Footprint on declared bias

[BearCave]

Bear's Footprint * Small traces of something big
Today's trace * 'At least my bias is declared'

Yesterday in the Herald Sun, Grant McArthur wrote quite a contrasting
opinion piece about viewer-vote TV shoes to the opinion pieces I've written
about 'Dancing with the Stars'.



McArthur's concerns are partly shared by David Knox, Joy FM's television
reviewer (5:45pm weekdays) about the validity of Ian Roberts making it so
far in the dancing contest. Hence, Mr. Knox repeatedly tipped Ian Roberts
as surely the next contestant to go for weeks now, concerned he might be a
vote-winner, yet not the best dancer.



Fair enough.



However, Mr. McArthur's premise is, in my opinion, less valid:



'We have dancers who can't dance. Infectious tall-poppy syndrome has
developed a strain of under-achievers with whom we can identify.'



This compares with my premise - that it's about 'the ordinary doing the
extraordinary'.



Speaking of 'infectious', Mr. McArthur then gently leads us to the
'ideological hook':



"The ALP appears to have taken the underdog lead in more ways than one by
re-electing perennial loser Kim Beazley as its leader. Who knows if
sympathy will translate at the ballot box?"



I wonder if the Herald Sun would have printed this at sunrise had they known
how 'unsympathetic' the Howard Government was by sunset towards breaking
election promises that hit the 'underclass' the hardest.



How quickly these writers forget the struggle they once had as
'undergraduates'.



How slowly they come to terms with the notion that voters might sooner warm
to a 'distant past' perennial loser than a 'current day' persistent,
perennial liar.



..From Justin

[BearCave]

Three days since the 'Persistent, Perennial Liberal Liars' convincingly
demonstrated they have a senate mandate to govern based on the deception of
the Australian public, I note that the editorial of the Herald Sun and
Sunday Herald Sun have had absolutely nothing to say about the Medicare
issue.

The fact their editor(s) had nothing to say about the Howard Government's
deceit of the 'underdog' is not in itself a problem. Except that on the
morning before the Government spilled the beans about their Medicare Safety
Net, the Herald Sun published the Grant McArthur story titled 'Underdogs
rule and it's a joke'. The same article that took a swipe at Opposition
Leader Kim Beazley's own 'perennial' record.

Oh well..........I'll say just one thing about it - thanks for the lesson in
journalism.

....From Justin

[Jonah]

Something You wont Read in the Herald Sun

But maybe in its Holiday Pages

Aussie tourist jailed over gay sex
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.*au/common/story_page/0,5478,12*770504^661,00.html

06apr05


A FIJI court has jailed an Australian tourist for two years for what
the
judge called a "shameful" and "disgusting" homosexual act.


Retired university lecturer Thomas Maxwell McCoskar, 55, and a Fijian
[man]
had pleaded guilty to having sex in the city of Nadi over the Easter
period
and asked the court for leniency, the Fiji Times reported.


Gay sex is illegal in Fiji, a nation of conservative Christian values,
and
carries a jail sentence of up to 14 years.


In sentencing the pair yesterday, Magistrate Syed Muhktar Shah said the

crimes committed by McCoskar, from Victoria, and Dhirendra Nandan, 23,
were
"something so disgusting that it would make any person vomit".


Mr Shah said McCoskar's actions bordered on pedophilia.

So gay Sex up till 23 is pedophelia?

This the media blurring Homophobes seel


"If you wanted to have fun, you should have stayed in Australia instead
of
trying to come to Fiji and exploit our young boys," he said.


"With you being a former lecturer, you should have known that such
indecent
acts are illegal."


The newspaper reported that the pair told the court there was nothing
wrong
with what they did and Nandan threatened to commit suicide if jailed.


But Mr Shah told Nandan he should have thought of the "shamefulness of
the
crime" before associating with McCoskar.

================================================== ==========



On the South Coast of the main island of Viti Levu, a connecting hard
surfaced road goes from Nadi on the Western end, Nadi [pronounced
"nandi'] to the capital of Fiji, Suva, which is situated on the
Eastern
end of the island of Viti Levu and this stretch is of 60 miles of road
and resorts is referred to as the 'coral coast' so that just about
every
few miles you have a resort, such as the famous Fijian, Pacific Harbour

Resort and many others!
'Man Friday' is another such resort that has been around for at least
20
or more years and heretofore catered to snorkelers more than divers.
It
was sort of a 'sand between the toes' type resort that used to be
frequented by Kiwi or Aussie tourists [New Zealanders or Australians]
with families. On my recent and 9th trip to Fiji, I now understand
that
"Man Friday Resort' has now switched their policy to cater more to the
Gay and Lesbian crowd.
Since the Fiji penal code is what you would expect from a former
British
Colony, you wonder how this is going to go down?


Chris
--------------------------------------------------------------

Join the Pell for Pope lobby

Are you Rootin for George

Or Have you in the Past?

[AussieSeek dot com@aus dot radio and aus dot radio]

Ah Fiji


Everone wear a Dress

And Wombat what are you going to do when the Google ads for
Aussieseek.com
start appearing on this group


Scratch them off with your Claws?


that wireless West who said

Keith gets 400,000 Hits a month and I guess Wombat is miffed cause he
cant even get a hit in a pub

Please dont be so quick as to demonise someone by calling them a
homophobe


Posted here because its OK for justin to post off topic items but no
one else

[BearCave]

"AussieSeek" wrote:

> Ah Fiji
>
> Everone wear a Dress

> Please dont be so quick as to demonise someone by calling them a
> homophobe
>
> Posted here because its OK for justin to post off topic items but no
> one else
>

Aw Jonah! (or is that Jonas?)

Does this mean that the other guys at Aussieseek still have not got around
to sticking that Allen Key up your arse, doing the necessary disassembly,
putting you back in your Ikea box and shipping you back to Sweden where you
came from?

Mind you, not that I'm phobic of Ikea. In fact, Ikea is cool. Hey, maybe
I'll even 'pick you up' next time I go shopping there :)

On a slightly more serious note Jonah, I'm not sitting behind this keyboard
wearing a dress and make-up, which is the sort of impression of gay men you
seem to be fixated on. Hence, why you seem to continue your protest
campaign against me.

Truth is, while my sense of humour (as demonstrated above) is a bit camp, I
otherwise love being a bloke and don't find my sexuality to be at all
conflicting with that. The only thing it affects is having a strong-enough
attraction to the opposite sex.

I have no ultimate explanation to provide you that justifies what makes me
same-sex attracted, which I highly suspect is what you are trying to extract
from me. You want me to debate you on that issue, which totally takes
conversation 'off-topic' and indeed belongs in a different forum.

The 'real deal' about BearCave posts is that within the parameters of
aus.radio.broadcast, all I can provide is my life story in the context of
the writing I adapt it to. That context of writing is actually a 'media and
marketing study', not a pro-gay rally.

I'm trying to educate myself here, not indoctrinate you or anybody else with
homosexuality (except if you are Male weighing about 120kg :) or political
views (I'm openly biased towards the Labor-Right and only market forces can
determine the appeal of that message, not I alone).

I'm a firm believer that you can't expect to please everybody, so this is
the last explanation of its kind that you are getting.

If we don't have an understanding by now, we never will.

....From Justin

[AussieSeek dot com@aus dot radio and aus dot radio]

Good Morning Bearcave
nice to see you in good humour

In 1944 we in SWEDEN decriminalised : Homosexuality.

I have found this that follows


What is the situation here in Australia?

>From Homophobia to Acceptance

When homosexuality was decriminalised in 1944, a higher age of consent
was imposed on homosexual acts ¦ 18 as opposed to 15 for heterosexual
intercourse. And it was the fears that young people would be corrupted
by homosexuals, combined with a belief that homosexual networks
constituted a danger to national security that sparked the homophobic
campaigns of the 1950s. In many countries this decade when the Cold War
grew in intensity also represented a period of harsh persecutions of
homosexuals. In the United States, the authorities persecuted
communists and homosexuals and hundreds of civil servants were
dismissed on grounds of homosexuality. In Europe there was also a wave
of homophobia, sparked by the Kinsey report and fuelled by the
political climate during the Cold war.

Also in Sweden the 1950s were characterised by homophobia. Conservative
forces, but also large parts of the political left stood behind the
demands for more moral authorities, and they helped paint a gloomy
picture of a morally corrupt society. Actors like the
anarcho-syndicalist newspaper Arbetaren, and leftist writer Vilhelm
Moberg formed an unholy alliance with forces like the Association of
Swedish Mothers and other conservative and Christian lobby groups.
According to these new moralists, homosexuals could ruin the lives of
young boys without risking any punishment, since a homosexual free
masonry protected the interests of its members and obstructed the due
course of justice. Traditionally, a strong opposition to homosexual
emancipation is attributed to the political right, but in Sweden at
this time of moral panic, right and left co-operated to fight what was
called the "rot of justice" (rättsrötan). A leftist conceptualisation
of homosexuality as an upper class phenomenon, or indeed as an
integrated part of fascism is not new, but is mostly a purely
theoretical concept with little ground in reality. What makes it more
difficult to dismiss such an analysis in the Swedish case are the
evidence of two major scandals in the beginning of the 1950s. A former
restaurant owner named Haijby revealed that the Royal Court had paid
him over 100 000 crowns between 1934 and 1947, asking him not to make
public his claims that he had had a homosexual affair with King Gustaf
V, who had died in 1950. There was never any concrete evidence of any
sexual affair between the two men but the rumours about the King's
homosexuality were widely spread at that time. And apparently the Court
was sufficiently disturbed by them to buy Mr. Haijby's silence for a
sum corresponding to more than thirty yearØs salary for a manual
worker. In order to explain the homophobic stance of the political left
during the 1950's, one has to understand that they were under the
impression that the authorities tried to protect the King and other
high-ranking officials from being exposed as homosexuals.

But the Haijby affair was only the culmination of a long series of
homosexual affairs, sprung from a growing anxiety in the media. During
the debate on homosexuality in the 1940s, those who opposed or were
reluctant to support decriminalisation voiced mainly two concerns. It
could lead to more sexual activities in the open, which would be
offending to a general sense of decency, or it could encourage
homosexuals so that they became more active and hence would ruin the
lives of many young people. One activity seemed to combine the worst
fears of the homophobes, and that was boy prostitution. Already in 1947
there were a number of articles about it in Swedish newspapers, and the
publication of the Kinsey report resulted in a growing concern in the
matter.

In March of 1950, Birger Sjödén, principal of a reformatory school
for boys near Stockholm, published an article in Dagens Nyheter, which
warned for the effects of homosexual prostitution. Many boys from his
school escaped and went to Stockholm from time to time. In the city
they had an easy way of making money by selling sex to homosexuals, but
it was a way which led to disaster. Through this activity, their sexual
life became permanently damaged, Sjödén argued, and they were also
introduced to drugs and criminality. Boy prostitution was a growing
social scourge, and society had to take firm action against it.

Shortly after SjödénØs article, the so-called Kejne-affair became
public. A pastor, engaged in social work, accused a colleague of
sexually exploiting young boys. He complained that the police
investigation of the matter took unacceptably long time, and accused
the judicial system of being corrupted by homosexuals on high
positions. The affair grew and popular indignation over what was
perceived as a homosexual conspiracy soon forced the government to
appoint a commission to look into the matter. The Kejne commission was
immediately accused of consisting of homosexuals, and a second
commission had to investigate the sexual orientation of the members of
the first. After a period of rumours and accusations, the minister of
Ecclesiastic affairs, Nils Quensel, had to resign He had been publicly
exposed as a pervert and a homosexual, something which he denied, and
his political career was damaged beyond repair.

The moral panic around homosexuality in the 1950s resulted in
commissions, newspaper headlines, political meetings and a sharp
increase in the numbers of prosecutions for homosexual acts with
persons under 18. It did not, however, result in any concrete legal
measures ¦ only in a tightened control of homosexual activities. In
July of 1950, the Governor of Stockholm (överståthållaren), invited
representatives for the police and social workers to discuss the
problem of boy prostitution. The committee proposed a number of
measures, which for the most part were not carried out. One lasting
effect of its work was a register of homosexuals, and the police was
also accused of photographing homosexual men at their meeting places.

Given the fears of the harmful effects of homosexuality on young
people, there was, needless to say, a general consensus about the need
of a higher age of consent for homosexual acts. The new law from 1944
prohibited all homosexual acts with persons under 18 and stipulated a
conditional ban of such acts with persons between 18 and 21. If a
person over 21 committed fornication with a person of his own sex
between 18 and 21 and took advantage of the younger personØs
inexperience or dependent situation, he could be sentenced to a maximum
of two years of hard labour. These age limits were challenged in 1951
by a private bill to parliament by left wing social democrat Ture
Nerman. In view of what he perceived as a growing problem of boy
prostitution, he proposed to raise the absolute ban for homosexual
intercourse to 21 and make the conditional ban applicable regardless of
age. This bill was rejected, but only because a committee was already
working on a revision of the penal code.

The new penal code of 1965 kept the age limits 18 and 21 (Brottsbalken,
chapter 6 section 4). More importantly, it added something, which had
not been in the Swedish law before, namely a prohibition to buy
"temporary sexual liaisons" with a person under 18, if it was
heterosexual prostitution, and 21 if it was a homosexual contact. In
the debate in the Riksdag on the proposed penal code, this new
provision (c. 6 sec. 8 Brottsbalken) was one of a handful of matters
that were discussed more thoroughly. Lisa Mattsson, social democrat in
the Penal Code Committee, entered a reservation to it, and it was
criticised both in the Upper and the Lower Houses of the Riksdag.
Elisabet Sjövall, social democrat in the Lower House said that through
the law "we give these antisocial boys a possibility to live on
blackmailing for another three years". Several other members of
parliament also spoke against this new law, both from the political
left and the political right, and it was carried by a feeble majority
of 6 votes in the Lower House and a more stable majority of 53 votes in
the Upper House. The new crime was entitled "seduction of youth" and
was defined as follows.

A person, who, by promising or giving compensation, obtains or tries to
obtain a temporary sexual relationship with some one under eighteen
years of age or, if he is of the same sex, under twenty-one years,
shall be sentenced for seduction of youth to pay a fine or to
imprisonment for at most six months.

This new law was severely criticised even before it came into force in
1965. In the debate on free sexuality, which shook Swedish society
during the first half of the 1960s, many people pointed out that the
new law would only make worse the already difficult situation for
homosexuals. It was compared to the Danish "Ugly Law" which was in
force only between 1961 and 1965 and which was severely criticised as a
convenient tool for blackmailers. Unlike the Danish law, however, its
Swedish counterpart was never widely used. Between 1965 and 1977, the
period during which the law still contained a higher age limit for
homosexual prostitution, only 33 persons were sentenced according to
it. It is difficult to find an answer to the question why the Swedish
authorities chose to use the law so little compared to how it was used
in Denmark. "For some reason, the Swedish police has refrained from
fighting street prostitution among young people with the help of c. 6
sec. 10" says Nils Jareborg in his commentary to the new penal code,
but offers no further explanation.

In 1969 the general age of majority was lowered from 21 to 20 years,
and consequently, the age limit for illegal homosexual prostitution and
for homosexual acts with a person in a dependent position was also
lowered. When this was dealt with by the Riksdag, there were no
attempts to abolish or further lower the higher age limit for
homosexual acts. However, Minister of Justice Kling wrote in the
Governments proposal in the matter: "In my opinion it is questionable
whether there will be any reason in the future to keep the distinction
between homosexual and heterosexual acts in the Penal Code".

The first initiative to abolish the unequal ages of consent was by a
private bill from the conservative MP Alf Wennerfors in 1971. He
explained that the suffering inflicted by the law on an already weak
group in society concerned him. Before he presented the bill he had
discussed it with members of the lesbian and gay association, and when
it was debated in the Riksdag, he revealed that several colleagues had
told him it would be political suicide to present such a bill. He was
also aware, he said, that it would lead to "strange and even for me
personally unpleasant reactions". Nevertheless he wanted to do this for
the many homosexuals in society. His bill was rejected by the Riksdag,
but it was the first initiative to finally abolish the partial
criminalisation of homosexuality that still prevailed in Sweden.

It may seem odd that the first initiative came from a conservative MP,
but it is but another example how political action around homosexuality
sometimes depends on personal beliefs rather on a party line or a
conscious ideology. The overall picture, however, is that the political
left and the liberals have had the initiative in these questions in the
post war period, with the exception of the homophobic 1950s. In the
1980s, when the anti-discrimination laws and the law on registered
partnership were prepared, it was liberal MP Barbro Westerholm,
formerly Director-General of the National Board for Health and Social
Affairs (Socialstyrelsen), who was the most active in these questions.
In the 1970s, however, when the last remnants of the anti-gay
legislation were abolished, it was without doubt the communist party
and its MP Jörn Svensson who had that role.

In a party bill, the communists in 1973 argued that the proposed new
Marriage Act would only perpetuate stale and petty bourgeois
structures. Marriage ought to be replaced by an act of civil
registration, open for heterosexual couples as well as for groups of
people who wanted to live collectively. "It should also be possible for
the sexually deviant to use the registered cohabitation as a legal form
for a relation between two people" was one of their demands. The Law
Commission rejected the motion, but in a wording which would become a
lever for the future strivings for legal equality. "The Commission
nevertheless wants to emphasise that from societyØs point of view, a
relation between two persons of the same sex is a fully acceptable form
of living together." This statement was accepted by 271 votes against a
more conservative minority of 34, who instead voted for a wording
according to which society "did not object" to such relations ¦ indeed
a change of political context from the 1950s!

The sexual and political radicalism of the 1960s resulted in extensive
efforts to reform society in the 1970s. Perhaps as a result of this
radical discourse the Sexual Crime Commission, chaired by the President
of the Court of Appeal Björn Kjellin, proposed changes that were too
radical to go through the parliamentary process. Its proposal involved
the decriminalisation of incest as well as the removal of all laws
especially referring to homosexuality. It was presented in 1976, when
Sweden for the first time since the early 1930s had a non-socialist
government, consisting of conservatives, liberals, and agrarians. The
Minister of Justice, Sven Romanus, appointed a new commission, which
soon presented a less controversial proposal, withdrawing the proposed
decriminalisation of incest. The lowering of the age of consent for
homosexual relations to 15 was kept in the new proposal, and in the
parliament only a handful of speakers opposed it. To compensate for
that, they often had a more sulphuric style when they discussed the
matter. "The heterosexual harbours life, development and future. The
homosexual harbours sterility, barrenness and death" said Gunde
Raneskog, one of those from the agrarian party who most vehemently
opposed the equal age of consent. Despite this opposition, the
abolition of the higher age of consent for homosexual acts was carried
by a vote of 210 for and 37 against.

The establishment of an equal age of consent of 15 for both homosexual
and heterosexual acts from the 1st of April 1978 marked the end of a
long period in which homosexual acts had been banned or discriminated
against by the penal code. In January of the same year the government
appointed a commission with the task to "compile and give an account of
available scientific documentation about homosexuality" and to "propose
measures which are needed in order to remove any remaining
discrimination of homosexuals".

It was the work of this commission, which eventually led to a set of
laws protecting the interests of homosexual citizens, such as the
anti-discrimination law, the homosexual cohabitation law and the law on
registered partnership. This marks a new phase, in which the homosexual
is increasingly integrated in the legal fabric of the welfare state as
a citizen with minority status and minority rights, but also with
important limitations to these rights. During this phase focus has
changed so that it is no longer the right to free sexuality which is
emphasised but the right to form family units on the same conditions as
the rest of society.
------------------------------------------------------------------

You get me wrong

I have been to Your Melbourne and next week I will go to Perth
then South Africa then home to Stockholm
I have enjoyed my time here.Keith and the guys and has been so good to
me. So maybe I am to protectice


Jonah is my name
me

[Keith]

I am sorry justin. It is just impossible to stop other people
posting on this computer.One of the little hackers has removed the
password again

[BearCave]

Keith wrote:
> I am sorry justin. It is just impossible to stop other people
> posting on this computer.One of the little hackers has removed the
> password again

No problem.

Actually, the above post was an interesting read for me since I am
currently studying the principles of Politics.

It's interesting the topics and feedback that grow out of an initial
topic, but there's now enough divergent thought here that it is too
difficult to reply to many of those thoughts without being off-topic.

So..........in my best PR voice, "Let's move on" :)