What is that country coming to? #6587

To shield their children from "the homosexual agenda" some people would be happy enough to audit school textbooks and lesson plans for signs of "promoting the gay lifestyle" and have them stricken from the curriculum. For others, that's not nearly enough. At a school in North Carolina, the school board has voted to ban Gay/Straight alliances from forming within the school.

Board members voted 7-0 in favor of Jim Shuping's motion to ban all sexually-oriented clubs — gay, straight or otherwise — and to address any student's emotional issues concerning sexuality with guidance counselors.

Shuping later added to the motion — at the recommendation of attorney Don Sayers — that the existence of such a club would "materially and substantially interfere with the orderly conduct of educational activities in school," a clause that makes banning it legal under the federal Equal Access Act.

Essay question for Mr Shuping:

How does the presence of a Gay/Straight alliance materially and substantially interfere with the orderly conduct of educational activities in school?

Brian Johnson, whose children will attend South Rowan, said a public high school was no place for a Gay/Straight Alliance.

"Take a stand for what you believe is right," he told the board. "If it comes down to a lawsuit, there will be help for that."

And I'm in complete agreement with Ed Brayton over at Dispatches, where I first heard about this sorry state of affairs...

A lawsuit is being prepared to challenge the school board's decision. And I'm going to make this prediction: the school board is going to lose and it's going to lose badly. In fact, I predict that the case will result in summary judgement for the plaintiffs and that will be upheld on appeal. This one isn't even close, nor should it be.

But as some commentators to Ed's post noted, it's a win-win situation for the bigots, as a crushing defeat in court provides the perfect opportunity to cry "Help! Help! Us God fearin' Christians is bein' persecuted by them godless liberal judges again!"

Janet's Test of Aussiness

Guess what! Janet Albretchsen thinks a test of “Australian values” is a good idea…

MAYBE, just maybe, the long, slow surrender is over. Instead of raising hewhite flag through silence, more political leaders are realising that not enough is being done to defend Western values. Last week, it was Andrew Robb's turn.

At the Sydney Institute, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs suggested that immigrants to Australia should pass a new citizenship test. From the reaction in some quarters, you'd think he wanted immigrants to recite verbatim, in a plum Tory accent, Robert Menzies' speech on Freedom in a Modern Society. Or recount word-perfect the first three chapters of Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

No, Robb had something less exacting on his mind. He flagged the need for immigrants to have a more functional level of English and an understanding of Australian values.

OK , tell me this. What form should this “citizenship test” take? An essay question? Multiple choice? What score does an applicant need in order to prove they’ve got what it takes? Can an applicant appeal their results? Can an applicant re-sit the exam? What’s to stop some naughty immigrant from sitting the test and then telling his naughty immigrant-to-be mates overseas what was on the test so that they can read up on those topics? These are important questions, and you can guarantee all those cheering on the comments of Andrew Robb probably don’t have the answers.

Immediately, Robb's proposal was subjected to the standard leftist values guessing game. Speaking for the Sikh community, Bawa Singh Jagdev told the ABC's AM program: "I don't understand very much what do they mean by Australian values." Federation of Islamic Councils president and long-time Australian citizen Ameer Ali said he had no problem with universal values, "but when you say Australian values, no one knows what those values are".

It was a predictable response and neatly proved Robb's point: that Australian values are not proclaimed enough to new immigrants.

Interesting theory. Bawa Singh Jagdev and Ameer Ali don’t know what Australian values are because Australian values haven’t been “proclaimed enough” to them. Janet knows that Bawah Singh Jadev and Ameer Ali are indicating that there is not some sort of official “approved values list” lying around somewhere carved into a stone tablet ten commandments style, but of course that doesn't fit her thesis.

Robb defined Australian values as including core Western values such as "our respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, our commitment to the rule of law, our commitment to the equality of men and women", then added some particularly Australian attributes such as "the spirit of the fair go, of tolerance and compassion to those in need".

OK, so if these are the values we're talking about, and an immigrant can recite these in a test situation, how does this guarantee that they’ll be a good citizen? Anyone can rattle off these sorts of ideas while actually holding conflicting beliefs.

Immigration Official: “OK sir, before we grant you citizenship, can you tell me what a few Australian values are?”

Hateful Chauvinistic Racist Xenophobe: “Oh you know – spirit of the fair go, tolerance, commitment to the rule of law. All that sort of stuff really”.

Immigration Official: “Correct! You’re in! Here’s your certificate."

Hateful Chauvinistic Racist Xenophobe: “Thanks!” (Chuckles evily).

I also find it amusing that Janet “Hooray for locking up asylum seekers for years on end” Albretchsen seems to agree with the “tolerance and compassion to those in need” value mentioned by Andrew Robb. Clearly, naming a value and acting in accordance with it are two entirely different things.

The rest of the article pretty much goes onto the standard whinging about Marxism in schools and Universities – pretty much an exercise in Donnellyist rhetoric.

In a nutshell, those making calls for an “Australian Values Test” are just singing from the right-wing nationalist hymn sheet. It’s the same people who think it should be compulsory for Australian flags to be flying above every Australian school and that flag burning should be a criminal offence. Who knows, perhaps they’ll take a leaf out of the books of Peter King and Jim Ryun, two Republican (gasp!) congressmen seeking to ensure that the recitation and singing of the Pledge of Allegiance, National Anthem and new citizens' oaths is in English only.

Akerman's Cult of Death

When the comedy act that is Andrew Bolt's column gets a little stale I occasionally turn to the Daily Tele and have a gander at Piers Akerman's rantings. His latest offering is perhaps sadder than it is funny however. It's called Standing Against the Cult of Death. Who's a member of this cult of death I hear you ask? Osama bin Laden gets an honourable mention, and I don't think too many people would argue with that. But get this: the ideological component of this death cult includes, or is at least tacitly supported by...you guessed it...Fairfax and the ABC...

The well-meaning idiots who embrace the bizarre notions of moral and cultural equivalence and proselytise in ugly, angular sentences of a world in which all values are relative, a world in which there are no truths, play directly into the hands of those who would deny life in their worship of death.

Incredible as it may seem, the left-leaning churches which have forged a toxic pact with the secular environmentally linked organisations are among the first to retreat in the war against this cult of death.

Politically correct media organisations like the ABC and the Fairfax newspapers also engage in ludicrous contortions in their efforts to avoid branding the enemy as such, preferring to play semantic games as if there were doubts about whether those who target civilians should be called terrorists or activists. Be assured there are no doubts in the minds of the victims.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Cup of Tea? Lie Down? This article is straight out of the RWDB playbook, basically placing bin Laden and any critic of the way in which this "War on Terror" is being implemented in the same basket. In one breath he complains about "bizarre notions of moral and cultural equivalence" and in the next he equates the crazed ramblings of al-Qaida terrorists with the reporting and opinion found in on the national broadcaster and the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald.

He achieves this by putting words in the mouths of others and strawman arguments. Playing "semantic games games as if there were doubts about whether those who target civilians should be called terrorists or activists"? Who, on the pages of The Age, or the Sydney Morning Herald, or the ABC, has argued that thoise who murder civilians would more aptly be referred to as activists? Or which "secular environmentally linked organisation" (WTF!?) do they belong to?

Throw in a few conservative catch phrases like "politically correct", close with a "support the troops" and you've got the perfect Murdoch right-wing pundit column.

It's so boring.