Posts by Moz
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Up Front: The Up Front Guide to Plebs, in reply to Emma Hart,
boggled me a bit with the US as well: there are still thirty-odd states where you can be legally fired from your job for your sexuality or gender identity
Also, "employer assumptions about your sexuality". While you could in theory be fired for being straight, in practice people are fired because their employer thinks they're queer way more often. But then, much of the USA is "fire at will" anyway. I am mildly surprised that more employers don't use that loophole, TBH. Why risk an unfair dismissal case when you can zero-hour someone or just say "fired for not being straight enough".
The PWC report I am mostly impressed with because someone actually asked them to cost the mental health aspects of it. Who knew accountants could be so caring (if you pay them enough).
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Up Front: The Up Front Guide to Plebs, in reply to Lilith __,
My understanding of the current law in Australia is that if one spouse transitions, the couple has to divorce.
That link again: http://www.gendercentre.org.au/resources/polare-archive/archived-articles/the-marriage-amendment-act.htm
The law does not directly require it, but in the past it was "to get you change recognised you have to comply with our demands, and those include getting divorced", so it wasn't illegal per se, it was just a requirement of the legally mandated process. I hope the situation has changed, and my impression from the article is that it has.
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Speaker: The real problem with the ‘Kiwimeter’, in reply to Ianmac,
I cannot get the Survey to work on my Mac/Firefox so still in the dark.
Bah, hitting "view post" clears the reply box. Russell!!!LL!L!L!
I think they're selecting against technically literate people, except for morbidly curious ones. I found it works in IE, because I have IE in a virtual machine specifically for times like this. Unfortunately there's no "back" button, so if you accidentally double click, congrats you just answered two questions.
* Immigration is a threat to New Zealand's culture.
* No matter what circumstances you are born into, if you work hard enough you can be as successful as anyone else.
* Sport is too much a part of New Zealand's national psyche.
* Refugees should be welcomed in New Zealand.
* New Zealand's British heritage should be central to its national identity.It doesn't seem to get better after that.
Although eventually I made it to: YOUR CLOSEST FIT: Globalist
(shouty in source) Along with 7% of Kiwis "Globalists believe they are as much a part of the world as they are part of New Zealand..."Which is accurate in that I regard that as a statement of the bleedin' obvious.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guide to Plebs, in reply to Emma Hart,
I have no idea how this plays out for trans and intersex people.
Almost certainly they are legally exactly one of (male/female) so the law will ignore all the subtlety and use the rules they have. But the adultery law seems weird on all counts, so who knows.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guide to Plebs, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
"same-sex marriage"... I think we might want to be very careful to nuance that where the "T" in LGBT is concerned. ALL trans people deserve equal access to marriage
I'm aware of some of the issues, but the plebiscite wording is still unknown. NSW has our famous "none of the above" gendered person (Norrie, who I know to say hi to because Sydney is a smaller place than you might think in some respects). I fear that just to be @holes the Liberals will make their new law say "and now men can marry men, and women can marry women". The ALP platform is much like Aotearoa's law ‘‘Labor will amend the Marriage Act to ensure equal access to marriage under statute for all adult couples irrespective of sex who have a mutual commitment to a shared life’’. But despite the wording I am sure they mean to exclude married people from "all adult couples". And I'm not confident that they would re-amend the marriage laws to match that if the Liberals pass some half-way form of gay marriage.
One thing I do hope vanishes in the law change is the requirement that people divorce before medical transition. I'm not sure of the legal situation, but it's traditionally been very hard to get approval without "showing commitment" by dissolving your family. Once it's explicitly lawful to be married to the same person after transition, hopefully that won't happen any more. (AFAIK it was never illegal to stay married, you just couldn't get married, but that is pure speculation... and it's actually much stupider than that)
And yes, the Safe Schools thing is in some ways funny as fsck, and as some military type said "never distract your enemy while he is making a mistake". I don't think they'll be able to ban it, and in the meantime it's giving people a good vehicle to say "fsck yeah equality" under the guise of school... headline today was one school has withdrawn, 30 have signed up. The bigot campaign appears to be unsuccessful.
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I admit I still struggle to call it "marriage equality" rather than "same-sex marriage", just on factual grounds. But whatever they call it, I think it's a useful next step towards equality, and probably a necessary one.
The plebiscite is hopefully going to be a bit more like the anti-smacking campaign was in NZ, at least in part because right now George Pell is all over the news with his "I knew children were being raped, but I wasn't much interested" comments that are reminding people how awful many Christians are. Any bigot that stands up has to face calls of "are you with the kiddy-fiddlers too, then?" and honestly, I don't have a problem with that. We don't have social pressure on them over torturing refugees, stealing children, not paying tax, victimising the poor or refusing to employ the "immoral" (as they define it, obviously), but with paedophilia the tide has finally started to turn[1].
The real objections I've heard are more like "why kick a dying institution" and "who cares, only sad old sods get married", plus a huge dose of "just do it already".
What amuses me is the number of people I know who got married for immigration purposes. Friends who were going overseas for a stint got to about page 3 of the Russian visa application and went "right, marriage it is" because getting a "non-married partner visa" was not a realistic proposition (they're straight, with kids). Likewise my coworker, who intends to marry before his kid starts school just because he has had enough of the whole nonsense around kids, visas and property ownership (or whatever you call the official "is this yours" questions that pop up every five seconds), because he's got UK & NZ citz but his wide is a skip.
[1] various "christian" organisations are doing all of those things right now, in or for Australia
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Actually, after watching the Disturbed - The Sound of Silence video I've taken to singing pop songs in more of a Disturbed/Nick Cave voice, and "Throw your arms" becomes a terrifying horrorshow of a song done that way. A deep slow voice singing "I will come for you at night time," ... run away screaming. Just as a complete side note.
Luckily the plebiscite is compulsory, so we should avoid the problem of "meh, whatever, why not" voters staying home and handing the process over to the die-hard opposition.
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Take a moment to imagine what that’s going to sound like.
It'll be fine, really, because the Christians have so far failed to get the restrictions on hate speech lifted for the duration. They have tried, though.
I'm not sure what their version of hate speech would actually sound like, because what they're saying now is, dare I say it, un-Christ-like. Out of respect for you, and for my sanity, I'm not going to look for some quotes to make you throw up. What I've seen has ranged from Pell-vian to outright hateful.
One positive is that Turnbull has managed to send Cory Bernadi out of the country for the duration. He's the "marry my dog" one, if you need to be reminded.
Also, there will be no singing in Australian Parliament, I guarantee it. Most Australians can't even dirge their way through their national anthem. And there's no way we could muster an indigenous song, so at best you'd get some awful version of "Throw your arms around me" or something, while Cory et al sing "tie me kangaroo down" in an attempt to be funny.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Stephen Judd,
you need to lower speed accordingly. If you don't like it, don't use a shared path.
It's unreasonable in general to say "if you want to do this lawful thing you have to obey some extra rules I just made up", but more so in this case.
For example, I could avoid the shared path on my commute by trading ~7km of shared path for the same distance on a 6 lane dual carriageway. Or more than twice that distance of less busy roads. There's no parking or verge, let alone a door zone, on that road.
One counterargument is that if pedestrians don't like sharing the shared paths they should perhaps re-evaluate their choices.
We have people campaigning against cyclists, and not just the one-man "Pedestrian Council of Australia" which regularly opposes cycle facilities and cyclists. My local river-care group regular submits on bicycle plans to say "cyclists must be required to travel more slowly than pedestrians and should be made to dismount when they can't be blocked from using the path at all". It means we have to organise submissions for every little thing saying "remember to allow for cyclists".
requires cyclists to maintain a 1m distance between themselves and pedestrians.
I'm in NSW and ride on shared paths every day, but I can't find any reference to this as legislation, only a "should" that's restricted to "when overtaking", so I'd really like more information. I can't find mention of it in any of the media about the recent legislation.
There's no obligation on pedestrians to leave that metre of the path available and they're not obliged to behave reasonably or even pay attention to their surroundings. That makes it very hard for cyclists on shared paths when pedestrians decide to be difficult, and unfortunately campaigns like the recent one explicitly encourage that behaviour by delegitimising cyclists (being generous, the roads minister has repeatedly said ugly things).
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Even if it's longer it's usually much more fun to ride around a ridge than go down into a valley and then have to climb straight back out
You forgot "there must be a stop sign at the bottom of every hill, if necessary a four way stop sign.", which I think is in bold at the top of the NSW cycle route planning guidelines.
I am really pleased to see ongoing psychopath development in Auckland. And I really like riding on (wide) shared paths through parks, it's one of the things that makes my current commute so nice. I ride some back streets, then drop on to a shared path up a creek then through a necropolis before I'm back on proper roads (I cross a busy road) and more than half my total ride is car-free. It makes such a positive difference.