The Light of Day – Graham Swift

This week’s featured archive post.

My latest fiction read from Surry Hills Library. I found it hard going at first, even annoying — “exasperating flatness” as one reviewer notes, but in time I warmed to it. There are plenty of viewpoints in the reviews linked here.

 

The Rabbit takes the plunge

Mudgee — nice wine district that. Or maybe around Tumut where one could become a trout-fisher, but that’s a bit far from Sydney. Then there’s the Southern Highlands. Cool in several senses.

No reason for that, except 1) it is in the Southern Highlands and 2) I like steam trains.

 

Looking for the “gay lobby”

Andrew Sibley has faith in its existence. Writing on the UK Creation Science Movement site (presumably not an anti-gay lobby group) he says with amazing confidence:

Channel 4 presented a programme of poor quality by Rod Liddle, The New Fundamentalism, Dispatches, 8pm 6th March 2006, that was nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on evangelical Christianity and creationists by a self confessed liberal Christian…

God called men and women to respect each other and engage in life long committed relationships, but Liddle seemed to ridicule children for their stand preferring the negative social consequences that a liberal attitude to sexual activity brings. He failed for instance to acknowledge the link between condom use and promiscuity. Condoms are about 95 to 98% effective, meaning they have a 1 in 20 to 1 in 50, failure rate. If the rate of extra marital sexual activity increases by more than a factor of 20 to 50 through contraception use then the incidence of unprotected sex will increase with damaging consequences for people and society. The issue of whether a gay gene exists or not is also an important one because many people suffer from confusion or mental illness, as a result of popular culture and the gay lobby teaching children and young people that gay sentiment is genetic, and not cultural. There is no evidence that a gay gene exists, although Jesus did acknowledge that some are born as eunuchs, this as a result of the fall. But God did not create people to be gay and our genes do not determine the thoughts we choose to think. While we have sympathy for those suffering confusion over their identity, it is important to maintain a correct understanding of our make up. Gay sentiment has more to do with exposure to a cultural replicator and nurture, perhaps through negative experiences in childhood…

 

australian daily: Such a disappointing day for High today

Is this what Delenio had in mind with that question at Yum Cha?