An almighty bigot

I finally got round to watching Australia, Baz Luhrman's fourth masterpiece. I know, I know, I'm late to the party as usual (fashionably late mind... I was wearing the speckled trousers), but there's no excuse for it. Ultimately uplifting and a true tale of what it means to come 'home', Luhrman's spectacle is astounding. I genuinely do believe there's no other director quite like him around today.

At the end of the film, we are told that the Australian government 'officially abandoned the assimilation policy for indigenous Australians in the northern territory in 1973'.

How is it that a four-digit fact can be so harrowing?

Then, as I turn off the DVD player and BBC news pops up on screen, a story is being ran about Iris Robinson, the wife of Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson, telling of how she had admitted last night that she had tried to kill herself after confessing to her husband that she had had an affair. This is the same woman who claims homosexuality is, I quote, an "abomination", something that makes her feel quite "sick" and "nauseous". As right-thinking members of society condemned this vile woman for her remarks, her husband rushed to her defence, saying:

"It wasn't Iris Robinson who determined that homosexuality was an abomination, it was The Almighty. This is the Scriptures and it is a strange world indeed where somebody on the one hand talks about equality, but won't allow Christians to have the equality, the right to speak, the right to express their views."

This is ignorance at its finest. Sometimes this world is so fast-moving that I temporarily forget these kind of views are still held, and that it's only been 37 years since the atrocities against those of mixed race ended in Australia. The fact that someone like Iris Robinson is a figurehead for a state like Northern Ireland...? It's beyond comprehension.

I wonder what The Almighty has to say about adultery and suicide, eh Iris?