It's come to my attention that the god-bothering population of NSW is currently engaged in a letter writing campaign in a poorly thought-out and somewhat transparent attempt to stymie the planned Secular Ethics class trial currently kicking off in NSW.
Our theistic Premier, Kristine Keneally, has already, it seems, decided that churches are qualified to "vet" a secular ethics class, despite this being far from their specialist subject. Now the churches are attempting a grassroots DDoS campaign to convince MPs that secular ethics are evil and must be stopped.
Chrys Stevenson writes:
Important for Australian atheists/secularists - the Christian rent-a-crowd have been busy inundating NSW MLC Penny Sharpe's inbox, pleading with the government to kill the NSW ethics classes so they won't compete with scripture classes. Let's let Penny know that there is widespread support for the ethics classes in NS...W. Here's the page to contact her by email: http://pennysharpe.com/contact
Or you can tweet her at PennySharpemlc
Or send her a message on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pennysharpemlc
Go to it guys! Let YOUR voices be heard!
Frankly, I agree. We need to be fighting back against this nonsense.
For my part, the only reason I think the Theist Front of NSW is doing this is because they know that if secular ethics are placed on their rightful equal footing in schools, they'll lose their most important indoctrination channel. The children of apatheists, non-christians and weak christians get herded into christian scripture classes by default, since it's currently an opt-out scheme, and they know if an ethics class is available, the churches will start losing subscribers as well as (more)credibility.
This nonsense must stop. Public schools are not a platform for proselytisation, and as long as children of non-theist parents have to put up with this, we'll keep figting against it.
And let me make this clear: This isn't just an issue for atheist parents, agnostic parents and progressive theistic parents. This is an issue for anyone who does not subscribe to the big-church idea of scriptural morality. If you have children in NSW schools, if you have relatives in NSW schools, if you ever plan on *having* children go to NSW schools or if you just want to see the next generation growing up with half a clue about ethics beyond biblical morality, this is an issue for you.
Start writing.
posted @ Thursday, April 15, 2010 1:26 PM