Peter Stokes, Salt Shakers, email to supporters, 19 Dec. 2007:

IVF and surrogacy for same-sex and single people will indeed create a STOLEN generation … [Some] children … will be raised by two mums or two dads living in unnatural, dysfunctional relationships. Children [will be] born with three mums and a dad … or any other combination that surrogacy and/or infertility treatment social engineers can dream up!

[Speaking of dreaming things up, Pete, you seem to be doing a pretty good job yourself.]

More Peter Stokes, ibid.:

When [Salt Shakers] appeared on Ch. 9’s ‘Sixty Minutes’ program some years ago, one scenario involved a very immature homosexual who ‘desperately wanted a baby’.

['Immature', eh? Glass houses, Peter, glass houses.]

One more from Pete, ibid.:

Once again, a small percentage (very few homosexuals want children) of a small percentage are able to destroy normality to suit their own personal unnatural lifestyle choices.

[And if you want to know what 'normality' entails, Salt Shakers will be only too glad to enlighten you.]

Cardinal George Pell, ‘On the need for healthy scepticism’, Sydney Daily Telegraph, 30 Dec. 2007:

We need rigorous cost-benefit analysis of every proposal and healthy scepticism of all semi-religious rhetoric about the climate …

[George, do you also recommend healthy scepticism of all totally religious rhetoric about the climate and everything else?]

Bill Muehlenberg, A Major Rethink on Church Growth, comment dated 5 Nov. 2007:

As a young believer I was a zealous defender of truth and orthodoxy, and was willing to challenge anyone and anything, often in a most arrogant and un-Christlike manner.

[Bill, you mean, you were just like you are now?]

More Muehlenberg, The Bitter Fruit of the Coercive Utopians, 30 Oct. 2007:

We are getting glimpses of the future and it is not looking too good. We are seeing how radical political agendas are being implemented throughout the Western world, along with the ugly consequences which inevitably follow.

[For Bill, 'radical political agendas' include things like access to cheap, safe and legal abortion, basic civil rights for homosexuals, and the right to see adult relationships depicted in movies and on television. Indeed, 'radical' is Bill's omnibus term for practically everything of which he disapproves, otherwise known as 'modernity'.]

Jonathan Sarfati, Creation Ministries International, ibid., comment dated 31 Oct. 2007, posted shortly before the recent federal election:

This is probably what we will be in for in Australia if we elect Chairman KRudd and Comrade Gillardova.

[When queried about the degree of maturity on display here, Master Jonathan tartly replies (a) that they are extremely witty remarks, and (b) that Jesus used to say just the same sort of things and nobody picked on him, not even secular humanist garbage like you. So there.]

Bill Muehlenberg, ‘Dear friends’ letter to close supporters, 4 Dec. 2007:

Gee, it did not take very long. Just a week [after] the election and moves for special rights for homosexuals are appearing around the country … One of the concerns [about] a federal Labor election win was that nothing would now stand between the homosexual activists and the institutions of marriage and family … There is now almost nothing politically that can stop the homosexual juggernaut.

[Bill rambles on for a while about 'evil', 'lunacy' and 'madness'. What a pity someone didn't read him The Boy Who Cried Wolf when he was a kid.]

‘Trudi’, a volunteer at Pregnancy Counselling Australia (run by Margaret Tighe’s Right to Life Australia), Right To Life News Special Issue, Nov/Dec 2007, 3:

I explained the procedure of a late-term abortion [to a caller who is the mother of a pregnant woman]. The mother was appalled. I also described the abortion/breast cancer risk, infections, miscarriages, etc. and asked whether the mother had any belief system. She is Catholic. She agreed that Jesus would not approve of the abortion.

[Oh well, Trudi, just so long as you gave her unbiased, rational advice then.]

Summit Australia, ‘Christian Worldview School’ enrolment form, Nov. 2007:

Summit: Australia’s Christian Worldview School (University Accredited)

['University accredited', eh? This conference is being held at Deakin University, Burwood, Melbourne, between 14-19 January 2008. I didn't think that Deakin or any other self-respecting university would 'accredit' a series of lectures being given by the likes of creationists Peter and Jenny Stokes, Bill Muehlenberg and Tas Walker, so I had a look at the fine print. Ah, here it is: 'Undergraduate students participating in the Summit Worldview School can earn university credit towards their degree from Liberty University.' Liberty University is the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's fundamentalist Baptist university located in Lynchburg, Virginia. Mystery solved.]

Alex Williams, Creation Ministries International (CMI), flyer for their Starlight, Time and the New Physics book, distributed Nov. 2007:

The idea that God created the universe in six days just a few thousand years ago is now not only intellectually respectable, it’s a far better explanation for what we observe than its competitors.

[As far as I'm aware, Alex Williams' only claim to fame is that he writes for CMI's Creation magazine. Can't they find a slightly more impressive blurb-writer than this?]

Gary Bates, CMI, Revisiting history to write a new future leaflet, Dec. 2007, 1:

The legalisation of abortion in many countries has its foundational roots in the theory of evolution … Our speakers go out week after week, church after church, and meeting after meeting to expose people to the truth about evolution, and that it is merely a belief system designed to deny the Creator of the universe His due glory.

[Gary, do be careful when mixing pure fantasy with paranoia. You're liable to come up with Young Earth Creationism.]

Clifford Wilson, editorial, New Life, 6 Dec. 2007:

‘New Life’ has a clear policy of not being actively involved in politics, and while some may not agree with that position, it has been faithfully observed during these weeks of electioneering.

[I hope you kept a straight face while writing this, Cliff. I've never seen such a set of pro-Coalition articles in New Life prior to a federal election and I've been reading your boring rag for many years.]

Janne and Murray Peterson, Good Report, editorial, Oct.-Dec. 2007, 2, regarding the November 2007 federal election:

[O]f course, if Australians elect a majority of candidates who will outlaw free speech from a Biblical ethical standpoint, then the publication of ‘Good Report’ may be banned!

[Hmm. Circulation of two men and a dog, and no one else has ever heard of you. You're pretty safe, I reckon.]

More from the Petersons (ibid.):

At this election there is a risk that the Labor Party could gain control of the Australian Parliament as well as every state parliament. If this occurred then it would unfortunately provide the Labor Party an unusual opportunity to be wicked.

[Oh no! And I'm only just recovering from the strip club episode.]

And just in case you hadn’t got the message (ibid., 5):

As every state is already controlled by Labor, if the Labor Party wins the election, then Australia will be totally – state by state and nationally – controlled by LABOR. There will be no governing opposition in any Parliament in Australia.

[As far as I know, there' s never been a 'governing opposition' in any parliament in history, but it's certainly an interesting idea. Thanks, Janne and Murray.]

Janne Peterson, ‘The home, the church and the government’, ibid., 9:

To believe in separation of church and state is OK, if you simply believe that ‘the state’ should not interfere in church matters, but when Christians believe that the church has no say in ’state’ matters they become their own worst enemy.

[And a lot of people would agree with you, Janne. Let's see, there's Calvin, Savonarola, the entire American religious right. Theocracy forever!]

Hannah Olvida, ‘Hannah means “the grace of God”‘, ibid., 22:

(Q. When you were studying for your degree, did you find any conflict with your Christian beliefs?)A. Yes, pretty much 95% of what they taught in Teachers’ College conflicted with the Bible. To mention some [examples], many lecturers, if not all, believed that children are born good, and this is completely opposite to what the Bible says … They are also breaking down gender roles … In their theories of teaching, they really wanted us to teach children that there are no such things as boys’ toys and girls’ toys. [There] are only toys for everyone … This paves the way for children to think that homosexuality is okay when it is an abomination unto the Lord.

[It's just a wild guess, but I think Hannah might have some problems with feminism and the theory of evolution? So call me crazy.]

Michael and Debi Pearl, ‘How to train up a child’, ibid., 24:

You should teach your children of God’s judgments, of heaven and hell, and the awful consequences of sin, but not as a means to manipulate their daily behaviour.

[And precisely how does one accomplish this apparently impossible feat?]

Filed in: Their Own Mouths