Busy busy busy

Well it's been a while since my last post, and I've been a busy batty indeed.

My main focus has been on the Human Rights community consultation, on trying to find ways to dissolve enough of the internalised transphobia endemic in the crossdressing community to get them more active including in undoing their own internalised issues (and always working on my own) but I've also spent a lot of time with online socialisation and offline Dungeons and Dragons. And a close friend has had a profound personal loss recently and has needed my shoulder *hugs if you read this*.

And just as my sleep schedule was falling back into gear it's been broken again by each of these. Oh well.

Lots of discussions lately have run into some frequent topics, many with religion...

Why oh why do so many people not understand that there aint just one religion? So religious freedom means ya gotta consider there's more than just one religion? Which means ya can't impose any religious rules outta your religion on everyone else cause some of them wont follow your religion but another one with different rules?

Example: Oh noes, treating gays as 1st class citizens rather than bashing them or discriminating against them interferes with my right to practice my religion.

But it was established a long time ago that basic rights overule religion, thats not new.
Example: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Well murdering witches has been against the law how long?

And what if the christian were to suffer because of another faith?
Example: A worshipper of Camasotz the Vampire-Bat-headed God decides to sacrifice the christian to their god.

Think the christian, like the witch, would at that point be happy that basic civil/human rights overule a persons following religious morality?

Yet still it keeps coming up.

And this nonsense about gay and transgender being 'new' keeps turning up too.

Where are they getting this nonsense from? Gays and Transgender people have been around as long as decent records go! C'mon folks who taught you history?

And to make matters worse in Australia, Canada, America and many other parts of the world the lack of acceptance of transgender, the lack of recognition of same-sex relationships is whats new! Merely centuries old.

Lets face it, heterosexual and cissexual, cissgender dominated society is not only new but a failure... a failed model of society resulting in large amounts of harm.

It only gained dominance by associating itself with colonialism built on expansive warfare with a technological advantage and using religious hostility that used force or coercive measures to stamp out other faiths.

Of course for people to hold these unsupportable conclusions requires them not to know about or understand other religious views, key points in history, other cultural traditions especially GLBT ones and the like.

So why are there key gaps in peoples knowledge and understanding?

The Human Rights Meeting

The meeting itself was fairly small in size though most of the seats were filled. Made up mostly of elderly people, members of the local Amnesty group and a locla Aboriginal Reconciliation group as well as a handful of university students.

A lot of my friends couldn't make it because of prior comittments so I was in effect representing quite a few folk.

The speakers were impressive giving very different perspectives. Dr Jurgen Brohmer who had worked with Human Rights laws in Europe gave an interesting and informative explantaion of how they work there and of various catagories of rights, Dr eric Ghosh on the various ways that such rights could in their various forms interact with the cutrent system and finally there was Proffessor Helen Ware who explained the needs for human rights protections by ilustrating some issues as well as giving some of her experiences working within the human rights field and changing attitudes in the community.

I have been further impressed by Independant MP Tony Windsor. He wasn't there to just get his picture taken, it was no token involvement. He showed clear attention to the speakers, to the questions asked of them by the audience and often turned around to read the projected points on the screen behind him.

As for me i asked one question regarding Dr Ghosh's suggestion of large civilian juries to hear human rights issues rather than judges. (my concern was how to minimise socially embeded prejudices against traditionally unpopular groups)

I also went in a fairly conservative appearance for me, no makeup and only minor jewelry etc. I'm sure I still stood out but my point to be there was to be involved for universal human rights not just my own Goth and TG communities.

I put my name down to be available for the comittee to work out the local community consultation submission. Hopefully I can make a positive contribution.

All in all I am very thankful to everyone involved in this process and I hope that this process results in a good set of universal human rights protections for all Australians.

Local Human Rights Consultation Meeting

I'm all excited.

Tonight my towns having a community meeting to discuss the pros and cons of protecting human rights in Australia with some speakers from the University and some form of chance for the community to have a say with the results being a submission to the governments Human Rights Consultation.

I'm not very fond of public speaking but if there is an open mike sort of deally and I think a point hasn't been made, needs to be reinforced or if something needs to be refuted I'll have to make myself speak.

So the possibility has me plenty nervous.

I hope it goes well and that reason and not emotive rhetoric carry the night.

I'll post up my thoughts afterwards when I've recovered :)