Angry Sydney Anglicans, and bollocks to Barney Zwartz and a nuanced discussion ...

(Above: the Sydney Anglicans at it again, no link, screen cap, the pond just wanted to memorialise these graphics by sending them off to Google images).

Sex sells, so when you're on the nose like a bunch of angry Sydney Anglicans, it's time to get out the sexegesis.

But will a half-baked merging of 'sex' and 'exegesis' stop the Census rot, and return the faithful to vigorous explorations of Anglican-approved sexual activity? Is there more to life than the missionary position in Africa?

Sadly it's likely the pond will never know, because it turns out that "Sexegesis" sounds just like another excuse to bash gays, as if angry Sydney Anglicans don't do that every day of the week.

"Many of us know of Christians struggling with homosexuality; their stories are normally very complex, often tragic and painful. They need to know that God loves them, we love them, and there is a better way to live outside that which society says" said the publishing director of Youthworks, Marshall Ballantine-Jones. (here)

Yes indeed, it's simply impossible to be gay and happy and proud. And perverted society instructs gays to lead a gay life, and the poor hapless gays don't know there's a better way to live ... angry Sydney Anglican style, brooding about hellfire and eternal damnation and the writhing for ever in the fire and the flames like a coal in the lounge room fireplace ... (go on Phillip Jensen, lay some of that hellfire and damnation and brimstone on us again, and why not do an Elmer Gantry impression while you're at it).

But back to Sexegesis, which sounds like it lacks the zing of Henry Miller's Sexus, Plexus and Nexus:

"I am glad Sexegesis has a pastoral chapter for church leaders reminding them of our core responsibility to love and support them, as we call them into repentance and obedience to Jesus Christ."

Oh dear, looks like we're going to cop another bout of missionary position nonsense.

The funniest thing? Here's Bishop Forsyth launching the book for Youthworks Publishing:

"What's interesting is that this is not a book by the usual suspects. We in Sydney have had almost nothing to do with it. It's a book written by evangelical scholars and ministers in places where I think the debate is much more urgent and severe".

Now quick, rush off to the wiki on Anglican Youthworks, and here's what you read:

Anglican Youthworks, otherwise known simply as Youthworks, is the youth and education department of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia. It exists to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the young people of Sydney and beyond in partnership with the churches and schools of the diocese.

Yes it seems that the Sydney Anglicans had nothing to do with it ... they're only the publisher ...

And giving it a good flogging on their website, and others they own. So Anglican Youthworks has a piece of puffery about the book featuring an extract from the introduction, here. And WTF, it's all because Sydney Anglicans think things are more urgent and severe in Melbourne and Brisbane on the gaydar front?

Not to worry, if we can be so bold as to summarise the thinking, Justice Michael Kirby is a sweetie but he's wrong, African bishops are new to the faith but exemplary in their persecution of gays (hang 'em, hang 'em high and hard), Kinsey was wrong and Anglicans know better, gay genes are dead as a concept, and gayness might be a predisposition, not a pre-determination, whatever that means, though perhaps it means there's hope the filthy perverts might change their ways after hours of being prayed over by Sydney Anglicans. Unless sterner measures are required. Now where did we leave that electro-shock machine ....?

And if that bout of gay bashing wasn't enough to get you going, why you have a chance to read the Archbishop's letter 'Redefining Marriage'. Naturally the Jensenists can't manage to distinguish between 'race' and 'species':

... the Bible teaches, and our general experience shows, that marriage between a man and a woman is one of God’s blessings upon us as a race.

Indeed, and geese tend to mate for life, thanks to god's blessings, while hooligan penguins in the Antarctic - as noted before on the pond - don't mind a little rough stuff as they take a walk on the wild side.

Little Happy Feet never once gave it away,
Ev'rybody had to pay and pay.
A hustle here and a hustle there
Antarctic snow is one place where they said:
Hey Babe, take a walk on the wild side,
Said hey penguin, take a walk on the wild side. ('Sexual depravity' of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal)

Are Sydney Anglicans routinely ignorant of nature studies and what goes on in the world? Do Sydney Anglicans seriously think marriage is God-given, in which case we need to sort through which god should be given the god-credit.

Did the Anglican god have something to do with Chinese marriage, long before Jesus hit the turf to save angry Sydney Anglicans? Strange, you'd think she would have sorted out concubinage and such like follies, and why did she send them Confucius?

Oh wait, the old testament doesn't mind a little rape, plunder, sex slavery and polygamy (the evil bible is always fun).

In his usual way, Mike Carlton had it right in Last tango for critics of gay marriage, looking back at Christians blathering on about the tango and mixed bathing, and their inclination to moral panics... and reminding us of H. L. Mencken's wise words: they have the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy ...

Well hell will sort out that happiness lark.

Moving right along, let's leave the angry Sydney Anglicans and turn instead to Barney Zwartz, doing it for The Age, with his call for nuanced debate in On gay marriage, both sides are guilty of bollocks.

Yep, bollocks is Barney's idea of nuanced debate, so can we just say amen and bollocks to that.

Of course the call for nuance is really just Barney's way of saying bollocks to gay marriage, but in a subtle and nuanced way. Here's how it's done:

... of the many Christians who do oppose gay marriage, very few of them oppose it for reasons of power or to preserve church influence. They do so because they think it is a slippery slope that could lead, for example, to polygamy, because they think it is against nature, because they think it is bad for children. In other words, they hold a position in good conscience to which they think reason and evidence have led them.

Yep, you too can be amazingly stupid and dumb, and use ridiculous 'slippery slope' arguments in good conscience, like polygamy, or bestiality, or evoke a peculiar concept of 'nature' which leaves out penguins, or shriek how we should think of the children, as if heterosexual marriage was the only way to go because it's been such a success at training people for a couple of world wars and more than a few minor ones... and Barney will give you a free pass.

Because in good conscience you're showing every sign of reason and evidence in your thinking. Cue the domino theory, and why don't we invade Vietnam before the whole world turns Communist ...

Poor Barney can see which way the world is heading, and takes his cue from the Catholic church's attempt to forbid artificial contraception:

It brought tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Catholics into the habit, which has become still more widespread, of simply ignoring official church teaching when they find it inconvenient or distasteful.

Indeed, religious superstition found out, displaced by the simple experience of reality, though in the day, and even now, you can still read learned clerics offering allegedly reasonable evidential theological arguments held in good if foolish conscience, but Barners still wants a nuanced view:

In saying this I am not endorsing any view of gay marriage. I simply want to see a more nuanced level of debate in which neither advocates nor opponents are stereotyped and therefore dismissed. The more heated the issue, the more important it is for both sides actually to listen to what their opponents say.

But why the need for nuance, why the need to listen to blathering babbling Christians in the grip of a moral panic? Did we need to listen to them about the tango, mixed bathing, or blacks consorting with whites in marriage?

Consider the Christian stereotype of gay people beyond the pale and in perpetual sin and destined for hell unless they live a life of chastity, and such like narrow prejudiced nonsense.

Must we - if we can borrow from Barners - listen to a load of bollocks?

Barners attempts to sow seeds of confusion and chaos, by proposing that the opposition to gay marriage doesn't just come from Christians, as if prejudice also coming from atheists like Julia Gillard and fundamentalist Islamics is somehow designed to make gay people feel more comfortable.

And he gets most anxious lest anyone confuse the local fundies with US fundies:

Don't be misled by the claim that Australia has a powerful and influential religious right akin to that in the United States, because it doesn't.

Not even the Pellists (deeply at one with the likes of Rick Santorum on this and many other matter)?

Or the Jensenists, off in deepest Africa working with other evangelicals to make sure that perverse homosexuality doesn't get a foothold? (Sydney Anglican, Russell Powell critiques the public media).

Or Barney's favourite, Danny Nalliah at Catch the Fire Ministries, whom Barney tells us is a dab hand at raising people from the dead? (I was raised from dead, woman tells), and always up for a bout of gay bashing ...

Yep, you can get plenty of stories from the Pellists, the Sydney Anglicans and others about the persecutions of Christians, but you hear very little about the persecution of homosexuals, perhaps because the Anglicans in particular have got an unseemly amount of skin in the game.

In the end, and contrary to Zwartz's plea to give fundamentalists a break and listen to their wretched, foolish slippery slope arguments, with the bestiality and the polygamy and the end of the world yadda yadda, it's actually a simple matter.

Either you accept consenting adults can choose a life partner with societal approval, without legal, social, or economic prejudice and disadvantage in their path, or you can prefer discrimination and intolerance as offered by Christians. That's not so hard to understand, and bugger the pond if it needs to be nuanced ...

And truth to tell is there any difference between a Jensenist blathering on about the human race, and the sort of nonsense spouted by fundies in the United States, given that the aim of the arguments is a shared desire to persecute gays?

If you want an example of hate speech, why not have a read of Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, and her portrait of evangelicals in How Bryan Fischer is Making Mitt Romney More Conservative (sorry, inside the paywall):

In Idaho, Fischer attacked homosexuality with growing fervour. In 2007, he sponsored a summit where he hosted Scott Lively, the co-author of a widely criticized book, "The Pink Swastika," which argues that homosexuality was at the heart of Nazism. (In fact, the Nazi regime persecuted gays.) More recently, Lively has expressed support for anti-gay initiatives in Uganda. He has been a guest on Fischer's radio show, and Fischer often promotes Lively's theories. "Hitler himself was an active homosexual," Fisher has said. "Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Storm Troopers... Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough." On another occasion, Fischer declared that "homosexuality gave us Adolf Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine, and six million dead Jews."

Obscene really, and so much for the "rosa winkel" homosexuals were forced to wear before they were sent to die in their thousands in Nazi German concentration camps.

And Barney Zwartz wants a nuanced conversation? Bollocks to that, and bollocks to Sydney Anglicans blathering on about the joys of the human race and the ways of the 'natural' world, when all around them is evidence that the natural world and human history denies their simplistic, hell-laden spin ... (should we even be talking about race these days?)

Hell, after all that, the pond is feeling mad as hell and wild.

For a moment we thought of memorialising more Anglican graphics, but enough already, a song please maestro YouTube, and a shout out to all those in Adelaide hanging out at the Mars Bar.

It turns out that according to the census, Adelaide leads the way with the highest percentage of 'no religionists' amongst the states. Clearly patrons of the Mars Bar are to blame.

Never mind, you don't have to settle down and get married if you don't want to, but if you do, that's fine by the pond, and who knows you can then become a decent, solid, staid, law-abiding, conservative pillar of society.

Dull, but there's an upside. You don't have to become a Sydney Anglican as well.