The Adventures of QueerPenguin

Guns for Jesus

For any New South Welshpeople not yet concerned about the RRR (refresher: Rancid Religious Right)'s takeover of the state's Liberal party, or for those who are under the false impression that factional brawling and branch-stacking are only by-products of the ALP, check this out - hard-right Catholic freaks are now flashing hardware to intimidate people in their own party.

This is part of an ongoing assault by the new-wave neocons on what was once, relatively speaking, a more moderate branch of the Liberal party. This is not the first incident of violence filtering into the Libs' internal machine - there was the wild factional brawl at Punchbowl last year that broke out after hard-right baby and new Young Libs president Alex Hawke gained permission to set up a branch in Bankstown as part of a plot to bring down moderate upper house Lib MP John Ryan.

Behind this is the dangerous Bible-bashing MLC David Clarke, who crashed into parliament in 2003 tying his maiden speech to the debate that was then happening on the Bill to equalise age of consent laws in NSW. Some of his more disturbing pulpit preachings include sycophantic praise for Fred Nile, informing us that "family" is a "God-given institution" (funny, I don't remember having to get a stamp from him when I was born into my family) and fear-mongering that "children raised in homosexual households are more likely to experience gender and sexual disorders".

Ordinarily, such a raving, hate-filled hypocrite could be dismissed - after all, most mainstream political parties have their token bashers. What's scary, however, is that Hawke - the YL president - is this man's protege. This sort of homophobia is part of the future direction of the NSW Libs, not just its past. I don't particularly like John Brodgen but to his credit he's been, again relatively speaking, a fairly consistent moderate on important issues (eg he supported the equalised age of consent) and at times actually appears more centre/left by comparison to Bob Carr and some of his posse. He's precisely the sort of man the neocons want to bring down internally, and how better to do this than bring along guns to the odd local party meeting to freak out similarly moderate Libs?

For more on the evils of the RRR, see Terry Lane's prediction of its rise as Australia once again emulates the US. Marion Maddox's God Under Howard is on my bedside table waiting to be read, second in the queue immediately behind The Corrections (I know, I know, TC is like so 2001). Lane asks:

When Peter Costello and John Howard turn up at Pentecostalist "prosperity" churches, apparently endorsing the new version of the Gospels that proclaims that God makes the good rich, are they attending as true believers or are they cynically appealing to a new constituency?

Cynical voter manipulation by the Libs? I won't hear of it.

posted by Sam @ Tuesday, April 19, 2005