Saturday, January 14, 2006

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

Going back to one of my earlier posts about our government's rules about a celebrant having to say that in Australian Law, a union is between a man and a woman. Britain has gone in the opposite direction. There registry offices are dumping "marriage" and "wedding" and won't refer to marriage except where legally necessary. This is in the name of equality since civil partnerships became legal for gays. Good for them and I didn't hear that Britain has been struck by thunderbolts or disappeared under the waves.

The U.S. says it has no objection to Australia exporting uranium to China. The U.S. Energy Secretary expects the world to make nuclear power part of it's energy mix. Alex Downer says the world needed to debate the wider use of nuclear energy. They both say this will allow reductions in greenhouse emissions. Nobody said where they plan to store the waste. This waste is already piling up around the globe without future increases in nuclear power. And how can the U.S. say yes to nuclear energy for the world when it denounces Nth Korea and Iran for using their nuclear expertise to build bombs (I've no doubt they are). Today's friend can easily be tomorrow's enemy, a lesson the U.S. doesn't seem to be learning very well.

I tried to find words to describe the cruise ship that was docked in Melbourne, big, very big, bloody enourmously huge. The Diamond Princess even has a miniature golf course along with several swimming pools. I kept thinking it was going to tip over, it looked so top heavy but I suppose all those passengers will keep it steady. I don't fancy being locked into something with four thousand people none of whom I might like. Four thousand passengers heading for the life boats in an emergency is something else I don't want to think about. Protesters had a point about the Diamond Princess. If a ship that big could sail up the bay, why are we dredging a deeper channel?

It seems that everyone is talking about Brokeback Mountain and have been for the last 6 months so I can't understand why theatres in the U.S. booked it in and then banned it because of the story line. I liked the way Heath Ledger put it, "it's that a soul within a vessel falls in love with a soul within another vessel, in this case in the form of a man". I don't know if they're his own words or some publicist's but it's a great explanation of love not just gay love.

Still on America, makes a change from Australian stupidity. The Society of Adolescent Medicine has reviewed the goverment funded abstinence-only programs and have rejected them. "Based on our review of the evaluations of specific abstinence-only curricula and research on virginity pledges, user failure with abstinence appears to be very high. (gee, surprise) Thus, although theoretically completely effective in preventing pregnancy, in actual practice the efficacy of abstinence-only interventions may approach zero".
The authors of the report found that LGBT teens were ignored because abstinence-only programs focus on no sex until marriage.
"U.S. AIDS relief programs abroad spend at least 33 percent of prevention dollars on abstinence-only programs".
In other reports I've read, some overseas organizations decided to go it alone without these funds in order to provide condoms, contraceptive advice and terminations, all of which went against the U.S.'s dictates.
"The U.S. government has spent over $l.l billion of taxpayers money on programs that don't work". (How much did we send in aid after Katrina?)
Church groups have said if teens practice abstinence then they don't need sex education or health information on sexually transmited infections including HIV. They think that if teens look at their "What would Jesus do" bracelets every time they have a decision to make, they'll be just fine.
Well now someone has finally said what the abstinence programs really are, a great steaming pile of manure.

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