Posted by Angie on Wed 9-Aug-2006 at 12:00 pm
In the lead-up to this month’s Australian census, many Christian Right organisations were churning out the mantra that Australia was ‘68% Christian’. This figure had apparently been set in stone by the 2001 census and wouldn’t it be awfully nice if that statistic could be maintained or even increased this year?
Posted by Angie on Wed 9-Aug-2006 at 12:00 pm
I’ve never been too keen on the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act. As far as I’m concerned, anything that gets in the way of free speech should be treated with the gravest suspicion but there are some blurry lines when it comes to vilification.
Despite these qualms, I had to laugh about this one. For the last few weeks, Peter and Jenny Stokes and their Salt Shakers group have been pushing supporters to attend a rally against this Act. The great day arrived on 8 August, when Christians and other opponents of the law were supposed to converge in their thousands on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House. They’d swarm in from the suburbs and be bussed in from country centres and Spring Street would be swamped by a Christian multitude. Dumbfounded by this awesome display, the politicians would quickly go to water and repeal the Act.
Posted by Brian on Wed 2-Aug-2006 at 10:00 pm
Right to Life Australia (RTLA) supporter Ted Watt doesn’t like the ‘Advanced Health Directives’ (AHDs) which may become available in WA soon. By making one of these directives, competent patients may refuse consent to specified treatments or to any treatment for specified illnesses, to take effect later if the patient should become incompetent. The bill before state parliament provides for ‘Enduring Guardians’ and ‘Persons Responsible’ to be appointed with power to make all health care decisions on behalf of an incompetent patient. (Dr Ted Watt, ‘WA to Debate Medical Treatment Bill’, RTLA News, Jul.-Aug. 2006, 4)
Posted by Angie on Wed 2-Aug-2006 at 12:00 pm
When Mel Gibson brought out his Passion of the Christ film in 2004, the Christian Right in Australia were all over him like a rash. The superlatives heaped upon this ’servant of God’ by conservative Catholics and evangelicals were positively embarrassing to read. The Christian periodical New Life gave readers the impression that unbelievers would troop into the theatres in their thousands, be instantly converted, and emerge to spread revival throughout the land.
Posted by Angie on Wed 2-Aug-2006 at 12:00 pm
Do you regard the Australian Family Association (AFA) as an ‘authority’ on anything? For the uninitiated, the AFA is the ‘family policy’ arm of the late B. A. Santamaria’s National Civic Council (NCC) i.e. it’s a conservative Catholic political pressure group and, as far as I’m aware, has never claimed to be anything else. It sometimes employs sympathetic Protestant spokespeople, Bill Muehlenberg being a good example, but in general its public pronouncements on abortion, contraception, sex education and all other ‘family’ issues are pure Pope-speak. AFA views on any of these questions effectively come straight from the Vatican and to this extent the AFA itself is an ‘authority’ on, and mouthpiece for conservative Catholic opinion. No more, no less.
Besides this, the AFA is not an especially large group. I’ve seen claims of up to 5,000 members Australia-wide but this must be a mailing-list figure if it’s not just wishful thinking. It seems to be strongest in Victoria and Queensland, and in Victoria it boasts a grand total of five branches - in Bayswater, Bendigo, Geelong, Malvern and Maribyrnong (another one may start up soon in Box Hill). Realistically, the number of truly active AFA members in Victoria is probably no more than a few dozen. The AFA is a small, self-appointed organisation, quite unrepresentative of Australians and their families in many demonstrable respects (opinions regarding divorce, pregnancy termination, IVF etc.)
So did Brad Newsome of the Melbourne Age know this when he wrote his recent piece on teenagers and television (’Fast times at TV High’, 29 July 2006)? He asked whether what young people watch is harming them and his very first ‘expert witness’ was Angela Conway, AFA Victorian vice-president.
Here it comes:
… [T]he teenage TV milieu is ‘hyper-focused on sex’ and [Conway] fears that it is giving children ‘a skewed view of reality. They’re seeing a fairly hefty diet of sexual involvement and there’s evidence to suggest that it’s ageing young people’ … Conway says teenage soap operas need to lose their ‘overemphasis on dysfunction’ and portray marriage as a viable, stable relationship …
Conway’s opinions occupy about one-quarter of the article’s length. Nowhere is there a reference to the AFA’s total dependence on NCC doctrine and policy in these matters. Indeed, Conway could be Australia’s greatest family psychologist and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference: if she diverged even slightly from the official NCC/AFA (i.e. conservative Catholic) line she’d be out on her ear.
And the poor old public goes away thinking, ‘Oh, so that’s what the family experts say’.
There oughta be a law …