerned. The fact is there is no reason for us to eat meat, in fact there are compelling reasons not to. It's more than possible – in fact it's easy – to adopt a healthy vegetarian diet. The only reason we eat meat is because it's so goddamn delicious, and we're capable of some amazing feats of cognitive dissonance in order to keep our delicious diets intact and squash-free.

As a meat eater I have no right to object to eating horsemeat. Nevertheless, despite my fairly staunch aversion to anything spiritual or supernatural I can't help but feel that there is something about horses - something undefinably special that goes beyond simple affection. I'm not a horse person. I've never ridden a horse, I've never worked with horses - yet I can't help feeling that eating horse is somehow just wrong, and wrong in a way that I'm not able to put to one side and ignore like I can with all the other types of meat I eat. Kind of like eating monkey, or a talking dog or something.

Of course my attitude has probably largely been shaped by the attitude of my culture and books like All The Pretty Horses - I'll be the first to admit that the descriptions of horses in that book has stuck with me pretty solidly since I read it maybe two years ago. That man can really suck you in with words, and he's the only writer I've read that can get away with not using punctuation.

I consider myself a good and moral person, yet I eat meat without qualms and enjoy it. I know the animals I eat probably lived and died in at least some pain, and I don't want to know about it. My brain and stomach generally get along fine. But this horsemeat debate makes me think - and I don't like to think about anything that might lead me to not eat meat so...

...this blog ends here.

Conspibrities: Bald Edition

Part one here.

NATALIE PORTMAN - SINEAD O'CONNOR

MICHAEL CHIKLIS - MATT LUCAS

MATT LUCAS - BLACK FRANCIS

BLACK FRANCIS - PRUITT TAYLOR VINCE

MICHAEL BERRYMAN - PETER GARRETT

PETER GARRETT - NOSFERATU

FRED DURST - BILL RAWLS

MICHAEL IRONSIDE - V.I. LENIN

KARL PILKINGTON - FUCKING ORANGE