CRIKEY WRITES: We have 14 tickets to the upcoming Storyology events in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to give away. Just reply to this email with the subject line – “Storyology Tickets” and we’ll sort out your tickets if you’re among the first 14.

 

On the postal plebiscite

Cara MacNish writes: Re. “This postal plebiscite bullshit is nothing but fear, wrapped in cowardice, inside stupidity” (Wednesday)

One of the stranger comments to come out of today’s postal vote debacle was former Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s assertion that  if you’re worried about freedom of speech you must vote ‘no’ to marriage equality. It defies logic, but lets give it a go. The converse, that if you vote “no”, you’re worried about freedom of speech, doesn’t logically follow (you might vote “no” for some other reason).

Nor does it logically follow that if you’re not worried about freedom of speech, you must vote “yes”. But the contrapositive, which is logically equivalent, is that if you vote “yes” to marriage equality, then you’re not worried about freedom of speech. I’m glad we got that cleared up. Now, where did I leave those stamps?

Meredith Williams writes: Re.“Fire up the homophobic abuse — the junk mail plebiscite is now on” (Wednesday)

Yes, the junk mail is already arriving. This afternoon I received an unsolicited email from the Australian Christian Lobby, assuming that as I am a minister of a Christian denomination I am therefore going to be part of its campaign against marriage equality and will be preaching homophobia to my congregation. I replied with the following: 

“Please be advised that I am fully in favour of marriage equality and do not in any way feel it threatens me, my marriage, my children or the society in which I live. Neither do I think the voluntary, exclusive union of two adult people who deeply love each other contravenes fundamental Christian concepts of grace, relationship, fidelity and fullness of life.  

I resent your assumption that all Christians share your views and your portrayal of your organisation as in some way representative of Australian Christians on this issue.”