AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS JOIN THEOCRACIES SUCH AS IRAN, THE VATICAN, ISRAEL, SAUDI ARABIA - & OTHER SIMILAR COUNTRIES

Some of the goings-on in federal and state parliaments in Australia over the last several years, and increasingly rapidly recently, indicate that Australia is on the verge of becoming a theocracy in the worst traditions of those types of states.

Indications are that more and more of its citizens will be affected by the change from a secular state to a theocratic one and the scene is getting uglier every day.

The items from newspaper and radio reports are becoming more alarming for those who do not have strong ties to religions of any sort.

Racism and homophobia are on the increase and statements from theologians, supported by politicians of all persuasions do not a pretty picture make!

HOMOPHOBIA STRIKES AGAIN - ASSISTED BY THE NSW STATE GOVERNMENT!

Faiths rule on sex from staffroom to bedroom

February 14, 2011 - 9:46AM
• Vote

Holding the line ... Anglican Bishop Robert Forsyth outside St Andrew's Cathedral. Photo: Marco Del Grande

Australia's religious organisations fight for the right to discriminate, writes David Marr.

ADULTERERS? "Yes." Divorcees? "Normally, no." At his desk overlooking St Andrew's Cathedral, an uneasy Bishop Robert Forsyth is listing the sinners officially barred from working for the Anglican Church. A postcard of Christ keeps watch on this uncomfortable scene. The unmarried and unchaste? "Yes." Gay men or lesbians in relationships? "Yes."

The churches of Australia guard with absolute determination the right to hire and fire according to the ancient sex rules of their faiths. Orthodox Jews and Muslims claim and exercise the same right, too. But across the faiths and denominations, religious leaders are far happier talking the talk of religious liberty than detailing the human cost.

Are de factos on the list? "Yes." Single mothers? The bishop pauses. "General carte blanche, no. You need to know why." The key is repentance: an unmarried mother is employable if she repents of the "behaviour" that occasioned conception. Indeed, everyone on this list of shame can save themselves – and their jobs – by being seen to wrestle with their sins.

Forsyth, who speaks on this issue for the Anglican Church in Australia, says it isn't a matter of proving harm or showing someone can't do the job. The damage to church organisations is inevitable: "In the long run, someone behaving in a way that is consistently immoral working for an organisation is going to depower and chill the fervour and the life of the organisation."

Who the faiths employ in their pulpits is their own affair. If they want to tear themselves apart over the ordination of women or homosexuals, they are answerable only to themselves. But ever since anti-discrimination laws first appeared 30 or 40 years ago, the faiths have fought for exemptions to allow them to employ only the sexually virtuous in their welfare agencies, hospitals and schools.
Services are denied. Promotions are blocked. Individuals are picked off. Applications are rebuffed. Jobs are lost.

It is not a boutique issue. The faiths are big employers. Indeed, the Catholic Church is one of the biggest private employers in Australia and claims the right to vet the sexual morals even of the gardeners in hospital grounds. It says: "Catholic agencies must be free in employing staff and accepting volunteers to prefer practising and faithful Catholics even in support roles, and not just in roles directly concerned with pastoral work or the teaching of religion."

The issue spooks – and bores – politicians. Grappling with religious leaders complaining about threats to religious freedom is about the most distasteful contest a government can imagine. At something like a dozen inquiries over the past five or six years, the exemptions have been challenged by human rights advocates, peak law bodies, gay and lesbian advocates and a handful of determined politicians. These tussles are barely reported and almost never successful.

The British government was forced to retreat last year when the Pope attacked British plans to allow exemptions only for the hiring of "vicars, bishops, imams and rabbis". Benedict XVI denounced this as interfering with the "freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs" and the reform died in the House of Lords, voted down in a revolt led by the Anglican bishops.

Even so, the exemptions are far tighter in Britain than they are here. Religious bodies can't discriminate when delivering services for any public authority. When the churches are doing the work of the state, they have to obey secular rules of fairness. That's not so in Australia. Though public money is their lifeblood, church schools and hospitals in this country remain free to pick and choose staff according to the rules of religion.

The former Victorian government fought to tighten the exemptions so religious rules would apply only when sexual virtue is an "inherent requirement" of a position in a religious agency. Though then Attorney-General Rob Hulls reported Anglican and Catholic bishops were content with the final form of the changes, they are to be reversed by the Baillieu government even before coming into effect.

"A Liberal-Nationals Coalition government will restore the rights of freedom of religion and freedom of association in relation to faith-based schools and other organisations by removing the inherent requirements test which Labor has imposed," the new Attorney-General of Victoria, Robert Clark, told the Herald.

The exemptions issue is back on the boil because the Gillard government has promised to extend federal anti-discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation and gender identity. It's a late move. Most states and territories did so many years – even decades – ago. Tony Abbott and the Coalition back the plan in principle. A Galaxy poll indicates public support is running at roughly 85 per cent. But religious bodies are demanding exemptions to allow them to ignore the reforms.

At the heart of this story is a political mystery: where are the votes in giving the religious privileges so distasteful they are rarely used? The laws of every state and territory – with the notable exception of Tasmania – allow for adulterers, homosexuals and like sinners to be stripped from religious payrolls. Yet there are never any pogroms. Careers are ruined quietly. Both church and state appear to recognise there are profound political hazards here.

Yet national politics is shaped by the subterranean battles to protect the exemptions. The death of Frank Brennan's proposal for a national charter of rights can best be explained by the role of the churches. Among the many enemies of the charter, they were the best-organised and made no secret of being driven by the fear that a charter might undermine the exemptions.

"There is no doubt about that," Brigadier Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby told the Herald. "This is an extremely important issue."
Cardinal George Pell set out to destroy the charter for just that reason. "There is no doubt that if Australia gets a charter of rights, upfront or by stealth, it will be used against religious schools, hospitals and charities by other people who don't like religious freedom and think it shouldn't be a human right," he thundered.
"The target will be the protection in anti-discrimination laws that allow religious schools to exercise a preference in employment for people who share their faith."

The Anglicans lined up with Rome. "We don't spend our nights tossing and turning wanting more laws," Forsyth tells the Herald. "It's when we see the state moving and we think if we don't watch out we will seriously lose a freedom to operate in a way we think we need to operate, and that's what we're concerned about – concerned about the human rights and anti-discrimination lobby intruding too deeply into our organisations. That's why we react."

But even in the ranks of the religious, there is deep disquiet about these privileges to discriminate. The Anglican bishop of Gippsland, John McIntyre, says they are "at odds with the essence of what the founder of the Christian faith lived, taught and died for. How bizarre that the followers of Jesus Christ would oppose, and ask for exemptions from, a legal instrument that has at its heart a declaration of the dignity and value of every human life and the basic rights of every person".
The Reverend Harry Herbert of the Uniting Church blames this on the old obsessions of Christianity. "The church is stuffed up about sex," he told the Herald. "It all arises from that. The church has this thing that you can only have sex to have babies. It all goes back to that."

A LAWYER and a social worker, O. V. and O. W., offered to foster a child through a service run by Sydney's Wesley Mission in 2002. The men were told: "As part of Wesley Mission, our policies must align with the ethos and values of that church, which does not support same-sex relationships." They lodged a complaint with the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board which the mission spent seven years and at least half a million dollars fighting.

Court cases that test the power of the churches to discriminate against sinners have been rare in the past so many churches watched intently as the case against Wesley Mission made its slow way through the courts.

The NSW Anti-Discrimination Act forbids discrimination on many grounds including sex, marital status and homosexuality but exempts "any act or practice" that conforms to the doctrines of a religion. O. V. and O. W. argued that fostering children was not a religious or pastoral function of the mission and denying a child to them was not dictated by the teachings of the wider Uniting Church.

A win for O. V. and O. W. in April 2008 provoked the NSW Attorney General, John Hatzistergos, to intervene on the side of the Mission. This was necessary, a spokesman for the Attorney-General told the Herald, because the case "raised particularly difficult and complex issues of statutory interpretation".
(see last paragraph in bold!)

The key issue Hatzistergos backed was this: that the NSW law exempts all the efforts – not just the pastoral work – of religious bodies.

Cardinal Pell was one of several churchmen who expressed relief when the case began to go the Mission's way. But it took another two hearings before the government-backed victory over O. V. and O. W. was clinched in the Administrative Decisions Tribunal just before last Christmas.

The upshot is that religious bodies in NSW now have an open slather to discriminate in all their operations against anyone who breaks the sex rules of the faiths.
So unhappy was the tribunal to reach this decision that the panel of three called the criteria for religious exemptions so "singularly undemanding" that they called for the "attention of parliament".

But the politicians disagreed. Hatzistergos announced: "It is not envisaged that there will be changes to the current exemptions in relation to religious institutions." And the Leader of the Opposition, Barry O'Farrell, backed him.
More victims are pushing back in the courts. That win for the churches in NSW came only weeks after a big loss in Victoria when a sect called the Christian Brethren was fined for refusing to allow WayOut, a suicide prevention group for gay kids, to rent cabins at the sect's Phillip Island Adventure Resort one weekend in 2007.

Though happy to host the Collingwood Football Club at this commercial operation, the sect justified knocking back the kids and their counsellors because their camping ground was "a place where God is honoured, where there is an atmosphere of peace, and where there is an opportunity of experiencing the truth of God's love".

Judge Felicity Hampel in the Civil and Administrative Tribunal made mincemeat of the sect's claims. She declared the resort a secular business usually untroubled by the sex lives of its customers. She didn't doubt the Brethren faithful deeply disapproved of homosexuality, but she found rebuffing gay kids was compelled neither by doctrinal necessity nor the need to protect the religious sensitivities of sect members.

The sect is appealing. But win or lose, the WayOut case displays exactly why the churches fear charters of rights. In NSW there is no such instrument, so "religious freedom" trumps "freedom from discrimination" every time. But the Human Rights Charter in Victoria compels the courts to interpret every law as far as possible to favour human rights – not the rights of religious institutions, but of ordinary and fallible human beings.

MASTURBATORS? Stephen O'Doherty takes the question seriously. While he has no doubt teachers in the low-fee schools he represents would denounce the vice, he wonders if masturbation at home would be a sacking offence from school. He lists adultery, living in sin, homosexual intercourse and being transsexual as sure career-stoppers. But masturbation? "I don't think I've ever heard a teaching on that issue."

O'Doherty has clout. Once a journalist and later a Liberal parliamentarian in NSW, he has been the face of Christian Schools Australia for nearly a decade. Protecting the exemptions is a big part of his job and he counts on the fingers of both hands the public inquiries where, over the years, he has had to grapple with the issue. "At any one time we have generally got two or three of these on the go."

He talks of the 130 or so schools he represents as communities of faith where all – down to the gardeners in the grounds – must show they not only believe but live by their beliefs. "Anybody who is employed in one of our schools but whose lifestyle didn't reflect any one of a number of teachings – let's say they became profligate gamblers – we would say absolutely we reserve the right to disengage them on the basis that they are not living by the values of the church, because they are there as exemplars to the kids."

Concerned with Canberra's latest plans, O'Doherty made a submission last October to the Australian Human Rights Commission consultation on the proposed extension of Federal anti-discrimination laws. "Current exemptions should be maintained," he wrote, "in order to ensure that faith communities can continue to exercise their rights to freedom of religion, consistent with both Australian and international law."

Dozens of submissions from religious bodies put the same argument to the commission. They are a familiar mix of high praise for human rights in general, broad demands for religious liberty and a remarkable coyness about who might suffer in the workplace if the faiths have their way.

None are as coy as the Catholics. Efforts by the Herald over nearly a month to clarify who might suffer under Rome's rules of employment proved fruitless. A list by Melbourne's Archbishop, Denis Hart, to an earlier inquiry had "seven attributes" demanding exemptions: "Religious belief or activity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, lawful sexual activity, marital status or parental status or status as a carer."

Neither the Sydney nor Melbourne archdiocese would clarify Hart's list, but it looks like the lot. Francis Moore, the business manager of the Melbourne archdiocese, says hiring and firing turns on public conflict with Church teachings: "The failure in behaviour has to be relevant, at odds with these teachings, the role of the Church body and the role the employee performs in the Church body. It is against these criteria and not a simplistic categorisation of individual personal circumstances that Church bodies determine their employment practices."

By contrast, Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen of the Institute for Judaism and Civilisation offered the Australian Human Rights Commission a full-throttle denunciation of homosexuality. "Judaism's position on the practice of homosexuality is unchanged over more than three millennia," he wrote. "Homosexual practice remains a moral wrong alongside adultery, incest and bestiality. The same God prohibited them all at Mount Sinai."

Dr Cowen concedes Jews are divided on this issue. "I speak on behalf of Orthodox Judaism and Orthodox Judaism accounts for the overwhelming majority of congregations in Australia." And no Orthodox school or hospital, he says, will employ homosexuals, the openly promiscuous, the flagrant adulterer and Jews in de facto relationships - though "for non-Jewish teachers it would not constitute a major problem".

Transsexuals need not apply. They don't worry Anglicans, it seems, but repugnance to transgender is a powerful, ecumenical bond across most denominations and faiths. Jews, Evangelical Christians and Muslims are at one insisting we must all stick with the sex we were born with. Ikebal Patel, the president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, lists transsexuals as the least likely to find work with Islamic organisations.

Muslims want exemptions but don't lobby for them. "It is not a priority," Patel says. Islamic schools in Australia employ about 5000 people. They will include homosexuals, de factos, sexually active singles and adulterers who keep their moral views to themselves.

"Marriage between a man and a woman is a very strong requirement of Islam," Patel says. "So if there is someone in the school who is trying to espouse otherwise, then we would like to have the right to terminate their services."

For Brigadier Jim Wallace and the Australian Christian Lobby, gender confusion is only one of a number of nightmares. No politicians' doors are shut to him and his lobby. Political leaders queue to speak at his evangelical shindigs. Wallace believes church agencies have a right to sack any sinner for any sin without being answerable to any secular tribunal. On the sex front, he sees no place on Christian payrolls for the unchaste and unrepentant - heterosexual or homosexual.

"My view - and the view of most Christians - is that we are all sinners. I would very much doubt that somebody is going to be fired on the basis that they were found to be an adulterer if they repent of that and correct themselves. If it's an unrepentant adulterer, why would he expect not to be fired?"

None of the Christians the Herald consulted could find a Biblical text that directs them to shed sinners from their payrolls. Bishop Forsyth and Stephen O'Doherty came up with some rather opaque teachings about gentiles, tax collectors and the dangers of yoking believers with unbelievers. Wallace simply laughs at the idea. "Clearly the texts of the Bible do not cover employment. But there are loads of texts that say homosexuality is a sin."

He is a candid man. The demands by the faithful to be allowed to hire only the virtuous began when homosexuality was decriminalised here and in Britain from the 1960s onwards. The exemptions were a sop to churches that demanded, all the way to the end, that governments go on punishing homosexuals. Adulterers and de factos hardly matter. The exemptions were designed to allow religious bodies to continue to punish homosexuals in their own way by refusing them work.

Wallace disagrees categorically. "The homosexual community is now determined to punish the church. I cannot understand for one moment how a community that has demanded tolerance, demanded the acceptance of diversity, is now attacking the right of the church to be diverse and different in a multicultural environment. Right?"

Bishop Robert Forsyth barely blinks when I report that lesbians in large numbers are working for Anglicare. Forsyth, who was on the board of his church's mighty welfare arm for many years, insists this is news from the blue: ''It was never discussed. Ever.''

Sinners are everywhere on church payrolls just as they are on the books of BHP and Westpac. ''There are heaps of poofs and dykes in the community sector,'' says Sally McManus, the NSW secretary of the Australian Services Union. ''Anglicare has lots of lesbians. It's a bit like 'don't ask, don't tell'. Everyone knows and it's just so much part of the culture that it's not something anyone would even question or talk about.''


O.V. AND O.W. are now parents. Within days of losing their case against Wesley Mission, they became the first gay couple in NSW to be allowed to adopt children: a boy of nine and a girl of five they had been fostering for some years through Barnardos. Judge George Palmer remarked that his court was not concerned with ideological debates surrounding gay adoption. He declared the men: "Unquestionably capable of parenting these two children."

CATHOLIC CHURCH'S LATEST ATTACK ON EUTHANASIA

1 FEBRUARY 2011

Article in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper:

Euthanasia a bad law by bad people, says bishop

By Leesha McKenny


Start of the legal year ... the Red Mass yesterday. Photo: Dean Sewell

EUTHANASIA was contrary to the ideals of justice and charity and would corrupt society, a Catholic bishop has warned the legal fraternity.

The Bishop of Parramatta, Anthony Fisher, used a service at St Mary's Cathedral yesterday attended by the NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, the shadow attorney-general, Greg Smith, and leading judges and barristers, to warn that ''state-sanctioned killing'' undermined the legitimacy of the state and its criminal law.

''Even were such a proposal to gain a parliamentary majority this would not make it right,'' he said.

Illustration: Cathy Wilcox

''Bad laws are mostly made by bad people and in turn make people bad.''

Bishop Fisher called on those gathered for the 81st annual Red Mass, which marks the start of the legal year, to resist efforts to legalise voluntary euthanasia.

The Greens leader, Bob Brown, has vowed to reintroduce a bill to overturn federal legislation that prevents its legalisation in the ACT and Northern Territory.

In NSW the Greens intend to introduce a private member's bill in support of legalising euthanasia after the election in March.

A NSW Greens MP, Cate Faehrmann, said the bishop's comments were an example of an ''out-of-touch commentator driven by out-of-touch ideology''. ''The vast majority of people support voluntary euthanasia as long as it's with appropriate safeguards, which is what the legislation I am proposing is about.''

Bishop Fisher, a former lawyer, said the proposed legislation was ''the killing of those who suffer by those who are comfortable, of the vulnerable by the powerful, of the sick by those professed to heal them''.

''Pope John Paul II went so far as to deem such laws 'lacking authentic juridical validity' and requiring lawyers and health professionals to refuse conscientiously to follow them,'' he said.

That remark echoed comments of Cardinal George Pell in a newspaper interview last month, where he denounced Catholic politicians who defied the church's teachings when considering controversial issues such as euthanasia or same-sex adoption.

The Premier, Kristina Keneally, a devout Catholic, told News Ltd at the time that the cardinal's comments risked being ''interpreted as condemnatory and threatening''.

But she said yesterday she did not personally support the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia.

''As I have said previously, a politician's faith and how they reconcile their beliefs in their public decision-making is a matter for each individual MP.

"The NSW government is yet to see the Greens' proposed legislation and will give it due consideration when it is forthcoming."

When asked if the bishop's comments on euthanasia were appropriate, Richard Perrignon, president of the St Thomas More Society (which sponsors the Red Mass), said the bishop was well-known for his views on euthanasia.

''It's a democracy we live in and people are entitled to their views - even prelates,'' he said.

A spokesman for Mr Hatzistergos, who is Greek Orthodox, referred to comments made in 2002 when he spoke against the Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill. The bill introduced by a Greens MP, Ian Cohen, was defeated.

2 FEBRUARY 2011

Letters in response to above article in SMH:

Dignity, morality and democracy in death

Shakespeare letters illo


Photo: John Shakespeare

I take great exception to Bishop Anthony Fisher's comments on euthanasia and his pejorative remarks towards those who are in favour of it (''Euthanasia a bad law by bad people, says bishop'', February 1). Legally and medically supervised euthanasia is not ''killing of those who suffer by those who are comfortable''. Any doctor, lawyer and especially family member of a patient undergoing euthanasia will feel the opposite of comfortable and will be acutely aware that a person's death is being caused. But they will be satisfied they are doing something that allows the patient to die without pain and in dignity.

It is not the ''killing of those vulnerable by the powerful''. In fact the process will empower a person dying from an illness over which they no longer have any control, and allow them to have control over the manner in which they die. The ultimate decision will be theirs alone.

It is not the ''killing of the sick by those who profess to heal them''. As doctors we should be there for a patient as much to help them die in peace and comfort when we can no longer do anything for them, as to help them with sickness.

Dr John Frith Paddington

The NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann suggests Bishop Fisher's comments rejecting euthanasia legislation represent ''out-of-touch ideology''. Yet her own stance, that such legislation is proper because ''the vast majority of people support voluntary euthanasia as long as it's with appropriate safeguards'', seems to suggest that moral issues be decided by popular opinion. So if the vast majority of people think it is OK to diddle their taxes, it is OK to do so. Try that on the Tax Office.

Perhaps Ms Faehrmann could undertake some of the ethics classes being promoted by the Greens. There she might learn that morality is not a matter of majority opinion.

She also might learn to share Bishop Fisher's concerns that euthanasia involves ''the killing of those who suffer by those who are comfortable, of the vulnerable by the powerful, of the sick by those professed to heal them''' and that a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable.

Neil Ormerod Professor of Theology, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield

How on earth can the Bishop of Parramatta argue that even a parliamentary majority ''would not make [euthanasia] right''? Clearly, such a majority would indicate that the moral convictions of Australian society have changed and that morality and law are in opposition to each other.

In Dishonest to God, Mary Warnock says ''a democratically elected parliament is the best interpreter of where the consensus lies''. If not here, where else could it possibly be found?

In the 21st century, the quiet majority of Australians neither expect nor approve of the church leading moral opinion.

Matthew Endacott Brandy Hill

Purple prose such as ''state-sanctioned killing''' does not embellish Bishop Anthony Fisher's argument against the right of suffering individuals to have their wishes respected. The bishop's lack of reflection on his pronouncement that ''bad laws are mostly made by bad people and in turn make people bad'' is striking, especially given his audience, and the worldwide challenge to the church to properly address the deficiencies of canon law in light of its treatment of young people.

It is here, not in acceding to requests by competent adults, that the suffering of the vulnerable at the hands of the powerful is perpetuated.

Julia Anaf Norwood (SA)

Bishop Anthony Fisher is quite right: ''Bad laws are mostly made by bad people and in turn make people bad.'' For example, the Catholic Church's canon law provisions on birth control, women priests, clerical celibacy and homosexuality.

Michael Frawley Downer (ACT)

EGYPT, MUBARAK AND HABIB - THE PLOT THICKENS!

We were sent this link to Crikey by email and it makes compulsive reading!

Monday, 31 January 2011

Mubarak’s new vice-president: the Habib connection

by Bernard Keane

General Omar Suleiman — Hosni Mubarak’s new vice-president and possible replacement as pressure on Mubarak to resign grows — tortured Australian Mamdouh Habib, according to Habib’s account about his experience of illegal rendition.

The Australian Government recently settled a long-running compensation case brought by Habib after his release from Guantanamo Bay in 2005. The Egyptian-born Habib had been arrested in Pakistan in the wake of 9/11 attacks. The settlement came in the wake of further evidence, revealed by The Australian, that Australian officials had been present at the interrogation of Habib in Cairo.

Habib has repeatedly claimed since his release that Australian officials, including DFAT and intelligence agency officials, were present when he was interrogated, a claim repeatedly denied by the Federal Government. At one point, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock denied having any information on Habib’s whereabouts, despite extensive evidence that the Australian Government knew exactly where he was and what was being done to him.

Habib was tortured in Pakistan before being secretly moved via a CIA rendition flight to Egypt, where he spent five months. He was subsequently moved to Afghanistan and then Guantanamo Bay. Richard Neville has provided extensive details of Habib’s kidnapping and torture, including his interrogation in Egypt, based on Habib’s account (read Neville’s full account at his website www.richardneville.com.au.)

Habib’s settlement with the Federal Government included a confidentiality agreement. Neville wrote:

Habib was interrogated by the country’s Intelligence Director, General Omar Suleiman, whose is ranked second in power to President Hosni Mubarak. Back in 2001, Suleiman took a personal interest in anyone suspected of links with Al Qaeda. As Habib had visited Afghanistan shortly before 9/11, he was under suspicion. Suleiman slapped Habib’s face so hard, the blindfold was dislodged, revealing the torturer’s identity. According to his memoir, Habib was repeatedly zapped with high-voltage electricity, immersed in water up to his nostrils, beaten, his fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks.

He was again interrogated by Omar Suleiman. To loosen Habib’s tongue, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a gruesomely shackled Turkistan prisoner in front of Habib – and he did, with a vicious karate kick. Suleiman is expected to be the next President of Egypt.

Suleiman played a key role in the US Government’s illegal rendition program. The central nature of his role in the rendition program and the “investigation” and “prosecution” of detainees sent to Egypt under the program is discussed in a Wikileaks cable from 2005:

General Soliman’s stature and power in the Egyptian establishment, and his history of close cooperation with the USG on counterterrorism, corroborate the Egyptian intent take responsibility for the detainees in such a way that protects both U.S. and Egyptian security interests.

As the cable shows, Habib was only one of many men subjected to kidnapping and torture by the US Government and its allies. Worse, Habib’s experience is only one of many thousands in Mubarak’s Egypt, where torture has been described as “widespread and persistent” and an “epidemic”.

A 2004 Human Rights Watch paper noted that torture and beatings by police had gone beyond political dissidents to anyone in police custody, including children. In July, the blatant beating to death of an anti-corruption activist by police drew widespread international attention.

Far from pressuring Egypt to end its extensive use of torture, the US and its allies like Australia appear to have been eager to exploit it.

"HELL ON THE WAY TO HEAVEN" - BY CHRISSIE FOSTER

AN INDICTMENT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, RELIGION AND POLITICS

I am 84 years old and have been an atheist for practically all of my adult life. I was brought up by my Jewish family to be a good practising Jewish man, to believe in god and to be a good heterosexual husband and father.

Being young, naive, trusting and obedient, as an adolescent and a young adult I did as I was told by my mother who was doing her best to be both parents to me as my father died when I was three and I had a stepfather with whom I was not very close. My father had been a religious young Jew and an ardent zionist, but he died at the age of 31 in 1930 and it is difficult to know what his responses would have been to the excesses of the Jewish state he believed in becoming Israel and a terrorist police state.

My disillusionment with religion began when I was fairly young and has only intensified over the years when I have watched the excesses of all religions behaving contrary to what they all preach, and the death and destruction this has brought to the life and death of so many around the world.

When I came out as a gay man at the age of 61 I started discovering so many in the gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS communities who had turned against their religions because they had been abused by religious people, by families, by employers, by those around them - and us - on a daily basis of homophobia and hate based often on the teachings of their religions.

During the five year period that I was a carer of people living with, and dying of AIDS I found many who had been thrown out of their homes by families because they were gay and because their families professed religion - mostly Catholics and Jews in my experience.

Many of these people had had nowhere to turn, and no one to turn to, and fortunately so many in the gay and lesbian communities had formed organisations to care for desperate people at their wits' and life's ends.

Although in my sixties and seventies, I learnt a great deal from the sufferings of these people and it had a profound and traumatic effect on me and my life for many years.

It is only in recent years that it has eased off somewhat, and I have become more peaceful in my later years due mainly to my partner of 18 years and my many caring and understanding friends.

Through one of these friends we were introduced into the life of Katie Foster who was being cared for on this particular day and brought Katie to our house - in a wheelchair - all the way from Oakleigh - quite an expedition to get to Preston from there on public transport. This would have been about 2007 or 2008 and from then on we continued to hear about the Foster family and what had happened to them to turn their lives upside down so that they were on a roller-coaster ride because of the Catholic church in their lives.

Our friend knew the Fosters through her own family who also lived in Oakleigh and had known them for years with their children attending the same Catholic church and schools.

When Chrissie Foster wrote the book with a journalist, Paul Kennedy, we received some of the early copies after it went on sale because our friend brought some to our house and gave us one. She then bought copies for people she knew and so did we.

At that stage we didn't know we were going to meet the Fosters, but our friend turned 60 and had a "mingling" for family and friends - she didn't want to call it a birthday party and amongst the friends were the Fosters.

My partner was nearly finished reading the book at that stage, and I was in the middle of a fairly long and comprehensive book of research called "The Invention of the Jewish People" - another book on religion and politics and the collision of it all due to the state of Israel and the lies and wars it has waged - in the name of the Jews - over the years since Israel was created in 1948.

I have just finished reading Chrissie's book after finishing the other one, and I found it devastating in its impact. What the Fosters have gone through and how they have suffered and come out fighting at the end of it is unbelievable in itself, but to meet them and talk to them and then be invited to their home to meet them and see Katie once again, this time in the loving and caring environment of her home made a lasting impression on us and it was one that will stay with me for a long time.

For a family to have suffered as they did due to the abuse of their two older daughters at the hands of their Catholic priest at the school the girls attended due to Chrissie's religious beliefs and her faith in her religion and to read and hear how it was all shattered as were their lives is to know what religion is capable of in all our lives.

Those responsible for this devastation in the lives of the Fosters and countless hundreds and thousands around the world are the Catholic church and its hierarchy from the fascist pope downwards, all other religions and the countries which house them and give them privileges which no other citizens are allowed - tax exemptions so that they can steal people's lives and incomes as they get richer and richer shows a collusion beyond comprehension.

Countries like Australia which give the Catholic church so much power and refuse to tax any part of it is in itself a criminal act, and the challenges which the Fosters faced in attacking the institutions which house us is as daunting as it is bravery of the first degree.

The Fosters may have won some compensation in their legal challenges to the Catholic church hierarchy, but it robbed them of their most precious possessions, the lives of two of their daughters.

There is hope that their youngest daughter, who escaped the sexual assaults perpetrated on her two older sisters will, in time, be able to live a comparatively normal life and achieve some measure of happiness.

The oldest daughter committed suicide and the middle daughter harmed herself and has ended up in a physically and mentally impaired state, but we actually saw a change for the better in her from when she visited us at our house some 3 years ago, and so there is some hope that as the years pass, she may regain some of her lost abilities, but for the parents, Chrissie and Anthony, their lives have been shattered forever, and one can only hope that also, over time, there may be some healing and some peace restored to all of them.

"CORRECTIVE RAPE" IN SOUTH AFRICA

“CORRECTIVE RAPE” IN SOUTH AFRICA

In February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years incarceration by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Four years later, Mandela became the first president of a multi-racial South Africa with a new constitution which guaranteed equality for all its citizens.

In 1999 Thabo Mbeki became president of South Africa and presided over one of the biggest health crises in South Africa’s history –the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Thanks to Mbeki and his health minister, both AIDS deniers, we have now, in 2011, nearly 1 in 5 South Africans who are HIV positive and many children have lost both parents and are themselves HIV positive.

This is South Africa’s future generation and this is the legacy they have inherited from Mbeki and his 10 years as South Africa’s president and his disastrous presidency.

If the current South African government does nothing about this “corrective rape” scourge damaging South Africa’s constitutional reputation, then its international reputation will suffer long-term damage and its human rights record will be set back for another generation at least while women remain not only second-class citizens but are cruelly punished for being who they are.

The items below are to point out to you that there are people around the world who are outraged at the inactivity of the South African government over this issue over at least the last year, and we await urgent action from the president and all members of the government to push legislation to punish the offenders and ensure that the law deals with them accordingly.

Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne, Australia
PO Box 1675
Preston South
Vic 3072
Australia

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 2010
End "Corrective" Rape of Lesbians in South Africa

• signatures: 35,669
•
• Target: South African President Kgalema Motlanthe
• Sponsored by: Care2
A new ActionAid report describes the shocking rise of "corrective" rape in South Africa - in which South African lesbians are being raped in an effort to "cure" them of their sexual orientation. Support groups in Cape Town say they see 10 new cases of "corrective" rape every week. And it's even more widespread around the rest of the country.

Many perpetrators of rape already go unpunished in South Africa, but the situation is even worse for lesbian women. Indeed, 31 lesbian women have been murdered in homophobic attacks since 1998, but in only one of these cases has there been a conviction.

Although South Africa's constitution recognizes rights of gay and lesbian people, its legal system does not view crimes committed against gay and lesbians on the basis of sexual orientation to be hate crimes. The South African legal system must recognize "corrective" rape as a hate crime in addition to a rape in order to establish a greater punishment for this brutal and widespread act of sexual violence. Urge South African President Kgalema Motlanthe to deem "corrective" rape a hate crime!

30 DECEMBER 2010





Spread the word about corrective rape in South Africa





Several weeks ago, survivors of "corrective rape" -- a heinous practice in South Africa where lesbians are raped under the guise of "curing" them -- started a petition on Change.org to ask the Minister of Justice to declare corrective rape a hate crime.

It has since become the largest-ever petition on Change.org, and the Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Justice has repeatedly contacted us to complain that they are overwhelmed with the messages coming from every part of South Africa and every corner of the globe. But the minister still refuses to meet with the activists who started the campaign -- Ndumi Funda and the women of the non-profit Lulekisizwe.

Ndumi asked us to pass the note below along to Change.org members. Read the note, then please continue to spread the word by posting on Facebook and forwarding this email to 10 friends.
___________
To Change.org members, editors and most of all to all of you who signed our petition,

We are GOBSMACKED at the response that our petition has received. Our fight against corrective-rape has been going on for so long, under the most harrowing of circumstances, with only a few volunteers to help, and it just seemed that nobody was listening, nobody cared, and our sisters were getting raped, beaten up and murdered without anyone doing anything about it.

In absolute frustration, we decided to write a petition. This was a first for us, and never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that we would get this kind of a response. We did jokingly say that we wanted to crash the Ministry of Justice's servers, but we thought that our petition would get a thousand or so signatures if we were lucky. More than 65,000 signatures later, and the senior Ministry officials we targeted are apparently having major difficulty accessing their e-mail because of all the e-mails your signatures are generating! WOOOHOOOO! Well done & thank you!
If you haven't already signed the 'Corrective Rape' petition, please sign and share it with your friends:
http://change.org/petitions/view/south_africa_declare_corrective_rape_a_hate-crime

Unfortunately, despite this becoming the most popular petition of ALL TIME on Change.org, and clearly getting the attention of the minister, Lulekisizwe has still not heard a word from the Justice Department! We need a meeting with the Minister of Justice so we can discuss how 'corrective rape' victims are treated, the lack of police response, how long the court cases take, why so many of the dockets get 'lost' and why the rapists get out on such low bail. Please keep the pressure up!

Thanks to a donation from an ethical cosmetics company in the UK called Lush, we were able to get another, more secure place to stay and use as a safe-house for the victims, but the rapes and assaults are continuing. We are worn out and things are far from easy, especially at this time of the year when stress levels are very high.

The one thing that is giving us hope is all of you showing love and caring by signing and sharing the petition. We are thrilled, excited and very, very humbled by the support that every one of you have shown, and all we can say is thank you and please, please don't stop. Ask your friends to sign our petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/view/south_africa_declare_corrective_rape_a_hate-crime?alert_id=CpiAYQksBB_iByXFCbPtJ&me=aa

Bless you all and have a great Festive Season,
Ndumi Funda & the Lulekisizwe team




25 JANUARY 2011
Dear friends,


‘Corrective rape’, the vicious practice of raping lesbians to ‘cure’ their sexuality, is becoming a crisis in South Africa. But brave activists are calling on the world to help stop these heinous Hate Crimes -- and finally the government is beginning to respond. Let's support them. Sign the petition and send it to friends!





Millicent Gaika was bound, strangled, tortured and raped for five hours by a man who crowed that he was ‘curing’ her of her lesbianism.

She barely survived, but she is not alone -- this vicious crime is recurrent in South Africa, where lesbians live in terror of attack. But no one has ever been convicted of 'corrective rape'.

Amazingly, from a tiny Cape Town safehouse a few brave activists are risking their lives to ensure that Millicent’s case sparks change. Their appeal to the Minister of Justice has exploded to over 140,000 signatures, forcing him to respond on national television. But the Minister has not yet answered their demands for action.

Let's shine a light on this horror from all corners of the world -- if enough of us join in to amplify and escalate this campaign, we can reach President Zuma, who is ultimately responsible to uphold constitutional rights. Let’s call on Zuma and the Minister of Justice to publicly condemn ‘corrective rape’, criminalise hate crimes, and ensure immediate enforcement, public education and protection for survivors. Sign the petition now and share it with everyone -- we’ll deliver it to the South African government with our partners in Cape Town:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_corrective_rape/?vl

South Africa, often called the Rainbow Nation, is revered globally for its post-apartheid efforts to protect against discrimination. It was the first country to constitutionally protect citizens from discrimination based on sexuality. But in Cape Town alone, the local organization Luleki Sizwe has recorded more than one 'corrective rape' per day, and impunity reigns.

'Corrective rape' is based on the outrageous and utterly false notion that a lesbian woman can be raped to 'make her straight', but this heinous act is not even classified as a hate crime in South Africa. The victims are often black, poor, lesbian women, and profoundly marginalised. But even the 2008 gang rape and murder of Eudy Simelane, the national hero and former star of the South Africa women's national football team, did not turn the tide. And just last week Minister Radebe insisted that motive is irrelevant in crimes like 'corrective rape.'

South Africa is the rape capital of the world. A South African girl born today is more likely to be raped than she is to learn to read. Astoundingly, one quarter of South African girls are raped before turning 16. This has many roots: masculine entitlement (62 per cent of boys over 11 believe that forcing someone to have sex is not an act of violence), poverty, crammed settlements, unemployed and disenfranchised men, community acceptance -- and, for the few cases that are courageously reported to authorities, a dismal police response and lax sentencing.

This is a human catastrophe. But Luleki Sizwe and partners at Change.org have opened a small window of hope in the fight against it. If the whole world weighs in now, we could get justice for Millicent and national action to end 'corrective rape':

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_corrective_rape/?vl

This is ultimately a battle with poverty, patriarchy, and homophobia. Ending the tide of rape will require bold leadership and concerted action to spearhead transformative change in South Africa and across the continent. President Zuma is a a Zulu traditionalist, who has himself stood trial for rape. But he condemned the arrest of a gay couple in Malawi last year, and, after massive national and international civic pressure, South Africa finally approved a UN resolution opposing extra-judicial killing in relation to sexual orientation.

If enough of us join this global call for action, we could push Zuma to speak out, drive much-needed government action, and begin a national conversation that could fundamentally shift public attitudes toward rape and homophobia in South Africa. Sign on now and spread the word:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_corrective_rape/?vl

A case like Millicent’s makes it easy to lose hope. But when citizens come together with one voice, we can succeed in shifting fundamentally unjust, but deeply ingrained practices and norms. Last year, in Uganda, we succeeded in building such a massive wave of public pressure that the government was forced to shelve legislation that would have sentenced gay Ugandans to death. And it was global pressure in support of bold national activists that pushed South African leaders to address the AIDS crisis that was engulfing their country. Let’s join together now and speak out for a world where each and every human being can live without fear of abuse.

With hope and determination,

Alice, Ricken, Maria Paz, David and the rest of the Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Blog of Luleki Sizwe, South African organization leading the call to their government to stop 'corrective rape', and provides support to victims
http://lulekisizwe.wordpress.com

Minister of Justice Radebe’s nationally televised interview (South African Broadcasting Corporation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkx-PYqHM0U

Protest against ‘corrective rape’ (The Sowetan)
http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/01/06/protest-against-corrective-rape

Petition launched on Change.org by activists from Luleki Sizwe
http://humanrights.change.org/petitions/view/south_africa_declare_corrective_rape_a_hate-crime

"South Africa's shame: the rise of child rape" (The Independent)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africas-shame-the-rise-of-child-rape-1974578.html

"Exploring homophobic victimisation in Gauteng, South Africa: issues, impacts, and responses" (Centre for Applied Psychology, University of South Africa)
http://www.avaaz.org/out_ucap_gauteng_study

"We have a major problem in South Africa" (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/18/south-africa-murder-rape

"South Africa: Rape Facts" (Channel 4)
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/articles/south-africa-rape-facts

"Understanding men’s health and use of violence: interface of rape and HIV in South Africa" (Medical Research Council)
http://gender.care2share.wikispaces.net/file/view/MRC+SA+men+and+rape+ex+summary+june2009.pdf

"Preventing Rape and Violence in South Africa" (Medical Research Council)
http://www.mrc.ac.za/gender/prev_rapedd041209.pdf


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EUTHANASIA AND HOMOPHOBIA IN ONE ARTICLE - IS THIS A RECORD??

What is wrong with the following article which was published in the Sunday Age on 23 January 2011??

The writer of the article who comes out of his exercise as a homophobe of the first order is trying to equate voluntary euthanasia with gay marriage in the public eye, as if the one issue is competing with the other for the attention of the public.

Euthanasia is a vital issue which is important for people in my age group in their eighties, but just as important for anybody who has a life-threatening illness which is causing unbearable suffering and which is destroying the quality of life for that person and those who care for and support that person.

Gay marriage is being pushed by the "gay lobby" whatever that is, into the public arena as if it is the most important issue around today. Or that is what this journalist is trying to prove to the newspaper-reading public.

In fact the two issues have nothing in common and the idea of equating the one with the other is nothing short of an exercise in gay-bashing, however Paul Malone wishes to dress it up. His article is a disgrace, and the editor of the Sunday Age should have refused to publish such an article, unless he or she is also a homophobe.

Any letter I would have written to the Sunday Age on this topic would not have been published because in general, my political views are not acceptable to the right-wing religious bigots who control the media - or most of it.

Fortunately there are still blogs available to the likes of me, so I am able to express my views, fairly sure that the homophobes of the newspaper world will not even get to see what I have said about the issues under dispute.

Euthanasia is a vital issue and one which the politicans and journalists are too afraid to address positively, as if it is a threat to everyone's lives and no one will be safe if we have voluntary euthanasia legislation such as that introduced with great success in certain countries.

Gay marriage is also an issue which has not caused the sky to fall in, and also in overseas countries, has given equal rights to all its citizens - something which Australia is a long way from doing!

Here is Paul Malone's homophobic article:

Right to die surely a bigger deal than gay marriage

Paul Malone

January 23, 2011

ANYONE following the media coverage of the most recent federal election could be forgiven for believing gay marriage was an issue of overwhelming concern to electors across the country.

Another social issue, euthanasia, would not have appeared to be of great interest.
A number of candidates were keen to make gay marriage an issue and saw it as a vote winner, while few thought promoting euthanasia would increase their chances. And yet all the polls over the years show much higher and broader support for euthanasia than they do for gay marriage. Consistently, more than 80 per cent of the population approves of a doctor meeting a request from a suffering, terminally ill patient to provide a lethal dose of drugs.

Attitudes to homosexuality and gay marriage are much more divided.

Advocacy group Australian Marriage Equality commissioned a Galaxy Research poll of 1050 voters in October last year. After being told same sex marriage was legal in countries such as Canada and the Netherlands, voters were asked whether they agreed or disagreed that same sex couples in Australia should be allowed to marry. The result: 62 per cent agreed, 33 per cent disagreed and 5 per cent were undecided.
Australians have become more tolerant of homosexuality. But Roy Morgan Research has found that about 27 per cent of the population still believes homosexuality is immoral.

Given the high percentage of the population supporting voluntary euthanasia, you would think some candidates would consider it more worthwhile pushing this issue, rather than gay marriage.

There are two reasons why this has not been done. One is the success of the gay lobby. The other is the way in which the community is divided on the issues.
It's not surprising that newly elected Greens MP Adam Bandt is pushing gay marriage and last year moved a motion calling on parliamentarians to gauge their constituents' views on the issue.

This push, and the election result, has also prompted a number of Labor members to express their support for gay marriage, and the issue will be a major one at Labor's national conference late this year.

It seems strange to me that gay marriage has become such a cause. For years gays fought to get the state out of the bedroom. Until 1972, male homosexuality was a crime across Australia. Following the death of gay law lecturer Dr George Duncan, who was thrown into the Torrens River and drowned in May 1972, South Australians led a hard-fought campaign for decriminalisation. All states followed, with Tasmania the last in 1997. Now it appears gays want the state to oversee their relationships.
As someone who has lived with one woman for 30 years and has two grown-up children - but never married - I find this strange.

If people want to attest their relationships, there is nothing to stop them doing so in front of as many friends and relations as they care to invite. If they're religious, they can have a religious ceremony. Gays can get a group together as easily as anyone else and can formalise it with whatever piece of paper they choose to employ, except of course a marriage certificate.

I don't care if the state does allow gay marriage. It just doesn't seem such a big deal. (As they swear in sickness and in health, forever and ever etc, they will join the ranks of all the other married couples lining up for the right to divorce.)
But voluntary euthanasia is an issue for me. I want the right - should the time come - to be able to say: ''I've had enough. The pain is too great. Give me the lethal injection.''

Four-fifths of the population feels the same way. Only the fanatical moral minority opposes voluntary euthanasia.

It should be emphasised that voluntary euthanasia means just that.
No one will be compelled to seek termination of their life. Safeguards are not difficult to devise.

A doctor would provide lethal treatment to a consenting patient to alleviate suffering. The strict process, as outlined by the Dying With Dignity organisation, would require at least two doctors to confirm the diagnosis and prognosis.
Anyone who wanted more, could seek as many opinions as he or she wanted.
And cooling-off periods would be required. A patient could not simply request a lethal injection today, have two doctors look at him tomorrow and get it all over and done with in 24 hours.

Greens leader Bob Brown has introduced legislation to reverse the Howard government's act which stops the ACT and Northern Territory assemblies from making their own laws governing the issue.

The baby boomers, who are now giving us an ageing population, have pioneered many changes in society. Today some of these oldies maintain a rational outlook on life and death. It's time parliamentarians across the land granted these people the freedom to end their suffering should they have a terminal illness and live in great pain.

Paul Malone is a freelance writer.