I took a whole heap of photos of little kids at this sixth brithday party last week, so you might get a few of them over the next few entries - I was pretty happy with them (although of course I threw out about two hundred). Kids are great to photograph, they just keep on doing what they are doing. This means of course a lot of blurry photos of kids running past with their mouths open, but some very cute ones too.

The gay marriage thing is still going. Mungo MacCallum wrote a very funny piece in the local paper about how nobody really cares, except John Howard and six or so of his fundamenaltist Christian mates, and how often have you asked the next door neighbours whether they have a piece of paper formalising their relationship anyway? Sometimes I think it's inevitable and sometimes I think this is a brief golden period in the history of homosexuality, and the pendulum will swing back and all of us who are out will be rounded up and thrown into jail...maybe that's just me watching too many totalitarian science fiction movies.

Yesterday I was listening to a Radio National Podcast (the best thing for all those tedious drives back and forth to Brisbane) on 'out groups'. The academic was saying that there are two dimensions we judge groups on - whether they are nice or nasty, and whether they are capable or incapable. We judge ourselves, of course, as nice AND capable. So some outgroups are nice but not capable - like the elderly or disabled. They get pity and help, but not respect, and you might help them but not want to be friends with them. Some outgroups are capable but not nice - so Asians are seen as technologically savvy, or smart; Jews as good with money; but both groups are characterised with flaws - sly, or greedy or whatever. So they get a different treatment to the first group - people will respect them, get along with them while they need something, like their computer fixed or to trade or whatever - but if there is a crisis, they are the first to go. 'Often when there are riots in a town, it is the foreign entrepreneurs whose shops are targeted,' she said. The final group are seen as both incapable and not nice - this group was the real down and outs, homeless people and drug addicts and so on. These (this was freaky) we don't see as human at all. They'd done all these studies looking at the parts of the brain that light up when you see another human being, and they didn't light up when they saw homeless people sitting in bundles of rags on the street. (You can train people to see homeless people as human, by asking the viewer about their human characteristics - what do you think he'd like to eat? how do you think she got there? and so on)

The point of all this is that I was thinking that gays are in the second group - respected but not liked. People assume we are capable - gay boys are aesthetic, dykes are smart - but they don't particularly think we should have the same rights as them.

i don't know how prevalent this is. Maybe Australian legislation is 20 years behind public opinion, and everyone really couldn't give a shit. I've only lived in nice friendly areas. But it is disheartening to see all this kerfuffle in the papers.

The Eggs

I don't want to come across as obsessive so this bit is at the end. I think I read there is only a 5% chance of IVF working so I'm trying very hard not to get invested in two little groups of cells. It's a tricky line - should I believe with all my heart and soul, you know, channel the universe, North Coast style, into making it happen? Why would the universe care two hoots about me & my cells? Or just be detached until it actually happens? Lovergirl favours the former, but that would drive me mad. We should know in two weeks.