Not really friends

I've said before that I don't usually post about politics here.  It's one of those things where everybody is keen to share an opinion and I don't feel I'm usually adding value.  I'll make an exception in this case.

In Victoria, two seats in the legislature are to have by-elections at the end of October.  They are safe Liberal Party seats and it's unlikely that that will change.  However, Catholic voters might want to avoid one party in particular.  No, it's not the Greens.  It's these guys -

Image from here

The Australian Christians party is standing two candidates in these seats: Geoff Rogers and Lillian Len.  I know next to nothing about these two people, and I have no reason to think they aren't worthy of respect.  Their party, however, is another matter.

The Australian Christians are a breakaway from the ultra-conservative Christian Democratic Party.  Through the magic of Facebook, I've gotten to hear what their supporters think of Catholicism in general and Pope Francis in particular.  For example -

 

One might add these gems -

"Catholicism needs to address its own historical crimes of the widespread rape of children by its "leaders". Worse still is the practice of allowing the moneychangers in its central temple to hide and shelter identified criminals from the reach of democratic law. Not until the rapists have been purged and the money redistributed to those who were forced to give it up will I consider Catholicism to be a Christian entity based on the teachings of Jesus". (Comment posted 28 September 2010)

"[Pope Francis] doesn't really want to help the poor, they are setting up socialism and the NWO so are using this as the legal pathway to set up laws with the peoples support. So unbelievable that people are so easily deceived" (Comment posted 26 September 2010)

Realistically, if many of this party's supporters were King-for-a-day, it's not hard to imagine at least some of them might look resentfully at the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1830 (still good law in Victoria, intriguingly!).  Their views on our brothers and sisters who are gay or Moslem are (let us say) fairly predictable.

I'm not a fan of mixing religion and politics: if one mixes vanilla ice cream and pigshit, it's unlikely to improve either.  And to some extent warning people about a party which tends to draw a risible share of the vote seems redundant (it's certainly not worth more than a written-in-ten-minutes blogpost).  However, if you are particularly keen to "vote your values", you should probably look elsewhere.