<H2><b>TED LAPKIN'S HOMOPHOBIA "TOO MUCH TO BEAR!"</b></H2>

I would hate to make you read this, because it will be sure to offend many of you who do, but it is so appallingly intolerant, ignorant, distorted and homophobic that it simply must not be ignored.

Ted Lapkin is a zionist who comes from the American continent. He was a reactionary conservative there, but seems to have grown even more so in Australia - if that was indeed possible.

He is still quoting the bible and other mythical issues to make points about gay marriage - if we allow such things we are opening the door to incest and worse!!! and polygamy - well, there's an idea whose time has come! Many males - and females - already live lives of polygamy - they are just called other things because it is more polite - you know - de facto for example!!

As for being an Ashkenazi Jew - what on earth has that got to do with it - he was born that way and can't change - what is he talking about??? My mother was born an Ashkenazi Jew and my father was born a Sephardic Jew and I am an atheist - so where does that get us with this homophobic nonsense?

Selectively quoting, as Lapkin does, does not an answer give!! He quotes - out of context - the feedback from a few parliamentarians about what their constituents said about the issue of same-sex marriage, but does not bother with the others who report different findings. Does Lapkin think everyone is born as stupid as he is??

He says, "In fact..........." when in fact the facts contradict the very points he thinks he is making - how pathetic!

If all Australians are entitled to the same rights, then that is exactly what it means - equality for all - not all animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others. Does that sound like Dr Verwoerd at his worst? Lapkin can go the whole round with him - blow for blow!!

The only people who move the goal posts in this country are the politicians at all levels of government and it ain't a pretty picture! For marriage issues see John Howard and Julia Gillard/Kevin Rudd. Gillard's hypocrisy over this issue is sickening, only more sickening than her atheist embrace of all "God's chosen people" whther they be zionists, cristians, muslims or other religions - Gillard is with them all the way.

Read the whole thing if you dare, but it is not very pretty and all it does is condemn Ted Lapkin out of his own mouth!

Too much to bear
Ted Lapkin
August 28, 2011


GREENS MP Adam Bandt bit off a bit more than he could chew with his parliamentary motion calling on fellow MPs to canvas public opinion on the issue of same-sex marriage. The measure passed through the House of Representatives last November with a one-vote majority and the numbers are now in.

And while you have to give Bandt full thespian credit for putting a brave face on disappointment, the results are lopsidedly in his disfavour. Only a handful out of the 30 MPs who reported back to Parliament were prepared to state that a majority of their constituents supported gay marriage.

In fact, the tide is running strongly against the idea of amending the Commonwealth Marriage Act even in Labor-held electorates. In the suburban Melbourne seat of Deakin, the ALP's Mike Symon indicated that more than 93 per cent of the 1015 people he surveyed were opposed to same-sex nuptials. These electorate surveys were hardly scientific, and published opinion polls are more evenly divided, but even when religious faith is excised from the equation, there are valid reasons to take a jaundiced view of the push for gay marriage.

All Australians are entitled to the same rights and privileges as citizens of our democracy. Each and every one of us - gay or straight, black or white, believer or non-believer - is entitled to identical protections of law in our individual persons and property.

But despite the impassioned arguments of Adam Bandt and others, the debate over same-sex marriage does not pertain to individual rights. It instead revolves around the demand that collective privileges be conferred upon a group whose self-definition relates to what its members do in the bedroom.

Gay rights activists hasten to assure us that any redefinition of marriage to include same-sex unions will end right there. We're promised there'll be no flow-on effects and that the door to further changes won't be left ajar.

But I've been around politics long enough to know that once the goal posts begin to shift, the precedent for further change has already been established. You can rest assured there'll be other aggrieved groups waiting in the wings, eager to push the envelope further.

Case in point: American polygamist Kody Brown. He is a fundamentalist Mormon from the state of Utah whose family unit includes four wives and 16 children. And he's so proud of his lifestyle that his clan was featured on a TV show entitled Sister Wives. But Brown is more than a television reality star. He's also the plaintiff in a lawsuit intended to strike down America's bigamy statutes. The lynchpin of his legal pleading is premised upon the 2003 US Supreme Court Lawrence v Texas ruling that overturned America's sodomy laws.

And truth be told, there's something to be said for the logic of Brown's argument. If restriction of marriage to male-female couples is the indefensible fruit of prejudice, isn't it equally bigoted to impose arbitrary limits on the number of spouses one can take?

So if Adam Bandt is pushing for same-sex marriage to be legitimised by law, shouldn't he be cheerleading for polygamy as well?

And then the next cab off the rank will surely be consensual sex between adult brothers and sisters, adult fathers and daughters or adult mothers and sons. After all, we're told individual choice is Holy Writ in such matters. And if people over the age of 18 years freely want to indulge in incestuous pursuits, who are we to tell them they can't do whomever they want to do?

So we should bear in mind that those guarantees about the buck stopping at same-sex marriage will, in reality, guarantee nothing. The floodgates will inevitably open to a further slide down the slippery slope of social disintegration.

Advocates of same-sex marriage also like to liken their situation to that of interracial couples living in the pre-civil rights-era American South. But sexual activity is volitional. As a heterosexual man committed to monogamy, I restrain my natural libidinous impulses. And I have friends who ignore their sexual attraction to persons of the same gender for the sake of their commitment to celibacy.
By contrast, I can't simply decide one day to abandon my Ashkenazi Jewish ethnic origins. I'm stuck with them. And it's this crucial distinction between who you are and what you do that nullifies the gay rights pseudo-equation between sexual preference and race/ethnicity.

The ''sexuality-equals-race'' argument falls short on other grounds, as well. People of different racial and ethnic categories have been falling in love since time immemorial. In the Hebrew Bible we read how Moses took an ''Isha Kushit'' - a black woman - as his wife. Inter-group romance is the historical norm while those obnoxious Jim Crow anti-miscegenation laws were an ephemeral aberration from it.
Yet it's notable that the annals of humanity are devoid of any similar precedent that would legitimate same-sex nuptials. Across continents and centuries, the institution of marriage has invariably involved the male-female family model.

And that's because of the kids. The universality of the traditional father-mother family unit stems from the superior child-rearing environment it provides. And the promotion of children's best interests makes it entirely appropriate for the state to preference heterosexual marriage in law and practice.

Of course, it's true that traditional marriages don't always succeed, and that there are far too many single-parent households. And I'll concede that many gay families provide loving environments to the child of whichever partner was involved in the gestational process.

But exceptions don't invalidate the state's legitimate interest in retaining limitations on marriage that exclude a family model where the father-mother unit is impossible by definition.

Nothing in any of my arguments would preclude the ability of same-sex couples to come together, live together and love together as they have been doing for time immemorial.

But the institution of marriage should remain as it's always been - the union of a single man and single woman who come together for the primary purpose of rearing the healthiest children possible.

Ted Lapkin was a ministerial adviser to the federal Coalition, and was communications director to a senior member of the Republican leadership in the US Congress