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The passage of marriage equality via the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017 ushered in a new era for religion and politics in Australia. The polarised public debate that was provoked in the lead-up to the legislation continued and only served to entrench the perceived incompatibility of religious freedom and LGBTIQ+ rights. The articles in this Symposium responding to these developments were first presented as works-in-progress at a Macquarie University workshop on 'Religion and Politics after Marriage Equality'. In the Introduction to this Symposium, we briefly outline the history and context of the religious freedom debate that crystalised after 2017 to introduce the three interdisciplinary articles that follow, each offering a unique perspective on the public, political, and highly personal controversies that accompanied this momentous change. Together these articles seek to enhance our understanding of how the discourse of religious freedom is being wielded for political gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ireland and Australia, survivors of historical institutional child abuse have achieved significantly different outcomes of financial redress paid by the government. This article explores the historical, political conditions related to different modes of colonialism that shaped survivors' experiences of institutionalisation in the twentieth century in each country, and their ramifications for contemporary campaigns for the national redress of child abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the framework of transitional justice to examine two prominent examples of national public inquiries into institutional child abuse: the Irish Commission into Child Abuse of 2000–09 and the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse of 2013–2017. It provides a detailed account of the practical workings of each inquiry in the context of the Irish and Australian political and legal environments, with a view to highlighting the particular nation-building function each played in informing a narrative about transitioning from the past to the present. Public inquiries are increasingly used by democratic states as a form of political and legal reckoning for mass crimes committed on children in the care of the state, with inspiration drawn from other examples of the political redress of atrocities (such as war crimes). While transitional justice approaches to peacetime human rights abuses have much to offer in their promise of truth recovery and accountability, they are limited in their ability to achieve justice in the context of consolidated democracies where the 'transition' from the past to the present is ambiguous and incomplete. This article points to the benefits of the national public inquiry approach to addressing institutional child abuse, while offering cautions about the expectations of transitional justice in this context, through the landmark examples of Ireland and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Experiencing shame can be a risk factor for relapse for people recovering from alcohol dependence, but for some it may act as a necessary protective factor for preventing relapse. Knowing how best to manage shame is therefore an important issue, yet the precise nature of the relationship between shame and alcohol dependence remains largely unexplored. Research questions: (1) In what ways do participants tell their stories of shame? (2) How is shame experienced and/or understood by those in recovery from alcohol dependence? Method: Eight participants were recruited from Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) groups and invited to tell their story of recovery. Stories were then analysed using a narrative analysis, focusing on how participants narrated their stories and made sense of their experiences of shame in particular. Findings: Participants spoke about an inherent deep-rooted negative view about themselves, which was present long before alcohol dependence developed. Alcohol served as a means of connection to others and a way of artificially relieving feelings of worthlessness. Recovery was about finding somewhere safe to talk about feelings of shame and make sense of these experiences. Conclusions: The results indicate that management of shame is an important component of recovery programmes for alcohol dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research evidence suggests that self-understanding is likely to be limited in individuals with autism. Method: Photo-elicitation interview was used to explore self-understanding in five adolescent boys diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition. Results: An interpretative phenomenological analysis yielded three superordinate themes: self in action, self extended in time and self in relation to others. These themes captured how participants understood themselves in terms of their actions and abilities, in the context of their past and future and in relation to others. Implications: The findings suggested that self-understanding is informed by relationships with parents, self-other comparisons and by reflecting on past and future selves, as well as on activities engaged in. Photo-elicitation was effective in engaging participants with the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the reported experiences of women who developed mental health conditions while they were members of Haredi Jewish communities. The research focuses on how their communities responded and how these responses affected their self-evaluations and relationships with their communities. A qualitative, idiographic approach was used. Four women were recruited through mental health charities and an online group for former community members. The women were interviewed and transcripts were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three cross-case themes were developed: “The negative evaluation of mental health conditions in Haredi communities”, “‘Cloak and dagger’: Secrecy and consequences of mental health problems in Haredi communities” and “Going and staying: Mental health experiences and changed relationships with Haredism/Judaism”. The themes are discussed in terms of stigma and the threat posed to Haredi communities’ self-understanding and self-presentation by the women voicing their mental health status within and outside the communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This brief comment explores the significance of a number of current lawsuits brought against Catholic Church leaders in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, in the context of enduring failures of justice for Australian victims of Catholic clerical child sexual abuse. It examines the obstacles to criminal and civil justice that have prevented Church superiors from being held to account for child sexual abuse perpetrated in Catholic institutions, and explains the responsibility of Australian governments, courts and the Catholic Church to further justice for survivors1 in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which authors discuss various articles within the issue on topics including feminist contribution to justice for survivors of child abuse by clergy, a workshop funded by Academy of Social Sciences; and articulation of clerical child sex crime in the canon law.

This article examines advocacy of Catholic restorative justice for clerical child sexual abuse from the standpoint of feminist criminological critiques of the use of restorative mediation in sexual offence cases. In particular, it questions the Catholic invocation of grace and forgiveness of survivors of abuse in light of critical feminist concerns about the exploitation of emotions in restorative practices, especially in regard to sexual and other gender-based offences. In the context of sexual abuse, the Catholic appeal to grace has the potential for turning into an extraordinary demand made of victims not only to rehabilitate offenders and the Church in the eyes of the community, but also to work towards the spiritual absolution of the abuser. This unique feature of Catholic-oriented restorative justice raises important concerns in terms of feminist critiques of the risk of abuses of power within mediation, and is also incompatible with orthodox restorative justice theory, which, although it advocates a ‘spiritual’ response to crime, is concerned foremost with the rights, needs and experiences of victims. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Towards Healing is a restorative justice program for addressing complaints of sexual and other child abuse committed by clergy and other members of the Catholic Church. The program is upheld by the Church as leading the world in providing restorative and therapeutic justice. This article examines Towards Healing from the perspective of restorative justice standards and questions the potential for restorative justice to function in regard to Catholic clerical child sexual abuse in Australia, where civil justice is stymied in this context. A key argument of this article is that Towards Healing operates on a less-thanvoluntary basis in this environment and fails to maintain the basic principles of restorative justice focused on the needs and experiences of victims. The article concludes that the Catholic Church's use of reparations to resolve liability in Towards Healing is incompatible with restorative justice ideals and best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the nature and effect of the campaign against the Family Court led by social commentator Bettina Arndt from 1995 to 2006, in the context of the men's rights agenda and the politics of anti-feminist backlash. It documents the changes to Australian family law and the workings of the Family Court under the Howard government, as a result of this campaign, in order to understand the politics of backlash in the context of Wendy Brown's States of Injury theory of 1995. In this analysis, the conservative men's rights agenda is understood as a reaction to structural and economic adjustments associated with neoliberal reforms, especially labour market regulation. But this context, of structural adjustment, is distorted in the rhetoric and focus of campaigns characterised by anti-feminist backlash, such as that directed at the Family Court in Australia. The example of Arndt and her championing of men's rights in this arena is presented as a means by which to compare the different experiences and traditions of feminism in Australia and America, and the associated politics of backlash in each nation, all of which have had a profound influence on Arndt's outlook and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of analyses of the rise of the religious right, this article examines the passage and outcomes of the 'abortion debate' from 2004 to 2006. It analyses the reasons for the then Health Minister Tony Abbott's pursuit of the issue, and his strategies to place abortion on the public agenda, through his encouragement of church lobbies and conservative allies in parliament. Although it is commonly argued that the influence of right-wing Christian lobbyists is growing, this exploration of the abortion debate indicates that this influence is limited, and that it was misunderstood and overstated at the time by politicians like Abbott, and by many political commentators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005 Freakonomics popularised the abortion-and-crime theory based on the microeconomic model of fertility control that was buoyed by the phenomenal ubiquity of market populism at the time. In its massive popularity, the book filled the popular bandwidth with a simple caricature of abortion as an individual economic preference, the demand for which might simply be switched on or off by the prevailing market conditions of the day. This, potentially, has great implications for women's reproductive history, and for the contemporary conceptualisation of abortion as a medical need. In this article I interrogate the abortion-and-crime theory in order to expose its tendentious character as driven by market populism and outdated economic models that have long been a focus for feminist criticism. I highlight the lack of interrogation, both academic and popular, that was afforded the basic premise of the abortion-and-crime theory, in an ideological climate that at the time was overwhelmingly in thrall to market populism as promoted by neo-liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative research extends current theorizing on behavioural strategies for managing body distress by exploring how women manage body image through clothing practices. Eighty two women reported their subjective understanding of how body evaluation and clothing practices are interconnected in response to open-ended questionnaires. Thematic analysis of responses revealed that clothing practices are a mundane and agentic part of the adjustive and self-regulatory processes for managing distressing body image (cf. Cash, 2002b). Clothing is used strategically to manage bodily appearance and anxiety by hiding 'problem areas', accentuating 'assets,' and flattering the figure. Body image is actively negotiated and managed through everyday behaviours which fluctuate on 'fat' days and 'thin' days. These data illustrate the processes which underpin the active negotiation of body image and capture the fluidity of body evaluations and strategies for managing the appearance of the body. These findings raise a number of challenges for theorizing and research including the need to adopt methods which capture the dynamic interplay of body image processes, and the need to address body appreciation as well as distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. Previous research has not taken account of the possibility that deaf people will show greater heterogeneity in how they experience voice-hallucinations due to individual differences in experience with language and residual hearing. This study aims to explore how deaf participants perceive voice-hallucinations and whether the perceptual characteristics reported reflect individual experience with language and sensory input. Method. A statement-sorting task generated data about perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations for exploratory factor analysis. The sample included 27 deaf participants with experience of voice-hallucinations, and a range of hearing loss and language backgrounds. Results. Perceptual characteristics of voice-hallucinations map closely onto individual auditory experience. People born profoundly deaf loaded onto nonauditory factors. Deaf people with experience of hearing speech, through residual hearing, hearing aids, or predeafness experience, reported auditory features or uncertainty about mode of perception. Conclusions. This is the first study to systematically explore voice-hallucinations in deaf people and to advance a model of subvocal articulation to account for such counterintuitive phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the role of psychology in the field of visual methodology. Different ways of meaning-making; Key issues that explain the use of visual methods; Reasons for psychology's neglect of the visual; Uses of the visual medium for psychologists; Ways in which the process of being engaged in visual research has the potential to shift participants' experiences of their lives and their worlds to open up alternative identities.

Presents information on the booklet "Ladies Directory," published by Frederick Charles Shaw, a British businessman. Charges against Frederick Charles Shaw that led to his conviction; Description of the book as a serious act of conspiracy during the case against Shaw; Insight into the law on the basis of which the book was termed as an act of conspiracy.

Recent interest in health inequalities research has focused upon psychosocial factors such as a sense of control. Previous work has sought to measure or describe personal beliefs about control over health without addressing the contradictory and rhetorical dimensions of such accounts. These issues are explored through an analysis of interviews with 30 lower socioeconomic status (SES) participants drawn from two qualitative studies of health inequalities. Key findings concern the rhetorical construction and interweaving of two contrasting positions regarding control over health: fatalism and positive thought. Fatalistic talk provided a means by which participants acknowledged their limited control over health, although not in an exclusively negative manner. Talk about thinking positively enabled participants to present themselves as having agency in the face of adversity. The creative interweaving of these two positions in accounts of control over health enabled participants to navigate the moral imperative of responsibility for health in the context of adverse and capricious circumstance. By foregrounding the social character of accounts of control the significance of moral and ethical dimensions for health inequalities research and practice are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]