Lauro Martines: Fire and Scourge: Savonarola and Renaissance Italy: London: Pimlico Books: 2007.
For Christmas, my partner got me two books. One was a fabulous guide to the fictional world of Avatar, while the other dealt with Girolamo Savonarola, the late fifteenth century Florentine predecessor of today’s Christian Right.
Lauro Martines is an incisive biographer and historian, […]

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 Nick Reding: Methland: New York: Bloomsbury: 2009.
Oelwin, Iowa is a dying US rural town. And P/crystal meth is the bullet that is slowly killing it.
Granted, there are other precipitating factors. The United States has no meaningful strong independent national trade union movement, comprehensive welfare state or nationwide public health system. As the US economy has […]

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In the Sydney Morning Herald, there’s an awful flap going on within Fred Niles and his Christian Democratic Party (sic). It turns out that the NSW seat of Bradfield had a by-election recently, and during the campaign, the CDP Campaign Manager Michael Darby, and Nile himself, tried to appeal to the bottom feeder end of […]

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Late last year, I made several predictions about forthcoming events after New Years Day 2009. What’s on offer this year? Here are my prognostications!
Will Singapore be the next nation to decriminalise male homosexuality, given its current status of de facto decriminalisation?
Will Portugal become the next nation to embrace same-sex marriage proper? Or will it […]

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It was probably only a matter of time before a professional rugby union player came out, and Gareth Thomas is the aforementioned sporting great. So why am I blogging about this?
Despite the fervour that our national game attracts (and provincial games- remember, I am Cantabrian, with all that implies), it is possible to overstate its […]

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It is usually the case that when a new government is elected, it appoints former party office holders, activists and ex-MPs to positions of senioe management, directorial or regulatory roles within appointed public sector positions. However, questions arise about this.
Certainly, some party activists and ex-MPs have had considerable relevant professional and/or managerial experience outside Parliament, […]

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Gay and straight men have different ideas about nudity and sex. How does this work out in practice?
Communal bathing, steam rooms and showering all go back to the time of ancient Rome. According to historian Ray Laurence, it was a sensual and social pleasure that was akin to modern commercial saunas, gay and straight. It […]

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In Wales, militant fundamentalist Stephen Green of the extremist Christian Voice antigay pressure group has endorsed capital punishment for lesbians and gay men, one month after Uganda proposed its infamous Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which endorses the same.
Green claims that:
* Gay people who have sex knowing they are HIV positive should be given the death penalty because they […]

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 Shelley Jackson: The Melancholy of Anatomy: New York: Anchor Books: 2002.
I’ve just read my first Shelley Jackson piece, The Melancholy of Anatomy (2002). Not to be confused with Elizabethan prosaist Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, this collection nevertheless traverses similar philosophical terrain, using the archaic medieval and pre-endocrinological designation of ‘humours’ to provide a framework […]

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 During the last couple of years, I’ve reported extensively on “Mercy Survivors,” a group of young Australian women who were led to believe that in return for signing over social welfare benefits, they would receive professional psychological, dietary, therapeutic and medical assistance at a conservative Christian residential facility for young women, “Mercy Ministries.”
Happily, I can […]

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