Obama inauguration speech: a historic moment for gay and lesbian equality

Written by Marcus O’Donnell, Lecturer, Program Convenor Journalism at the University of Wollongong.

Obama wove the story of gay rights into the language of America’s founding fathers during his inauguration speech. EPA/Shawn Thew

 

Much has been made of the fact President Obama became the first president to mention the word gay in an inaugural address. But the significance lies not in what he said but how he said it.

In declaring, “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law” Obama not only declared himself abstractly for “gay rights”, he placed these rights at the heart of the central ideals of the American story.

Obama’s whole speech sprung from his reiteration of the much sung hymn to equality from the Declaration of Independence which he quoted at the start of his speech: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. Presidents and other American orators are fond of quoting this lodestone of the American dream, so it is not surprise that Obama should refer to it.

But his speech was much more telling because he made clear that he took those words as a call to action: “For history tells us that while these truths maybe self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth”.

Again, a rousing call to act for freedom and equality is common place in the American presidential tradition. Obama’s distinctive play on this came with his declaration that securing equality and freedom entailed both a steadfast commitment to the founding father’s vision and embracing intelligent changes in the light of contemporary challenges. “But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action”.

Obama’s riff on gay and lesbian rights then begins in a very specific way which very skillfully links it to both adaptation to new challenges and collective action: “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth”.

In this extraordinary declaration, Obama not only declares that adapting to, and fighting for, gay and lesbian rights is important, but that the fight for these rights, which stems from the 1969 Stonewall riots, should be placed on the same footing as the fight for women’s rights at Seneca Falls and the fight for racial equality at Selma. Here the president effectively placed the fight for gay and lesbian rights within the myth of the ongoing American revolution.

This leads to an explicit call for gay and lesbian equality in the next paragraph: “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well”.

Obama goes further here than any of his predecessors would have dared. This is not just a call for equality under the law, it is a carefully phrased call for same sex marriage: “the love we commit to one another must be equal as well”.

Obama has recently declared his support for same sex marriage, so this is not a new statement. But his inclusion of such a statement in an inaugural address, a key ritual moment of American democracy, and his inclusion of this declaration in the context of the fight for women’s and civil rights marks yet another milestone in the story of gay and lesbian citizenship.

The fight for marriage equality faces several key tests in the US this year, the most significant of which are the cases before the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, both of which define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.

One of the ongoing pressure points in American public debate has been around so called “judicial-activism” on social issues. In opposing such “activism” conservative legal scholars often adhere to a doctrine called “originalism”, which proclaims that any constitutional judgement must aim to get as close as possible to the original meaning of the words of the founding fathers when interpreting the constitution.

In this carefully crafted speech, Obama not only laid a claim for gay and lesbian equality and same sex marriage; he was laying a claim that any constitutional value of equality does not have an original or fundamentalist meaning, rather one that constantly evolves.

This is fundamentally at odds with our own Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who appeals to the importance of tradition and “heritage” in her own refusal to acknowledge the marriage rights of gay and lesbian Australians.

Traditions only continue to have meaning when they are reinterpreted and made relevant by each generation. Obama’s inauguration speech was an inspiring attempt to do this. Let’s hope his actions over the next four years are equally inspiring.

Originally posted on The Conversation

Meet Boston Dynamics’ LS3 – the latest robotic war machine

By Associate Professor Katina Michael. Originally posted on The Conversation.

On first viewing Boston Dynamics’ latest creation, the LS3 (Legged Squad Support System), I could not help but be taken back to the AT-AT (All Terrain Armoured Transport) walker, as depicted in the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back.

But it is the AT-TE (All Terrain Tactical Enforcer) walker that appears in Attack of the Clones which strikes the most eerie resemblance to the LS3 concept, as the two images below demonstrate.

The AT-TE is a six-legged walker that appears in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and The Clone Wars multimedia campaign. starwars.wikia.com

Boston Dynamics’ LS3 Concept. Boston Dynamics

Star Wars toys have become, it seems, real-world creations. The only discernible difference is that the AT-TE is a six legged beast, while the LS3 has been dubbed the “packed mule”.

According to Boston Dynamics – which made its name with the development of the BigDog quadruped robot in 2005 – the LS3 has been designed to accompany war fighters into battle, carrying 180kg payloads and freeing up troops that would otherwise be carrying such equipment themselves.

The demonstration video below gives a sense of the LS3 in action.

One cannot help thinking this packed mule could serve a variety of functions in a war, as its real-life counterpart did in the Great Wars.

In other words, the LS3 won’t just be carrying the necessities of water, food, shelter and medical supplies – it’s more than likely it will be carrying the instruments of war.

Can we fix the damage caused by workplace bullying?

By Diana Kelly, University of Wollongong

Associate Professor Di Kelly, School of History and Politics at UOW

For more than a decade I have been researching aspects of workplace bullying – that widespread and scurrilous set of activities where those in power (about 75% of perpetrators are managers and supervisors) attack, demean, demand or destroy their subordinates.

It occurs often enough that it is deemed costly, although academic assessments of employees experiencing bullying vary from 5% to over 50% in the last year.

Workplace bullying is not new – Dickens offers some excellent examples of bullying, but it has become more widespread and more insidious in recent decades – perhaps reflecting changes in management practices and managerial prerogative, larger workplaces and greater pressures on labour productivity.

Over those ten years of gathering data and surveying workplace bullying, I have all the while held hopes of completing a scholarly and useful research project called “Workplace Bullying – Fight, Flight or Fix?”

I dreamt of doing research which would show how bully targets had dealt with bullying – not been damaged or destroyed. The trouble has been, that in my informal research for setting up this project, I have found almost no good examples of “FIX” – no legislation, policies, processes, or interventions that might offer exemplars to remedy instances of workplace bullying and make bloody sure it doesn’t happen again.

No – almost none – and while my file of articles on workplace bullying over the last 10-12 years is more than two feet high, real examples of FIX are almost non-existent. Like a Greek chorus chanting the progress of a tragedy, those hundreds of paradigms of excellent research, measure, survey and describe workplace bullying in many occupations, sectors and organisations, exploring the causes, consequences, targets, perpetrators and bystanders in workplace bullying – but almost never a FIX.

And yet – and yet … surely there are answers – aren’t there?

Certainly, there is no end of concern about workplace bullying. Not just the Greek chorus of we, the academic researchers, but also clinical and organisational psychologists, management theorists, businesses, trade unions, and governments. Bullying is an anathema to the fair minded and efficiency oriented, and yet it seems to grow in incidence and impact.

The Australian government wants to investigate the incidence of bullying and the scope for government intervention in its Inquiry into Workplace Bullying, amidst a push to extend Victoria’s so-called Brodie’s Law nationally.

Inquiry submissions closed last week and national tours of the Committee will take place in July. (Trouble is – they are only going to major cities – yet workplace bullying is a country issue too, as the death of a country Ambulance service employee demonstrated.)

Nevertheless, this is a good initiative – if it can follow through on its findings and if it one of many initiatives – but workplace bullying is hard to diagnose and even more difficult to “cure”. In the UK, the outstanding Labour peer, Baroness Anne Gibson was nearly successful in the late 1990s in getting a Dignity at Work Bill through the British parliament. Of course it failed ultimately – workplace bullying is widespread but it is too diffuse and there are no discernible blocs of voters among the bullied to compel the uncaring. What Baroness Gibson did achieve was a million pound float of the Dignity at Work project and even a National Dignity at Work Day – November 5.

But still bullying is a major issue in the UK. Even if there had been legislation, there would need to be many more initiatives to combat and confound workplace bullying. A multi-faceted problem needs multi-faceted responses. And it needs to start at the level of the organisation and the workplace – and start from the very top of the organisation.

As a great NSW Board of Anti-Discrimination President used to say – “the fish rots from the head” – and workplace bullying – like discrimination and occupational health and safety – are only addressed in the organisation when the board of directors and senior executive are committed to good practice.

This is perhaps even more so with workplace bullying – the Greek chorus of researchers have found that organisational culture and socialisation practices and processes are major determinants of bullying. Improve the culture, make bullying and harassment as grievous as damage and destruction of physical property, and the bullying may decline, just as many forms of discrimination have declined in recent decades.

So it makes sense to start with the most senior leaders – but it is a vexed solution too. As the researchers have also found, those same managers are driven more by fear of litigation and the will to power. From such perspectives, even the merest hints of bullying must be hidden, the bullied targets swept aside or out of the frame altogether, for litigation not only brings costs but it also damages organisational reputations. For many, such concerns are much more important than fairness and human dignity at work – and with increased competitive pressures and the strengthening of managerial prerogative in recent years, imperatives of senior leaders are unlikely to change.

The government’s inquiry into workplace bullying is a good initiative; but I fear that it rather than find any answers, any FIX initiatives, it will just join the Greek chorus telling yet again the rise and rise of workplace bullying.

Diana Kelly does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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Australia’s rich talk about saving the environment; the poor bear the burden of doing it

By Lesley Head, University of Wollongong

Public housing tenants struggling with their bills will well understand NSW Community Services Minister Goward’s concern over the rising costs of nails and pots of paint. According to the minister, the carbon tax will push the price of household maintenance up; this is the reasoning behind an increase in public housing rents. But what’s fair about the state government passing its own carbon tax costs on to those least able to afford it?

To make matters worse, Ms Goward also announced that the imminent carbon tax compensation payments from the federal government will be included as part of a tenant’s assessable income. The state government may just be trying to score cheap points off the feds. But we should all be concerned about the social justice implications of framing the debate in this way.

For a start, more of the electricity price hikes are coming from infrastructure costs than from the carbon tax. A particular bottleneck and driver of change is the summer peak demand for air-conditioning, which low income households are less likely to use. All households are feeling the impact of increased electricity prices, but the pinch is disproportionately tighter if you are poor.

The same goes for the carbon tax. There is no cost-free way to make the necessary transition to lower greenhouse gas emissions. But as a community we need to find fairer ways to share these costs.

We also need to share the work. If you are economically comfortable and well educated, and think you are already carrying an extra burden, think again. Research shows clearly that the poor are doing the heavy lifting on a range of sustainability issues.

Our survey research shows that households earning less than $250 per week are statistically more likely to undertake sustainable household practices. They switch off lights in unoccupied rooms and put on extra layers of clothing before turning up the heating. They are more likely to repair than replace clothing. They are less likely to use an air-conditioner in summer, and much more likely to save water by taking shorter showers.

Not all such households profess “green” attitudes or sensibilities. And the poorest households were most likely to be “uninterested” in climate change as an issue. Ethnographic research throws light on this apparent conundrum. Often they are influenced instead by generational or socioeconomic backgrounds of frugality and thrift. They hate waste, and have many creative ways to save and reuse materials and stuff.

In contrast, households earning over $1700 per week are over-represented in the group undertaking fewer sustainable practices. Affluent well-educated households are more likely to profess pro-environmental attitudes, but their high levels of consumption make practical sustainability more difficult for them. They are more likely to own two or more fridges, and plasma screen TVs. Baby boomers are the least likely to be sceptical about climate change, but the most likely to fly often.

We are used to thinking about this in an international context; for example, comparing per capita emissions between Australia (high) and China (low). We are less inclined to acknowledge that there are also substantial disparities between Australian households.

The poor – particularly the elderly – are also more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. They suffer heat stress in summer, and have to make hard choices between heating and eating in winter.

Most of us know people with cupboards or garages full of things that “might come in handy”. They might be Grandma, or the old guy next door. They are not all poor, and I am not suggesting we should celebrate their poverty. Rather, these unheralded vernacular practices – honed in diverse socioeconomic, generational and ethnic circumstances – provide cultural resources that we should acknowledge and draw on. We should celebrate their contribution towards helping us think about how to do things differently.

There are no easy answers here, but a double whammy for public housing tenants is surely not one of them. If the state government decreases tenant resilience by passing on the increased costs, they will end up paying more elsewhere, for example in the health budget.

We are all in this together, and need to find ways to share both the costs and the work of responding to climate change. We certainly should not be putting extra costs on that segment of the community who are already doing more than their share of the work.

Lesley Head receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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We can’t compete on cheap and nasty; let’s be a country that makes high-quality, lasting things

By Chris Gibson, Professor of Human Geography at UOW.
Orginally published on The Conversation.

Embracing an Australia that makes things doesn’t mean taking backwards steps. Photo: Pizzodisevo/Flickr

When BlueScope Steel announced in August 2011 it was about to close one of its Port Kembla blast furnaces and cease steel exports, Australian Workers’ Union national secretary Paul Howes asked, “do we want to be a country that still makes things? Do we want to value-add to our natural resources, or do we want to become just one big sandpit for China?”

Australia should think positively of its future as a country that makes things. Exactly what things we make, and how we make them, is the difficult part of the equation.

Making things does not necessarily require backwards steps to a protectionist era when import tariffs meant artificially cheap Australian fridges, shoes or cars. But nor is making things in Australia necessarily dependent on competing with low wages in China or India for “bread and butter” manufacturing. That presumes we join in the “race to the bottom” through cheapening labour and relaxing environmental standards. Judging by the spectacular failure of Howard’s WorkChoices in 2007, Australians won’t accept cuts in wages and conditions in the name of global competitiveness (and in any case our reserve army of labour is just too small). Likewise, although cynicism towards Federal Government policies on climate change is at an all-time high, Australians care deeply about the environment (especially our beaches, national parks, air and water quality) and won’t accept deterioration in how industrial waste is handled simply so things can be made more cheaply.

So, in the face of seemingly impossible competition abroad, the question is whether it is worthwhile making things here in Australia at all?

The Sydney Morning Herald’s economics commentator, Ross Gittins, seems to think not. Gittins editorialised in August last year that the decline in manufacturing in Australia was part of an inevitable and permanent transition, a “historic shift in the structure of the global economy as the Industrial Revolution finally reaches the developing countries”. Rich countries such as Australia must now find other things to do to replace manufacturing. We can dig up resources to supply manufacturers in China. We can focus on the so-called “knowledge” industries (where a product’s value is in its intellectual or design content, not its material fabrication). We can export “know-how” rather than physical commodities.

‘Outsiders and Ratbags’: the Greens will struggle without Bob Brown

By Gregory Melleuish

Associate Professor, School of History and Politics at UOW

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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Bob Brown says The Greens could form a future government, but they may have peaked already. AAP/Lukas Coch

The exit of Bob Brown raises an interesting issue for the Australian Greens. Now the party’s charismatic founder has gone, what will happen to the party? Does it have a long-term future, and if so, what kind of future?

There has long been a place in Australian politics for one minor party, that acts as a safety valve for those who are not happy with the state of politics. But that party does not have to be the Greens. If political circumstances change and another charismatic figure emerges a new party could well emerge to challenge the Greens for this role.

Three party politics

The Democrats became the first of these third parties in 1977. They had their heyday in the early years of the Howard government. For a time, it seemed possible that One Nation would also assume that role. But in past few years this role has been taken over by the Greens.

All of these parties were founded by a charismatic leader – Don Chipp for the Democrats and Pauline Hanson for One Nation – and came to be associated with that leader. This may partially explain why both the Democrats and One Nation are no longer significant political players.

All of these parties share an old-fashioned form of economic nationalism in which the state plays an important role. They have appealed to a particular constituency which feels that the two major parties are not really serving their interests, and that politics has failed them.

One could argue that what caused the emergence of third parties, and has sustained them, was Bob Hawke’s post-1983 economic reform, supported by both the major political parties, which sought to make Australia a more competitive and productive country.

Hence the desire, manifested in their economic nationalism, of minor parties to return to the “good old days”.

A limited appeal

The Greens are both the environmental party and the party of the big state and increased government control. This can be seen in many of their policies, for example their policies on education.

Their appeal is necessarily limited because the sort of constituency that they attract are those who do not like politics as practised by the major parties. They are the natural home for outsiders and ratbags. In this sense they are an “anti-political” political party.

This means that their appeal cannot rise much beyond 15% of the electorate. Hence they are very attractive to many young people who have problems with the major parties, and who do not yet feel that they are part of the political system. Green policies on education, that students should pay less and the state pay more, are attractive to this group. The Greens also appeal to academics who also feel somewhat alienated by the political system.

The end of the Greens?

One thing, I believe, is certain. The Greens will not become a major party unless they cease to be the Greens.

Major parties have to appeal to the broader Australian community and there is no indication that the Greens are capable of evolving in this way. What Bob Brown achieved was to make the Greens the unchallenged third player in Australian politics. It was a considerable achievement.

But they have now reached their peak. My feeling is that the best they can do is to maintain their level of support. However, the case of the Democrats may indicate that once the minor party in Australia peaks, the fact that it cannot go any further may be a sign of its ultimate decay.

Whatever the case there is no doubt that the Greens will miss Bob’s charisma.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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