"It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time" Abraham Lincoln
The issue
For some time now homosexualists and their allies have been bandying around a set of propagandist lies and half-truths. The  apparent intent is that if you say it often enough, and swamp every discussion with them, then they come to be taken as truths. It is classical use of discourse to create power arrangements through which interests can achieve their aims in society. It seems that even the judiciary have had enough of this. Last year Judge Jones used the rational basis test to put some of these homosexualist propaganda items to rest. 

“The more corrupt the Republic, the more numerous the laws” (Tacitus)

I have been mulling over whether I should write this piece. A few days ago The Conversation published an article by a philosophy lecturer. It is titled, Love thy neighbour: religious groups should not be exempt from discrimination laws, and it has stirred the pot quite a bit, so to speak, with nearly 500 comments discussing the argument forwarded by the author. In Australia there is a move afoot by the Federal Government to introduce a national  Bill, which is proposed to replace various Federal anti-discrimination legislation, consolidating them into one. The Bill was introduced by Australia's Attorney General, Nicola Roxon and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Penny Wong. A parliamentary inquiry is underway, which has received hundreds of submissions. 

Imagine you are sitting on public transport and opposite to you two men begin to kiss passionately and fondle each other's genitals You stand up and move to another seat. One of them withdraws his tongue out of the other man’s throat to shout after you, “Homophobic bitch!”, and releases his grip on on the other man's crutch to flip you his index finger. The other man follows with his own quip: “Get used to it, breeder”.   This is not fiction. It happened to a young woman on a train I was traveling on not so long ago.  I observed the terror and the tears on her face, as she looked down and visibly shrunk in her seat, cowered.

As usual, in the days before Christmas I somehow ended up watching a re-re-repeat of a Santa Claus movie. The very western, consumerist, stereotypical, nonsensical plot, complete with Rudolph and elves, is of course hogwash.  Nevertheless, it worked its magic on me once again, immersing me in its fundamental message – it is okay to believe in magic, even when you know darn well that it isn’t real. And the reason it is okay to do this is because we are human beings; we need to have stories of magic which survive the test of time and logic, because at their very core they embody fundamental norms which underpin a healthy society. It is doubtful whether researchers practicing scientism understand this.