And the Christian Lobby goes ballistic about ethics classes... again

This morning on breakfast-news TV* there was discussion of the ethics class issue, between a representative from the NSW Council of Churches and another fellow whose affiliation I didn't catch but I presume to be representing the St. James Centre - the group that designed the syllabus for the ethics class trial.

*(this was on ABC2 - the ABC is basically a government-owned but editorially independent national broadcaster - their breakfast news and current affairs coverage is substantially more serious than on the commercial networks, which tend to be more like the US network-style breakfast programs - a glossy entertainment magazine of celebrities, diets and other ephemera)

Well, the guy from the Council of Churches was pretty upset that the government was going to go ahead and implement the recommendations, but his central objection was telling. He stated that the biggest problem was that the students *currently* getting religious instruction ("scripture class") *would have the option to take the ethics class*.

That's right - he was objecting primarily to parents having the choice, if their child was currently going to religious classes. But he didn't actually explain why the choice was bad.

Why is this? Well, the problem was he couldn't raise a serious objection to the kids not currently in religious classes having the choice of attending the ethics class instead of doing nothing (though he did attack the content of the syllabus also) - the interviewer asked him specifically what objection he could raise to then having the choice. So he was only left with the fact that the kids not already sitting out the various forms of available religious instruction would be able to choose to opt for ethics classes as well. [The church lobbhy have even argued at one point that the kids in religious classes would miss out on instruction in ethics (!) ... oops. Er, no, we didn't mean to say we don't teach that.]

This choice is a problem for the churches. While about 20% of Australians list no religion on the census, many of the ones in NSW still have their children attend school religious classes for a variety of reasons. There is also an even larger group that do have a nominal religion and list it on the census (i.e. they list whatever religion ran the religious class they attended themselves when they were children, which would have been the church one of their parents actually attended at some point) - these "nominally religious" people do send their kids to religious instruction - but many of them would choose not to if there was a serious alternative.

Provided sufficient volunteers can be found to run the ethics classes, this could easily halve the attendance at religious instruction (it's what they feared before the trial began, and it's what actually happened).

Hardly anyone actually goes to church any more (to my recollection, something like 10% of Australians attend church more than twice a year, other than weddings and funerals - and most weddings and funerals aren't even held in churches any more). Apart from that core, the rest of the kids are "up for grabs", and they know parents will vote with their feet.

Sundary school is largely a wasteland. The religious classes are, for many, the only place the churches have to get their hooks in... so they're hanging on for dear life to the one really solid free shot at impressionable minds they've got - an advantage they've had entrenched in legislation for 150 years now. The legislation won't change, but for the first time there will be an alternative to religious instruction for those who opt out of religious class, and many, many more are going to take that option.

They're afraid (and they made that quite clear) that free choice will mean an even more rapid demise than they're experiencing now. And they're doing whatever it takes to make sure that doesn't happen.




Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle

Pew online Political News IQ survey

Pew have a Political News Quiz up, here, and you can see how you went compared to a national US survey.

I did okay on that:

Here's Your Score: You correctly answered 12 of the 12 possible questions along with approximately 2% of the public. You did better than 98% of the general public.

If you do it, once you get a graph like the above, there are some further links on the left with more information; the link How you did, question by question takes you to a list of which questions you got right or not and the percentage of correct responses on each question from the previous survey.

Why 60 Dem senators is not all that filibuster-proof

There's a lot of noise about Arlen Spector's move to the Dems, which along with Al Franken (when he finally gets there, probably some time in 2011) makes for 60 democratic Senators.

But 60 democratic senators, while it sounds filibuster-proof, is nothing of the kind.

If the democrats try to rely on those 60 votes, where does the power lay? With the right-leaning democrats. It hands blue dogs the ability to bring on a Republican filibuster any time they have an issue that they want their own way on... and I don't imagine they won't use it a few times.

They can't do it *every* time, but that doesn't mean that they can't do it at all. If there's something they *really* want, you can bet that's a bargaining chip they know they hold. Even if they don't actually use it, the threat may be enough to get them what they want at the bargaining table.

Let's wait and see how it all pans out.

58 down, two to go.

Stevens is behind Begich by 814 votes. With mostly Begich-heavy count left, Stevens is not going to pass him.

The only question remaining: whether Begich can (roughly) double that lead and avoid a petition for a recount (not that a recount would flip it).

End of mandatory detention

A few days ago the Rudd government in Australia decided to end mandatory detention for asylum seekers while their applications for asylum are processed. This can be a very long process, often taking years.

This is great news; it ends a period of appalling treatment of people who in many cases have already suffered a great deal.

Be careful what you wish for

One thing the Republicans have done over the past couple of decades is increasingly polarize the electorate, and really put effort into the politics of hate. That's a popular strategy with totalitarian governments, because it gets people looking the direction you want them to (anywhere but at what you're actually doing).

It worked, as it usually does. Among other things, they pandered to what they call "values voters". The thing is, people on both "sides" of politics (an oversimplification if ever there was one) vote their values. The Republican fear-mongering grabbed a bit of the middle as well, and so it worked well - a die-hard core plus a good chunk of the ordinary everyday person, at the expense of the people who are less likely to vote for you will get you power - for a time.

But the problem is that the people they have upset the most are growing, while the people that they're relying on are both shrinking and abandoning(1) them(2) in revulsion(3). Young voters, in particular, are increasingly secular, and that's a problem for Republicans, because they have attacked the secular and their values at every turn.

The Republicans are beginning to reap what they have sown.

Blogger Nate at FiveThirtyEight talks about the problem McCain has with nonreligious voters.

The religious only slightly favour McCain over Obama. The nonreligious overwhelmingly favour Obama. As time goes on, unless the Republicans move toward the centre, they're going to increasingly lose the now-secularizing middle, and their history of vile attacks on them won't be quickly forgotten. If they do move toward the centre, they'll lose what remains of the right-wing evangelicals. Things are not looking good for the Republicans in the next 3 or 4 elections, unless they can completely reinvent themselves. I don't think they'll be able to do it.

They could stew for a generation in the cesspit they've dug for themselves - and they'll still stink less than they do now.

Weekend news

A couple of items from the local news over the weekend:

Obama has the confidence of people in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia and is strongly preferred as president over McCain

"In Australia, 80 per cent of participants said they had confidence in Senator Obama, against 40 per cent for Senator McCain. Similar results were reported from Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Tanzania."


The secretive religious group at the heart of US politics

"The Family organises Washington politicians into intimate "prayer cells", influences foreign policy, inspired the creation of the president's annual prayer breakfast in 1953 and sponsored George Bush's faith-based 2001 policy of transferring social welfare responsibilities to religious groups."

Read about them, and be scared. Or angry. Or both. But know they they're there, and they may well be behind a lot of what you really hate about what goes on in US politics. They're the elitists we should be fighting against.