THE SAME SEX MARRIAGE DEBATE

In Australia at the moment we are in the middle of a postal vote, where as a country we get to decide whether or not same sex couples are allowed to get married. 

Frankly the whole thing is a bullshit debarkle by the liberal government which is costing tax payers $122 MILLION dollars that could be better spent on pretty much anything else. This post is a rant and a vent rather than a carefully worded logical argument because I am tired and annoyed and I believe with my whole heart and my mind that marriage should be strictly reserved for two people who decide that they want to get married and everyone else can butt the hell out.

As a person who is straight and married, I didn’t have to get millions of total strangers to decide whether or not I ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be allowed to marry the person I was in love with. Despite the fact that I was a non-religious 18year old and 4 months pregnant with my second child I was allowed to legally marry my husband, we signed a form waited 30 days and got hitched. No questions asked. It was nobody elses business!

I hate this vote because it shouldn’t have to happen, it’s 2017; we are supposed to be equal! It should not be up to anyone other than the couple wanting to marry to make decisions that impact their personal lives in this way. Centrelink and the tax department have no problems with same sex couples having the same rights as heterosexual couples when it comes to merging finances, so why can’t same sex couples declare their love for each other and get a nationally recognised marriage certificate like heterosexual couples? The government doesn’t seem to mind when it serves their purpose.

One person I know was arguing that “those people” shouldn’t marry because “the sexual act of anal intercourse is against the word of God.” This gave me the shits for so many reasons but rather than say something I may later regret to a person I will unfortunately have to interact civilly with in the future I am voicing my opinions here.

What I could have said was if that’s honestly your best argument then just shut up mate because men and women have anal sex all the time and you don’t seem to mind them getting hitched.

If you don’t like the idea of same sex relationships, don’t have a relationship with someone of the same sex. It’s pretty straightforward. How would you feel if someone decided that they didn’t like the fact that you give/receive blow jobs and decided there for you can’t get married? Blow job’s aren’t “natural”. You’d be pretty upset, your sex life and choice to marry is none of their God damn business! 

NOBODY else's sex life is ANYBODY else's business regardless of gender. What you choose to do in the bedroom is private and this is your chance to vote YES for marriage equality which is unrelated to people’s private bedroom time.

So far, the dumbest argument I have heard from the ‘no’ camp was “But if we allow Same Sex Marriage people won’t be able to procreate and the human race will die out” Yes, somebody actually said that. *Face palm* Newsflash: not allowing people of the same sex who are in love to marry is not going to stop them from being gay, allowing same sex marriage is not going to suddenly turn the whole world gay. Besides same sex couples can (and do) have children, so that argument is just...*sigh*... oh why am I even bothering. 

The saddest thing here is that lifeline is currently being inundated with calls from the LBGQ community who are under enormous stress from having their private lives shoved so rudely into the spotlight and publicly judged for being who they naturally are, this includes children. 

That should not be happening.

Look everyone has the right to an opinion, freedom of speech and all that (providing it's not hateful), it’s what makes this country great, but if you are leaning towards ‘No’ then think about what you are actually voting against and if the answer is anything other than honestly believing two people of the same gender that already have the same rights to a private sex life, rights to have kids and financial responsibilities as two people of different genders shouldn’t be allowed to have an official marriage then you should actually be voting yes. 

I can honestly say that when I put my vote into the letter box it was the first time since I turned 18 that I actually WANTED to vote, the first time I felt like I was genuinely voting for something that matters. 

While this vote should never have had to happen in the first place, now that it is happening, for goodness sake Australia, do the right thing. 

Vote for people, vote for freedom and vote for equality. Vote YES.

Cooking, Why??

Dinner of Champions

Cooking. Most people either passionately love it or passionately hate it, but unless we are squillionaires with personal chef’s out the wazoo or unlimited take away budgets then at some point we will get sick of raman noodles and jam sandwiches and simply have to learn how to cook with actual food in order to survive. 

I remember my food tech teacher in high school telling us to keep our recipe books at the end of year 9 as ‘statistically at least one of you will leave home in the next two years and you just might need them”. “Ha!” I thought as I threw mine ceremoniously into the bin and “Damn!” I thought when I left home 12 months later. 

You can probably guess from the negative energy surrounding that paragraph that I don’t exactly fall into the Martha Stuartesque passionate wannabe chef category. 

Generally if we meet someone special then we like to pretend that we know our way around a kitchen at least a little bit, alas hubby was a flatmate before he was a boyfriend so he knew my passionate distaste for the culinary arts long before I could fool him. Infact when we were renovating our old house, my beloved (who is a Joiner by trade) suggested rather than building me a new kitchen he should simply give me a giant phone so that I could order take away. Pah! 

Sadly the take-away option was itself taken away from me when we decided to move out to a one pub town in the bush an hours drive from anything resembling fast food.  That’s not entirely fair, we do have a servo that doubles as a shop (and a post office… and a mechanic workshop) if you want to pay $5 for a soggy reheated pie or sausage roll (+70c for sauce). 

The food at the old pub is ok, but it’s gold plated and dine in option only, but since the publicans aren’t big on kids and I have four of them we eat there about once every 5 years.

If like some of my friends you have a partner who simply loves whipping up ‘cordon bleu’, ‘beef bourguignon’ or some other fancy foreign sounding delicacy for you every night or hell, even once a week then fuck you! put a ring on it immediately! 

In my household despite my misgivings I am sadly still the cook, unfortunately when I procreated the law obliged me to feed my spawn more nutritious meals than I was used to making and I wasn’t happy about it.  I think the main issue is that I completely suck at it, like burn water suck at it. You know that joke that says you know dinner’s ready because the smoke alarm goes off? Well I eventually had to pull the smoke alarms right out of my ceiling. Another dinner, another kitchen fire…

When you are forced to do something you suck at every. Single. Day. And simply don’t get any better at it, well it’s not exactly a recipe (pardon the pun) for happiness. In fact my lack of enthusiasm rivals that of Lunch Lady Doris from the Simpsons but with less cigarette ash to add the flavour that my dishes are apparently severely lacking.

You see, in my defence, I don’t eat 99% of what I cook for the family due to that pesky eating disorder of mine so I don’t really know how much salt/pepper/turmeric/eye of newt I need to add to make it less “tomatoey” or give it some “zhang” and the stuff I am willing to sample myself is usually flatly refused by my offspring.

Anything that could contain a vegetable or a derivative of a vegetable gets scrutinized within an inch of its life by Miss 8 (she can’t find her shoes but will spot a 1mm piece of onion in anything!) Mr 15 hates spicy stuff, Mr 14 hates textures (like all of them) and Mr 11 HATES mushrooms and accuses me of putting them in everything!

But aside from the constant complaints and mushroom paranoia, the thing that irks me the most – and prompted the writing of this post/rant today is that my beloved Hubby is ONLY EVER LATE HOME on days when I have actually pulled my finger out and created something more culinarily delightful than pouring a jar over some frozen vegetables and half cooked pasta.

This means that on the odd occasion I finally do dish up perfectly cooked steak with smooth ‘Diane’ sauce and fresh vegetables steamed ‘just right’, by the time he comes home and has re-heated it in the microwave he gets rubbery steak, lumpy sauce and soggy broccolini.

It drives me freaking crazy and does nothing for the motivation! 

At the frustration of all my friends I now have a really big nice ‘chef’s’ kitchen, with three ovens, huge walk in butlers pantry, Lazy Susan’s in my corner cupboards to neatly place my pots and pans which is completely wasted on me. I did get into the cooking thing once, I was rather manic and as such had recently purchased a Thermomix. I spent about 6 continuous weeks baking up a storm, profiteroles, layer cakes, quiches and risottos all from scratch. Feel like lemon meringue pie at 3am? 

No worries!

Sadly as soon as that mania ended so did my new found *amazing ability and my desire to create, but at least I got my **Thermomix out of it, they might cost a bomb but they are great for lazy people who get distracted easily and want to make a risotto but don’t want to stand there and stir it. I have honestly used it every single day since I got it 7 years ago.

Cooking up a storm in the kitchen also comes at a price for the family, in our household the kids have to pitch in with the clean up, the tears and tantrums associated with washing 1,000,000 pots, pans and utensils you never knew you had can make you question just how important vegetables are for growing bodies – and we own a dishwasher!  

So for now my Thermomix curries and heat up pre-packaged frozen goods might not be the most exciting meals, but they keep everybody fed. Although, now that Mr 15 has started doing cooking classes at school and likes to brag about what an “AMAZING” cook he is “MUCH better than Mum” I might just have to start making him prove himself at home, say dinner every Monday night darling?

* My ‘Amazing ability’ may have purely been delusions of grandeur…

** This post is not sponsored by Thermomix, however if they want to throw a freebie my way…

Do you LOVE or HATE cooking?

How on earth DO you stop things being too ‘tomatoey’?