Welcome from the Australasian Family Association

For those who don’t know anything about me, I used to be a regular solo blogger here. I’m now pleased to join the illustrious Troppo crew as an occasional (monthly) guest blogger.

As a special treat for my first guest post, I’ve sworn to avoid all of my previously-known hobby-horses. In fact, this wasn’t as hard as it seems, because just this very morning, I saw the light, in the form of the Australasian Family Association, a group founded in 1980.

You’ve probably heard of them; if not, their name fairly accurately sums them up, as standing for all things wholesome, and against all things not. More specifically, they’ve identified a particular threat to the ongoing existence of wholesome family life in Australasia: the model-boat-in-a-bottle building fraternity.

Now, I’ve long thought of the said hobbyists as just a bit, you know . . . icky. I’m not exactly sure why. Sure, for the most part, they do it in the privacy of their own homes, but I once saw a man fondling the said object in a city display window . . . just like that! . . . and there were CHILDREN around everywhere, and no warning sign, or anything. Plus, there are model-boats-in-bottles EVERYWHERE on the Internet, and no one seems to care.

Anyway . . .

it was a recent article from an Australasian Family Association spokesman, mentioning the evil posed by model-boat-in-a-bottle builders, which caught my eye this morning. You can find it at Online Opinion an excellent site that allows this spokesman to repeatedly express views (well, a view, anyway) on this topic that others might dismiss as a bit extreme, in a 1930s Germany kind of way.

Some model-boat-in-a-bottle builders argue that they are born that way, and can no more help being that way than can someone who is black-skinned, red-haired or left-handed. But building model-boats-in-bottles is not at all akin to racial make-up. Increasingly, vilification laws are being passed which include such family-destructive hobbies under their protective auspices. This is a very bad application of what may have been a good starting principle: that of preventing discrimination and hatred based on genuine unalterable characteristics”

There’s plenty more that the Association has said on the topic, though (and to think that until this very morning, I had thought my hatred of model-boat-in-a-bottle builders was just me!)

See it socked to the little weirdos here (and not at all contradictorily with the above quote):

There was also once a common acceptance that model-boat-in-a-bottle building was, in fact, a disorder. This should lead us to propose ways of assisting them should they seek help (and here, a nice serving of hate is the best ‘help’ of all!).

What REALLY makes me angry about these perverts, though, is the way they promote their hobby to children, as though it were normal and/or harmless. Only a few weeks ago, some Melbourne kinders were reported to be using a collection of 10 laminated family posters, one of which depicted a model-boat-in-a-bottle builder as a parent. How yuck is that! As the Association president aptly said in response, the material was taxpayer-funded propaganda designed to brainwash children.

My only complaint is that I think that the Association’s position on this topic has been a bit tame all words, and no action. A little bit of roughing them up surely wouldn’t hurt, I reckon. And you know what we call a bundle of sticks, roughly of the sort the sickos play with?

Geddit, geddit? Ff f firewood! (smirk, geddit, geddit)