secular party – Cate Speaks

So, we’ve seen various shades of Christian Right, a couple of flavours of patriotism ranging from the mildly xenophobic to the outright racist, some libertarians, and, of course, our good friends over in the world of legalised drugs. Now for something completely different, we have the Secular Party.

I have to admit, this lot make me uncomfortable, which is interesting, because so do all the Christian parties. The right wing Christians make me wince because they seem to be at their loudest when promoting the most un-loving and un-compassionate policies they have, and I want to keep saying, look, we aren’t all like that. But the secularists also make me uncomfortable, because while I absolutely do think that religion has no place in government, I find it frustrating when people assume that I must be either stupid or complicit in my own oppression. (I’m actually not particularly oppressed by my religion, thank you.) It’s possible that I have been spending too much time reading the words of internet atheists, who seem to be an entirely different breed to the totally lovely atheists I know in real life.

And now we have a complete change of pace – moving from the Christian Democrats a by the very big, very established Labor party, we find ourselves at the Secular Party, a party that is brand new and very far from the fundamentalist Christian parties… or is it?

The Secular Party’s preferences are pretty good – Democrats, Sex Party, Greens, Carers Alliance and eventually Labor. The bottom of the ticket, unsurprisingly, is reserved for the Christian Democratic Party, with Family First and the Democratic Labor Party directly above them. They aren’t too keen on the Climate Sceptics either.

I should probably say up front that while I went to their site wanting and indeed expecting to quite like this party, I found that I did not, in fact, care for them. They are so very smugly superior that I want to slap them. For example

Unlike the major parties, we have no allegiance to the sectional interests of labour or capital. The Secular Party bases its economic policies on judgements concerning the long-term public interest and in the interests of global humanity.

Because the other parties are just too caught up in their preconceived notions, but *we* actually use our minds in an objective fashion. Sure.

I like their social justice policies and their left-wing worldview, but in all honesty on the subject of religion they remind me rather strongly of the Christian Democrats. They, too, are convinced that they are in possession of the only correct world view, and while other (ie, religious) worldviews should be tolerated, they must always be subordinate to secular interests and are, in truth, considered to be rather dangerous. In short, this group for me verges on fundamentalist, and their tone is condescending towards people of other beliefs, and they manage to irritate me even when they are being reasonable. So I’m not sure how objective I can be here.

Anyway, here’s one of their less annoying opening statements:

Continue reading

Tag: secular party

Victorian Senate Group I: Let’s get Secular!

Politics: Federal Election – Meet the Secular Party

Pages

Blogroll

My Other Sites

Meta