Letters: Games' gender stance on the agenda

IT WILL be interesting to see the method the "politically correct” boffins use to print the programs.

CONFUSED: A letter writer wonders how commentators will refer to men's and women's sports in the Commonwealth Games. Picture: John Stillwell

Gender bender

FIRSTLY let me congratulate C Brown (NM, 9/1), he is spot-on.

It will be interesting to see the method the "politically correct" boffins use to print the programs.

Will they refrain from calling the events either men's or women's races, and what about the commentators, how will they tell all the gender neutral spectators who is competing?

Will the now "male" swimmers be forced to cover the upper part of their torsos or the "females" forced to remove their upper garments just to become equal?

Yes folks, Australia really needs to do something about this utterly ridiculous situation where we pander to a tiny minority who want to change the world because they don't know who or what they are from day to day.

JIM CARTER

Elliott Heads

Experience needed

HEARING Jane Truscott play the gender card for a council position is like someone wanting a sympathy vote.

As far as a councillor is concerned, I'm looking for someone who has a wide range of experience in the community, has operated

a business and is able to work with others to reduce rates and charges yet still keep our region moving forward.

No singular councillor can achieve that on their own because there are so many factors involved in how our rates are determined.

Currently we have a very proactive and experienced council and staff who are steady yet focused and driven to improve the region we live in.

Having someone who jumps around from political party to political party lends itself to assuming you would only put your own interests first.

D BROWNE

North Bundaberg

Think about it

NO DOUBT some readers will find Dieter Moeckel's article criticising Christianity (Guardian, 28/12) tantalising and even agree with some or all of his many opinions regarding celibacy, that Christianity is an "authoritarian patriarchal value system" which endorses the "subjugation of femininity" etc.

While he is certainly free to air his views, is he also prepared to take personal responsibility for them as the credibility of the article stands or falls on how much respect is shown for the intelligence, morals and culture of fellow human beings.

Did it occur to Dieter that by opening his article with the mention of a polite request by the hotels in the Christian nation of the Cook Islands for guests to observe a certain dress code on the beaches (one that was ignored) that he was in fact also criticising not only the intelligence of the Cook Islanders themselves but their culture and right to even make such a request simply because they happen to be Christian?

Did the possibility ever occur that the pre-Christian culture of the Cook Islanders was not unlike that of their neighbours, the Samoans for example, who were not only devoted polytheists but whose entire society was built, not on promiscuity, but on the veneration of virginity (celibacy before marriage), a devotion that Christianity only intensified?

While the article's several misrepresentations and imaginative name calling are one thing, is Dieter aware that by closing his article with the claim that "decency is a mutable moral principle" not only renders his writing of the article criticising Christianity a waste of time but provides the seedbed for either anarchy, dictatorship or a new form of paganism?

Think about it.

J M ROYAL

West Bundaberg

No communication

WELL we sure know storm season is here due to storms.

Just wish to say it's a bit disappointing in this 21st century that we cannot communicate with people when power is out.

Why did my mobile not work at 5.15am when I tried to ring Ergon to get an update?

Even the garbo couldn't contact his boss to let him know about rubbish in Gin Gin streets.

The police had to drive to a paramedic's flat to let her know she had a call-out.

Come on, someone in authority, why do we not have communication?

What happened to two-way radios?

I do have a trannie so was able to listen to ABC all the time but I did not once hear a message from Ergon letting people know what was the reason for prolonged outage.

Surely they could have said it was due to lots of poles down in such-and-such an area and could be a couple of days.

Any news would have been better than no news

at all.

Some people in Gin Gin had no water at all too.

PAM REBBECK

Gin Gin

Originally published as Letters: Games' gender stance on the agenda