This tolerant truce is a far cry from the blunt war cries of US radio guru Dr Laura Schlessinger. This "queen of hate radio" broadcasts to an estimated 10 million listeners. She tells tier fans that homosexuality is a "biological error and a sadness that can be cured" and that lesbian mothers are "a devastation to children". Outraged opponents have taken out newspaper ads across the country, including in The New York Times, claiming her "anti-gay commentary is harmful to children" because it exacerbates the problem of youth suicide.

Tap "Dr Laura" into any internet search engine and you'll find scores of websites arguing about this blonde bombshell who has the usual Yankee knack for self-prornotion. You might also find the following "open letter", posted on the net from Canada, which says everything that needs to be said about the intellectual pitfalls of selective Biblical interpretation. The letter begins: "Dear Dr Laura, thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate."

"I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them:

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Lev 1:9), The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

d) Lev 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair, around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made from two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necesary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev 24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev 20:14)?

"Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal unchanging."

To visit Dr Laura's web site, try www.drlaura.com.

The production Pandora's Box, which toured the Riverina district of NSW, was all about preventing "self-harm" among young people. In Tasmania, their Lifting The Lid project on the west coast was designed to prevent domestic violence. Over 600 young people rocked up to their workshops in this isolated corner of our country where innovative arts are about as common as the Tassie tiger.

This company always works with young people who have heaps of problems and many sources of disadvantage. This makes public recognition very powerful.

Positive reviews and audience applause may be the first experience of genuine praise that many of these youngsters have experienced in a long time.

But what really excites me about Rankin and the Big Art team is their commitment to excellence and their belief in, the capacity of storytelling and culture to act as an entry point through which troubled people can "re-engage morally with their community."

Right now they are working on a project in the Don Dale Juvenile Justice Centre outside Darwin. It is the kids' lock-up for the Northern Territory.

Rankin says it holds many indigenous boys and girls who are up for mandatory sentencing. Now mandatory sentencing has pulled a lot of headlines, but from Rankin's perspective it is an embarrassment for the eastern States that diverts attention from the underlying issues which effect young offenders all over the country. "Nobody goes into bat for the kids in the juvenile justice centre up the road," he says.

The Don Dale project involves a group of indigenous kids who are living inside the detention centre an another group of white kids who are living outside, but whose history of offending puts them at risk of incarceration at any time.

Rankin rejects the view that education and employment are the only ways to prevent recidivism. Young offenders need to feel a commitment to those around them if they are to stop their anti-social behaviour. Storytelling and cultural expression can be the catalyst for this reconnection to the social fabric. "You have to see beyond the negative identity, the violence, the self-harm and the suicide attempts to the tiny glimpses of a positive self, and then reinforce that flash of light," he says.

This is where the search for excellence comes in. Rankin rejects a "bullshit" approach to community cultural development which praises every product created by people in places like Don Dale. "To treat everything as positive is a falsehood," he says. Just as a professional artist discards all sorts of creations along the way and only shows an audience a final product, so Rankin offers "mentoring" to these young people to help them develop good work, and to recognise and discard the bad.

As the project in the juvenile justice centre develops, some youngsters are released. Several have joined the outside group of kids. This delivers the benefit of outside support, which is often not available. Rankin describes the white kids as "lone itinerant wolves without a connection to culture".

By contrast, many of the indigenous kids have a deeply felt cultural identity, "The whitefellas have the money and the Toyotas, but they've got no culture" is a theme enrerging from the indigenous half of this theatrical work-in-progress, which has the working title Wrong Way, Go Back.

The final show will be performed in the Darwin Entertainment Centre and the prison.

Rankin's faith in these kids is inspirin. He was the co-writer of indigenous performer Leah Purcell's highly successful biographical show, Box the Pony. He reckons the kids in Don Dale "have a storytelling power as great as Leah's". I suggest that Purcell surely has some special quality, but Rankin insists these kids have "an immediate sense of the narrative structure of a story, instinctive comic timing and a kinetic intelligence that means they know how to use space". His stories about these kids seem a long way from what we usually hear about petrol sniffing and hopelessness.

It takes only a nanosecond for an impulsive driving error to catapult any one of us into the brain injury unit of a major hospital. And every day, somewhere in this country, a few more people experience a sudden cerebral event that pushes them across the threshold and into the tough world of stroke recovery.

It's hard even to think about these things. And that is the problem. Most of us don't ask questions about the quality of our community services until someone we love - or we ourselves - really needs it. The trouble is, when you're recovering from a disabling event, or learning to live with a permanent disability, it's not the time you feel full bottle about lobbying for services. The same applies to your family or friends. If you're busy caring for a relative or mate, it's very hard to find the time and energy to learn enough about the service sector's political economy to lobby effectively for an essential service. The non-existent service might be essential in keeping the disabled person living in their own home, rather than being forced prematurely into a hostel or nursing home.

You don't know the full meaning of anxiety until you've met the ageing parents of an adult child with an intellectual disability. Thousands of these parents have been trying for years to find a stable, professionally supervised home for their daughter or son. In the game, this is called "unmet need" and it is bloody painful to see loving parents afraid to die because they doubt our capacity to care for their child once they're gone.

It is important to remember that life isn't fair. You can stop smoking, go to the gym, and jog until you're the perfect weight for your height, but nothing insures you against the drunken driver, the unseen power of the genetic lottery or the remorseless ageing process.

All this flashed through my mind when I spent a day at a conference in the city of Maitland in regional New South Wales. The attendees were from services like Home Care (which provides housekeeping and personal care) and Community Transport (which gets people out of the house to doctors, shopping centres and social activities). Home modification and maintenance services were there as well, which got me thinking about changing light bulbs. It might as well involve climbing Mount Everest, because step-ladders are life-threatening challenges in this corner of the world. The work of Meals on Wheels is well known. The great effort to improve their food is less familiar. If you need your tucker delivered, then you're vulnerable by any standards. So what will motivate staff to care and to strive to deliver what their clients really want, as individuals?

That was precisely the focus of the Maitland day of professional training for more than 100 workers and volunteers. Congratulations to the NRMA for their investment in social capital by sponsoring the conference. Congratulations to former commercial lawyer, now NSW Community Services Commissioner, Robert Fitzgerald for an inspirational endorsement of the role of the whole community, including the business sector, in helping to rebuild the "weak and fractured" foundations of our social policy.

And congratulations to conference organiser Cathie Murray, who is building mutually beneficial links with local businesses and government. She doesn't want simply sponsorship, but to share expertise and increase the profile of her sector's vital work. Helping to build the skills of compassionate, community workers is an investment that could benefit any of us one day.

The head of the Australian chapter of the worldwide non-government organisation Defence for Children International, Danny Sandor, says we should be talking about "children's rights to knowledge about their identity, the marital status or sexual orientation of the would-be parents". He rejects the Federal Government's proposal to allow States to exclude single and lesbian women from fertility clinics because it would empower State governments to ban access to "crucial semen screening services that can prevent a host of dangerous transmissible diseases". This is an important public health issue. But his primary concern is the international evidence that children "generally want to know who their biological parents are... whether they are raised by same-sex or heterosexual parents, or adopted, or conceived as a result of assisted reproduction technologies".

His concern is echoed by Judy Cashmore from the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of NSW, a respected researcher on children and the law.

"The big issue is the children's right to information about their genetic origin, for both medical and psychological" she says. "We've learnt from our past experience with closed adoption and closed records, that keeping secrets doesn't work because people eventually want the information." Cashmore points out that when these IVF and donor insemination kids want to get information "there may not be enough there to satisfy them."

Similar issues were raised in a very emotional way at a conference held at the Royal Society in London in March this year. The conference was organised by the group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

Children born as the result of insemination, or "remote father conception" as it is sometimes called in Britain, took the opportunity to distribute personal statements about their experiences. They emphasised that only they have the capacity to assess the emotional impact of their conception. As Bill Cordray wrote, "Infertility experts do not know. They do not see the face of the human being beyond birth. The few studies that have been undertaken took only at parental interpretations of the child's emotional life. No-one knows how we feel because no-one has actually asked us."

It has been estimated that 40,000 children will be born in the UK using donated eggs and sperm between 1991 and 2007.

British legislation places strict limits on the information that can be accessed relating to these births. Donor offspring cannot get access to the identity of the donor.

From 18 they are able to confirm, their donor-assisted status, and from 16 they are able to ascertain whether anyone they intend to marry is a sibling.

But for many, this is simply not enough. Jo Rose told the London conference he was angry that "half of my ancestral identity has deliberately been concealed from me". According to Rose, "Whether it is adoption, stolen generations, child migrants or donor insemination, the same mistake is being made because experts have assumed it certain group of people should be denied knowledge of their biological family, ethnicity and medical history." Barry Stevens denounced the law that denies him information about his donor. "It is profoundly hypocritical to say the genetic connection is insignificant. Notjust medicine, but all the life sciences are exploding with the impact of genetics and the importance of genetic influence on behaviour and personality." Janice wanted a chance to meet her donor. "I would never want my donor father to feel any obligation towards me, but I am curious about him. Why not, we are part of each other."

Australia's legal and professional guidelines about information storage and retrieval vary front State to State. But many Young Aussies are being born with very limited, if any, rights to information. This is the real human rights issue we need to debate.