While trying to catch up with the life I left over thirty years ago now, I discovered that one particularly ghastly secondary teacher of mine had died from cancer twenty years ago. A. was a Brethren teacher, and her cousin B, a fairly mediocre landscape artist, was a repressed martinet who shared her fundamentalist religious […]

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Michael Adams: Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro-Zombies: Millers Point: Pier 9: 2010.
 Australian movie reviewer Mike Adams spent virtually all of 2008 trying to work his ways through the worst movies known to humanity.
What makes a movie kitsch, as opposed to camp (in which case, it has some redeeming qualities?) Bad acting? Really low production values? […]

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Pope John Paul II was apparently a devotee of the practice of ‘penitence’ and ‘mortification of the body’ during his tenure as pontiff. According to a new account of his papacy, he spent  long nights lying on the floor and practiced flagellating himself as an instrument of ’self-perfection.’
“When it wasn’t some infirmity that made him […]

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At present, LGBTI politics is primarily concerned with practical legislative reforms and resource allocation issues in the context of HIV/AIDS, focusing on full citizenship rights and responsibilities. What might the alternative be like?
In 1993, Michael Warner argued that ‘queer theory” should be focusing on resistance to ‘normativity.’ He argued that LGBTI communities should work actively […]

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In the latest Mother Jones, Stephanie Mercimer notes that the US Christian Right has a youth problem. There almost aren’t any new recruits.
Spying on Focus on the Family’s Value Voters Summit, Mercimer noted that the notorious Colorado Springs based US fundamentalist multinational had employed Esther Fleece (27) as a social media consultant. When she addressed […]

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Back during the days of higher religious observance, it was not uncommon for older social conservative members of both Labour and National to vote on the basis of subjective personal religious beliefs, as opposed to evidence-based scientific grounds. However, does this still happen?
Arguably not as much as it once did. It may be the case […]

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In fifteenth century Florence, Renaissance Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino penned one of the first defences of male homoeroticism…but not male homosexuality.
How did this happen? Ficino defended the mutual desire of older men and younger mature adolescents in a widely-read commentary on Plato’s Symposium, itself a classical Greek defence of male homoeroticism. He argued that the […]

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New South Wales is beginning to lose its former reputation for progressive social reform, as the ALP state government refused to amend its discriminatory adoption legislation, despite recommendations from a select committee.
NSW Community Services Minister Linda Burney said the existing law would not be amended, citing ‘insufficient evidence’ of its benefits or ‘disadvantages’ which divided […]

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