Which is why Bettina Arndt is, hands down, my favourite journalist in the whole wide world. If it weren’t for her, I never would have known just how badly my life was being destroyed by women’s low sex drive, and this week she’s done it again, warning us all that the new prime minister, Julia “Medusa” Gillard, is setting a bad example for Australian women everywhere.
It probably has not escaped anyone’s notice that the PM is living with a man, without having first consecrated the relationship via the sacred bonds of marriage. Or that, furthermore, she has chosen to live for 48 years without at any time making use of her reproductive system in pursuit of the survival of the human race and Western civilisation.
Of course, this is fine, in and of itself. If a woman decides that she wants to violate all standards of morality and decency in order to satisfy her own unnatural lusts even as she denies her inherent feminine purpose by selfishly putting the hedonistic enjoyment of a materialistic lifestyle ahead of the creation and nurturing of new life that gives all humanity a reason for being and without which a person is but a hollow soulless shell destined to die alone, unloved and without meaningful contribution to the world, who am I to judge?
But there’s a broader significance to the issue of Gillard’s sexual proclivities and rogue womb that goes well beyond the individual. As Bettina warns, it’s all about the example being set. Women are, as we know, easily led and slaves to trends – just look at Twilight – and there is a very real danger that if set a bad example by the most powerful woman in the land, other women, women without Gillard’s political career to fall back on, and without Gillard’s total absence of normal human emotion to comfort them, might find themselves making bad decisions..
And prime ministers are, of course, exceedingly influential in social matters, as we’ve seen time and again, with the likes of the Italian suit craze of the Keating years, or the enormous popularity in the late 1960s of disappearing mysteriously at sea. Why, Frank Forde was only in power for eight days, and yet that week sales of nipple rings rose 400 percent. And that was based on nothing more than an unfortunate misquote from a Press Club dinner. So we see how much sway prime ministers have over the common people.
Prime Minister, or First Whore?
And so what are the women of Australia – bless their little hearts – to think when they see Ms Gillard stand up before them and say, “Yes, I am proud to be a living outrage against social cohesion”? Why, quite naturally they will think, “Hey, if it’s good enough for Julia, it’s good enough for me!” And so we will see the country beset by an epidemic of women shacking up with men they aren’t married to, diving headfirst into the murky waters of shared en suites without the sturdy anchor of a marriage certificate to keep them from drifting onto the rocks of dissatisfaction. “I’m unmarried,” they will think to themselves, “I can leave anytime I want to.” And so, at the first sign of trouble or stress or long-term psychological abuse, off they’ll flit, away to the next “committed relationship”, footloose and fancy-free, totally unaware of the terrible price they will pay later in life, when they will live out their lives pushing shopping trolleys full of catfood around the streets, muttering to themselves and asking passing strangers if they’re looking for a de facto.
And what of any children that might come from these reckless relationships? How horribly scarred will these poor mites be, knowing they are the product of idle whims and experimental co-habitation? How horrible will it be for them to be forced to sit in the Bastard Corner at school, shunned by the legitimate students and mocked by the teachers?
Arndt has many examples to back her argument. Pat Rafter, for example. He had a child out of wedlock a few years back, and the results have been catastrophic. Thank God Bettina Arndt has finally taken the opportunity to expose the trail of shattered lives that Pat Rafter has left in his procreating wake. How many more, Pat? How many more people must you rob of dignity and crush beneath your heel before you’re sated?
Of course, there are worse things than children out of wedlock, such as not having children at all. Imagine at 20 telling yourself you would try to follow Gillard’s lead because she is an inspiration to all women, and all of a sudden, BANG! It’s 25 years later and you’re breaking into hospitals to steal babies to make up for all those who were never born because you thought you’d got a “role model” and that it was therefore OK to go to Bali or buy yourself an iPad instead of putting your ovaries to practical use.
So we can see how lucky we are that Arndt sounded the alarm. But still there is something nagging at me. The new prime minister is obviously an intelligent woman – some commentators have described her as “as smart as any man”, which is as high a compliment anyone could wish to be paid assuming she was a character in a Famous Five novel – and she obviously understands the consequences of her actions. So why? Why has she decided to nudge Australian womanhood in the direction of wanton sin and pleasure-seeking infertility?
It just didn’t make sense to me until…until I heard Gillard this week reveal on radio a rather disconcerting fact: she doesn’t believe in God.
Suddenly everything clicked into place. The non-marital sex. The wasted uterus. The pantsuit. She’s been operating without a moral compass. Flying blind.
I don’t see this from a Christian perspective; I don’t believe in God either. But I know I can handle non-belief. I know I have the ethical grounding and moral viscera to prevent me from running off half-cocked due to my lack of a higher power. I’m not sure this is the case for the PM.
Because sadly, even though you and I know we don’t need religion, most people do. Most people are far too stupid to be allowed to formulate their own moral frameworks and make their own decisions about good behaviour. Most people need to be protected from their own blithering idiocy, something the Labor Party knows all too well – that’s why they’re setting up an internet filter. And God is the internet filter of our everyday lives: keeping a watch on us and blocking us from all the naughty things that we really want to do. Like an internet filter, God also doesn’t necessarily work all the time, and slows us all down quite a bit, but at least he keeps us headed in the right direction.
And I’m afraid this is exactly where Julia Gillard’s problem lies. She answers to no higher power. She used to; and Rudd perhaps managed to keep her debauchery in check. But now he’s gone, she’s accountable to nobody but herself, and so will continue to engage in her perverse, unsanctioned, recreational monogamy, sending the message to all that such behaviour is perfectly acceptable in today’s society and thereby causing the nation to sink under the weight of the fractured relationships and blighted lives that await all who attempt relationships without the proper paperwork.
And so I beg you, Ms Gillard: find God. For your own sake, and for the sake of all the silly, impressionable, scatterbrained young lasses who fail to heed Bettina’s warning, and who look up to you so devotedly as a leader, a feminist icon, and a reasonable substitute for an independent mind.
Don’t let a generation of women slip away from their womanly destinies. Don’t let your own selfishness ruin everything for the rest of us. Pick up a bible. Pick up a nice white dress. Do the honourable thing. Because if our first female prime minister refuses to conform to tried-and-tested gender norms, what’s the point of having a woman there in the first place? We might as well have kept Kevin. At least he could cry like a girl.
