NSW’s arts minister, John Graham, says a Sydney council has sent a “terrible message” by voting to ban same-sex parenting books, importing a “US culture war into our country”.
In case you missed it: Cumberland city council voted to place a blanket ban on same-sex parenting books from local libraries. Labor councillor Mohamad Hussein voted in favour of the motion, which passed six to five.
Speaking to ABC RN earlier this morning, Graham said he had not spoken to the councillors directly but understood there would likely be another vote next Wednesday.
“That’s a good thing. I think it’s a chance for the council to reconsider.”
He said the council’s decision to ban same-sex parenting books is in breach of guidelines that apply to public libraries across NSW, stating they should be “an unbiased source of information and ideas”. Abiding by this is a condition for funding, Graham said.
The minister said he has read the book which sparked the ban – which is a “simple story [showing] that families come in all shapes and sizes”.
“It’s a terrible message to send, to have this councillor importing this US culture war into our country and playing it out on the shelves of the local library. I think the community expectations are clear – the local councillors should be coming around to pick up their bin, not telling them what to read.”
“The global culture wars have an effect on religions themselves, dividing them into a conservative and a liberal wing, and forcing moderates to take a side. In this way, a middle ground for compromise disappears.”
The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture Wars
It looks like the Government is quietly getting on with improvements whilst the Ruling Party is fighting a #CultureWar and going on about a "war on drivers"
'£101 million investment to boost cycling and walking nationwide'
Page summary:
Newly funded projects will provide even more people, especially in rural and deprived areas, the choice to travel by walking, wheeling or cycling.'
The woman is woefully unsuited, qualifications or otherwise to be a Science Minister. But why the rush, why the lack of due diligence? I suspect that this is just another tedious chapter in the ‘culture wars’ which are being conducted by the Tories to tear apart society and split us in the hope of electoral (and subsequent) financial gain.
#Budget#UKPolitics This article by Gary Stevenson is so good, please read every word of it.
“Whatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And they’re paid millions to bet on it.”
This is what the world is - it is run by a minute elite for a minute elite and the rest of us, the masses, the natural world, we just don’t count. It is a #TragedyOftheNonCommons (will reshare my own piece on this below 1/n)
@pvonhellermannn this is why the #culturewar is used whenever possible.
Much easier to rattle people's cages with scaremongering & bigotry, rather than addressing the country's problems
How many old white guys out there would be willing join a 501(c)(3) whose mission is to oppose old white guys in positions of power? How many people would be willing to provide financial support for the same?
Nothing like this currently exists in the U.S. and I think it could be a damn effective form of protest. Personally, I’m sick and tired of seeing old fucking white guys in power everywhere I turn. Am I an aberration?
Oh, and despite thinking of myself as a bit of wordsmith, I’m admittedly terrible at acronym generation. What’s a good name for an organization pursuing said mission?
The #CultureWar playing out is between young BIPOC femmes (who internalized the language of therapy) and Boomer men (who should have sought therapy and never did).
Sunk cost, ego, and motivated reasoning are why we can’t have nice things right now.
Missouri judges cannot legally finalize a divorce if a woman is pregnant.
Every single culture war issue is about taking rights away from people and increasing the authority of undemocratic institutions.
Telling women that they can not get an abortion and they can't get a divorce removes reproductive and legal rights from a woman and increases the authority of the men in her life.
#USPolitics#SociologyOfReligion
I worry a lot about the persistence of Christian Fascism in the US. There's been some coverage of the scholarship on white Christian Nationalism in the mainstream press, but Evangelical support for Trump is rarely framed as a form of American Fascism. That's a problem. /1
@brooklynsoc Yes, yes, yes and yes. And it is having knock-on effects in conservative evangelicalism around the world. Or perhaps better: there is an international ecosystem of (esp white) conservative evangelicalism in which there's an increasingly open embrace of unashamed #authoritarianism. Only in some places has it reached such an advanced stage as in the US (e.g. evangelical support for the fascist #Bolsonaro in #Brazil), but the open embrace of #Trumpism by white evangelicals in the US is not an isolated phenomenon.
For instance, #ScottMorrison, #Australia's PM from 2018–2022, was elected with strong support from white evangelicals (and identifies as such, which has been very unusual in #Auspol). Morrison recently published his memoirs with a foreword by #MikePence. While they were both in office, Morrison never criticised Trump, and displayed a number of similar political leanings (albeit somewhat more constrained by Australia's Westminster parliamentary system). In recent years, many White conservative evangelical leaders in Australia have increasingly focused their public agenda on a similar constellation of #CultureWar issues as their US counterparts. This is more pronounced than it used to be.
Beyond the “culture war”: How to cover #trans issues well in an election year—workshop for journalists offered by the Trans Journalists Association. Feb 7, online class, registration $35
"'What sort of society and culture do we want, and how do we get that' is the topic of the AI-driven culture war. The culture war prevents us from thinking clearly about the future.
Mooglebook recommender AI does not hate you, but you are made out of emotionally-charged memes it can use for something else."
On the one hand, I generally find Diversity Equity Inclusion in the workplace offensive, as it's presented as the company taking care of me while its primary purpose is to protect the company from lawsuits. On the other hand, states in the U.S. pushing to ban D.E.I. feels very... fascist. Like, they're not allowed to be equitable in a genuine or phony fashion? What a country! #DEI#CorporatePropaganda#CultureWar
‘DIE HARD Is the Only Christmas Movie That Bridges America's Political Divide’
A West Coast-hating 'good guy with a gun' trying to get his nuclear family back - it's a conservative fantasy that liberals can't get enough of every holiday season.
"Online and on-screen reactions to the conflict reflect a subtle
but important shift in Western attitudes, driven by three related
forces: technology, demography
and ideology."
Support for #Israel in the #US and many #European countries is set to decrease over the long term, as memories of WWII wane and immigration of non-Jews...
‘We are easy targets’: professor speaks out on quitting over
👉Republican culture wars
“I have this morning informed my dean that I will step down from my position at LSU at the end of the school year,” Journalism professor Robert Mann posted on X.
“My reasons are simple: the person who will be governor in January has already asked LSU to fire me. And I have 👉 no confidence the leadership of this university would protect the Manship School against a governor’s efforts to punish me and other faculty members.”
Mann’s resignation comes amid the 🔺GOP’s fight to seize control of American colleges and universities🔺.
Rightwing lawmakers this year introduced more than👉 50 bills across 23 states aimed at eliminating faculty tenure, a longstanding job protection policy to protect academics from outside interference.
Florida, Texas, Tennessee and North Dakota this year enacted legislation that would 👉unravel Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts at state colleges and universities, making it more difficult for higher education to protect marginalized students.
Earlier this week, Wisconsin Republicans used Universities of Wisconsin 👉employee salaries as a bargaining chip against the school’s fight to protect DEI spending.
Professors like Mann are unwilling to remain on the frontlines of the GOP’s battle on higher education – especially without the backing of university leadership. #culturewar#tenure#dei https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/20/us-universities-faculty-republican-culture-war?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
I loved #bookfairs when I was a teacher, and later when I was a parent. That the deplorables have made them a casualty (gravely wounding them, at the very least) of their #CultureWar is infuriating.
The Nobles of Iowa moved to blue Minnesota. The Huckinses of Oregon moved to red Missouri. Their separate journeys, five weeks apart, illustrate the fracturing of America.
Not surprisingly, voters as a whole don't seem to apply the same, um, SOUL-CRUSHING IMPORTANCE to crushing #woke#teachers, #LGBTQ -friendly curriculum, or the hopes and lives of #trans kids in school, as, say, #GOP politicians and pundits do. Support for such #culturewar issues is higher among #Republicans, but even there, the polling doesn't show this focus as a grass roots groundswell.
Now, if that just translated into actual #voting ...
#Saskatchewan is one of the more conservative provinces in Canada, but we’re still in #Canada, which means we’re still a lot more progressive than U.S. Republicans.
[Analysis] Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out. (www.nytimes.com)
The Nobles of Iowa moved to blue Minnesota. The Huckinses of Oregon moved to red Missouri. Their separate journeys, five weeks apart, illustrate the fracturing of America.