Investigate HERS, Oct-Nov 2012

HERS | Same-sex marriage | Vitamin D & Cancer | Facebook Bullies | 09/2012

current affairs and lifestyle for the discerning woman

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE Exploding the myths

VITAMIN D & BREAST CANCER HIS Tricky Treaty | Obama Nation | Dawkins Vs Design | 09/2012

How vitamin D kills aggressive tumours

WATER RIGHTS

How the treaty has been reinvented

Oct/Nov 2012 $8.60

FACEBOOK BULLIES Delta, Charlotte, and you could be next

PLUS

BEAUTY, CUISINE, TRAVEL, FAMILY, MOVIES, HEALTH & MORE

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 1

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 1

CONTENTS Issue 134 | Oct/Nov 2012 | www.investigatedaily.com HIS Water Rights

How the Treaty got hijacked

Obama Nation

Does he have a second term agenda?

DawkinsVs Design Is Richard Dawkins right?

features Gay Marriage

IAN WISHART explodes the myths surrounding this controversial subject page 10

Killing Cancer

How vitamin D demolished breast cancer tumours page 28

Facebook Bullies

Delta Goodrem, Charlotte Dawson, and the girl next door - how cybervenom is harming us page 26

False Prophets

The commercialisation of Christ page 44

CONTENTS Formalities

06 Miranda Devine 08 Chloe Milne

Beauty & Health 28 30 32

Vitamin D kills cancer Cardiomax trial The promise of BB creams

Cuisine & Travel 36 On a Bali highy 38 Sicily through a wine glass

38 44

Books & Movies

40 Intriguning reads, romance, painters & pregancy 42 The Words

Heart & Soul

44 Real gospel vs fake 46 Sexualizing our children

32 46

42

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HERS / DEVINE

Great green lies recycled Miranda Devine

Y

ou would think the last thing we need is another environmental tax but the great green beast is never satisfied.

The latest feel-good eco-furphy to be foisted on us here in Australia in the cause of saving the planet is a proposed 10-cent slug on all glass and plastic drinks containers, described as a recycling “deposit”.

The Greens have introduced legislation into federal parliament to try to force states to impose the container tax, which the Australian Food and Grocery Council estimates will add $1.8 billion a year to the price of milk, juice, soft drink and beer. It would cost average families an extra $300 a year or $4 more for a case of beer.

At first glance it might seem an attractive proposition, despite the cost. After all, those people who want their money back need only take their bottles and cans to a recycling station, while enterprising people can collect discarded containers and exchange them for cash.

But not so fast, says economist Jeff Bennett, professor of environmental management at the Australian National University, whose latest book, Little Green Lies, demolishes the 12 core beliefs of the environmental movement.

In a talk at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, he said recycling, of beverage containers, paper and so on, is not a costless activity, because it involves the use of scarce resources.

For instance, collecting bottles and cans from remote communities in the Northern Territory, where container deposit legislation was introduced in January, uses a lot of fuel for the trucks carting them. Then there are the “chemicals used in the processing operation, the storage facilities used to house the stock of collected cans”.

Recycling just “involves the substitution of one set of scarce resources for another”, says Bennett.

Surprise, surprise: costs per bottle in the NT have reportedly risen as much as 20 cents since the legislation was introduced.

The war against plastic bags is similarly absurd.

The results in South Australia show the ban there may actually have caused worse pollution. Clean Up Australia Day last year found people were dumping more plastic bags on the state than they did the previous year. Even worse, 6 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Oct/Nov 2012

Since most of us recycle supermarket plastic bags as bin liners, lunch bags, footyboot carriers and dog-poo holders, we will just have to buy more expensive plastic bags to do the same job they are now dumping the reusable imported Chinese-made heavy gauge “green” bags – which Peter Garrett used to call “canvas” but which are really made of another type of plastic, polypropylene.

Each one equates to 1000 polyethylene bags and, unlike the old bags, they cannot be recycled easily.

In fact, the old bags may even be eco-friendly in solid landfill, according to a 2006 cost-benefit analysis by the Productivity Commission, because of their “stabilising qualities, leachate minimisation and minimising (of) greenhouse-gas emissions”.

What’s more, since most of us recycle supermarket plastic bags as bin liners, lunch bags, footy-boot carriers and dogpoo holders, we will just have to buy more expensive plastic bags to do the same job.

Lo and behold, when South Australia banned plastic bags in 2009, the sale of Glad plastic bin liners in the state went through the roof to double the national average.

A similar thing happened in Ireland when plastic bags were subjected to a 15 euro cent tax, according to Bennett.

His book sets out to “scrutinise the logic” of the basic assumptions we make about the environment.

For instance, that pollution must be banished.

“Intuitively we think pollution is bad,” he says.

“Here’s the twist – just about everything we do involves pollution. “In fact our very being creates pollution. My being alive has created pollution.”

“It’s not that pollution is inherently bad,” he says. But we need to balance the good things associated with pollution with the bad.

From the belief that people are a scourge on the planet rather than a resource, to the myth of “food miles”, Bennett shows that seemingly well-meaning attitudes do more harm than good.

At the heart of green ideology is a deep pessimism about human ingenuity. For instance Bennett’s first “Little Green Lie” is the “peak oil” scare, the fear that fossil fuels are running out.

But, he points out, “as known reserves are depleted, oil price

rises stimulate more exploration and technological advances.”

This is exactly what has happened in the US, now in the middle of a new oil boom. It will become energy-independent within the next 20 years, having harnessed the technology to extract shale oil and gas resources thousands of metres below ground.

Short of deleting ourselves from the planet, we need to accept that there is no such thing as zero pollution and have faith in ourselves to solve problems as they arise. devinemiranda@hotmail.com

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HERS / GEN-Y

Smoke and mirrors Chloe Milne

F

or once, I actually agree with the tobacco industry. Don’t worry, I won’t be taking up smoking any time soon, but their latest campaign sure has got me thinking. The “If I create it, I should own it” crusade not only demonstrates that the tobacco industry has a lot of money to spend on marketing, but that they may, for once, actually be right. I believe they should own what they create, be it packaging to differentiate themselves, or lung cancer that kills its users. The health effects such as strokes, heart disease, blindness and erectile dysfunction, just to put a downer on things, are as much a creation of cigarettes as the packets they come in. Surely if the cigarette companies wish to claim ownership, it should be for all the things they have created, the good, and the not-so-good.

According to the World Health Organisation, tobacco products will kill half of their users, or 6 million people per year. That’s information you won’t find at agreedisagree. co.nz, nor will you find an opportunity to disagree. Misleading advertising? I think yes.

It’s not very often that a company agrees that their product is harmful yet has no intention of taking steps to remove, or lessen that harm, yet British American Tobacco New Zealand has done just that.

Smoking is a serious threat to our health and arguably our clean and green image, yet you don’t see people holding placards and yelling in the streets about it. Everyone seems to be more concerned that overseas investors might be able to purchase part of our state assets. God forbid that New Zealand might try to lessen its ever-growing debt.

Labour’s Clayton Cosgrove has referred to John Key’s partial sale of state assets idea as, “hocking off the family silver to the foreign pixies.” Who knew people from China were “foreign pixies”? Here I was thinking that Chinese people were human beings just like you or I. Which makes me think; is it so bad that some other human beings wish to purchase some of our assets? Perhaps people opposed to the sales are worried that New Zealand is going to turn into a communist, Chinese speaking country, or worse, a mythical land, where pixies like Tinkerbell are tinkering with our assets. Let me tell you, when I was in China I didn’t see any pixies, but I did see two midgets and that’s kind of the same thing.

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Smoking is a serious threat to our health and arguably our clean and green image, yet you don’t see people holding placards and yelling in the streets about it I don’t want to play the race card, but no one seemed to bat an eyelid when James Cameron purchased over 1000 hectares of land in Wairarapa. Admittedly some people probably think he is the famous Oscar wining Kiwi director, and sure, he passes the Paul Henry “looks like a New Zealander test,” but has everyone forgotten how annoying and loud Americans can be?

Speaking of loud and annoying I think we can all agree that Jamie and Sally Ridge are two “assets” that would be better owned and operated offshore, however, I guess much like our economic debt, we did create them, so we should take responsibility for them… unless of course some foreign pixies come up with a good price.

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G IN

s h t y P X m E e thu t o X b E a ME-S riage r A a S m D O L

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ne i u n e g g n ki o ex v s o e r p f am RT o s s e t h t A es r hs y n H e t o t S y n I e i t a W ular m marr he b t e N d n A p I o d I t o e , ’ p e t m e u infor iage iss e of th the ‘righ r m mar ines so gay and examt being abou

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#1

THE STATE HAS THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THE DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE Central to the same-sex marriage debate is the definition of marriage.

Throughout the past eight thousand years of recorded human history, marriage has been exclusively defined as a relationship between men and women, not same-sex partners. Whilst it is true that many cultures have recognised polygamy, (and in some cases still do), where one man has several wives, there is no historical precedent for same sex marriage.

The issue has an even more fundamental problem however: the question of where the powers of the State begin and end.

For centuries, governments in Western civilisation have codified laws reflective of and based in religious law to a large extent. Much of the legal systems of Britain, the US, NZ and Australia hinges on principles first raised in Mosaic law found in the Old Testament. To this degree, the State has reflected the beliefs of the wider community.

In the past thirty years, however, the State – at the urging of powerful and wealthy gay lobbyists – has moved from reflecting society to attempting to shape it using the coercive power of the Law. There is a danger in allowing this, because it sets the State adrift from ordinary constitutional checks and balances.

A Government that can force its citizens to believe something new, and punish them if they refuse to accept or believe the new teachings, is little more than a dictatorship within a velvet glove. The “great revolutions” of the Soviet communists in Russia and Hitler’s Nazis in Germany were achieved when the citizens allowed the State to assume power and control over what they were allowed to think.

By changing the law to say that two men are “married”, the State then carries that decree throughout everything it touches, including the education system and free speech laws. Your five year old children in school will soon be reading school books featuring same sex parenting relationships as normative, because it will be illegal for

schools to refuse to use such literature: Section 56 of the Marriage Act states: 56 Offence to deny or impugn validity of lawful marriage (1) Every person commits an offence against this Act, and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $200, who— (a) alleges, expressly or by implication, that any persons lawfully married are not truly and sufficiently married; or (b) alleges, expressly or by implication, that the issue of any lawful marriage is illegitimate or born out of true wedlock.

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(2) For the purposes of this section the term alleges means making any verbal statement, or publishing or issuing any printed or written statement, or in any manner authorising the making of any verbal statement, or in any manner authorising or being party to the publication or issue of any printed or written statement.

Think about that for a moment.

Under “the law”, you will no longer be allowed to express an opinion about same sex marriage. The very debate we are having today will become illegal.

If you wish to complain when activists

within the Ministry of Education use it as a springboard for indoctrination of your children, you could face legal action yourself. All debate about the morality or legitimacy of same sex relationships will become illegal. Your right to hold an opinion and discuss it in terms of free speech will have been stripped from you.

When Parliament votes to redefine marriage, this is an automatic flow-on effect of the law change. Yet it is one that has not been covered by the news media, and not been debated by the New Zealand public.

When the New Zealand Parliament – without the constitutional backing of a public referendum – legislates to change 8,000 years of collective wisdom of humanity on the basis of a “conscience” vote by 121 politicians (arguably a contradiction in terms), it assumes to wield a power it does not inherently have under law: the power to control what you should believe, and what your children should believe.

Marriage existed before States ever existed. The State therefore does not “own” marriage, any more than it owns you. It is merely given a sub-licence, if you like, to administer marriage. To the extent that States have exercised

meets society’s standards and can therefore be recognised by the State for the purposes of State business.

Proof of this argument can be found in New Zealand today. It is illegal for the purposes of New Zealand law for a man to have two lawfully-wedded wives simultaneously. It is not illegal for a man to be lawfully wedded to one wife, however, and have one or more other women living with him as if married.

For all intents and purposes, polygamy already exists in some New Zealand households for all practical purposes except gaining extra benefits or recognition from the State. Such marriages exist independent of and untouched by the State because the State has no power to touch them. By the same token, people having affairs outside of wedlock are also taking on multiple partners. Again, the State does not interfere.

If the State doesn’t own marriage, then, and only uses the term under licence, what gives the State the right to re-define the word?

The simple answer is “Nothing”.

Without a public referendum, the 121 MPs of the New Zealand Parliament have no constitutional legitimacy or

civil unions would give proper legal recognition to same sex relationships: “In New Zealand, same-sex couples cannot legally get married, or access the rights that come with marriage.

When a couple get married, they automatically receive over 100 different statutory entitlements. Because samesex couples cannot get married, they cannot access these entitlements. This is discrimination.”

“Generally, New Zealand’s laws do not recognize the existence of samesex couples. Same-sex partners are not ‘next of kin’ or ‘family’, according to most of our laws. This can have a devastating impact on people’s lives.”

“There are countless stories from all around New Zealand, of people experiencing horrific situations and hardship because of the current relationship laws and their effects. For example, there are many distressing stories of people not being able to see their partner in hospital, because they are not considered to be ‘family’. Because of these effects, it is important that New Zealand’s laws are changed, so that they do recognize the existence of same-sex couples.”

“Because same-sex couples cannot legally get married, they do not have the choice of publicly expressing their

Without a public referendum, the 121 MPs of the New Zealand Parliament have no constitutional legitimacy or mandate to redefine marriage, no matter how hard they try and argue differently control over marriage, that control is only recent and only to the extent expressly delegated by citizens in order to give legal recognition to a relationship where that relationship intersects with the State (benefits, healthcare, next-of-kin, taxation etc).

As long as two people have met the commonly recognised requirements for marriage – one man, one woman, not from immediate family – the State is required to issue a marriage license and cannot lawfully withhold one. The issuing of a licence, therefore, is not a “permission” from the State to marry, but merely a recognition that the union

mandate to redefine marriage, no matter how hard they try and argue differently.

#2

THE DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE NEEDS TO BE CHANGED The claim from the pro-lobby is that “equality” will only be achieved with legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

The claim is untrue.

Before the Civil Union Act was passed in 2004, the man behind both it and the legalisation of prostitution (now rife in suburban streets), gay Labour MP Tim Barnett, argued that

commitment. The legal effect of this is that same-sex couples are considered ‘legal strangers’, even if they have lived together for twenty or more years. The social effect is that bisexual, lesbian and gay people are treated like secondclass citizens, and their relationships are denied the dignity of being socially recognized. This has negative effects upon individuals’ health, self-esteem and relationship stability.

“But unlike marriage, civil unions will be available for all couples. Civil unions won’t be based on religion, or other traditional ideas about ‘couples’.”

“Civil unions will be a modern

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relationship model for the 21st century, with a secular (non-religious) basis. What they will mean socially will depend on us – society. We have the challenge of being pioneers and developing social meanings and status around ‘civil unions’.”

The Civil Union Act gave Barnett everything he wanted. In all major areas, a civil union was legally deemed to be the same as a marriage.

“What we propose in the Civil Union Bill is to change all the statute books in one go, by saying that every time the words ‘spouse’, ‘wife’, ‘husband’, or ‘de facto couple’ appear, they should be read to include samesex couples. This will make sure that all the laws comply with the Bill of Rights Act, and the Government isn’t in breach of our human rights in terms of equal treatment. This is an efficient one-step law change that means we won’t have to argue for same-sex inclusion, every time a law is debated in Parliament.”

This was done. So why are gay activists back bullying parliament again? The answer can be found in the response to Myth #1: this is really

about shutting down your right to have an opinion on homosexuality forever.

Once this law passes, people who challenge it – even in churches – could be prosecuted, and homosexual lifestyles will be taught alongside heterosexual ones from pre-school upwards, because a failure to do so could open an educational institution up to prosecution.

This is being portrayed in the media as a debate simply about gay marriage. In reality, it’s a Trojan horse that changes the balance between politicians and the public. Whether it is same sex marriage now or something else five years from now, the precedent in allowing politicians to dictate what you are allowed to believe and teach your children oversteps the separation of “church and state” – I use the phrase to mean anything that goes to the private beliefs of free citizens.

Is the role of Government to represent the people, or to mould the people according to the views of whoever holds power at a given moment in time? The Soviet Union created a very effective homogeneity of thought by ‘brainwashing’ generations of Russians to believe State doctrines. The

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presumption of NZ MPs to think that they can arbitrate such a major moral issue is similar in nature – even if not in scope – to the communist approach.

Both are anchored in the idea that the State is supreme, and that the State can overrule its citizens.

US president Thomas Jefferson, who helped draft the US Constitution, once wrote “The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction…legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.”

Yet 200 years later, New Zealand politicians now presume to outlaw opinions they don’t agree with. That’s a very, very dangerous precedent.

The Herald’s Jonathan Milne identified this fundamental point in his interview with gay marriage architect Louisa Wall, MP, and Conservative Party leader Colin Craig: “Louisa believes we elect MPs because we trust their values and their judgment; we trust them to invest time in informing themselves and making a hundred decisions every day, based on the values they espoused in their election campaign,” writes Milne. “We

charge them with making balanced decisions for the good of everyone in society, rich or poor, weak or strong.

And if they breach the trust, we’ll boot ‘em out in three years’ time.

“Colin doesn’t trust politicians. He makes no bones about it. Time after time, he says, we voters have told them do one thing – and they’ve done the opposite. He wants binding citizens initiated referenda on the big social and moral questions, acting as a check on unaccountable politicians. The people, he says, always get it right. The MMP electoral system. Maintaining firefighter numbers. Cutting MP num-

#3

GAY MEN ARE NOT PROMISCUOUS, THAT’S JUST HATEFUL TALK Er, wake up and smell the coffee. Enter the words “gay”, “NZ” and “orgy” into Google and see what you find.

You could be randomly strolling the beach at Rabbit Island near Nelson and stumble across this, for example: “Man Orgy,18-50yrs, tops/versatile, no bottoms only! Cum use my man’s ass**** for your f*** toy...Rabbit Island, this Friday 19th 1pm, City End of Beach, first beach shelter. BYO everything.”

“Tops” is a reference to the dominant

interest in sexual activity. Offering a condom indicates interest in protected sex. If the other party is also interested, he will accept the offer and put his penis through the hole to be serviced.

The most common activity is oral sex, and to a lesser extent anal intercourse…Glory holes are today most commonly found in established adult video/bookstore arcades, sex clubs, gay bathhouses, and adult theaters.”

Every weekend, gay clubs around New Zealand are rocking to the beat of anonymous gay sex through holes in cubicles with random strangers.

A survey of men who have sex with

Once this law passes, people who challenge it – even in churches – could be prosecuted, and homosexual lifestyles will be taught alongside heterosexual ones from pre-school upwards, because a failure to do so could open an educational institution up to prosecution bers. Hard labour for violent criminals.

Keeping superannuation saving voluntary. Smacking kids. He rolls through the list. Voters have got it right every time, he says. And most of the time, politicians have gone ahead regardless and done the opposite.

“That’s why he believes gay marriage should be put to a national vote,” concludes Milne.

Once again, this is the real issue: a growing number of MPs believe they have the right to absolute power for the three years they are in parliament, and that they know best. Your right to hold an opinion on a moral issue is now at grave risk of being taken away from you by the State. And if they can do it on this without a public mandate, they can do it to you on everything else. It’s called divide and conquer.

Thomas Jefferson warned the public not to easily surrender their rights to the State, because given an inch the State will proceed to take a mile: “The purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights….and which experience has nevertheless proved [the Government] will be constantly encroaching on if submitted to them.”

male in anal sex. “Bottoms” refers to men in receptive positions.

One Auckland club advertises its services on the GayNZ website: “Every Sunday is a Naked Orgy or Underwear Orgy at Basement.”

Services include: “FACILITIES : Cruise Club, Cruising Dark Hallway, Complementary Condoms and Lube, Large Screen Porno Lounge playing hot up to date latest release dvd’s, Douche Facility, Private Rooms with beds, Dungeon playroom with sling, cross, tv, mirror, Clean showers, toilet, stainless steel urinal, Themed areas – bath with shower – Slinghall, Raised glory hole area, Glory Holes.”

Wikipedia helpfully describes a “glory hole” as “A ‘glory hole’ is usually a hiphigh hole drilled, punched or filed in a wall between stalls in a public restroom or adult bookstore peepshow; through this hole one man will insert his penis for sexual contact with another person.

Usually it is the centralized location which facilitates impersonal, anonymous sex, rather than the structural feature of the setting itself.

“To use a glory hole a man puts his finger through the hole to indicate

men in New Zealand1 reveals 57% of them take drugs, “The most commonly reported drugs were amyl, cannabis, ecstasy and amphetamines”.

There was also clear evidence that most “gay” men had been preyed on as children by older homosexual men.

The survey found, for instance, that even when homosexuality was still illegal (up to 1986), some 56% of surveyed men at that time had been physically penetrated whilst aged 15 or younger, leading researchers to conclude that the illegality of gay sex had little impact on the gay community: “This indicates that even the possibility of imprisonment did not deter a majority of homosexual men from engaging in sex with men [boys] at the time,” says the study. Even with numbers smoothed out in the ensuing decades, fully 25% of men surveyed reported their first anal sexual experiences were between the ages of 12 and 16.

The study authors noted that “A small number of individuals reported first anal sex before age 12 but are not reported here. The questionnaire did not ask respondents whether experiences of first sex were coerced or not, yet this may

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have been true for an unknown number of individuals who reported first anal sexual contact at a young age, as well as for others in the sample.”

And what of promiscuity? It is often portrayed in TV programmes that gay men are monogamous couples, just like everyone else. The New Zealand survey shows the TV and popular media image is as far from the truth as it always has been.

Only 23% of the 1,200 men surveyed had managed to remain monogamous over the previous six months. Two thirds of the men reported multiple partners over that time. Many of them – more than a quarter – not only had

multiple regular sex partners, they also had multiple casual sex partners as well. Nearly ten percent of those surveyed reported having between 20 and 50 sexual partners in the previous six months. A further 24% had between six and 20 partners in just six months.

This wasn’t a survey about how many times these men were having sex, it was a survey to find out how many different men they were having sex with.

A 2008 version of the same study notes that actual rates of “concurrent sexual partners” will be “higher than those reported here” because of methodology issues with the survey.

When confronted with these figures,

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supporters of gay marriage retort like a commenter named “Cat” on the NZ Herald website: “Most heterosexual males, despite the rhetoric of love and commitment, are not committed to a genuinely monogamous relationship either.”

Cat grossly exaggerates to make her point. In reality, if one in every four married heterosexual men were sleeping with up to forty different women a year, society as a whole would not merely know about it, the entire country would be reeling.

According to gay scientists and social researchers, monogamy just is not in the blood for gay men. Marriage, in the true sense of the word, would be tarnished by redefining it to include relationships that allowed for and even encouraged such widespread promiscuity.

Conservative groups question what stability the average gay male couple could genuinely offer an adopted child, when most of them (nearly two thirds) are frequent drug users and most (77%) have multiple sexual partners within just six months despite being in “committed” relationships.

“The result is high levels of sexually transmitted infections amongst gay men,” notes researcher Laurie Guy in the Herald. “Over 60 per cent of new infectious syphilis cases are gay men.

This category also has high rates of gonorrhoea and hepatitis. And 76 per cent of all new HIV diagnoses in 20002009 were gay men.

“Can we affirm male gay relationships to the level of “marriage”, given the data on faithfulness and health?

One can argue change on the basis of “me”, “my rights” and “choice”. But the debate is also about the good of society.

“What society needs are stable, faithful, healthy relationships. Stable marriage has gravely weakened in the last generation. There is deep hurt and scarring of many, especially children, as a consequence.”

#4

IT’S UNFAIR TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST GAYS, THEY’RE BORN THIS WAY! Yeah right. Popster Lady GaGa channels this liberal angst in the words of her recent hit song, Born This Way:

“A different lover is not a sin/ Believe capital H-I-M/ I love my life, I love this record/ and Mi amore vole fe yah “I’m beautiful in my way,/ ‘Cause God makes no mistakes/ I’m on the right track,/ baby I was born this way.”

You can see from her lyrics that GaGa is pushing the idea that God made people gay, from birth. It’s a crock and has been proven so, but it’s the elephant in the room that no one likes to talk about. There was disbelief from one Herald subeditor and journalist that Conservative Party leader Colin Craig could dare to suggest the homosexuals were gay by choice, rather than “born this way”, when he spoke on TV3’s The Nation recently.

“Conservative Party leader Colin Craig has sparked outrage by saying homosexuality is a choice and gay people are more likely to have been abused as children,” the Herald reported.

Newstalk ZB’s Susan Wood expressed similar outrage at any suggestion that gays were not “born this way”.

The idea is so entrenched in New Zealand thinking that it pops up everywhere: “I am gay. It is the way I was born, not a disease I caught and most definitely it is not a choice I made,” an Ashburton man told his local newspaper last month.

A lesbian named Monique told the New Zealand Herald: “I think all this [opposition] comes from this belief that people have that you choose to be gay and I think if people could understand it’s just the way you’re born, just the way you are, they wouldn’t have so much objection to it because they’d realise you just want to live your life like everyone else and you shouldn’t be excluded.”

Yet the evidence that people are not born gay is overwhelming.

For a start, genetics and the law of natural selection suggest “gayness” is not something you can inherit. Why? Because anything that reduces the likelihood of breeding reduces its own chances of being passed on through the generations. If homosexuality was truly genetic, it would have been bred out of humanity hundreds of thousands of years ago soon after it first appeared.

Additionally, the hunt for a so called “gay” gene has come up empty handed and the scientist who pushed the issue turned out to have falsified some of his data.

So if same-sex attraction is not genetic, and people are not actually “born this way” no matter how much the media keep repeating the incorrect information, then what does it stem from? This is where the story gets fascinating.

One avenue being explored is environmental. Chemicals being pumped into our modern supermarket foods include estradiol and other forms of estrogen, the female sex hormone.

Human wastewater ending up in the environment, even after processing for other nasties, is found heavily laced with estrogen from birth control pills.

Animals living in or drinking these polluted waters begin to display samesex attraction behaviour.

Another impact of modern lifestyles has only recently emerged – a serotonin imbalance. Serotonin is the brain chemical that controls mood and for which millions of prescriptions for anti-depressants are issued each month.

According to recent studies, however, an imbalance in serotonin may also have a big impact on sexual appetite: “The brain chemical serotonin seems to truly have a direct affect on sexuality, at least in mice cages for now,” reported Medical News Today.

“More often than not, persons taking serotonin reuptake inhibitors for depression often link a decline in sexual prowess to these prescriptions.

Now, it is found in mice that when you take this chemical away, they want to breed like bunnies or may even be bisexual. Their sex drives became so high that they would attempt intercourse with anything that moved within their cages.

“Researchers at Beijing’s National Institute of Biological Sciences worked

with male mice that lack a gene which makes serotonin, they introduced mice of both genders into their cages and observed the actions. Simply put, giving the rodents too much serotonin and they were not able to obtain erections, but when taken away, their drives just wouldn’t stop no matter with fellow males or females.”

Could modern lifestyles that have caused a huge increase in depressive mental illness also be causing changes in sexual preferences? That’s the question posed by the Chinese study, originally reported in the journal Nature.2 Homosexual behaviour has been with us for a long time, however.

California’s Young Americans For Freedom leader Ryan Sorba has researched and written extensively on homosexuality, and describes it as little more than a sexual fetish, similar to bondage and discipline or even a hobby like surfing!

“The other issue is, a lot of people lose their confidence when they talk about this issue, because the other side is so good at putting you into a corner with their terms, which is why this panel is so important, because he who defines the terms controls the debate,” Sorba told a recent conference discussion.

“Stop using the word gay, because implicit in the notion of a gay identity is the fact that they’re born gay and that it should be a fundamental human right, but fundamental human rights are based on human nature not on capricious desires. If fundamental human rights are based on capricious desires, guess what, we’d have every group on this planet with a different hobby arguing for fundamental rights and benefits based on the fact that they play hockey, based on the fact that they play basketball or surf, or anything that they’re interested in.”

While it might be easy to stereotype Sorba as a mouthy conservative, he has

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backing from impeccable sources: gay academia. He’s not saying anything that is not being discussed behind closed doors (and sometimes more publicly) by the leaders of America’s gay rights movement.

Perhaps the world’s leading expert on the history of homosexuality is Dr David Greenberg, a New York University sociologist. He’s gay, and the author of a 635 page academic study of homosexuality through the ages called “The Construction of Homosexuality”. It has been hailed within academic circles as the most “extensive and thorough” analysis of homosexuality ever published.

When he undertook the project, gay rights activists were hoping Greenberg would prove that people were “born gay”. Instead, he shocked them by reaching the overwhelming conclusion that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.

To those who were stunned at the find-

ing, Greenberg responded that he had “an obligation to the truth”.

Greenberg looked at all recorded historical examples of homosexuality. Every single one, he wrote, could be traced back to a sexual behaviour practice rather than an innate sexual identity. Homosexual behaviour was rife in Greece and Rome, for example, because it was tolerated and even expected, and had much to do with male initiation ceremonies. Older men enjoyed the power of raping young boys. These men then went home to their wives and fathered children. In essence, human sexual behaviour in ancient times was bisexual.

“The Greeks assumed that ordinarily sexual choices were not mutually exclusive, but rather than people were generally capable of responding erotically to beauty in both sexes,” writes Greenberg. “Often they could and did.

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“Sparta, too, institutionalised homosexual relations between mature men and adolescent boys.” He noted that homosexual behaviour was “universal among male citizens”.

Greenberg quoted one report from second century Rome where the writer stated the Romans “consider pederasty (man-boy sex) to be particularly privileged and try to round up herds of boys like herds of grazing mares.”

These men were not exclusively homosexual. They were multi-sexual.

In a very real sense, they were addicted to sex, with anyone and – in many cases – anything. This concept of same-sex attraction as a sexual addiction rather than a set-in-concrete sexual identity goes a long way to explaining why gay men are so much more promiscuous and sexually active than heterosexual men – they are simply addicted to it.

The level of drug use in the gay community is another clue – nearly two thirds are regular users, fuelling their sexual addiction by means of a chemical addiction as well. Nearly seven percent of gay NZ men reported having sex on ‘P’, and it may come as a surprise to find that nine percent of men in the GAPSS gay Auckland survey reported having sex with a woman during the previous six months as well.

This crossover – essentially proving that we are really debating bisexuality – happens far more often than is ever discussed in the mainstream media.

The gay media, on the other hand, frequently has stories about homosexuals who fall in love with the opposite sex and happily begin grazing in the other paddock: “Things are more three-dimensional and less compartmentalized than they once were,” lesbian activist Nan Golden

wrote in The Advocate. “Maybe that has to do with getting older and understanding the ambivalence of things. At the moment I’m actually dating a man.

And I’ve known people who were active in ACT UP and were very defined as lesbian or gay but who were secretly sleeping together. I think people are more complicated than those categories.

Being gay to me isn’t just who I sleep with, it’s how I live my life.”

In other words, it’s a political statement, not a true sexual identity.

International surveys of the gay community have shown that a staggering 91% of gay men have become aroused by and had sex with women. Ninety-six percent of lesbians have had sex with men. It’s the ‘dirty little secret’ that the gay community doesn’t discuss with outsiders, but gay media reports offer some insights: “I must confess that I am both elated

and terrified by the possibilities of ‘a bisexual moment’,” lesbian activist Dr Lillian Faderman told Advocate magazine. “I’m elated because I truly believe that bisexuality is the natural human condition. But I’m much less happy when I think of the possibility of huge numbers of homosexuals (two thirds of women who identify as lesbian, for example) running off to explore the heterosexual side of their bisexual potential and, as a result, decimating our political ranks.”

There it is again. The ‘born gay’ myth is a political tool.

“What becomes of our political movement,” Faderman wrote, “if we openly acknowledge that sexuality is flexible and fluid, that gay and lesbian does not signify ‘a people’ but rather ‘a sometime behaviour’?”

Faderman is an award-winning lesbian writer, but she’s only saying

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exactly what Conservative Party leader Colin Craig is also saying: people are not ‘born gay’, they choose to act gay.

“We continue to demand Rights,” argues Faderman, clearly on a roll, “ignoring the fact that human sexuality is fluid and flexible, acting as though we are all stuck in our category forever…the narrow categories of identity politics are obviously deceptive.”

Why then do New Zealanders in gay relationships continue to insist they were “born this way”? Probably because they genuinely believe it – they’re conditioned by society to believe in the either/or theory of sexuality. If you display the slightest whiff of attraction for members of the same sex, you are told through the media and through gay helplines that you are really a homosexual in denial and it’s time to “come out”.

In truth, you are merely bisexual and you can ultimately choose who you fall in love with. There is also probably an element of self-denial – it is easier in terms of friends, family and your own peace of mind to argue that you are “born this way”, than it is to admit there is any element of choice, because where there is choice, there is always the option to say ‘no’ to exploring same-sex relationships.

New Zealand’s gay community might not like it, but the book title Queer by Choice sums it up, and its author – American lesbian academic Dr Vera Whisman – explains the political ramifications for the “rights movement”: “The political dangers of a choice discourse go beyond the simple (if controversial) notion that some people genuinely choose their homosexuality.

Indeed, my conclusions question some of the fundamental basis upon which the gay and lesbian rights movement

has been built. If we cannot make political claims based on an essential and shared nature, are we not left once again as individual deviants?

“Without an essentialist (born that way) foundation, do we [even] have a viable politics?”

In other words, the grouping around “born this way” is a protective tribal mechanism, it is not the truth when it comes to same-sex attraction.

The Bible, and other ancient writings, don’t talk of homosexuality as sexual identity, but as a sexual practice – sodomy. In the New Testament the apostle Paul talks of people “given over to their lusts”. The behaviour was far more widespread in ancient times than it is now, but it is making a comeback thanks to a new PR spin.

In the mid 1980s, advertising and PR whizz Hunter Madsen teamed up with psychologist Marshall Kirk to come up with a strategy to end homosexuality’s bad press. Both were gay, and both were skilled practitioners in the art and science of persuasion. The AIDS syndrome had only recently been discovered, and gays were feeling hunted by both the HIV virus and public opinion as it quickly became apparent that their sexual practices had unleashed a deadly plague.

Madsen and Kirk wrote a strategy later put into place throughout the western world as a blueprint for changing public attitudes to homosexuality.

These are their words, published and intended for a gay audience to work with at grass roots level. The campaign began in the late 1980s.

“As cynical as it may seem,” wrote Kirk and Madsen, “AIDS gives us a chance, however brief, to establish ourselves as a victimized minority legitimately deserving of America’s special protection and care.”

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But Kirk and Madsen had no intentions of playing fair: this was a fight to the death, about death, and they urged their colleagues in the gay community to use every dirty trick in the book.

“The campaign we outline in this book, though complex, depends centrally upon a programme of unabashed propaganda, firmly grounded in longestablished principles of psychology and advertising.”

Propaganda can sometimes be true, but Kirk and Madsen weren’t keen on the facts getting in the way of a good story.

“Our effect is achieved without reference to facts, logic or proof,” they wrote, “the person’s beliefs can be altered whether he is conscious of the attack or not.”

Make a note of that: the masters of gay persuasion boasting that they can re-programme you without you even realizing they’ve done it. One method was to “mainstream” gays into major media using gay or gay-friendly journalists and producers: “The visual media, film and television, are plainly the most powerful image makers in Western civilization.

The average American watches over seven hours of TV daily. Those hours open up a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan Horse might be passed,” wrote Kirk and Madsen in After the Ball. “As far as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message—of normalcy.

So far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert weapon in the battle to desensitize the mainstream.”

The reason a large number of New Zealanders now see homosexuality as “normal” is because inoffensive gay relationships and characters have been portrayed over and over in your living rooms every night through TV. Ever wondered why there are so many TV shows every day and movies with strong gay themes, when the biggest population studies ever undertaken have shown homosexuality running at less than one percent in the population?

When you turn on the TV this week, keep a mental note of every gay character you see on the screen, then measure it against the one percent yardstick.

Then ask yourself if homosexuality is over-represented in primetime, and then ask yourself, “Why?” The authors of After the Ball had a grand plan, summed up largely in a three-keyword pitch: “Desensitize, jam and convert”.

The “Desensitization” phase involved shoving homosexuality in the faces of the public, or in their words a “continuous flood of gay-related advertising, presented in the least offensive fashion possible. If straights can’t shut off the shower, they may at least eventually get used to being wet.”

By “advertising”, however, they weren’t talking about a 30 second spot in The Simpsons, they were talking about soaking Western culture in homosexuality and turning up the heat so slowly the public never even realized they were being cooked: “The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome. You can forget about trying right up front to persuade folks that homosexuality is a ‘good’ thing.

But if you can get straights to think homosexuality is just another thing – meriting no more than a shrug of the shoulders – then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won.”

The public, they pitched, needs to: “…view homosexuality with indifference instead of keen emotion. Ideally we would have the ‘straight’ register differences in sexual preference the way they register different tastes for icecream…Talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible… almost any behaviour begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close quarters and among your acquaintances.”

And now we’ve had Hero parades, The Big Gay Out and numerous other PR events covered at length by the media and widely attended by politicians keen to be seen as “tolerant”.

Madsen and Kirk must be laughing all the way to the bank.

“Each sign will tap patriotic sentiment; each message will drill a seemingly agreeable position into mainstream heads,” Kirk and Madsen wrote.

The “Jamming” phase follows desensitization. Recognising that conservatives would not fall for the spin (well,

not all of them), Kirk and Madsen urged gay activists around the world to target their opponents with personal abuse and carefully chosen phrases to make conservatives look like bigots: “Jam homohatred by linking it to Nazi horror…Most contemporary hate groups on the Religious Right will bitterly resent the implied connection between homohatred and Nazi fascism. But since they can’t defend the latter, they’ll end up having to distance themselves by insisting that they would never go to such extremes. Such

declarations of civility toward gays, of course, set our worst detractors on the slippery slope toward recognition of fundamental gay rights.

“The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes whose secondary traits and beliefs disgust middle America…the Ku Klux Klan demanding that gays be burned alive or castrated; bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs and convicts…”

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Getting the feeling you’ve been played for suckers? It is a total campaign of behaviour modification. If police road safety campaigns were this effective, the roads would be free of drink-drivers.

“These images (of anyone opposed to homosexual behavior) should be combined with those of their gay victims by a method propagandists call the ‘bracket technique’. For example, for a few seconds an unctuous beady-eyed Southern preacher is seen pounding the pulpit in rage about ‘those sick, abominable creatures’. While his tirade continues over the soundtrack, the picture switches to pathetic photos of gays who look decent, harmless, and likable; and then we cut back to the poisonous face of the preacher, and so forth. The contrast speaks for itself. The effect is devastating.”

Ads like this did indeed run in the United States. But pause for a moment.

What effect would such ads have had if, instead of “decent, harmless and likable” gays, the shots used had been

taken in the San Francisco bathhouse detailed here, (be warned, the following paragraph is explicit): “[M]y eyes took a moment to adjust.

I was in a large space filled with small wooden cubicles, like cupboards, in which men were apparently expected to kneel and give head. Glory holes were drilled into these closets, and other men came by, hoisted out their dicks, and inserted them into the holes in the cubicles. In another part of the room, men stepped up on a raised platform and other men stood below, eager to suck them off in a standing position…”

Imagine if those were the images portrayed in the plotlines of Shortland Street or Offspring – would the public be so tolerant? The contrast between a pastor talking about “sick” sexual behaviour, interposed with shots of the real gay lifestyle in all its trappings (rather than the Will & Grace version), would engender a very different response from the version of the ad that actually went to air in the US. And

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that, dear jury, shows you how TV can be and is used to manipulate the way you think.

The current media attack on people who dare to question the legitimacy of gay marriage is straight out of the gay propaganda playbook.

As part of “Jamming”, Kirk and Madsen’s blueprint recommended working with gay journalists in the news media to get slanted, gay-positive stories into the news as often as possible. Within a year of their book being published, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association of America was formed. Kirk and Madsen urged gays to “not demand direct support for homosexual practices, but…instead take anti-discrimination as its theme.”

In other words, turn homosexuality into a “human rights” issue rather than a debate about homosexuality itself. The new buzzwords, said Kirk and Madsen, should be “homophobe… tolerance…diversity” and, they added, drop references to “homosexual” in favour of the word “gay”, which was

seen as more “cheerful”. This was back in 1988. How many times a year do we now hear all these buzzwords?

“Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers…make gays look good…make the victimizers look bad.”

The gay persuaders’ logic was that gays “be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector. If gays are presented, instead, as a strong and prideful tribe promoting a rigidly non-conformist and deviant lifestyle, they are more likely to be seen as a public menace that justifies resistance and oppression.”

News stories, they suggested, should publicize “brutalized gays, dramatizations of job and housing insecurity” – cue the 1993 movie Philadelphia – or other issues like “loss of child custody”, all of this to portray gays as victims of heterosexual society.

“In order to make a gay victim sympathetic to straights, you have to portray him as Everyman… completely unexceptional in appearance…in a word they should be indistinguishable from the straights we would like to reach.

“The masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behaviour itself…the imagery of sex should be downplayed… make use of symbols which reduce the mainstream’s sense of threat, [to] lower its guard…Replace the mainstream’s self-righteous pride about its homophobia with shame and guilt.”

“First you get your foot in the door, by being as similar as possible; then, and only then – when your one little difference [sexual orientation] is finally accepted – can you start dragging in your other peculiarities, one by one.

You hammer in the wedge narrow end first. As the saying goes, allow the camel’s nose beneath your tent, and his whole body will soon follow.”

In case you are wondering, Kirk and Madsen’s reference to the gay community’s “peculiarities” was pedophilia.

The paragraph you’ve just read was for the attention of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), advising them to keep a low profile while the push for rights was taking place. “We’re not judging you, but others do, and very harshly, please

keep a low profile,” wrote Kirk and Madsen. As representatives of the gay community, they should have been judging the pedophile organisation.

But perhaps given the large number of New Zealand gay men whose first sexual experience was as a child at the hands of a much older man, maybe it is not a surprise after all.

#5

I’M NOT STUPID ENOUGH TO BE FOOLED BY PROPAGANDA Maybe you’re not, but a large number of your neighbours and friends evidently are. A Pew Research poll of Americans in 1996 found 65% of the US population actively opposed to gay marriage, and only 27% in favour. By 2006, opposition had dropped to only 51%. In the last six years, opposition has now dropped to only 44% – a minority. Support for gay marriage has leapt from 27% to 48%.

In New Zealand, touted overseas as the “most gay friendly nation” on the planet, a 63% majority favoured gay marriage in a One News/Colmar Brunton poll this year.

What’s changed? Nothing except the propaganda campaign through the news media and Hollywood. The mechanics of gay sex are the same today as they’ve always been. Gay males are as promiscuous today as they have always been. Drug use in the gay community is much higher than in the heterosexual community as it always has been. Nothing about the gay community has changed except the PR surrounding them.

#6

SAME SEX MARRIAGE DOESN’T AFFECT ME For the reasons just outlined, legalising same sex marriage affects you directly. It will become an offence

under the law to debate the morality of same sex marriage. More to the point, it will quickly become a compulsory component of the education system.

Same sex marriage will automatically legitimise same-sex adoption and put same sex couples in direct competition with other married couples.

Most heterosexual New Zealanders who support the idea of gay marriage do so because of misplaced feelings of tolerance, based on the idea that homosexuals are “born this way” and therefore cannot change. As you’ve seen, this is a fabrication, but it also leads parents into the mistaken belief that “exposure to homosexuality can’t make my child gay”. This too is a myth.

The news media is rife with stories of people who’ve been heterosexual all their lives, only to suddenly “find myself” and “come out of the closet” as gay. There are well-known personalities in New Zealand who fit this plotline.

Unfortunately, they have misunderstood homosexuality because they’ve been lied to, and they continue to assume sexuality is either/or. It isn’t, it’s fluid. A person who has spent years married to and sexually performing with a person of the opposite sex is not homosexual, no matter which way you slice and dice it.

The fact that such a person later engages in a same sex relationship makes them bisexual. Their behaviour is ultimately a choice, not a straitjacket imposed by Nature.

Gay academics and researchers have long known that if society is soaked in acceptance of homosexuality, more people will experiment with it and more people will adopt homosexual behaviour as a result.

Dr Greenberg’s groundbreaking study acknowledged that teaching about homosexual relationships at

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school would result in more children losing their inhibitions against homosexual behaviour.

According to many New Zealand parents, this isn’t possible. “You can’t change your sexual preference!” they exclaim.

“Oh, yes you can,” responds Dr John De Cecco, a gay psychologist who headed the Center for Research and Education in Sexuality at San Francisco State University.

De Cecco made his mark in a study that proved he could turn straight men gay by subjecting them to increasing levels of gay pornography and company over time: “One such man who was carefully studied, identified by the code name “D,” had heterosexual feelings, fantasies, dreams and sex until age 27 at which time he experimented sexually with a gay man. By four years later, his behavior, feelings, fantasies and dreams were almost exclusively homosexual.”

The scientific conclusion reached for such evidence, De Cecco said, “… shows that life-long, exclusive homosexuality, as articulated by gay rhetoric, is more a statement about the culture in which it occurs than the ‘essence’ of homosexuality.”3 De Cecco, at the age of 82 five years ago, was still trawling San Francisco’s gay bars looking for rentboys, as the San Francisco Chronicle noted in an interview: “Sex is more than an abstraction– it’s also an active pursuit. De Cecco doesn’t date, per se, but frequents Polk Street, where he cruises for male hustlers and goes to Kimo’s, a bar that caters to older men and rent boys. Most of the men he hires are in their 20s or early 30s, often homeless or living in fleabag hotels. Many of them use crystal meth or heroin.

“It’s the pursuit, the mystery of the man as yet unattained, unconquered, that motivates him. ‘It’s going out on the street and seeing who’s there, who’s available, and meeting someone about whom you know nothing. And just having this very intimate act with a stranger. ... It’s partly the unpredictability of what’s going to happen’.”

De Cecco’s work proved, like

Greenberg’s, that sexuality is a matter of choice, largely governed by what society regards as acceptable limits.

In societies where sex with children is tolerated, like Papua New Guinea, pedophilia is rife. In societies where women are chattels, rape is widespread.

In societies like ancient Greece and Rome where men were expected to take male lovers as well as wives, homosexual behaviour was nearly “universal”.

“I don’t think lesbians are born…I think they are made,” says lesbian writer Jennie Ruby in Off Our Backs.

“The gay rights movement has (for many good practical reasons) adopted largely an identity politics.”

If gay academics are now conceding the people’s sexuality can change back and forth, and that children can adopt gay behaviour by being culturally exposed to it, then the logical extension of legalising gay marriage is that more children will end up identifying as bisexual or gay later in life.

Indeed, studies suggest children with gay parents are indeed more likely to try homosexuality themselves. A 1999 study found 15% of children raised by lesbians later had same-sex relationships, while none of those in the study raised by heterosexual parents did so.4 The findings were even worse in a 2012 study: “Children raised in a lesbian household are 50% more likely to later describe themselves as homosexual, bisexual or asexual, than children raised by heterosexual couples.

“In a stunning new study, reported in the Washington Post newspaper, long-accepted assumptions that there were no differences between gay and straight parenting have been overturned with long term data.

“Among the other revelations, children raised in lesbian homes are more than twice as likely to be contemplating suicide, at a rate of 12% against 5% for heterosexual families.

“On the issue of child sexual abuse, the differences are horrific. While two percent of children in heterosexual households report being touched sexually by a parent or other adult, a stunning 23% of children in lesbian family units report sexual abuse by a parent or other adult – almost 12 times higher

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than the rate of child abuse in heterosexual families.

“While fewer than one in ten children who grew up in married heterosexual families have been diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections by adulthood, more than double that number – 20% – of children raised in lesbian families end up with sexually transmitted infections.

“Children raised by lesbian families are overwhelmingly likely to end up on social welfare – at 69% – compared with only 17% of children brought up in heterosexual families.

“Overall, lesbian parenting had negative outcomes for children in 24 of 40 categories overall, while for gay men raising children there were negative outcomes in 19 out of 40 categories.

“On the strength of the results, study author Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin said today: “The empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go.”

“The study is published in the journal Social Science Research.”5 The idea that no one is harmed by same sex relationships is quaint, but it is not legitimate.

SUMMARY The entire debate we have had around gay issues since the mid-1980s has been a carefully engineered propaganda campaign designed to desensitise the public to the idea of same sex relationships. They have used TV, movies, pop songs and gay or gay-friendly news journalists to spin positive stories, in much the same way that Big Tobacco used positive PR and product placement to lure millions into smoking over the decades. Tim Barnett’s Civil Union bill, Louisa Wall’s gay marriage bill – they all have their origin in the blueprint laid down by Kirk and Madsen in their book, After The Ball.

These then, are arguments exploding the myths surrounding the gay marriage debate. By all means let’s have a debate, but if you see newspaper stories suggesting homosexual people are born that way, those claims have no validity in science and no validity in the gay community either. They are a convenient untruth told to keep the

wider public onside during the battle for “rights”.

Yet if, as gay academics now admit, same sex attraction is nothing more than a modern lifestyle choice, is it really appropriate to redefine thousands of years of marriage on a whim?

The question becomes even more important when you realise how much it will affect children – not just children at risk of being adopted into a drug-addled, highly promiscuous household, but also children in schools who will have the State instructing them that same sex relationships are not only legal, but moral as well.

If you dare to “impugn the validity” of gay marriage, once it is legalised, you could be prosecuted.

Far bigger than all of this, however, is the issue of whether 121 MPs should be allowed to impose their own morality on the whole of New Zealand on an issue that the State does not own. Marriage transcends the power of Parliament. It existed before governments existed, and exists after governments collapse.

On such a fundamental matter, the only appropriate forum for debate is a public referendum. If we let politicians get away with this without one, we are giving MPs carte blanche to impose their morality on us forever more – something US founding father Thomas Jefferson warned we should never allow.

References: 1. http://www.nzaf.org.nz/files/2006_GAPSS_ Report.pdf There is a follow-up study published in 2010 but the numbers are not significantly different for the purposes of this analysis. The researchers themselves note that the general pattern in the nature of sexual relationships has remained stable across all four surveys so far.

2. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ ncurrent/full/nature09822.html 3. “If You Seduce A Straight Person Can You Make Them Gay?”, ed. By Dr John De Cecco, New York, Harrington Park Press, pages 129-130 4. “Do parents influence the sexual orientation of their children? Findings from a longitudinal study of lesbian families” by Susan Golombok PhD and Fiona Tasker PhD, Developmental Psychology, Vol 32, 1999, No 1, pp 3-11 5. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S0049089X12000610

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 25

The RISE of CYBERVENOM WORDS BY ANGELA HILL

I

n Australia, expat NZ TV personality Charlotte Dawson was hospitalised after a barrage of internet ‘tweets’ from the public urging her to “kill yourself, bitch”. Singing sensation Delta Goodrem’s life was almost turned upside down by similar social media abuse resulting from her appearances as a judge on The Voice.

The predominant advice from social media experts in such situations is ‘don’t feed the trolls’ – which is slang for ‘don’t respond’. But the problem in real life is that while you stay silent, often your character and reputation are being shredded in public, watched by tens of thousands. Your silence is taken as proof that you have no defence to the allegations against you.

“Cyber-bullying” is the phrase used to describe it, but that’s almost too twee. It’s a lynch-mob, pack mentality that can literally kill.

It’s not just celebrities or people with high profiles falling victim to the crowd.

Akemi Bourgeois was floored this month when members of a young mothers group recently labelled her an “idiot and dimwit” on their online comment board in response to a humorous blog post Bourgeois wrote about reconfiguring her car seats for her twins.

Avid video gamer Christopher Victa has seen an increasing barrage of nasty

comments from fellow online gamers, attacking others for the way they play, or even just for their screen names, he said. “It’s pretty sad,” he added. “It’s just a game.”

PR executive Debra Bethard-Caplick recently defriended several people on Facebook because of “rabid and virulent” personal attacks from friends of friends of friends who barge into conversations and try to start electronic shouting matches.

“You’re always going to have someone who doesn’t like what you do or say,” she said. “But I can’t believe if they were standing here looking at me they would say something so vile as they do. Somehow if it’s on the Internet, it’s OK.” Since the dawn of electronic communications, mean people have trolled the world of the Web, taking personal jabs at total strangers about everything from politics and movies to recipes and knitting circles, making outrageous, hurtful and sometimes bullying remarks – especially under cover of anonymity.

But why do we get so mean just because we can’t be seen?

“We behave in a different way when online. It’s as if you’re wearing a cloak or a mask and, well, you can get away with it,” says Daniel Martin, associate professor of management at California State University East Bay and a visiting associate professor at Stanford Uni-

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versity’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. He recently attended a “science of compassion” conference that brought together researchers from across the country to look at ways to improve human communications.

“Psychologists call it ‘de-individuation,’” Martin said. “When in a mask or uniform or group, you cease to recognize even yourself as an individual and therefore don’t see others that way either, don’t see how you’re hurting someone.”

Dacher Keltner, University of California, Berkeley social psychology professor and director of the Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley, agrees it’s nothing new that humans are judgmental. “But we’ve become this hyper commenting society,” he said. “In one sense, it’s very old, the act of expressing opinions. In another sense, these new sites and online experiences have brought new dimensions with them.

They take out the face-to-face aspect, even the voice-to-voice of a phone conversation.

“That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of good things going on out there in social media,” he said. “But there are certainly trolls, too.”

While e-meanies are admittedly in the minority in the vast openness and freedom of the online realm, Martin says, they seem to be lurking everywhere – likely because more venues for such behaviour are constantly popping up, more social networking sites, more comment boards, more places to vent, rant and roar.

Some psychologists and social media experts do say one way to reduce online conflicts and foster civil public discourse is to remind people that “they are who they are,” Martin said, by encouraging them to use their real identities and combatting the “de-individuation.”

“Basically, if I’m writing something, and I know my mom and my colleagues and my daughters are going to read it, I’m going to be on my best behaviour,” Keltner said.

Some sites are moving in that direction. YouTube recently announced on its blog an effort to get people who post comments on the video-sharing site

to use their real names. Movie review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes is examining its anonymous commenting policy after venomous, threatening comments about the “Batman” movie reviews in July forced the company to temporarily suspend its comment board.

And it’s been a debate in the news industry for years, whether to allow anonymous comments or ask people to provide – one hopes – real names, a process long-required for hard-copy letters to the editor. Some agencies allow anonymous posts. Others don’t. Bay Area News Group sites use Facebook commenting because “we’ve found that when readers log in with their Facebook ID, the conversation tends to be more civil than with our old anonymous system,” said Randy Keith, BANG’s managing editor for digital content. “However, no system is perfect and we still see some bad behaviour. We’re looking at other alternatives that will improve the tone of conversations about our stories.”

Even Facebook has been exploring new ways to reduce online conflicts and cyberbullying with kinder, gentler language on various aspects of the site. Recently it has been working with a team of researchers from Yale University and UC Berkeley, including Keltner and other scientists from the Greater Good Science Center, to come up with ways to promote compassionate communications. During the past five months, they’ve developed “emotionally intelligent” messages to replace user reporting options when someone is offended by a photo or comment – so instead of “I don’t like this photo,” they’ve changed the reporting option to, “I don’t like this photo because ...,” then offering a series of choices such as “It’s embarrassing,” or “It makes me sad.”

“We start from the assumption that Facebook is a lot like life, and life has conflicts, people with different goals, opinions,” Keltner said. “And we work from there, trying to build in the wisdom of the social sciences.

“Technology is taking us in so many new places,” he said. “But the need for the human dimension of compassion and kindness is greater than ever.”

Robert Wallace/ WENN.com

THREE WAYS TO REDUCE ONLINE CONFLICTS There are a lot of e-meanies out there in the world of online communications. But kinder, gentler approaches can prevail with very little effort: 1. Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read.

2. The Internet is the realm of spontaneity. But if you’re angry, write an angry missive today, wait until tomorrow, and if you’re still angry, send it then. Chances are you might at least reframe your comments in a more constructive light.

3. Type it. Then read it. THEN send it!

Additional reporting: Investigate staff

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 27

HERS | HEALTH

Vitamin D kills breast cancer cells WORDS BY IAN WISHART

T

he vitamin D debate has continued to heat up with a new study showing massive cancer-killing properties in lab tests.

The Journal of Clinical and Experimental Metastasis reports on a University of Delaware project that found aggressive breast cancer tumours grown in lab conditions shrunk by 69% after being bathed in a vitamin D solution to the concentration of 100 nanomols per litre for 24 hours – the same as the recommended level of vitamin D in human blood.

The tumours did not just shrink – the migration of breast cancer cells was also decreased by 68%, compared to tumours not exposed to vitamin D. It’s merely the latest study to show that vitamin D (technically a steroid

hormone rather than a vitamin) works in a variety of ways to keep humans healthy. Scientists have known for some time that people with high vitamin D levels in their blood have a reduced risk of developing cancer and a better chance of surviving cancer – the new study provides one explanation as to why, that high circulating levels of vitamin D3 are more likely to wash past rogue tumour cells and kill them. People with low vitamin D levels, on the other hand, don’t get the benefit of that.

There are a number of vitamin D providers in the New Zealand market, but the one thing common to all of them is that health regulators in this country currently prevent manufacturers from offering vitamin D at more

28 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Oct/Nov 2012

than 1000 IU per dose. That’s because we still have an archaic Ministry of Health daily intake recommendation of only 200 IU a day – an amount shown in international scientific studies to be far too low to provide any significant health benefit.

Even more embarrassing for NZ officials, the European Food Safety Agency has just increased daily vitamin D intake for Europeans to 4000 IU a day, with an upper tolerable limit of 11000 IU a day.

About Health Ltd, one of the major New Zealand suppliers, is utilising the current maximum allowable dose of 1000 IU a day in its new formulation, “Lester’s Oil”. Doses of 1000 IU a day achieved a 77% reduction in cancer risk for hundreds of Nebraska women tak-

ing part in a double-blind vitamin D/ the immune system to keep cancer would be dead. So here’s my phiplacebo trial. under control, the natural supplement losophy: our basis should be a good For the New Zealand scientist who is well supported by scientific studies. diet and exercise, we should eat well developed Lester’s Oil, it’s only a mat“I don’t believe there should be a and eat sensible foods. We should ter of time before NZ health regulaclash between natural and pharmasupplement when necessary, and when tors catch up with the Europeans, he ceutical,” remarks Dr Eyres. “I started there’s a disease we should use the believes. my career as pharmacy chemist, and prescribed antibiotics under a doctor’s “We’re a little bit behind the times,” without antibiotics probably half of us supervision.” remarks Dr Laurence Eyres, a former University of Auckland scientist specialising in fats and oils in food. Eyres is also a past board director of Food Standards Australia & NZ, and is currently an advisor to the National Heart Foundations of both countries.

“These things take time. People are very risk-averse, quite rightly so. But people in the Health Ministry need to look at whether we should be taking our recommended levels up to 3000 IU or the European level – they will have looked at all the risk strategy in this.” #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR Lester’s Oil isn’t just the vitally important vitamin D, it also includes high-strength omega-3 fish oils, rich in DHA. “DHA makes up around 11% of our brain mass,” explains About Health director Dan King, “and we can only get it from our diet.”

Wasn’t About Health asking for trouble calling its formulation Lester’s Oil? “A lot of people just go, ‘no, it’s snake oil’,” laughs scientist Laurence Eyres.

“They think, ‘we just rely on the doctor and go and get an antibiotic when we’re feeling ill’.”

Eyres says the issue with natural dietary supplements is not to treat them as medicines, but preventatives.

“It’s a long term preventative, it’s not a cure. It’s not like hitting it with a silver bullet, like hitting a disease with an antibiotic. It’s about building in a regular intake to complement your diet.”

The Lester’s Oil name, evocative though it may be of an old prairie DOES sunlight CAUSE CANCER, wagon covered in tin pots and driven by a guy in a dusty top-hat, actually OR HELP CURE IT? COULD THIS refers to Lester, the late father of comVITAMIN DRAMATICALLY CUT pany director Dan King.

HEART DISEASE, ALZHEIMER’S AND “He died of pancreatic cancer, which INFLUENZA? THE NEW RESEARCH hits fast and hard, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to focus on vitamin THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE D when we came around to developing HATM Publishing Lester’s Oil in his memory,” says King.

Given the way vitamin D stimulates

There are a number of vitamin D providers in the New Zealand market, but the one thing common to all of them is that health regulators in this country currently prevent manufacturers from offering vitamin D at more than 1000 IU per dose

IAN WISHART

Ian Wishart

VITAMIN IS THIS THE

MIRACLE

VITAMIN D

VITAMIN?

D

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 29

HERS | ALTHEALTH

Cardiomax trial for Investigate readers WORDS BY IAN WISHART

T

he company behind a groundbreaking natural supplement for heart health is calling for volunteers to trial the product in New Zealand and diarise their comments on it.

Cardiomax, based on a patented Hawthorn extract, hit world scientific headlines five years ago literally: “Herbal extract extends life for heart failure patients”, reported Science Daily. It wasn’t some random claim, but the result of extensive studies by some of the world’s leading researchers on heart health.

“An herbal medicinal substance, Crataegus Extract WS®1442, safely extends the lives of congestive heart failure patients already receiving pharmacological treatment for the disease, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 56th Annual Scientific Session.

“Crataegus Extract WS®1442 is an extract of leaves of the Crataegus tree, and is a natural antioxidant. The herb is currently approved for use in some European countries to treat early congestive heart failure, a condition in which the heart cannot pump enough blood to the body’s other organs.

“A total of 2,681 patients with markedly impaired left ventricular function–indicating advanced congestive heart failure– were randomized to WS®1442 or placebo for a duration of two years. All patients were already receiving pharmacological therapy with ACE-inhibitors (83 %), betablockers (64 %), glycosides (57 %), spironolactone (39 %) and diuretics (85 %).

“Dr. Christian J. F. Holubarsch and his team saw a 20 percent reduction in cardiac related deaths among patients

on WS®1442, extending patients’ lives by four months during the first 18 months of the study. The safety of the compound was confirmed by a lower number of adverse events among the study group than those on placebo. “ ‘WS 1442 is safe in patients with more severe congestive heart failure and left ventricular ejection fraction lower than 35 percent,’ said Dr. Holubarsch of Median Kliniken Hospitals in Bad Krozingen, Germany, and lead study author. ‘It postpones death of cardiac cause after 18 months and sudden cardiac death in an important subgroup of patients’.”

You would think after endorsements like this that New Zealand cardiologists would be prescribing Cardiomax for their patients, but the product can’t get traction. The highly respected international medical panel known as the Cochrane Collaboration has told world health agencies, “there is a significant benefit in symptom control and physiologic outcomes from hawthorn extract as an adjunctive treatment for chronic heart failure.”

Hence the New Zealand trial.

Investigate magazine and the makers of Cardiomax are seeking 20 volunteers to register a “like” on our Facebook page,facebook. com/pages/Investigate-Magazine, then send us a message confirming you’d like to take part in the trial and providing a contact email address.

We’re looking for two different groups: 1. Those who are prone to fatigue and who need more get up and go. These may fall into two sub groups:

30 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Oct/Nov 2012

A. A general decline of the cardiovascular system B. recovering from heart problems 2. Those who want to protect their heart; that is de-stress it.

The key point to remember are that this is not a “clinical” trial – Cardiomax has already been extensively clinically-trialled worldwide and passed with flying colours. Instead, what we’re looking for is anecdotal reports of your usage and how your health changes as a result over time.

Secondly, Cardiomax has been clinically approved as safe to use alongside existing pharmaceutical heart drugs, so can be taken by anyone even if already in medical care.

Thirdly, Cardiomax is based on a natural product, not synthetic medication.

Fourthly, Cardiomax is recommended by Australian cardiologists to their patients and by heart specialists around the world.

To volunteer for the product trial, visit Investigate Magazine’s Facebook page, register a like and then message us with your contact details.

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Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 31

HERS | BEAUTY

How do new BB creams stand up to promises?

WORDS BY COURTNEY ORTEGA/MCT

P

romising to give you the flawless look you’ve always wanted, beauty balms or blemish balms (also known as BB creams) are the “it” beauty product of summer. And as they are an alternative to often sticky, greasy foundations, it’s easy to see why.

BB creams are infused with skinnourishing vitamins and antioxidants and are marketed as the perfect way to mask facial imperfections and rejuvenate dull, lifeless skin.

So, what exactly is a BB cream?

Created by German dermatologist

Christine Schrammek in the 1960s, the first beauty balm was created as a way to help protect the skin after a laser procedure or surgery. With a formula chock-full of antioxidants and moisturizers, BB creams not only soothed the skin but also acted as an antiinflammatory agent.

It was not until the 1980s that BB creams gained a cult following among Korean actresses who began relying on the product to give their faces a smooth, porcelain quality. With their multitasking benefits (moisturizer, primer, foundation and sunblock in

32 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Oct/Nov 2012

one), BB creams became a hit in the Asian market, with brands like Missha, Skin79 and Skinfood the popular choices.

It would take almost three decades for BB creams to reach the United States, but within the past year, BB creams have taken the Western market by storm. Ranging from drugstore brands like L’Oreal and Garnier to high-end brands like Smashbox and Origins, there are now more than a dozen BB creams out there. And before you try one, there are a few things you should know.

First off, one of the biggest differences you will find in the formulas sold in the United States is that they do not include a whitening agent like some of the formulas in Asia. Light skin is highly favored by many Asian consumers, so creams there are made to give users a lightened complexion. Second, not all BB creams are for everyone. Depending on the brand or the formula, some creams feature special benefits (such as oil control) that are targeted at specific skin types. Lastly, BB creams can be worn alone or under a traditional foundation to enhance your look.

So now that you have a little background, here’s a roundup of some of the high-end and budget-friendly BB creams on the market.

SMASHBOX CAMERA READY

Boasting a high SPF, Smashbox’s BB cream does everything from prime your skin to control oil. It’s supposed to give a glowing, ethereal look, and can also be worn under foundation.

NZ$64.

First impression: It’s available in three shades, and I chose medium to match my olive-toned skin. This formula is definitely not nearly as sheer as some other BB creams, but it does apply smoothly. Of all the BB creams I tried, I noticed Smashbox›s formula was

the only one that gave my face complete coverage and did not require any use of concealer (perfect if you have blemishes). This makes sense considering that one of its selling points is its ability to make you camera-ready, a promise fulfilled in the flawless finish it gives your face. One of my favorite things about the cream is the way it acts as a primer. Not only did it stay on my face all day, it also kept my blush looking as good as it did when I applied it in the morning. My only gripe is as someone who has an oily T-zone, I still had to apply a finishing powder.

Verdict: Perfect for achieving an almost Photoshop-quality look, this is the product that does everything you want a regular foundation to do and more. Is it pricey? Yes. But is it worth it? Double yes!

ORIGINS A PERFECT WORLD

Infused with silver tip white tea and SPF 15, this beauty balm by Origins is meant to leave tired, ravaged skin looking healthier and younger. With a wear time of up to eight hours, this age-defense BB cream seems made for those with combination to dry skin.

First impression: It’s available in six shades, and I chose medium. The first thing that caught my attention when I applied the cream was how lightweight and sheer the formula was.

Not only did it go on smoothly, it also gave my face a natural look, as if I were not wearing any makeup. However, the biggest selling point is the noticeable glow the product gave my complexion.

Verdict: The perfect BB cream to perk up your complexion, this is a great buy for those wanting a natural, flawless finish on a daily basis. With its anti-aging benefits and ability to rejuvenate tired skin, this product suits the older customer who might be cautious of trying the latest beauty trends.

MAYBELLINE DREAM FRESH

Jam-packed with eight skin benefits, Maybelline’s BB cream promises to blur facial imperfections while

brightening and evening skin tone. It’s perfect for normal skin types. $11.

First impression: Of the five shades available, I chose medium. When I smeared the cream on my hand, the shade looked dull in comparison to the more glowing formulas from Origins and Smashbox. As I applied it to my face, the cream went on smoothly and was sheer, just as the product›s packaging promised. While the product did even out my skin tone nicely, I did not see any other significant changes, such as the “brightening effect” that is supposed to happen.

Verdict: After a full day of wear, I found that this BB cream is decent in quality, but falls short of being anything spectacular. However, as one of the most budget-friendly BB creams on the market, this product would be a great way to try out the trend without a major commitment.

COVERGIRL CG SMOOTHERS

A lightweight formula that blends effortlessly, CoverGirl’s BB cream was designed to instantly enhance the look of skin with the help of 10 skin-friendly benefits. At under $10, this beauty balm would seem to be a great pick for your face and your wallet.

First impression: Of the three shades available, I chose medium. After applying it, I noticed that this product was not as sheer as the other BB creams I had tried. In fact, the consistency reminded me of a foundation.

In my previous research of this beauty balm, I found several online reviews that questioned whether this product was just a repackaged version of one of CoverGirl’s tinted moisturizers. Indeed, it does say tinted moisturizer on the product›s packaging. Besides

that, after 15 minutes of wear, this product gave my skin a light gray tint.

Verdict: If you’re looking for an actual BB cream, and not a tinted moisturizer disguising itself as one, I’d stay away from this product.

L’OREAL PARIS MAGIC SKIN BEAUTIFIER

L’Oreal Paris’ BB cream promises a natural finish. Made to hydrate, correct, even and perfect, it contains vitamins C and E, and helps keep your pores from clogging. Under $20.

First impression:

When I first squeezed the formula out of its tube, I was taken aback.

Despite choosing the shade medium (it’s available in three other shades), the BB cream looked white with a gray tint. However, once I applied it to my face, it quickly blended in to match my skin tone perfectly.

Within seconds of application, I noticed a very vibrant glow to my suddenly even complexion. The product is very sheer, giving users an effortless, natural look. However, because of the sheer formula, those with blemishes might still need to use concealer.

Verdict: As far as drugstore BB creams go, L’Oreal Paris’ offering is a cut above the rest. Not only did it give me most of the benefits of a high-end product, it also cost about a third of the price.

It would take almost three decades for BB creams to reach the United States, but within the past year, BB creams have taken the Western market by storm Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 33

HERS | DECOR

Organise your home

ABOVE: Now that we are in the lead up to spring, there’s no better time to start organising your home. Inject some character back into your living space and embrace the simplicity and style of classic tin containers. With their vintage appeal and clean-cut design, these tins are the perfect way to maintain an orderly home with some added charm.From the laundry to the pantry, you can store it all with one of these smart tin containers, available now at Farmers. From left to right: Laundry Tin – Small $19.99, Medium $29.99, Large $49.99, Petfood Tin with Spoon (Available in Medium & Large), Medium $29.99.

LEFT: Classic styling with gorgeous colour options to accessorise with any kitchen! The Goldair Domus two slice toaster features variable browning and a removable crumb tray within a retroinspired housing. It also provides cancel, reheat, defrost and bagel functions PLUS, this beautifully styled toaster comes in classic brush stainless finish, stunning red, classic black and stylish cream, coordinating beautifully with the matching Goldair Domus Kettle series. Which one will you choose? Available from Farmers. $79.99

34 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Oct/Nov 2012

with Colour...

ABOVE: Beat the winter blues and add some colour to your kitchen this season. Whether you’re entertaining guests or just the family, brighten up the occasion with these quirky designs and bright colours. From teapots to salt and pepper shakers, these fun Farmers ‘Hearts’ designs will liven up any winter gathering! From left to right, Hearts Bowls, Dip Bowl $3.99, Small (12cm) $5.99, Medium (15cm) $29.99, Large (24cm) $39.99, Hearts Salt & Pepper Shaker, $7.99, Hearts Rectangle Plate, Small $19.99, Medium $29.99, Large $39.99, Hearts Butter Dish, $19.99, Hearts Teapot, $29.99, Hearts Jumbo Footed Cup, $9.99.

RIGHT: With the holidays over and the kids back at school, keep the fun alive by surprising them with a bedroom makeover. Add some excitement back into bed time and let their imaginations run wild as they drift off to sleep as their favourite superheroes. With just a cushion or the whole bedroom set, these funky, fun designs can transform any room into a fantasy dream world. Whether they are two or ten, these Hiccups bedroom accessories are perfect for any little superhero, available now at Farmers. From left to right: Hiccups Hero Cushion RRP $29.99, Hiccups I Am Super Duvet Cover Set. Single RRP $79.99, King Single RRP $89.99, Hiccups Pow Cushion RRP $34.99, Hiccups Mobile Novelty Cushion RRP $19.99, Hiccups Police Car Novelty Cushion RRP $19.99.

Note: All stock is available at Farmers

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 35

HERS | CUISINE

On a Bali high James Morrow enjoys a week of eating luxuriously – and picks up a trick or two along the way

F

or the first couple of decades of life, each new year brings new privileges and opportunities: dating, drinking, driving (though hopefully not all at the same time). But once your feet are firmly planted on the far side of thirty, it is sometimes hard not to think that it’s all been something of a downhill coast since that day long ago when a mischievous uncle on his fifth beer clapped his hand on your shoulder

and congratulated you for becoming, as he so genteely put it, “free, white and 21”. Which is why, when your kids tell you it is really exciting that you have a birthday coming up, it is hard not to wrinkle your nose and say simply, “not so much”.

Thus determined to shake off the annual – and have no doubt, it gets worse by the year – birthday torpor, a few weeks ago on the eve of turning not quite 35, I found myself sitting over the

36 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Oct/Nov 2012

wing of a Jetstar A330 bound for Bali, home of sun, sand, and Schapelle Corby.

I knew a few things going into this holiday: For example, that with the weak US dollar I could have my own villa, with maid, for a song. And that very little would be required of me except possibly make it through a large stack of books.

And that I should stay out of the Kuta end of town, which every person I spoke to before my trip nominated as “mate, an absolute hole, mate”.

But what I was not prepared for was the fact that Bali has become an absolute food Mecca where for what one would spend for a feed at a slightly upitself Sydney gastropub one can have three or more courses worth of the sort of food that back in the real world would be sent out from the kitchen at least once a week with a diamond solitaire in it.

Take lunch at Cafe Warisan in Kerobakan. What from the road looks like a high-end antiques shop in one of the more fashionable parts of town gives way to a terrace, covered on three sides, which on its fourth side comes to an end at rice paddies which stretch on to the mountains beyond, and decorated in tropical-colonial chic. (Later research would uncover the fact that chef Nicholas Tourneville was once the personal chef to Paris’s ambassador to Algeria, explaining somewhat why the whole place had a bit of the feel of the French Plantation sequence in Apocalypse Now Redux about it. Indeed French, not English, was the language we heard most from other tables, which at lunchtime were populated largely with leggy, glamourous Francophones of European, Asian and African descent, the descendants of a disgraced empire’s post-colonial elite.)

But this is no musty ex-pat club; Warisan is not the sort of place where colonels come to berate the staff for putting ice in their gin-and-tonics: we were a million miles from that sort of Year of Living Dangerously Indonesia.

This is a serious restaurant, and my only regret is that we came for lunch not dinner (next time). My travelling companion had a plate of pasta, a fresh ravioli of artichokes with a lemonbasil sauce, and having tried hers I can honestly say that I have not seen a

more deft touch with a pasta machine this side of Italy. For myself, I enjoyed a starter of pan-seared foie gras – the real stuff, not the overpriced, overheated tinned stuff Australians and Kiwis normally have to make do with.

And although they poured a white that was far too sharp to complement it properly, it was perfection on a plate: two luxurious slabs of fatty goose liver fried to perfection and interleaved with apples and a tart reduction of raspberry vinegar.

Indeed, foie gras would be something of a leitmotif of the trip, and would be my starter of choice at almost every restaurant (unless, of course, it was integrated into a main course, as it was at one otherwise unremarkable Italian joint where it was laid over a veal chop), and typing this I hope my GP is not an Investigate reader lest he call me up and demand I come in for cholesterol bloodwork and a cardiac workup, stat. On our last night it opened the batting at a gorgeous meal at Breeze Restaurant at the Samaya Seminyak resort (whose beachside tables are perhaps the most romantic affairs one will find this side of New York City’s One if by Land, Two if by Sea) and gave way to plates of duck (done two ways) and pork (done three). The pork, truth be told, was something of a disappointment: the square of pressed belly was notable for its crispy skin, but the rest was a bit too dry and stringy and left us picking bits of flesh from our teeth over a nightcap at next door’s oh-so-trendy Ku Da Te. The duck, however, was transcendent, even if its inspiration has become so classic as to verge on the twee. Rich, heady, unctuously ducky, it was everything such a plate should be.

None of this is to say that the only thing worth eating is high-end European with ingredients that flew further than you did to get to Bali – though in our eco-puritanical age there is something profoundly satisfying about enjoying a meal with a carbon footprint as big as the Ritz. In Jimbaran Bay, where one goes to watch the sunset with a cast of thousands we enjoyed some great, if overpriced, local seafood. And in Ubud, a 45 minute drive up into the hill country, just off the brilliant markets, we enjoyed a

plate of babi guleng, the local delicacy of suckling pig – and walked away with change for a tenner.

It was also in Ubud that we enjoyed the highlight of the trip: an afternoon’s cooking course at Mosaic Restaurant, the only restaurant in all of Indonesia to make it into the exclusive Les Grandes Tables du Monde, an annual review of the 100 best restaurants in the world.

(Michelin does not give stars out in this part of the world, apparently). Led by chef James Efraim in the restaurant’s private kitchen/dining room off the back garden – from whence many of the restaurant’s local herbs are sourced – this was no typical touristtrap Balinese cooking class. Instead,

we were told that we would be making Western cuisine complemented by Asian ingredients, with an eye towards creating high-end dinner party food.

Mission accomplished: over the course of four very hands-on hours, we made tuna, duck, and a trio of deserts that had even die-hard pastry-phobes such as myself putting a KitchenAid for making short-crust pastry on his Christmas list (I’ll have to be very, very good this year I reckon), and walked out stuffed from eating our creations. And if what a bunch of talented amateurs with a bit of direction made tasted so good, next time I’ll have to eat in the restaurant and see what the professionals can accomplish. spring onions ¼ tsp shrimp paste 1 red chilli, sliced 15g sliced tomato sliced lemon 1 tsp salad oil crème fraiche dill

Sesame crusted tuna, cherry tomato and “Bangkuang” salad, ginger flower relish Adapted from Mosaic Restaurant’s Kitchen Workshop

You’ll need: 1 320g filet of tuna, trimmed and wrapped with cellophane to form a cylinder, and refrigerated 160g cherry tomato 30g carambola 60g rosewater apple 50ml olive oil 20 ml red wine vinegar 5 ml ginger juice (obtained by crushing fresh ginger) 50g shallot, sliced chopped fresh herbs (small handful) chives

Method 1. Slice the cherry tomatoes in half. Slice the carambola into thin slices and the rosewater apple into segments. Place all of these into a bowl and season with the olive oil, ginger juice, 25g of the shallots, the herbs and the chives.

2. Toast the shrimp paste until it is dry and crumble it with some sea salt. Add the chilli, remaining shallot, sliced tomato, ginger flower, lemon, salad oil and salt.

3. Mix the crème fraiche and dill with a squeeze of lemon juice and salt and pepper.

4. When ready to serve, slice serving-size rounds of your tuna and season with salt and pepper. Heat a little salad oil in a pan until lightly smoking and place the fish into the oil. Cook until ¾ cooked and add some room temperature butter, lemon juice and thyme. Turn your fish to finish cooking, to just medium rare.

5. Using the back of a spoon, spread the dill crème fraiche into circles in the centres of four room temperature plates, and arrange a spoonful of the salad in the middle. Place the fish on top, and top with sea salt. Add some ginger flower relish, and, if desired, garnish the plate with basil oil.

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 37

HERS | TRAVEL

Seeing Sicily through a wineglass WORDS BY ALEXIA ELEJALDE-RUIZ

T

he wine drinking began before we left Newark, N.J., with a clink and a “salud” in the airport lounge over some unidentified white.

My father and I, belatedly fulfilling the college graduation gift he had promised me 11 years earlier, were embarking on a 10-day journey across Sicily, land of our ancestors – specifically, of my dad’s great-grandfather, a merchant ship captain who lived on the Aeolian island of Lipari before sailing to Peru to found a winery.

It was fitting, then, that in addition to ancient ruins, medieval churches and spectacular Mediterranean views, ours was a trip overflowing with wine.

We are no experts, but we drank our

way across the almost 10,000-squaremile island – lucky for our livers that it’s no bigger – sampling the indigenous varietals, many grown in the volcanic soil of fuming Mount Etna.

Those varietals set rustic Sicilian wines apart from their more polished northern Italian neighbors.

“If Tuscany is suits and ties, Sicily is wife-beaters (T-shirts),” is how Jason Wagner, wine director at hospitality group Element Collective, described the different wine personalities, though, he said, over the last few decades the ancient Sicilian viticulture has become more diverse. For example, Sicily is home to a rock star of the biodynamic wine movement, Arianna Occhipinti (agricolaocchipinti.it), who

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produces certified organic wines in the southern Vittoria region.

“They’re starting to have a new identity,” said Wagner, who offers many Sicilian wines at the Element-owned restaurant Nellcote in Chicago. “It used to be that they were big, clunky, hardto-drink reds, and now they’re getting a reputation for making more delicate, thoughtful wines.”

That, at least, is an American sommelier’s perspective. In Sicily, ask a waiter for a recommendation, which is how we made most of our wine decisions, and usually a hearty red arrives.

That was perfectly fine with this duo.

After a morning spent walking amid ancient Greek temples in former colonies, we were sitting on the outside

patio at Trattoria Il Pescatore (www. trattoriailpescatore.it), a seaside restaurant in Agrigento on the southwestern coast, eating a grilled cuttlefish the size of a grown man’s hand, when my father grunted admiringly at the Duca di Salaparuta Passo delle Mule ($25, duca.it) in his glass, a dense red made of the popular nero d’Avola grape.

“This,” he said, “is a man’s wine.”

My dad’s taste for weighty wines meant we had a lot of nero d’Avola, a juicy, earthy grape, heavy on dark fruits. One of the best was Duca Enrico ($55), also from Duca di Salaparuta, a large winery behind the budgetfriendly Corvo line. We drank it near Palermo, the Sicilian capital, while dining on grilled ricciola (fresh-caught amberjack) at Da Peppino restaurant in the seaside suburb of Mondello.

Duca Enrico, first produced in 1984, was the first single-varietal wine to be produced from nero d’Avola grapes.

Another nero standout was the Rosso del Conte ($62) from the Tasca d’Almerita winery (tasca dalmerita. it/en). We drank the spicy, bright red wine seaside (this is a pattern) at the Lungo la Notte Cafe on the picturesque Ortygia island in Siracusa, sophisticated home to the island’s best Greek theater. In thematic harmony with our wine-soaked adventure, the play we happened to see there that night was “Le Baccanti” by Euripides, starring good-time god Dionysus.

Sicily also counts lighter red grapes among its indigenous varietals.

Light, friendly frappato is a low-tannin, high-acid grape that Wagner compares to gamay, the primary grape of Beaujolais.

Nerello mascalese and nerello cappuccio are an “aromatically dynamic” pair often blended together to evoke decomposing earth, red leaves and black tea, Wagner said, comparing them to nebbiolo, the grape used in Barbaresco.

One of the last wines we drank in

Sicily was a grand blend of almost all: Firriato Quater Rosso ($32, firriato. it), made in the Trapani province on the western coast, was a full-bodied combination of nero d’Avola, frappato, nerello cappuccio and perricone, another robust indigenous red grape.

We were in sleepy Lipari, on a fruitless search for my great-great-grandfather’s house, and found ourselves in the airy, leafy terrace of Ristorante Filippino (filippino.it), where the supremely attentive servers brought to the table a choice of no fewer than four bottles of olive oil. I had the best pasta I’ve ever eaten: tubular noodles with mozzarella, tomato, eggplant and grated baked ricotta. The wine was a welcome exclamation point.

Though not as famous as the reds, Sicily has indigenous white wines, too often more tropical-tasting than their northern Italian peers because of the hotter climate. Inzolia, catarratto and grillo, grapes often used in the sweet Marsala wines that Sicily is famous for, also produce table whites, as does the popular grecanico.

In the Moorish town of Mazara del Vallo, where we were staying after a long day of sightseeing along the western coast, including a memorable stroll through the medieval walled town of Erice, perched high on a mountain with views of Tunisia, we enjoyed a bottle of Kheire ($52), a grillo from the nearby Gorghi Tondi winery. It was full, soft and citrusy, a fine complement to a typical regional dish of trout over couscous.

Another good white was the refreshing Baccante ($48), a grillo-chardonnay combo from the winery Abbazia Santa Anastasia (abbaziasantanastasia.it), a wine we drank at the Michelinstarred La Capinera (ristorante lacapinera.com) in the tourist resort town of

Taormina – on the seafront terrace, of course.

Maybe everything tastes good amid the worn, soulful beauty of Sicily, with the deep blue of the Mediterranean on one side and rolling pastoral hills on the other. Sicily’s legacy of being invaded by pretty much everyone – Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Normans, Arabs, Bourbons – left layers of cultural complexity that enriched the food and drink as much as the architecture and people (dark hair, olive skin and light green or blue eyes is a typical Sicilian look).

It felt like home, my dad and I agreed as we debriefed on the plane ride home over some Italian red. Clink. “Salute.”

(All wine prices (US dollars) reflect what we paid for a bottle at the restaurants.)

In Sicily, ask a waiter for a recommendation, which is how we made most of our wine decisions, and usually a hearty red arrives Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 39

HERS | READIT

Painters, pregnancies & inconvenient romances WORDS BY MICHAEL MORRISSEY BEFORE I FORGET

By Jaqueline Fahey Auckland University Press, $45

This is the sequel to Fahey’s earlier work Something for the Birds which concluded with her marriage to Fraser McDonald, the well-known reformer of psychiatric institutions. Fahey is of course one of New Zealand’s celebrated painters specialising in full-bodied dynamic portraits of home life. With the publication of this second volume of autobiography, she cements her place as one of our leading memoirists.

Fahey is one of those fortunately gifted writers who seems incapable of writing a less than elegant sentence. So regardless of content – never less than interesting – her style will hold the reader captivated from the beginning to the end. Alas, this is a quality of excellence found only too rarely among our biographers, autobiographers and memoirists. In this field of writing, Martin Edmond is her only rival.

A sample passage describing Pope John XXX111: “Even those manipulative cardinals perceived his shining decency in a world of corruption. Into the bargain, he was innocent of this genius. He threw his bridge of hope across Voltaire’s Abyss and serenely trotted across.” Though to the best of my knowledge, Fahey is very much an ex-Catholic, Pope John’s moral example inspired her (and Fraser’s) admiration because it meant Catholics were seen to support the oppressed.

To Fahey, as no doubt to Fraser McDonald, mental health seemed tied up with social justice. Her respect and love for Fraser shines through the book as does Fahey’s own sense of justice.

Fahey gives a telling account of Rita Angus, in my view likely to eventually

be perceived as our most distinguished painter. She makes the interesting point that what seems eccentric in an artist’s life e.g. improvising with clothes, housing and food may simply be a matter of practicality And further that Angus was dedicated to her art not to a perverse desire to be different.

Unlike her mother, who gave up music as a career for the family, Fahey stuck to her path of being a painter – and still raised a family. Indeed, the family has become the central theme of her work.

In 1980, she visited New York under a QE11 Grant and stayed at the Chelsea Hotel famed for its bohemian clientele which had previously included the brilliant Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.

Like so many before and later (including the reviewer), Fahey was fascinated by the hectic contrast between the dazed and sometimes manic individuals who walk New York streets and the enormous sense of vitality and energy given off by the city’s busy inhabitants.

As with Colin McCahon years before, American art made a deep impression – particularly the work of Isobel Bishop.

At one point, she records that she got more from living in the Chelsea than looking at paintings. Perhaps this was the writer temporarily overtaking the painter? Daringly, Fahey uses her actual report – notes as things are happening to her – not considered reflections at a later date. This makes her New York impression particularly vivid.

Fahey includes fond and admiring memories of E.H. McCormick, the art historian and Jean Tuwhare, wife of Maori poet Hone Tuwhare. There is a cautious, if not cautionary, note

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about activist Titewhai Harawira who was convicted of abuse to patients at Carrington Hospital. In honour of the publication of this current memoir, the earlier book, Something For the Birds, has been reprinted. Both are warmly recommended for their rich evocations of family life and the elegance of the writing.

THE TROUBLE WITH FIRE

By Fiona Kidman Vintage, $36.99

Like many New Zealand short story writers, Kidman’s stories often focus on the underdog, the marginalised, the bullied, those who don’t quite fit in. In initial contrast to this impression, Hilary, the central heroine of her initial longish short story – practically a novella – is a novelist, with some success. Though she has emerged thus, she has been less successful in romance.

Her ill-timed attraction to an Italian

boy (Italy had been an enemy in the recent Second World War), a relationship of which no one approves.

Kidman does bullies well and

Anthea is one of her more unpleasant characters. Then there is the smooth operator Julius who winds up trading off higher marks for students in return for sexual favours. However, ultimately the soft fade of the story leaves a feeling of dissatisfaction that possible climaxes or confrontations have not been explored.. A writer of Mansfield’s calibre can get away with this sort of “soft” ending – a bit like a fade in cinema – but it doesn’t serve Kidman as well. As a novelist in the making, the younger Hilary invents a pregnancy, a lie which initially fools, then is seen through. Either it is a manipulative lie or it is the young novelist testing out her powers.

In a later story “Extremes”, Rachel is genuinely pregnant and must – as was the practice at the time – make a flight to Sydney for her abortion then fly back the same day so that she wouldn’t be missed. The operation is covered a trifle tersely in just a line or two.

One Last Thing Before I Go

By Jonathan Tropper Dutton, $26.95 Drew Silver is one of modern literature’s more pathetic losers. And that’s before he discovers an aortic dissection is about to kill him.

The good news for Silver – which is what everyone, even his daughter, calls him – is that surgery can save his life. There’s a bit of bad news, and part of it is that the procedure would be performed by Silver’s ex-wife’s fiance.

The other is that Silver, who is 44, doesn’t want the surgery.

The sad-sack hero of Jonathan Tropper’s affecting, darkly funny new novel has already given up when the novel opens. Plagued by tinnitus, regret and ennui, he’s spent the last seven years and four months of his life in a state of numb inaction after a divorce from Denise (his fault) and the alienation of his daughter Casey (also his fault).

Once upon a time, he was a big deal: the drummer and co-songwriter in a one-hit wonder band, The Bent Daisies, that broke up when the front man decided to go solo. His leftover claims to that fame are occasional recognition and the residual checks from the song that made it big: “...(H)e was blinded by the flare of fleeting, accidental stardom, and when it was over, he never stopped seeing spots.”

These days, Silver gets gigs as a drummer at weddings. Denise is about to get remarried, and Casey, 18, heading for Princeton and valedictorian of her class, has just told Silver that she’s pregnant.

But Silver, after the ministroke that reveals his condition, realizes he hasn’t felt so alive in years. His wife begins to recognize the man she once loved, and his daughter seems to want him around. He sets goals: Be a better father, a better man, fall in love, then die.

He spends the bulk of the novel thinking of the things he wishes he’d said or done – or could still do – and accidentally saying those things out loud

Rachel subsequently marries a religious man out of desperation or impulse. The lives of Kidman’s heroines are never a sweet smelling bed of roses but then bad luck and poor judgment is the stuff of fiction.

The middle section consists of a series of interlinked stories the most haunting of which is “The Man from Tooley Street” Once again, a sensitive heroine marries an unsympathetic male. Farmer Les is a charmless man of few words. When Joy Mullins, his wife, mysteriously disappears, a variety of causes is offered, but in a later story a piece of green fabric hints at murder.

This dark undertow together with a web of related characters forms a richly layered tapestry. Yet it was two of Kidman’s more “offbeat” stories that charmed the most – “Silks” set in Vietnam and lyric invocation of Prime Minister Coates make a refreshing change from her customary rather lugubrious portrayals of rural life.

in front of the relevant people.

Secrets are revealed, often to the service of plot development, and unkind truths are told.

Despite the many new ways Silver discovers to disappoint and bewilder his extended family, Tropper convincingly portrays him as sympathetic and even likable. His relationship with Casey is complicated: She’s been wounded by her father’s absence, and she’s not afraid to hurt him back. But she’s also willing to love him and eager to let him be the dad she needs. To the author’s credit, Denise is not a wench; her husband-to-be is altogether decent, and Silver’s father, a rabbi, and mother are wise and lovely.

Silver has no one but himself to blame for his dysfunction – and he does.

During a trip to the beach with his daughter: “It would have been so easy, he thinks, to do things like this; take her on drives, to the beach, to a movie.

Anything. It’s not like he was busy traveling the world. He was right here, and nowhere to be found.”

Despite his family’s pleading, Silver doesn’t want to try to save himself because he can’t imagine going back to his former life. He’s a frustrating man. But Tropper has created a character so hapless and endearing and a story so compelling that the reader can’t help but take the journey with Silver – no matter where it leads.

By Hannah Sampson

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 41

HERS | SEEIT

The curse of creativity WORDS BY RICK BENTLEY & BETSY SHARKEY

T

he Words is a literary nesting doll where each hidden layer is another author’s story.

The problem is that the further the script by directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal moves from the centre, the weaker the plot and characters get.

What starts out as a poignant cautionary tale of the power and obsession that comes with the creative process slowly reveals itself to be little more than a so-so mystery that leads to an unsatisfactory ending.

The title refers to a work of fiction penned by the mysterious Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid). Through a book reading – that allows for the film’s never-ending narration – Hammond reveals that his much-heralded work is the story of a young and ambitious writer, Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), who, in an act of creative desperation, passes off an old manuscript he’s

found as his own work. Jansen appears to have committed the perfect writing crime until the real author, identified only as The Old Man (Jeremy Irons), shows up to confront him.

Klugman and Sternthal skilfully show the addictive nature of the creative process through The Old Man’s story. Each word, line and paragraph of his story about love and loss comes with a tiny bit of his soul. This is not writing, but it’s the unconscious state of giving into the power of words and letting them assume a life of their own.

The script also shows how the desire to share such an inviting addiction makes good men do bad things.

Cooper turns in a convincing performance as he takes his character from despair to delight to devastation. Irons is masterful as the writer cursed by the creative Muses. And Zoe Saldana makes the most of her limited role. But

42 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Oct/Nov 2012

they are part of the inner layers that work so well.

It’s the outer layer of this tale-withina-tale-within-a-tale that falls short.

Just like his character, Quaid seems to do little more than read lines of the story. It doesn’t help that Olivia Wilde is cast as a mysterious young woman who forces Hammond to face his own writing demons. Wilde’s casting is so out of context that instead of being the catalyst for the literary truth, she’s more of a plot decoy.

The main point of The Words is that there’s a great responsibility with any writing that continues to the last period. Klugman and Sternthal failed to carry out their responsibilities to the end, which leaves this film without the final giant exclamation point it needed.

THE WORDS Cast: Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons, Dennis Quaid, Olivia Wilde Directed by: Brian Klugman & Lee Sternthal Running time: 96 minutes Rating: PG-13, for language, smoking GGG

L

iberal Arts is a light and lively comedy of manners about college, literature and a midlife crisis that hits earlier than expected.

The bookish group at the heart of this talky film – Josh Radnor, Elizabeth Olsen, Richard Jenkins, Zac Efron and Allison Janney – is having such a grand time trading tart exchanges their mood proves infectious. The sparring helps offset some of the contrivances that make Liberal Arts less buttoned up than it should be – so an A for effort and a C for execution.

Radnor, who also writes and directs, plays Jesse, a guy caught in a conundrum. He’s a university admissions counsellor in New York City, now 35, but not yet able to let go of a lingering nostalgia for his Midwest college days. That’s clear in the clever opening as he pitches the many virtues of a liberal arts education to some faceless student who doesn’t begin to share his enthusiasm.

But it does put Jesse in the right state of mind to accept an invitation to a retirement dinner for one of his favourite English professors, Peter Hoberg (Jenkins). While New York has been giving him a rough time – he’s just out of a relationship, a Laundromat thief makes off with his clothes – Jesse’s alma mater embraces him.

The occasion allows Jesse to give into, and reflect on, all those old feelings – not of the frat-boy party type but the coffeehouse debates over favourite authors. It becomes a crafty way to dissect the way in which nostalgia can trump the harder truths of the past. When Jesse bumps into Professor Judith Fairfield (Janney) and begins gushing about her class on the Romantics, he barely merits an arched brow.

The film shifts from fond memories to a thornier present when Jesse meets a fetching young student, Zibby (Olsen), who also loves the Romantics.

There is an undeniable something between them. Just what that something is, or can become, remains uncertain. Zibby is 19, and it’s been 16 years since Jesse was that age.

Though Jesse returns to New York, he and Zibby begin an old-fashioned correspondence – handwritten letters sent via U.S. mail. It’s a lot of lovely

getting-to-know-you prose and an occasion for nice montages. After a time, she wants the gentleman to actually call and Jesse drives back to Ohio for a date (fear of flying the excuse). So begins the conspiracy of events that will force Zibby and Jesse to think about growing up before getting together.

Since their flirtation is forcing the coming-of-age issues, there should be a visible attraction. But the filmmaker does a better job in drawing out the couple’s differences than igniting a spark. When they go back to Zibby’s dorm room to “make out,” its priceless to watch Jesse’s discomfort as it dawns on him just how absurd the situation is.

Olsen continues to show that her breakthrough in Martha Marcy May Marlene was not a fluke. She has a gift for finding the right note for her

characters, and she’s made Zibby just innocent enough and astute enough to be a compelling complicating factor.

Janney and Jenkins simply never hit a false note.

This is Radnor’s second film and relies on the same gentle humour to carry it that made 2010’s Happythankyoumoreplease such a festival favourite.

It’s more of a nudge in the ribs than the biting style of humour that has come to dominate today’s comedies and makes for a nice change.

LIBERAL ARTS Cast: Josh Radnor, Elizabeth Olsen, Richard Jenkins, Allison Janney Directed by: Josh Radnor Running time: 97 minutes Rating: M, for adult themes GGG

The film shifts from fond memories to a thornier present when Jesse meets a fetching young student, Zibby (Olsen), who also loves the Romantics.There is an undeniable something between them

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 43

HERS | FAITH

Real gospel vs fake gospel WORDS BY BILL MUEHLENBERG

A

s I am reading through the book of Acts right now I am again struck at how markedly different the gospel the first Christians preached was from what we so often hear today. It is as if there never was an early church: the stuff we hear pouring from our pulpits, Christian TVs and Christian bookstores bears almost no resemblance to what was preached and lived 2,000 years ago.

I am absolutely astounded by how far we have been removed from the real gospel of God. Paul could strongly rebuke the Galatians for doing just this: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all” (Gal. 1:6-7). And that was just a matter of some years.

So how much worse are matters after two millennia? If the Galatians could get off track within such a short period of time, how much more we who have such a great time gap between the early

church and ourselves? The full text of what Paul said in vv. 6-10 is worth presenting here: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all.

Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people?

If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

The difference between Paul and many preachers today is that Paul wanted to please only one man: the

Lord Jesus Christ. He cared not one bit about pleasing anyone else. But today we are overrun with churches which seem bent on just one thing: pleasing as many men as possible.

Sadly there are plenty of examples of this to choose from here. I don’t mean to suggest there is just one, but I must say there is a major figure who exemplifies all this big time. I have written about him and his gospel before. I refer to American megachurch pastor Joel Osteen: www. billmuehlenberg.com/2009/05/18/ will-the-real-gospel-please-stand-up/ While there are plenty more like him, he is noteworthy for many reasons: he has the biggest church in America, and his TV ministry and books are ingested by countless millions of believers. He has a huge following, and people hang on to his every word.

But when you consider what his words are, this is not surprising in the least. He is telling the people exactly what they want to hear. Consumeristic, materialistic, greedy, narcissistic, money-hungry, self-centred and selfworshipping Americans are flocking to hear the guy.

Jesus has become merely an appendage to my selfish life. God simply exists so that my world can continue to go well, so I can always be happy, and so I can always have the good things in life.

As long as I am happy and wealthy and successful and so on, I must somehow be doing God a really big favour.

Joel Osteen, pastor of the nation’s largest megachurch, preaches at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, where services are broadcast around the world. (Frank E. Lockwood/ Lexington Herald-Leader/MCT)

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But contrast that with the message we hear in the book of Acts. There is nothing of this me-first selfishness ever mentioned in the book. The early disciples never waffled on about living the good life, being happy, getting lots of money, and being at home in the world. Consider just three passages.

What about Acts 3:6? “Then Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk’.”

What an incredible contrast to our famous big cheese preachers of today.

They are absolutely swimming in filthy lucre. They are well-known for their lavish churches, their lavish salaries, their lavish homes, their lavish cars, their lavish hairdos, and their lavish lifestyles.

They have heaps of silver and gold, and seem to want to have heaps more of it. And they falsely promise their deluded followers that they too can have all the silver and gold that they want. They can be successful. They can be prosperous. They can be wealthy.

They can have great careers. They can have a terrific self-image.

They can have everything except the one thing which is required: the cruciform life. The very requirements which Jesus gave to his would-be followers are completely ignored by these folks: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Jesus said we are to deny ourselves, not pamper ourselves, gorge ourselves, enrich ourselves, and worship ourselves.

Or consider Acts 3:26: “When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”

We hear about “blessings” all the time from these preachers. God exists simply to bless us, to make us happy, to make us rich, and to give us everything we want. Not only is that an unbiblical view of what God’s blessings are all about, but they have it back to front.

When Peter said these words, he made it clear that real repentance was the first step needed for the blessing of God. Yet you will never seem to hear a word about repentance from these preachers. Indeed, you will hardly ever hear a word about sin, or judgment, or the cross, or the wrath of God, or hell.

But there is no blessing without turning away from our selfish and sinful lifestyles. There is no crown without a cross.

Let’ take a look at Acts 14:21-22: “[Paul and Barnabas] preached the good news in that city and won a large number of disciples. [Their message was] strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. ‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,’ they said.”

What? Many hardships? And we must go through them to enter the Kingdom? But that is not what the prosperity preachers told me. That is not what the me-first pastors proclaim.

That is not what I ever hear in my lavish multi-million dollar entertainment centres – I mean churches.

One can say so much more here. The truths of the book of Acts should be sufficient to make my point here. But let me supplement those with some wise words from a true preacher of the true gospel, Leonard Ravenhill: “The early church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions.

Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.”

“You see, what people are seeking today is a painless Pentecost. There isn’t such a thing. What happened immediately after Pentecost? They prospered? Yes? No! They went to jail!

It wasn’t prosperity; it was prison, pain, privation, and persecution.”

“People say, ‘We want another Pentecost.’ I don’t believe them for a minute.

Pentecost in the New Testament is tied in with persecution, poverty (and) prison!”

“Christians don’t tell lies, they just go to church and sing them. How many times have you stood and sang, ‘Take my life and let it be’ and haven’t given Him a scrap?”

“We’ve reduced God to a minimum.

Most of us are trying to get to heaven with minimum spirituality. If we looked after our business like we look after our soul, we’d be bankrupt years ago! The materialism has crept in and it’s blinded us! It has become a way of life.”

“Paul never glamorized the gospel!

It is not success, but sacrifice! It’s not a glamorous gospel, but a bloody gospel, a gory gospel, and a sacrificial gospel!

We hear about “blessings” all the time from these preachers. God exists simply to bless us, to make us happy, to make us rich, and to give us everything we want

POP \ WENN

Five minutes inside eternity and we will wish that we had sacrificed more, wept more, bled more, grieved more, loved more, prayed more, given more!”

Amen and amen.

Bill Muehlenberg blogs at CultureWatch, billmuehlenberg.com

Oct/Nov 2012 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 45

HERS | FAMILY

Six in the city WORDS BY VIKKI ORTIZ HEALY/CHICAGO TRIBUNE

S

ophia Saverese attended her first day of Kindergarten last month wearing a delicate floral print dress, ballet flats and a bow in her hair, no thanks to the displays at the mall promoting glittery mini-skirts, wedge sandals and oneshouldered tank tops in kiddie sizes.

“She did see the other stuff, and she picked it out and said she liked it,” saysNicole Saverese, the mother-of-three, who, with her mother-in-law’s help, steered Sophia away from the adult styles during a recent shopping trip.

“I know girls who dress their 6-month-old babies in mock leather pants, and in those shoes that look like they have a stiletto,” Saverese says.

“But I just feel that she’s 5. Why would I want to dress her older when she’s going to get older already?”

The age-old question has taken on new meaning in an era of bikinis for babies and skinny jeans for 6-year-olds channeling Suri Cruise.

Across the U.S., mommy bloggers, educators and parents say the mature designs for little girls are hard to avoid these days, with even stores like Forever 21 offering to dress their darling daughters.

“What a challenge it is for a parent to hold your ground,” says Cynthia Kalogeropoulos, a primary school principal.

“I don’t even know if parents have a choice,” she adds, noting that ordinary clothes are getting harder to find.

Retail experts confirm parents aren’t imagining the trend. While many adult clothing makers entered the children’s apparel industry between 2002 and 2006 offering trend-setting designs not seen before for that age group, the economic downturn put growth of the market on hold. That momentum

has picked up again as the economy bounces back, prompting pint-sized designer duds at boutiques and trendy knock-offs at discount stores across the Western world, according to Marshal Cohen, chief analyst for the NPD Group in New York.

And sociologists monitoring the trend say fashion for young girls has never been more provocative. In a study released last year, researchers found that a third of the clothing at 15

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popular stores in the U.S. had “sexualizing” characteristics, revealing or emphasizing body parts and sexiness, according to Sarah K. Murnen, who co-wrote the study.

“You can walk into any teen/adult retailer and you begin to see how they’re taking it younger and younger,” Cohen says. “I shake myself in disbelief and say, ‘Did I just see that?’ It’s a 4-year-old dressing like she should be at a college bar.”

Seven years ago, trend watchers at Synclaire Brands in New York noticed an untapped market in children’s apparel. Company officials were convinced that as technology and media exposed children to more than ever before, buyers would jump at the chance to buy little girl shoes bearing the names and designs of high profile women’s designers Michael Kors, Stuart Weitzman and Cole Haan.

“I have an 8 and a 10 year old. They know things that I’m shocked that they know,” says Evan Cagner, president of Synclaire Brands. “I think it’s just how information moves, quite honestly, and they’re just more aware of what they’re wearing.”

The company’s new venture took off – Synclaire Brands now offers dozens of women’s inspired shoes in sizes newborn to 11 – and was soon joined by a rush of other companies eager to cash in as well, Cagner says.

Shoppers encouraged the growth by spending money on their children instead of themselves, another trend that surfaced during the recession, says Cohen, the retail analyst, who noted that US shoppers spent $12 billion on clothing for 5 to 10 year olds in the last year, a growth of 4 percent. Women’s clothing sales remained flat in the same time period. Today, adult stores such as Billabong and Adidas have added kids’ lines, says Katie Lindsay, marketing manager.

“As times have evolved, the products that they’re making for children are also evolving. I think moms want the opportunity to dress their children exactly how they’re dressed.”

But while Cagner insists that Synclaire Brands goes to great lengths to design shoes that look like women’s but keep little girls in mind, companies that don’t make the same efforts – or, even worse, go out of their way to push the envelope – have become a common complaint among parents.

Jennifer Gersten was alarmed when she began taking note of the short mini-skirts and midriff-baring tops sold at her 9-yearold daughter Eleah’s favorite stores.

“I have to go shopping without her so I have a little bit more control over what she is drawn to,” says Gersten.”It’s not her fault. She’s just drawn to what everyone else wears.”

Laura Kleyweg, 40, surprised herself by giving her 9-year-old daughter a serious talk about her body and being conscious of showing skin when Ellen was in the second grade.

“I’m hopefully laying some good ground rules to start respecting her body,” Kleyweg says.

And, as school started, principal Kalogeropoulos made sure a box of extra clothes in the nurse’s office was ready for students who might show up in an outfit that showed a little too much or sent the wrong message.

“The fleeting years of childhood, you have that little portal of time to just be carefree and innocent, and to have that robbed and shortened, even by a year? It’s so hard to imagine,” Kalogeropoulos says.

After noticing a steady stream of parental rants on this subject online, Jessica Ashley, who writes a popular parenting blog on babblefish.com, posted helpful tips on how to keep children both fashionable but appropriate for their age in today’s shopping world.

First, Ashley suggests sticking with well-established children’s clothing companies, who are less likely to try flashy new looks because they have an image to uphold. She also recommends developing clear cut wardrobe rules for your family, explaining not just what your kids can’t wear – but also why.

“Pay attention to what you’re allowing on a regular basis,” Ashley says.

“When is your daughter being sexualized by the clothes that she wears when she’s not even aware that's going on?”

Keeping your own standards in mind is important, especially because at today’s stores, the styles can pull you in when

In a study released last year, researchers found that a third of the clothing at 15 popular stores in the U.S. had “sexualizing” characteristics, revealing or emphasizing body parts and sexiness

you least expect, says Kristi Stec, 31.

Earlier this year, Stec took her 3-yearold daughter to a popular high-end children’s clothing store in search of shoes. At first, she was tickled to find a pair of wedge heeled sandals next to the store's regular Mary Janes and sneakers.

But when she fastened them to Savannah’s feet, Stec knew her daughter was years away from runway looks.

“You definitely get tempted,” Stec says. “But she couldn’t even walk in them. She doesn't care what her image is. She’s not trying to attract boys. She just wants to have fun.”

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