Every now and then - well, actually, about six times a day - I see something that makes me think the Christian fundamentalists should just pack it in. This comes from a piece called ‘Unholy Alliance‘ by Roulla Yiacoumi and it appeared in the Melbourne Age Green Guide of 8 Feb. 2007:

Richard Cohen is chief executive of Hotmovies.com, a website that allows you to watch selected scenes from porn movies streamed to your PC. Each night, between 38,000 and 60,000 video clips are viewed.

‘I couldn’t believe those figures when I first heard them’, Mr Cohen says. ‘I got our people to check them several times. But they were correct …’

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Filed in: Christian Right, Sexuality

Jim Wallace’s Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) likes to portray itself as moderate, reasonable, and generally a cut above the other groups comprising Australia’s Religious Right. But slice through the holier-than-thou attitude and all you really have left is a bunch of 1950s-style wowsers.

Let’s have a look at ACL’s recent media release entitled ‘Access to Sex Videos in Prison Highlights Wider Social Problems‘. Wallace is at his most po-faced:

People [What people? How many people?] are rightly concerned that sex offenders in Ararat [Vic.] Prison have been repeatedly watching films that could feed into their problems and encourage deviant behaviour.

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Filed in: Censorship, Sexuality

Melbourne City Council is considering the introduction of a same-sex ‘Relationships Declaration Register‘, a move that has shocked and appalled the egregious Salt Shakers ‘Christian ethics’ group. Leaders Peter and Jenny Stokes turned up at a recent council meeting at which this idea was discussed. No other Salt Shaker bothered to do so, thus setting the scene for one of Peter’s legendary dummy-spits:

Who cares that I can’t sleep?

Who cares that Jenny and I were OUTNUMBERED 12, maybe 15 to 1 tonight at the Melbourne City Council meeting? And it was not pleasant!!!

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Filed in: Politics, Sexuality

While conservative evangelicals sometimes band together for some common purpose, they are really a collection of warring tribes. This is in the nature of Protestantism, which prizes one’s ‘personal relationship with God’ above all else. If your minister or pastor tells you one thing about Christian doctrine, and you have a bit of a pray about it and decide that he (or sometimes she) is wrong - well, congratulations, you win! This is not much of a recipe for unanimity and helps explain why there are tens of thousands of Christian denominations and sects scattered around the place. (For a very funny example of how these and related clashes can work out in practice, have a look at Ken Dempsey’s Conflict and Decline: Ministers and laymen in an Australian country town [1983], available in many libraries.)

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Filed in: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Sexuality

Michael Gilchrist, editor of the National Civic Council’s AD2000, has this to say about two Catholic sex education booklets written by Carol Phillips, Western Australian coordinator for Babette Francis’s ‘Endeavour Forum’:

These booklets [one for boys and one for girls] make the task [of sex education] much easier, while keeping the sensitive subject within the bounds of a child’s latency period …

‘Latency period’? I’ve been very interested in my sexuality since before I can remember. I was having huge crushes on schoolmates when I was seven and so were half my friends. I thought the very idea of a latency period went out with the ark.

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Filed in: Catholicism, Sexuality

Andrew Lansdown, ‘Writer and Editor’ for Life Ministries WA, has strong views about justice. Justice demands, for example, that animals which happen to kill human beings must be held morally responsible for their actions, and put to death:

God will not tolerate the killing of innocent human beings, whether the killers are humans or animals. He will hold them to account at the cost of their blood … (’Sympathy for a shark’, Salt Shakers Journal, Feb. 2001, 13)

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Filed in: People, Sexuality

Family Life International(Australia) (FLI) recently distributed a leaflet called ‘The World’s Greatest Con Job … The Real Truth About Condoms’. I received one of these (a leaflet, not a condom) from the National Civic Council’s ‘Australian Family Association’ and found little ‘real truth’ but a long list of reasons why readers should postpone sex until marriage:

It is the only 100% foolproof way of avoiding unplanned pregnancies.

So all pregnancies within marriage are planned? Don’t think so.

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Filed in: Sexuality

Even in the United States the powerful Christian right lobby doesn’t always get its own way. US government regulators recently authorised over-the-counter sales to adults of the ‘morning after’ contraceptive pill. Under-18s will still have to get a prescription, but something tells me that a girl who really needs this medication won’t have too much trouble getting hold of it. (Melbourne Age, 26 Aug. 2006)

Conservative Catholics and evangelicals in Australia kicked up a hell of a row when the morning after pill became easily available in Australia. Notice how the sun still rises in the mornings? Funny about that.

Filed in: Sexuality

Lots of cracks are now appearing in the reputedly monolithic Christian right facade. Already squabbling with the Australian Christian Lobby over gay and lesbian issues, Peter and Jenny Stokes’ ‘Salt Shakers’ group is now having a go at backsliding mega-churches, Baptists and sympathetic National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce.

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Filed in: Pentecostalism, Politics, Sexuality

According to a survey just published in Britain, 23.5 per cent of women fantasise about same-sex relationships, while only 5.3 per cent of men do so. (’Nurses and firemen top fantasy poll’, Melbourne Age, 24 Aug. 2006)

This is going to cause a lot of problems. You see, religious right groups constantly tell us that only 1-2 per cent of the population is gay or lesbian and therefore that we should staunchly oppose the granting of equal rights to such a tiny, insignificant group. It’s completely illogical but this is how these people think.

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Filed in: Sexuality