Christian Right leaders and their followers are often quite prurient when it comes to the discussion of sex. (This prurience sometimes extends to sexual activity itself, but that’s another story). I well remember attending a talk at which the highly ’spiritual’ speaker treated us all, including a number of young teenagers, to a detailed description of physical homosexuality. The speaker was most enthusiastic and the sensation of delighted ‘disgust’ running through the audience was palpable.

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between an almost morbid fascination with sex and a simple matter of ‘too much information’. Bobbie Houston, wife of Hillsong Church’s Brian Houston, once produced a set of tapes called ‘Kingdom Women Love Sex’ in which she gave detailed tips on how to keep your husband happy. Most of it was excruciating Pentecostal nonsense:

When you are doing what is correct in God there is a protection over your life. Like - hello! - it is just there. So it is a very powerful thing. Amen. Yeah, fully.

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Filed in: Sexuality

I see that the WA National Party state conference recently voted to support legally recognised unions of same-sex couples. The party will be taking this policy to the next state election.

Young Nationals WA president Darren Moir said that the party was not made up of radicals: ‘It was the right thing to do.’ Moir noted that one of the party’s 84-year-old stalwarts had been all in favour of the motion, saying that ‘homosexuality was natural and people were born with it and we should get over it’.

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Filed in: Politics, Sexuality

Charles Francis AM QC is the honorary legal adviser to Endeavour Forum, an anti-feminist group run by his wife, Babette Francis. Writing in the National Civic Council’s News Weekly magazine of 5 August 2006, Charles informs us that:

It has taken the World Health Organisation [WHO] decades to warn that the contraceptive pill is a Class 1 carcinogen, in the same category as tobacco and asbestos, and no doubt it may take decades for WHO, wedded to the ideology of population control, to acknowledge the link between abortion and breast cancer. (’Pregnancy counselling services under threat’, 11)

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Filed in: People, Sexuality

Melbourne’s Salt Shakers group, led by Peter and Jenny Stokes, has the reputation of being one of Australia’s more puritanical Christian Right organisations. It came as a shock, therefore, when they appended a paper entitled ‘Understanding Propaganda’ by Dr R. Winfield to their e-newsletter of 6 Jul. 2006.

Winfield’s main message was that the Academy Award-winning film Brokeback Mountain was nothing but a vehicle for pro-gay and anti-family worldviews - in Winfield’s own words, ‘one of the most blatant propaganda pieces of recent times’.

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Filed in: Christian Right, Sexuality

Self-selected readers’ and viewers’ polls were all over the place when it came to the ACT gay civil unions law. When Christian Right groups ran concerted campaigns, the polls they targeted indicated strong opposition to the legislation, while other (less tainted?) polls showed majority support.

A scientifically-conducted ACNielsen/Age survey indicated that 45% of those polled supported the ACT laws while only 34% opposed them. This support peaked in the 18-39 age-group with 56% of the sample backing the legislation.

Religious Right groups continue to squabble among themselves about how best to proceed in their ongoing campaign against gay unions. Some want the ACT Government to settle for a form of civil registration while others want the Feds to obliterate all state laws that recognise gay unions in any way whatsoever. But Canberra doesn’t seem interested in taking the matter much further. A spokesperson for Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock said recently that the Government now believed ‘that the definition of marriage is quite clear and enshrined in the common law …’ (Annabel Stafford ‘Poll finds half say “yes” to gay unions’, Melbourne Age, 20 Jun. 2006)

Filed in: Politics, Sexuality

Terry Lane, a Melbourne religious and political affairs commentator, recently wrote a brief article about the biblical attitude to homosexuals (’Better to run away than burn in hell’, Melbourne Sunday Age, 2 Jul. 2006).

Lane began by quoting Paul’s letter to the Romans:

God gave them up to dishonourable passions. (Er. God made them do it? - T.L.) Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another … [T]hose who do such things deserve to die …

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Filed in: Biblical criticism, Sexuality

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

Two quick comments about the ACT civil unions law (Mark I), recently overturned by the Federal Government.

Firstly, here is how Federal Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock’s reaction was reported when the bill was passed on 11 May 2006:

The bill had been hugely controversial, with … Ruddock at one point threatening to use Commonwealth powers to stomp on the law.

But this morning, after the legislation was passed by the ACT last night, his spokesman said Mr Ruddock was happy with amendments made to the original bill … However, [the spokesman] warned Mr Ruddock would still look closely at all the details to ensure the legislation doesn’t conflict with Commonwealth law. (’Gay groups applaud ACT civil union bill’, AAP, 12 May 2006)

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Filed in: Sexuality

10-Jun-06
Thanks, Bronny, for the following snippet from Toni Hassan’s interview with Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen on the ABC’s Radio National Religion Report (June 7, 2006)

Hassan: … [M]any argue from a rational point of view that homosexuality is a variant, it’s neither moral nor immoral … Could you at all be irrational? Could you conceive that perhaps you’re just not facing the facts of how this has come to be practised in modern life?

Jensen: I’m pretty surprised at the question I think. Please explain yourself, what do you mean, homosexuality is, what did you say? I’m not even sure what you’re saying.

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Filed in: Sexuality