But will Kevin Donnelly and the Xians ever address their women and gay problem?

Every so often, a bit of gob-smacking cheek&sgy;iness comes along that results in a sharp intake of breath, along with a gush of awe and admiration ...

For sheer chutzpah, it doesn't get much better than an angry old man, shouting at clouds and Islamics, at work at a Catholic university, complaining of Islamic attitudes to women ... with nary a mention of the Catholic church's past and present proud history in the area ...

Talk about a mote in the eye and all the other folkloric tales of pot and kettle and people in glass houses with too many stones and the owl telling the sparrow it has a big head and ... oh just Greg Hunt them all here, so we can get on with the man shouting at Islamic clouds ...

Stop right there.

"So unique?!"

Usage Note: Unique may be the foremost example of an absolute term—a term that, in the eyes of traditional grammarians, should not allow comparison or modification by an adverb of degree like very, somewhat, or quite. Thus, most grammarians believe that it is incorrect to say that something is very unique or more unique than something else, though phrases such as nearly unique and almost unique are presumably acceptable, since in these cases unique is not modified by an adverb of degree. A substantial majority of the Usage Panel supports the traditional view. In our 2004 survey, 66 percent of the Panelists disapproved of the sentence Her designs are quite unique in today's fashion, although in our 1988 survey, 80 percent rejected this same sentence, suggesting that resistance to this usage may be waning. In fact, the nontraditional modification of unique may be found in the work of many reputable writers and has certainly been put to effective use: "I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of preachers" (Martin Luther King, Jr.) "The creature is so unique in its style and appearance that the biologists who discovered it have given it not just its own species name ... but have moved way up the classification scale and declared that it is an entirely new phylum" (Natalie Angier). (here)

So sorry, Natalie and Kev, but the pond is so uniquely traditional and conservative that it's naturally so disapproving.

Not for the pond the dangerous, radical and misleading abuse of the English language by morally bereft academics working at Catholic universities ...

It'll take more than the combined might of the ABC and Kev to get the pond to abuse and misuse "unique" ...

But as a result the pond was been distracted from the more important aspects of Kev's message, so please, do go on ...

Uh huh. Now it's more than just a sense of casual irony that immediately led the pond to contemplate Donnelly's Abbott made the right call on same-sex marriage, though there's a wondrous - some might say juicy - irony in Kev quoting Joachim Gauch on gays and women, and David Cameron ...

You see, your average Xian fundie has a lot in common with your average Islamic fundie ...

Oh sure, they dress it up with high flying rhetoric about love, sensitivity and respect, but let's remember that the most important aspect of marriage is a capacity to breed and so keep the Ponzi aspect of religion provided with a plentiful supply of likely young followers ...

The institution of marriage involving a woman and a man for the purpose of having children is one of the bedrocks of Australian society and is common across cultures and has existed for generations. There are good reasons why it is so enduring.

Well it's not the same as throwing gays from rooftops or high places, but still, it's a form of discrimination any Islamic of a fundamentalist conservative kind would agree with ...

But here's where it gets truly wondrous, as if it's only in German on New Year's eve that women in western countries have to fear for their lives, or endure casual abuse on a daily basis ... and it gets even better when the Qu'ran is trotted out as the reason ...

Such a stupid man, and a measure of Tony Abbott's Australia that he should briefly have been put in charge of an important review of the Australian education system ...

The pond never gets tired of linking to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, despite that American use of the "k", and its section on Misogyny and Insults to Women in the Bible, which at last count numbered some 388 and make the efforts of the Qu'ran seem like the work of a half-hearted amateur - though to be fair and balance the book, we should also link to the Skeptic's Annoted Quran's annotations on women (though it manages only a mere 69) and homosexuality ... though also to be fair, the Qu'ran only manages four references to homosexual acts, whereas the bible trots out some 54 references, usually abusive and vile, here.

The pond is so uniquely over stupid people at Catholic universities attempting to portray Islamics as the source of the treatment of women as second rate, when in other contexts, Kev himself has spoken of the urgent need to keep women and gays in their place ...

Don't trust the pond on this, trust Kev, scribbling as he did many pieces during Abbott's years, including this fine piece for Fairfax ...

Finally, it has to be realised that defining marriage as between same-sex couples involves what in philosophy is known as a category mistake - an error in which something is incorrectly presented as belonging to a particular category, or mistakenly claiming that opposing things belong to the same category. In the same way it is impossible to describe night as day or day as night, it is impossible to define marriage as anything but the life-long union of a women and a man for the purpose of having children.  

That's it? It's all for the Ponzi scheme? Repeating himself like a cog in a broken theological machine ...

And if you can't have kids? ... why, guess the marriage must be a tragic sham ...

Back in the day, the tragedy of Donnelly even caught the eye of Mamamia, in Meet the man who is going to decide what your kids get taught at school. Oh my.

Donnelly's hostility to feminism is right up there with the Vatican's irritation at pesky American nuns ...

The implication is that the characteristics associated with being "male" are misogynist and ripe for change. Even worse, the assumption is that traditional role models must be abandoned as boys become sensitive new age guys (snags) and embrace the world of the gender correct. 
Increasingly, men are beginning to respond to the gender agenda imposed by feminists over the last 20 or so years. The University of Western Sydney's Mens Health Information and Resource Centre offers one example. The Centre provides a series of papers written by men that seek answers to questions like youth suicide, under achievement at school and the place of fathers in a post-feminist world.
Making it OK to be Male (pdf file) (is one paper that should be compulsory reading for anyone wanting to learn about the problems caused by the way men have been emasculated by the feminist agenda. For too long, especially at school, boys, and men, have been told that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Instead of celebrating masculinity in a positive way, men are portrayed as misogynist, violent and emotionally crippled.
This deficit view of what it means to be male is based on the assumption that men need to become "more 'feminine' in order to be whole". The result, according to academics like Peter West and John Macdonald, is that boy's lack self-esteem and a "positive sense of self". 
The alternative to a deficit approach to masculinity, in the words of the above mentioned paper, it to "create a culture which does not run away from the darker side of men but which validates and honours men … a culture where men and boys and older men don't feel they have to apologise for being male".
The federally funded Boys' Education Lighthouse Schools Programme offers a second example of the emphasis shifting from positively discriminating in favour of girls to addressing the question of boys' educational disadvantage. Schools around Australia are being funded to identify and support "best practice" and to make what works available to other schools. 
One of the most damaging aspects of the feminist agenda is the assumption that equality means sameness. Not only do girls, to succeed, need to become more like boys, but boys, so they are told, need to be more in touch with their feminine side. The alternative is to celebrate difference and to realise that men and women are not the same and that gender is not simply a social construct, but also biologically determined. (more here).

Truth to tell, an Islamic theologian couldn't have put it better ... especially that bit supportive of those who consider the sexual practices of gays, lesbians and transgender individuals as being decidedly unnatural ... which you can find here ...

But enough of doddles Donnelly, because yesterday the pond thought it had stumbled on the wrong newspaper when the reptiles ran this piece which joked about the Anglicans and celebrated David Bowie, and made the pond think nostalgically of the Angry Sydney Anglicans...

Lordy, lordy, long absent lordy, you can see why the pond almost had a fainting fit ...

Luckily, it turned out that the pond had been reading the wrong paper ...

Phew, for a moment there, the pond was thinking that the legacy of Chris Mitchell, Kevin Donnelly, Tony Abbott and the Angry Sydney Anglicans might be under threat, but it was only The Times letting its hair down ...

Would Kevin Donnelly understand a word that was written?

After all, it's not so unique ...

Probably not.

Blinkered bigotry is a hard won right, and after a couple of thousand years of taking it off the leash, it's terribly hard to return the hound to the collar ...

Finally, the pond did hear the SOTU ... whatever his failings, he knows how to deliver a speech ... something that can't be said for the current crop of wickedness contending for the GOP crown ... and lordy, lordy, long absent lordy, did Rowe have a point to make about them, and more Rowe in correct format, with links, here ...