Stop Press! Blair does something vaguely progressive...

Finally the Blair government has done something that differentiates it from its 'coalition of the willing', religious tub-thumping friends the US and OZ, and reminded us that his is a (so-called) labour government after all.

He's refusing to allow (government funded) Catholic adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples wishing to adopt. Some of these agencies have declared that they would 'rather close' than adopt children out to gay couples. Don't abort your child, they say, and when you are forced instead to give it up for adoption, we'll decide who it goes to, based on bigotry rather than what might be good for the child and fair to everybody concerned. Talk about boxed in by ideology. But Tony's not having a bar of it. So, finally, (and with gritted teeth) good on you Tony!

Contrast that with that clown Abbott and his dogmatic, misogynistic agenda - denying teenage girls the pill on Medicare before the age of 18 (yep, that'll reduce the number of abortions), dithering on the provision of Gardasil (which would vaccinate girls against the virus that causes cervical cancer) on the PBS and, scandalously, awarding abortion counselling 'contracts' to churchy agencies willing to twist arms and use scare tactics to save the unborn at the expense of the living. Don't be fooled by these agencies - they rarely nail their colours to the mast. It's not a straight-forward matter of:

Agent: 'Don't abort your child please, it offends God'
Woman: 'I've considered all the options and I don't want to keep it, and anyway what business is it of yours?'
Agent: 'OK then'.

Like all sly viral marketing, which the churches are far from averse to employing to recruit unsuspecting punters (see Christian metal bands), this counselling will be cloaked in false impartiality and deceit. Most women I know are painfully aware of their reproductive health and looking after themselves. They are therefore vulnerable to suggestions that there might be any nasty damage to 'their bits' through a termination procedure. This is the jugular vein these vipers will go for to seal the (non-termination) deal.

The more I see and hear of organised religion, the more sickened I feel by it.

Two quick things

We're moving! It was easier than I thought. By the end of this long weekend we will be ensconced in our own snug place, from which art, song and the written word will emanate on a regular basis. Hooray!!!

Happy Birthday dearest love.

Liberation

Here's a round up of events following my now-dreamlike holiday in the land of my birth.*

Christmas lived up to its 'Silent Night' reputation round my way. Most of it was, thankfully, spent in NZ airports - meaning less time forcing smiles with the olds.

In that No Man's Land between the 26th and the end of the year, commonly otherwise referred to as the Boxing Day Test, my dear friend Robin ate dumplings, dragged us to bars where he eyed up chicks and generally hung with us before heading back to Berlin. We also drank martinis with Elly and beers with Maddy and Will and Max (he passed on the beer, being not yet one year old).

On the 31st, through misadventure (supplied by Robin before he boarded the international flight) I missed midnight. Chris nursed my remains until we awoke at 12.45am. Oops. But bollocks to it - it's for bogans.

We pulled up magnificently on MY BIRTHDAY and went to see Marie Antoinette, which seduced us with its Gang of Four/Bow Wow Wow/Adam Ant and best-ever-New-Order-song ('Ceremony') soundtrack, though as a history purist I was more than a little disturbed that our 'heroine' came over as nothing more harmless than a 19th century Paris Hilton, and that many of the kids in the audience would not have realised 'what happens next' in the scheme of things (the small matter of the guillotine and the birth of La Republique), as the movie politely ends where all that messy real stuff begins. Still, musn't quibble. I love the confused dreamscapes Sofia creates - dappled sun through treelined boulevards at Versailles and powdered high camp set to an intriguingly complementary New Wave soundtrack. She is starting to build a very shimmery, impressionistic body of work. Perhaps if she worked with a clever wordsmith her dialogues could still be fat-free without being a chromosome short (as they sometimes are, unfortunately). Sofia! Over here!

On the first real day of 2007 it all started to unravel...
First I returned to work to be slammed with a potential job crisis (still unresolved - hello Centrelink!); then there was some desperate flat hunting with Chrissy, necessitated by our respective housing situations; then I copped a $145 fine from a cop who was tailing us and did me for not wearing my seat belt during said flat hunting; and finally, the old family dramas resurfaced.

And that was just the first week.

But you know what? I'd rather have financial and 'career' woes than emotional ones, and throughout all these trifling but compounded stresses I had a soft, warm hand to hold and a lot to laugh about. Even at the height of what we have called my misadventure, which at one point entailed buckets and heads-down-toilets, I felt that soft hand stroking my slimy hair. What would I not get through with such a companion? He's the best SSRI getting around!

*Stay tuned - I promise to finish off that little travelogue. And for those of you who thought that blog was a little light-on for sex, drugs and rock n roll, let me reassure you that what started off as sleepy holiday with spectacular scenery on a tourist bus with a bunch of British 50-somethings ends with Chris and me in a campervan parked at the side of the road in the plush suburbs of central Auckland like two blissful vagrants with only Dolmio bottles for 'comfort', to coin a very coy American euphemism (used earlier in our trip on tour buses thus - 'there will be a five minute comfort stop at Hokitika') via a Wellington doss house.