Anglican letter signed by 34 school principles demanding the right to discriminate - suffers backlash

So the other day the Anglican leaders got together and wrote a letter to all Canberra politicians demanding that the right to discriminate against gays should be preserved in law. What's more they had the principal's of 34 Anglican schools sign the letter to give it more weight.

Among past students of the Anglican schools there was outrage. 

The Anglican Synod last week sent all federal MPs a letter signed by the principals of 34 of its schools. It said while schools would not expel gay students or staff in practice, they wanted to preserve the right to employ people who "support the ethos of the school".


The letter prompted a backlash from alumni. Ex-students from Abbotsleigh and St Catherine's in Waverley are circulating petitions, while there is also disquiet among graduates of schools such as St Andrew's, Shore and Roseville College.


 A petition begun by St Luke's graduate Max Loomes has attracted more than 2000 signatures from graduates of many of the schools involved in the letter, such as Barker College, Blue Mountains Grammar, Shore, Arden Anglican School and The Kings School.


"We call on you to retract your open letter and not judge your staff by their sexual orientation but by the quality of their work," the open letter said. Most signatories were past students, although about 10 per cent were worried parents, Mr Loomes said.


The Abbotsleigh petition argues it does not matter whether the schools would actually act against gay staff and students. "As alumni, we are concerned that this public display of intolerance could have devastating effects on the girls to whom Abbotsleigh owes a duty of care."


 Felicity Wilson, who graduated from Abbotsleigh in 2009, is also planning a peaceful march from Abbotsleigh to Barker College on November 10, to promote equality in schools and to raise money for struggling teenagers.


"They can say all they like about hiring within their values, but they are supporting a specific law that condones specific discrimination," she said. Sydney Morning Herald

But perhaps the most telling thing is the way one school principle equated gays with the insane. 

"I am particularly averse however to the notion that the government may dictate to us whom we can and cannot employ," he said. 


"My aversion relates to my experience over 20 years ago as a government school principal, where the Department of Education forced particular teachers on the school I led. I came to the conclusion that some of them were actually clinically insane. 


 "They were not effective teachers. They did damage to the interests of children." Sydney Morning Herald

And there it is, the homophobia. 

Darling spilled a whole glass of coke on his PC

It happened last night. David had his drink in front of the PC on the coffee table, I have no idea why it was there like an accident waiting to happen. It was a full glass. He bumped it with the back of his hand and just about the entire contents went on the keyboard and overflowed to underneath.

There was much shouting and hysteria as I went on a mercy dash to the kitchen for tea towels. But alas despite the frenzied mopping up the PC soon turned itself off. Mopped the keyboard some more and put the PC on top of the still warm oven to dry out. It would start and get to the login thing but the keyboard was soaked and you couldn't log in.

 This morning it was even worse. Nothing on the screen at all. I think it's likely the sugar in the coke. Despite the drying out of the actual liquid there'd be a sugar residue remain, which I'm guessing conducts electricity. The PC would have to be pulled to bits and cleaned by a professional for any chance of it working again. In other words it's fucked.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth by David. Luckily though my ancient old one is still working as a media player under the big telly, so I pulled that out for him to use. Told him you have to have quite a bit of patience with it because of it's age.

It was also lucky that the great PC flooding happened just at the time when I'd got money out of Super. I've ordered a new one Through Kogan which will arrive in a day or two.

Meanwhile the ancient PC is giving him a bit of grief. You see David is one of those people that sets passwords up for everything and tells his PC to remember them. So in a couple of weeks he's completely forgotten all his passwords. Add to that that I stripped the software on it back to the bare minimum so as the poor old thing wouldn't be straining to play videos.

First thing he wanted to do was download a couple of shows. The bittorent downloader was gone as I'd uninstalled it. I downloaded and installed it again for him to download. David is a very outgoing person and just has no patience with things like that.

Next he wanted to log into Farcebook. Of course he had no idea what his password was. So he had to do the email thing "Forget your password?" to log back in to Farcebook.

Then he had no idea what his email password was, so he had to get an SMS code to log into his email. By this time I was getting pretty gobsmacked, but kept a calm face as I guided him through it all. He was getting an SMS code to get into his email to get the reset password thing to log into Facebook! It all succeeded in the end but that process took nearly half an hour. *sheesh*

A bit of advice for people like David who get their PC to save their passwords; don't. Even if you have to write them down in a secret place or something, key in the passwords every time yourself. For email, regular sites, everything. That way you're very unlikely to forget them if you spill a whole glass of coke on your PC! 

"Boy Erased" new trailer, before release this Friday

David and I can't afford going to the movies, but this is released on Friday in the US and Nov 8th here in Australia. Perhaps the local cinema would be much cheaper so we'll look into that. Really don't want to wait for a decent torrent to show up before seeing it.  

Anyway, this is the new trailer of Boy Erased just before it's release at the cinemas.