Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on April 30, 2010 at 8:40am

Unfortunately the petition requires that I be a citizen of New South Wales. I am not, nor ever have been. Nevertheless this still concerns me as my husband and I are intending to move to New South Wales on our return from the U.S.A.

Permalink Reply by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on April 30, 2010 at 9:02am

Dear Penny,

Unfortunately the petition requires that I be a citizen of New South Wales. I am not, nor ever have been. I was born in Melbourne and have lived there, in Darwin and in Perth. My husband was born in Perth and has only lived in Western Australia. We both moved to California for Peter's job in 2000.

Nevertheless this still matter still concerns us as my husband and I are intending to move to New South Wales on our return from the U.S.A.

Our child suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a condition which impairs a person's ability to benefit from normal socialization. Ethics classes and social skills training are a crucial component of our son's education. Our stay in the U.S.A. has given us first-hand experience of how much serious damage an exclusive ethical worldview can do in the education system. We want our child to be able to continue to benefit from a partisan free class on ethics, such as the one being provided by his specialist school in the U.S.A. We are very concerned that N.S.W. will try to force a sectarian religious viewpoint on him. We do not want him exposed to ideas which could lead him to the conclusion that any of his subjective feelings, desires or community-sanctioned beliefs are divinely inspired and therefore above question. In the U.S. this type of thinking has led to abortion clinic bombings, the bashing of homosexuals, child torture and death from medical neglect, the rape of children and youths by clergy, the systematic cover-up of these crimes, the impairment of the nation's science education and the persistent and extensive water-board torture of foreigners and nationals deemed to be acting against the dominant religion.

Partisan viewpoints discourage children from seriously evaluating community prejudices. We do not want our child's socialization to be impaired in this manner. He is already socially disadvantaged.

Permalink Reply by Doug on April 30, 2010 at 9:09am

hi Rosemary

I hope you have emaild that to Penny

I am sure she would love the have a copy for her reports

cheers doug

Permalink Reply by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on April 30, 2010 at 9:42am

It's a copy of what I emailed to Penny. I am sorry I missed the stutter-typo.

Permalink Reply by Limber Lightfoot on May 7, 2010 at 10:21am

I just visited a Christian site http://www.makeastand.org.au/campaign/index.stw?campaign_id=32 and they are indeed very organised in their opposition to any ethics/non-scripture alternative to their SRE classes. I may be on the cheeky side but while at their site I took the opportunity to use their own slick "email a polie" generator to find my local MP's email address and shoot of an email. Funnily enough it wasn't along the lines the website suggested!

The auto email I got back was:

Thanks for responding to our "Save our Scripture" Campaign. Your action at this time does influence politicians. Australian Christian Lobby is spending considerable time and money working to win political support for this initiative. If you would like to provide further help by way of a secure online donation, please visit https://www.acl.org.au/donate.

Thanks again,
The Team at ACL

--
You are receiving this email because someone (presumably you) entered your details at the Make A Stand website (www.makeastand.org.au). If you did not submit your details please contact us in the ACL National Office on (02) 6259 0431. Thanks.


We atheists have to organise ourselves into some kind of political force or we will get walked all over, yet again, by these heavily funded theistic organisations. I'm sure Jesus talked about his followers giving their money to the poor but apparently feeding the hungry and housing the homeless isn't as important as keeping my non-scripture daughter doing colouring for 140 hours over the next 7 years instead of actually learning something during scheduled scripture class time at school. I'm so frustrated.

Yes, I'll be printing out the petition and getting signatures!

Limber