The remarkable victory of Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party in the 2007 Federal Election brings to an end 11 years of conservative rule under John Howard. Much of the Howard government’s rhetoric revolved around claims of growth and national prosperity. But for many Australians there was a sense of unease during the Howard years with its singular emphasis on economic expansion and rampant consumerism which somehow failed to acknowledge our need for humanity and compassion in government.

We have published an article that explores the role and effectiveness of the Christian Right in lobbying for its political agenda, and the failure of Christian parties to make any significant inroads with the Australian electorate.

Read the full article: Righteous Indignity: Musings on The Christian Right and the 2007 Election

Filed in: Christian Right, Family Values, Politics

An ‘Australian Christian Values Checklist‘ has been published by a number of Religious Right groups in order to assist prospective voters at the NSW state election to be held on 24 March 2007.

The introduction to this checklist claims that:

In the 2001 census, 68% [of] Australians identified themselves as Christians. This summary of the positions of major parties on issues of concern to Christians is provided as a service to the Christian community.

This statement disingenuously implies that 68% of Australians support an extensive Religious Right political program involving, for example, a crackdown on abortion, prohibition of embryonic stem-cell research and voluntary euthanasia, and the introduction of a draconian censorship system. As you can see, the only parties who allegedly support a majority of these positions are the National Party (by a whisker) and Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party, which promotes all 27 listed policies.

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Filed in: Christian Right, Family Values, Politics, Stem Cell Research

Age film critic Tom Ryan recently wrote an article about why younger teenagers should be allowed to see the ‘R’-rated movie 2:37. (’Why my girl should watch this movie’, 30 Jul. 2006)

Among other things, he said this:

My wife and I have tried to bring [our daughter] up as an individual, someone who is aware of the world, treats others as she would like to be treated, thinks for herself and isn’t afraid to stand up in the face of injustice.

These aren’t ‘Christian family values’, but rather predate Christianity and probably all religions by many, many ages. They used to be known as ‘good old common sense’ and they don’t need to have any magical label stuck on them at all.

Thanks, Tom.

Filed in: Family Values

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 …

Filed in: Family Values

According to the Christian Right, families are the closest thing we have on earth to the heavenly social order. Every member is devoted to all other members and there’s nothing we’d rather do than promote their interests through our own self-sacrifice. So I had to laugh when I read these comments about wills and children in the Melbourne Age ‘Money‘ supplement (Margot Date, ‘For their own good’, 12 Jul. 2006, 12):

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Filed in: Family Values

A critic of this website - sadly, there are such people - recently entreated us to use less ‘invective’ against the organisations we so justly criticise. Now, apart from an occasional (very witty) jibe, I don’t think we do throw much invective around here, if you take ‘invective’ to mean ‘abusive rhetoric’ (Oxford dictionary).

Our critic’s missive implied that Christian Right groups do not themselves employ invective against their opponents, as would indeed befit followers of ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’. I tried to bear this in mind as I glanced through the latest issue of Fred Nile’s Family World News (FWN) (Jul. 2006). But I’d only reached page 2 before I came across this:

The failed ACT Government ALP leader, Jon Stanhope, has made a complete mess of the ACT … in every area of society - morally, socially and economically. (Fred Nile’s editorial)

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Filed in: Christian Right, Family Values, Sexuality

We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion. The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an anti-child mind-set. So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception.

Judie Brown, American Life League, quoted in Russell Shorto Contra-Contraception, New York Times, 7 May 2006 -

The American Life League is a lay Catholic organisation and it’s therefore no surprise when someone like Judie Brown outlines an anti-contraception rationale. But increasing numbers of American Protestant churches and para-religious groups like Focus on the Family are beginning to take the same line. For instance, R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently wrote that:

The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age - and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm … A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control …

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Filed in: Christian Right, Family Values, Sexuality

Dr Kerrie Allen, research officer for the Australian Family Association, has a rather warped view of recent Australian history. According to her recent News Weekly feature article ‘Whatever has gone wrong with sex?’ (4 Feb. 2006):

‘Sex’ has been redefined almost out of recognition during the past 20 years.

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Filed in: Evangelicals, Family Values, People, Sexuality

Back in 1968, Melbourne journalist Keith Dunstan published a wonderful book called Wowsers (i.e. obsessive puritans). Evangelicals claim that the word ‘wowser’ is merely an acronym for the slogan ‘We only want social evils remedied/removed’, but this is false - see Dunstan’s first chapter for a more accurate etymology.

In his book, Dunstan examined all the major concerns of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century wowsers. There were the old perennials like ‘the Demon Drink’, tobacco-smoking, prostitution, pornography and gambling, but there were a number of other ‘Evils’ against which puritan divines fulminated and waged war. Among these were ‘the Evil of the Desecration of the Sabbath’, ‘the Theatre Evil and the Evil of Dancing’, ‘the Evil of Bathing’ and ‘the Evil of Cremation’.

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Filed in: Abortion, Christian Right, Family Values, Stem Cell Research, Voluntary Euthanasia

Having learnt nothing from their unsuccessful assault on The L Word in 2004, Peter and Jenny Stokes of the Salt Shakers (SS) organisation set their sights a little higher this year and took on the Desperate Housewives juggernaut.

With their customary flair for understatement the Stokes’ asked their readers:

What could be worse than Channel 7’s bunch of psychotic ‘Desperate Housewives’, all living in one street, doing their best to destroy the foundation of society - marriage and family? (SS E-News, 10 Feb. 2005)

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Filed in: Christian Right, Family Values