It is desirable and appropriate that politicians with a religious commitment are elected to office in Australian politics, while also at times keeping separate their professional roles from private convictions for the sake of constituents and members of the community who do not belong to that faith.
It is altogether different when a religious faction demands followers infiltrate a range of parties’ branches and structures to bend them to their authoritarian will.
When Peter Killin was preselected for the Liberal Party for the Victorian seat of Wills in 2019, he had minoritarian goals. On a “conservative” blog, he had written: “My suggestion is to change a party from within: 1. Infiltrate 2. Influence 3. Impel. Pray and Do.”
In another post, Killin labelled the moderate Liberal faction that has held office repeatedly in more progressive Victoria as “termites” that need to be removed, bringing “good Godly” candidates in. Killin was particularly exercised about homosexuals in the party whom he did not want being preselected; he was dropped by the Liberals after it was revealed he had referred to Tim Wilson as a “notorious homosexual.”
Killin’s more detailed plan for infiltration was later leaked to the public.
As governments make it harder for minor parties to function, the radical Right or ultra-conservative members cut adrift have targeted the traditionally conservative parties to colonise and change.
Victorians have been warned about the plans leaked to the press in which extremist “micro church” leaders are instructing followers to join political branches and to infiltrate party structures. These churches function as high control cults. The system struggles to protect branches from attack when the congregants pay for their own membership.
We have seen the same crisis at work in South Australia.
Anecdotally, such preachers have expressed the plan for their members to work to infiltrate all parties and options for power. Community independents and Greens should take note. Anti-trans attitudes might be a strong warning of an infiltration at work.
As is apparent in Killin’s story, anti-LGBTQIA+ goals are critical to the project. Trans people present a most vulnerable and visible target for the start of such a winding back of Queer equality. White supremacist activists, the Catholic Church and a strand of feminism have all interconnected to make trans people seem a legitimate target in dangerous displays of opportunism and disinformation. This campaign erases the omnipresence of gender variety throughout human societies and the much greater biological complexity of gender than is taught in high school biology.
The Presbyterian Church in Australia has been a driving force fighting any effort to limit its commitment to gay conversion “therapy” which has been labelled a form of torture. It founded the “Church and Nation” committee which was involved with establishing the multi-faith body “Freedom for Faith.” One of their primary goals has been protecting the churches’ ability to “save” people from “unwanted homosexuality and gender confusion.” The Church boasts in the record of the 2021 General Assembly that testimonies by grateful Christian “ex-gay” people are “living proof that faith in Christ and loving biblical counselling can transform hearts and lives.” The fact that such people might well reject this sexuality because they are taught by churches to hate it in themselves is not mentioned.
Also at stake with ultra-conservative Christians intentionally concealing goals that strip rights from their fellow citizens are access to abortion, euthanasia and inclusive education that accepts people for themselves.
One person who has emerged from the Presbyterian Church in the Victorian political scene is Moira Deeming. We do not know whether she entered politics as part of a concerted mission by the ultra-conservative Christian groups coalescing against the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill in 2012 or whether her political goals are independent of those decisions in the General Assembly.
In 2019, Deeming was the secretary of Bernie Finn’s abortion abolitionist March for Babies organisation. In the speech at that year’s rally, she repeats the American movement mantra that abortion must be made “unthinkable.”
In 2019 and 2020, Deeming is also listed as a member and described as a “researcher” for the Presbyterian Church’s “Church and Nation” committee.
As part of that role, she is an interviewer on a pro-conversion “therapy” video on the “Free to Change” website where she expresses fears that human rights laws will criminalise “ordinary Christian practice” and make “raising our children according to the Bible illegal.” Deeming and her interviewee, an “ex-gay” woman, bemoan schools “making” children “confused about their sexuality and gender” as well as conveying misinformation about the nature of medical treatment. The video enjoins Christians to go to the “Church and Nation” website to find MPs’ details and to write to them in support of conversion practices.
Deeming was elected as a Councillor to the City of Melton from 2020-2022. There she was active over the divisive issue of transgender people’s ability to use a bathroom when they leave their home. She also fought vaccine mandates and public health decisions. She described the Safe Schools anti-bullying program as created by “pedophilia apologists.” She posited the nonsense argument that schools are “actively trying to change children’s gender and sexual identity, while encouraging gay and transgender students to be ‘really narcissistic’.”
Deeming then resigned and took over mentor and abortion abolitionist Bernie Finn’s state seat after his ultra-reactionary comments led to him being expelled. She declared that she was preselected as a result of “a team effort by Christians” who “joined up and voted according to their consciences.” She describes herself as pondering where the line lies between pushing to “have Biblical morality enshrined in law” and the risk of becoming “hypocritical crushing dictators.”
At that point, Deeming is recorded by the “Church and Nation” committee as resigning her researcher post. It is notable that those same minutes record the committee as discussing “the increasing persecution of Christians in Australia.”
This persecution seems to consist of not being allowed to dictate ways of life for the rest of the state.
In 2020 and 2021, Deeming crafted extremist anti-abortion sermons for “Australia’s largest Christian news site” the Daily Declaration. In 2020, she borrowed the US anti-abortion trope that this fight is equivalent to the abolition of chattel slavery. In 2021, she characterised “each” abortion as a “terrible evil.” The extremity of her rhetoric deserves attention.
Deeming is also noted as standing in opposition to voluntary assisted dying.
Deeming did not know Nazis were coming to the trans rally that created so much grief. (She had apparently ceased the hiring of white supremacists as security detail that is alleged to have occurred the year previous to when she organised the March for Babies rally.) The presence of Neo Nazis, however, was not enough to make Deeming leave the event.
Deeming’s positions are particularly important because Peta Credlin, a strategist for the radicalising Right insurgency within the Liberal Party sees Deeming as leading the party one day.
It has taken 50 years for the fringe anti-abortion issue to become a deadly crisis in America. The importation of Trumpist politics underway in Australia suggests it will not take so long for minoritarian positions to be imposed here.
Deeming’s husband Andrew is an Elder in the Presbyterian Church. He has expressed ultra-conservative positions on LGBTQIA matters on social media. Andrew Deeming has expressed the desire to enter politics too.
Christians have been the majority faith in Australia. It can be hard for some to accept moving from dominant status to just one of many belief systems in a pluralist society. Christians tempted to see themselves as persecuted because they are no longer able to dictate our way of life need to understand the injunction from the rest of us: believe on as long as you do no harm.
It is a form of harm that we will not accept if you aim to force us to live by your religion’s strictures.
This essay was first published at Pearls and Irritations.
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In 1989 Bob Katter infamously claimed that there were no homosexuals living in his electorate of Kennedy in Qld – promising to walk ‘backwards from Bourke to Brisbane’ if any were found.
None were found ! so perhaps Ms Deeming should stand for the Liberals in this seat as being more compatible to her interests – also Kennedy is substantially bigger than the state of Victoria (570,000 sq km compared to 227,600 sq km) that’s a plus.
It’s interesting that these people who decry homosexuality are using as their base, a book/books that were completed about 1500BCE (OT) and 2nd century CE (NT), while homosexuality has been recorded going back to about the 100th century BCE.
In addition, about 500 animal species have been recorded engaging in “homosexual behaviours” including sex, courtship, affection, pair bonding and parenting. Are these creatures also an abomination deserving of punishment? Why did God allow them to evolve I ask myself? Or they also the spawn of the devil?
As for abortion, they are saying that a 12 year old who has been raped or a 15 year old who has “made a mistake”, or a woman carrying a baby that will be severely disabled, should be forced to carry through with the pregnancy.
Allrighty then! Just the people I want to represent me, my daughters, my grandies and my students. NOT!
One “knows” that some extreme religious superstitionists are carrying ruptured, fractured and injured clots within the personality, mentality and ethicality areas of their limited outlooks. A “good” religious person, especially any of abrahamic supremacist racist triumphal exclusivist types, is a rotten and not civilised person in reality. As the fortress seige mentality hardens, all other persons are suspect, even being seen as enemies, savages, heathens, untouchables, outsiders, just “shit.” Is that nice? Is a Deeming type actually “nice”? She is actually quite Wrong, Irrelevant, Undereducated, Illiberal, and to be shunned. We all deserve better…
As candidates begin their campaigns for election, I ask hem several questions, by email or messenger.
Included is a question regarding religious affiliation, and how that will affect their position on abortion, Voluntary assisted dying and sexuality questions.
Those questions are asked at all levels of government.
Sometimes candidates respond.
To quote you: “..This campaign erases the omnipresence of gender variety throughout human societies and the much greater biological complexity of gender than is taught in high school biology….”
I have no particular affinity to any religious sect however our society needs more than sectoral influence to dispel the totally unfounded claims of human gender complexity beyond FEMALE and MALE. There are only 2 biologically determined versions of human gender and therefore no irrational populist ideas as to gender diversity can be substantiated. Surgical intervention to “create” male from female and vis versa should be regarded as criminal medical mal-practice and prosecuted accordingly. Similarly parents who give consent to hormone blockers for their children should be referred for psychiatric assessment. I know I sound radical but this subject has got way out of control and there will be many damaged persons in our future community if it is not addressed. By the way, gender dysphoria has nothing to do with same sex partnerships and and the religious extremists should not be permitted to hi-jack homosexuality between consenting adults as part of their virtue signalling charade.
@ Peter.
Please explain – given your statement about gender complexity and biological gender, ie male (XY) female (XX) – what is happening when someone has:
– Klinefelter syndrome: XXY (males)
– Trisomy x : XXX (females)
– Turner syndrome X (females)
– XXXY syndrome (males)
– XXXXY syndrome (males)
– XXXYY syndrome (males
As well as numerous other genetic disorders that are not, under your definition “normal”.
These people may look “male” or “female”, but may well not be able to reproduce under your definition.
Some of these people do not have either the internal or external body parts to match your assertion.
What about the few people who are born with both ovarian and testicular tissues (ovotesticular syndrome)?
Deeming is another of the jesuit trained pollies of the religion that is by men for men and excludes women.
The god in the bible based books declare women cannot be equal and must defer to the men (in some modern xstians sects a handclapping god gives power to boys on their 12th birthday).
Religiously trained women, in Australia, will join with the trumpish men to remove women’s choice This is now America and if dutton gets in it will be here.
In the abortion debate, I can see a situation where women. who have a god’s abortion, being charged with manslaughter/murder if they were drinking or driving or cycling, running, lifting(other than groceries or furniture) or any activity deemed inappropriate to men.
ps
there are only 4 jesuit schools in Aust check the current and ex-pollie graduates
pps
uncletimrob if you have a ‘y’ you are M if not you are ‘F’ if you are ‘y’less go where you like as M if not don’t be a Khelif
wow, President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, has a message for people who are excusing President Trump’s racism:
“I had fully intended to ignore President Trump’s latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump’s latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal.
But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone’s ‘The Cross and the Lynching Tree’ off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner’s enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was ‘stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.’
God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child.
When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.
Like, I suspect, many others, I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes.
What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump’s divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump’s continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.
Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country’s cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us.”
— Michael Gerson
Firstly I’m entirely supportive of eliminating discrimination on the basis of sexuality or sexual identity.
But I think there are some difficult but legitimate issues regarding the participation of those born as males in women’s sport.
Those that have a male adolescence are likely to be stronger, faster with greater endurance than those that don’t.
It’s probably not a huge issue in participation in social or local/district sports.
It becomes a problem at the state, national and international levels.
I’m familiar with a young woman, who will never be an elite athlete, but gets so much motivation and self belief out of representing the country, even though she only ever finishes mid field.
She is probably one of the last to qualify in the national team.
The idea that a fit 40 year old former male could displace her in the team would be absolutely outrageous.
I had always thought our constitution stated politics and religion were to be kept separate……………..yet more and more we have these religious nutjobs infiltrating our governments and trying to ram their “beliefs” down our throats. It seems nobody is given a choice, we must all follow their ideals. Sounds a lot like a bunch of commies to me.
Good as always, one thinks it’s also a sign of long term weakness and strategic part of right wing coalition shaping and forming for RW votes and/or techniques to suppress votes to the centre right through left; gaming of ageing electorates to prevail.
See generations ago Paul Weyrich of both RNC Republican National Committee and fossil fuel Atlas-Koch Network’s Heritage Foundation introduced abortion or pro-life as a new policy to attract both Evangelicals and Catholics (ex. Hispanics & brown people).
In parallel past decade linked to the US alt right have been both the ‘Traditional Wives’ movement and ‘White Boy Summer’ (think Happy Days & nostalgia), targeting young white European heritage for PR content. However the target or catering is to mass of middle aged and older nativist conservative blokes (who often like(d) Putin too); ditto Rogan et al ‘manosphere’ and ‘intellectual dark web’.
Then, by coincidence we have (as the author discovered) Credlin’s spouse Loughnane some years ago was temporary &/or interim head of the Budapest Danube Inst. partnered with Koch Heritage Foundation (now led by former Thatcher aide, Quadrant correspondent and US National Review’s John O’Sullivan, now Abbott’s lead).
A warning to ‘ultra Conservatives’ (moniker given by Applebaum) is first whiff of Russian influence and implicit shared values of faux family values, Christianism, corruption, fossil fuels, authoritarianism, ‘anti-woke’, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-liberal democracy, anti-west etc.
Outcome? Tone’s mate PM ‘mini Putin’ Orbán is looking like toast due to meeting his match in a new opposition figure, Peter Magyar, amongst middle aged and younger, plus much fatigue from older conservative voters too, why and how?
Overt corruption, faux Christian and family values including church pedophile scandals, health system near collapse, Orbán ‘show boating’ around the world, attacks on EU/west, malign Russian influence and related autocrats (inc. Netanyahu, Trump & MAGA etc).
Magyar has little state managed media access, but has ‘energy’ to cut through using social media, events and targeted stunts for framing around the same issues, that the media cannot ignore….ALP and indies could learn something vs. being on the defensive constantly vs RW MSM.
No, Peter Gumley, parents who refer their children to gender clinics because their children have dysphoria should be praised as good parents! Forcing gender stereotypes onto children is a form of abuse! As always, another right-wing extremist, hanson, has the bull by the tail and it has shit all over her when she spouts the misinformed crap that she does on the issue!
Thanks to UncleTimRob for pointing out the anti-science binary being maintained by Peter. It is fascinating to see how scared some people are by the inherent messiness of life. It must be black and white. Day and night. There is to be no dawn or twilight. Blurring kills boundaries and borders – and that, apparently, is terrifyingly challenging for some. As for sport, it’s truly a non issue. There are so few elite trans athletes, and to compete at that level almost every difference is erased by lengthy hormone treatment. Sport is a furphy, just as the faux-women’s rights campaign is, intended to get well-meaning normies on an anti-LGBTQIA+ trajectory. Note that Trump’s executive order aims to stop all L G and B people as well as trans having recourse if they suffer discrimination because of their sexuality. The attack on trans people marches hand in hand with the attack on reproductive healthcare and slightly in advance of the winding back of LGB rights. We must stand together with well-meaning cishet male allies. Attempts – like the sport thing- to divide us are an ugly game.
On women in sport I noted how Channel Nine interviewer found it necessary to rain on Madison Keys’ parade by asking/telling her in her moment of triumph having won the grand slam that ‘no female has ever lost more games en route to the title than you have she politely responded ‘thank you’.
Where do Nine get get these blokes from ?
Lucy said-
“As for sport, it’s truly a non issue. There are so few elite trans athletes, and to compete at that level almost every difference is erased by lengthy hormone treatment.”
I normally find your opinions quite compelling, but on this occasion I think you’re entirely wrong.
1.Participation of trans women in women’s sport is increasing, as would be expected when community acceptance of diversity and diverse sexuality becomes more widespread.
The options are to do nothing and await a serious backlash that will be particularly hurtful and divisive, or to establish rules, processes and expectations now.
Waiting for a crisis isn’t a solution.
2. There aren’t a lot of studies about the advantage remaining after hormone replacement, but I recall a study involving the US military that showed an advantage of about 2% to 3% years after hormone replacement.
That’s like a 2 metre head start on the 100 metres, of half a lap in the 10,000m.
We have also seen a WA surfing champion win the opens men’s, then a few years later, won the open women’s.
This is an issue that will become increasingly common, and as I said, the do nothing approach will lead to a crisis.
Good question, Terence. The put-down by the Ch9 interviewer was MSM Trade-Craft 101. The last intelligent interviewer on a commercial station was Jeff McMullen back in the mid-late 80s. it’s been downhill since then. YouTube has a 1984 video titled ‘Absolutely Free to be Funny’ featuring a 60 Minutes interview of Osho in the USA that gives an idea of the contrast, then to now. If YouTube has banned the video, try BitChute.
Gumley:
You don’t even know the difference between sex and gender, much less the complexity of how the former is determined. If you want to spout “science”, learn the actual advanced science, not the basic primary school xx = vulva, vagina, uterus, ovaries = female; xy = penis, scrotum, testicles, prostate = male gross over-simplification on which you’re stuck.
These dangerous fanatics plan to make Australia a theocracy. They are a Christian version of the Taliban.
Sport used to be fun, and a way of remaining healthy. Now its been captured by the machinery of greedy money makers who are obsessed and fanatical about concealing their guile, and lies about everything, to prop up their ignorant lowness and trembling fear about their meaningless lives. These desperate proto-celebrities have absolutely nothing to offer anyone, except for more of their type. These narcissistic sociopathic nobodies just have to hate everyone and everything in a desperation to make themselves appear relevant and powerful. As they expect the world to see them as ‘normal’ supremos, they will spare no lengths to subdivide the world right through to minutia to dredge up ‘universal’ hate and determine cringing moral complicity in their image.
Their ultimate threat is revenge, by wreaking havoc, confusion and destruction because they lack any other imagination, and it comes as an easy accomplice to their cowardly absurdity.
Now for the time being sport and everything else has had its fun and joyousness removed by their calculus.