Free Republic

Welcome to the very first edition of AUSLibertyNews. This is the week's news presented from a Paleoconservative perspective. Hosted by the controversial and thought-provoking Milton Johnson; topics cover Australia's rapidly changing culture, deteriorating race-relations in the US and Israel Folou. Today we are joined by special guest Plato Sandilands (@PlatoSandilands) as he discusses his exciting new internet venture.

New Zealand’s first same-sex “marriage” is shaping up to become the country’s first same-sex divorce. Less than a year since they became the poster girls for the country’s new legal definition of marriage (last August) the NZ Herald reports that Melissa Ray, a former Ferns football player, and Natasha Vitali, a sales rep, are “believed to have split”. The main source of the story appears to be Ms Vitali’s Facebook page on which the following poem appeared yesterday: Drink it down, laugh it off, Avoid the drama, take chances, And never have regrets Because at one point everything you did...

To be clear, in America's polite upper-middleclass circles, gay domestic violence is the hatred that dare not speak its name. Ditto "progressive" Australia. For the media class, at least, would prefer to talk about white picket fences, rainbow flags and same-sex wedding cakes. The message: Think pretty things. Still, even MSNBC can't wish away ugliness. As one underreported UCLA study found: Although reported incidences of intimate partner violence, or IPV, are widespread, especially among women and certain ethnic groups, reported IPV was surprisingly high among lesbians, gays and bisexuals in California, who are almost twice as likely to experience violence...

Blogging for the Ruth Institute, Jennifer Johnson recounted her experience of growing up with five parents. The piece responds to claims by Masha Gessen, a prominent LGBT activist who was recently honored by the state department, who has famously celebrated her own unorthodox family as the shape of things to come: I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage....

*The largest ever study of the effects of the main psychoactive component of cannabis suggests that it can cause paranoia in vulnerable individuals* To discover whether cannabis really does cause paranoia in vulnerable individuals, we carried out the largest ever study of the effects of THC (∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the drug’s principal psychoactive ingredient). We recruited 121 volunteers, all of whom had taken cannabis at least once before, and all of whom reported having experienced paranoid thoughts in the previous month (which is typical of half the population). None had been diagnosed with a mental illness. The volunteers were randomly chosen to...

EUTHANASIA guru Dr Philip Nitschke is furious the ABC has finally pinged him for actually helping the healthy to kill themselves. “Attacked by rabid Christians & journalist jackals!” he tweeted last week. But you don’t need to be rabid or even Christian to consider Nitschke dangerous. For 20 years Nitschke, founder of Exit International, has had largely positive coverage from a media which too often assumed he’s just helping the dying and the suffering. Only now does he seem in trouble, with the Black Dog Institute, the Australian Medical Association and beyondblue publicly denouncing him. This follows the ABC’s revelations...

The hostility towards Christians is reaching fever pitch in the liberal West. The rights of Christians to practice their faith has come under sustained attack from some liberals, and too often those in positions of power. The past few weeks the right of Christian parents to educate their children in the Christian faith as protected by Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights was placed under sustained attack by liberal columnists, particularly at The Times and The Guardian. Even though their argument relied on alleged discriminatory practices carried out in non-faith state schools, it seemed Christian faith schools...

“We are loving, committed and faithful couples just like anyone else.” If you’ve paid the slightest bit of attention to the same-sex marriage debate, you’ve heard this very statement in some iteration. It’s not true by some important measures though. 1. Same-sex male couples are dramatically more likely to be unfaithful than heterosexual couples. 2. Committed lesbian relationships are more likely to break up than both male-male and opposite-sex couples, by dramatic margins. Those are two very important differences, unarguably judging the “we’re no different” dogma incorrect. What support is there for these stark differences? First, it should be noted...

Smoking cannabis as a teenager lowers IQ into adulthood and could have a lifelong impact, researchers have warned. U.S. researchers found the damaging effects of the drug remained even if users stopped smoking marijuana as adults. They said teenagers face increased risks from smoking cannabis, because the brain is rapidly developing at this time. The scientists, from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) in the U.S., added that smoking cannabis affects critical thinking and memory during use, with the effects persisting for days. Reviewing a range of studies on marijuana smoking, they reiterated that cannabis impairs driving and increases...

Why should we stand up for normative monogamy? Well, not all forms of marriage lead to equal outcomes. For example, “normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses” and is therefore better for adults and children, according to academics Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson in The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage Of course, my fellow Australians instinctively know that monogamy is good for children. Or at least a good majority know. Another important study, The World Family Map, found that 70 per cent of Australians believe a child...

You’re not ready to have sex if… 1. You think sex equals love. 2. You feel pressured. 3. You’re afraid to say no. 4. It’s just easier to give in. 5. You think everyone else is doing it. (They’re not!) 6. Your instincts tell you not to. 7. You don’t know the facts about pregnancy. 8. You don’t understand how birth control works. 9. You don’t think a woman can get pregnant the first time. (She can.) 10. It goes against your moral beliefs. 11. It goes against your religious beliefs. 12. You’ll regret it in the morning. 13. You...

Peter Moskos, an Associate Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York, and the author of In Defense of Flogging, is coming to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. But don’t feel sorry for Australian criminals just yet. Indeed, Moskos is more about closing prisons than punishing offenders. Actually, In Defense of Flogging should be retitled In Defense of Demonising Prisons because Moskos’ book is devoted to paying out expensive prisons. As for justice, he argues that criminals should be given the choice between a good flogging and jail time. It’s not a compelling argument....

A recent report claims that "marriage equality" will provide an economic boost to Illinois: US$54- $103 million in new spending, and $8.5 million in new tax revenues. This study comes at an opportune time for the gay lobby in Illinois. Their marriage bill, SB-10, is not exactly sailing through the House. Chicago legislators representing heavily ethnic minority and religiously conservative districts have been reluctant to endorse the redefinition of marriage. Perhaps the gay lobby hopes this extra tax money might motivate wavering legislators to support this bill. The people and legislators of Illinois should not count on extra revenue as...

Atheism is a closet religion – and there’s no shortage of field evidence. Consider The Sunday Assembly, a group-identified “godless congregation” in London. There, the faithful meet on the first Sunday of every month. As their evangelical pitch goes: “Come on down to hear inspirational speakers and to enjoy a morning that is part-foot stomping show, part-atheist church.” Being secular apostles, the assembly’s members (disciples?) are keen on planting new assemblies (churches?). To wit, “Sunday Assembly Everywhere is a framework that allows everyone to create their own Assembly, while staying true to the spirit and values of The Sunday Assembly.”...

ON Tuesday, Kevin Rudd declared himself in support of same-sex marriage. He told us that, after deep reflection, he found he was able to reconcile his religious faith with his secular ethical principles. His last line of argument was that: "30 years of research has seen the Australian Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association acknowledge that same-sex families do not compromise children's development". But Rudd hasn't kept up to date with recent research and his claim is misleading. Last July, in the journal Social Science Research, Mark Regnerus published a large-scale study comparing children...

...media elites are obsessed with sexual abuse testimonies when the Catholic Church is in the firing line. But, when children and adults are abused by powerful secular priests, watch them tiptoe away, or downplay events. There are numerous examples: I have to ask, where’s the loud, moral outrage surrounding the late Jimmy Savile’s five decades of abuse against vulnerable minors and women? After all, it’s understood that the child-abusing BBC presenter even sexually assaulted ill children in their hospital beds. I have to ask, where’s the media interest in serious allegations surrounding two male executives and the abuse of young...

Having collected the Nobel peace prize in 2007, Al Gore's fortunes as a climate crusader slid into the doldrums. But 8th November 2011 arrived as a ray of sunshine. On that day Australia's parliament passed into law the world's first economy-wide carbon tax. Rushing to his blog, Gore posted a short but rapturous statement, cross-posted in The Huffington Post. His fervent language echoed in progressive circles across the globe. Australians have been held-up as pioneering environmentalists ever since, putting Americans to shame. "This is a historic moment", thundered Gore. "With this vote", he blogged, "the world … turned a pivotal...

Clearly, the world isn’t as pro-gay marriage as Australia’s establishment media. With only 14 of the world’s 195 nation states allowing same-sex partners to marry, your average “gay marriage” state belongs to an experimental minority. We’re talking eccentric social-engineering islands. Together, they make up the seven per cent. So your average gay-marriage state looks like…? In short, the sociological answer is…very white. Such nations tend to be relatively small, overwhelmingly Caucasian, and frighteningly bureaucratic. Think, legalistic Belgium for a good example. Nevertheless, media elites boast that gay-marriage nations are “ahead of history,” implying that white-majority nations are morally superior, even...

Seasonal anti-interventionist, Sheryl Crow, has lost her antiwar T-shirts. Or she is making hypocrisy – not war. Curiously, the singer-songwriter supported Bill Clinton when he “dispatched the military overseas forty-four times during his eight years” – a modern record, according to historian Thomas Woods. Crow also traveled with Hillary and the comedian Sinbad to the Balkans. Bill Clinton’s anti-Serb campaigns were legendary. Yet, in 2003, Crow mysteriously advocated pacifism, pleading with Bush 43 to appease Saddam Hussein, because interventionism was evil. To make her point, she strutted around in her “War Is Not The Answer” T-shirt, at The American Music...

“Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is Director of the Global Change Institute. He is an active research scientist working on coral reef ecosystems and environmental change, for which he receives Australian Research Council support,” boasts his bio. I’m not sure what “global change” means, to be frank, or what an “active research scientist” is. I do know what an activist research scientist looks like, however. His name is Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. In “The Conversation” a website dedicated to promoting Labor-first groupthink (my wild guess) the “active research scientist” actively attacks critical thinkers from his (my second guess) high-energy office. Hoegh-Guldberg preaches: The science...