The Death Rattles of a Dying Government
The next two and a half months will see the greatest Parliamentary assault on prolife and Christian family relationships ever experienced in 190 years of the Legislative Council’s existence.
Everything we have fought against and feared is on the agenda of the NSW Parliament. I will refer to half a dozen serious issues. These Parliamentary Bills of the NSW Parliament are the death rattles of a dying State Government. The alliance between the secular Greens and the extreme Socialist left wing of the Labor Party know that there will be a change of Government at the next Election, so the last possible chance of their reform agenda being voted in the House lies in the next two and a half months. The Bills are already on the Notice paper and will stay until we rise for the elections about 1st December. This is their last chance for at least 10 years. They are the death rattles of a dying Government.
The barrage has already started, and we who are pro-family and prolife have already lost the first battle.
We lost the battle against same sex adoption
With 50 years of experience in providing or supporting the care for children, and ten years of unpleasant legal cases against allowing the fostering of children in the care of Wesley Mission Child and Family Care due to our principles over the protection of children who may be adopted or fostered, I opposed this motion to expand the adoption of children into Homosexual and lesbian partnership.
The membership of Family First have been very vocal on this issue. Hundreds of people have contacted me, and thousands of others have signed petitions regarding this issue. I represented their views as strongly as I could. My speech in full is on my website www.gordonmoyes.com
1. The Adoption Amendment (Same Sex Couples) Bill No 2: will have profound impact upon vulnerable people. It is largely a clash between vulnerable people (usually children who have parents unavailable to care for them) and vocal people (usually adult people living in a lesbian or homosexual relationship). The Parliament in the Assembly and in the Legislative Council had only a minority of supporters for a pro-life and pro-family stance.
2. The issue was rushed through Parliament. The Government was happy to see a contentious issue turn away the public attention from its ineffective and dysfunctional governance, and to hide the Government failures from the newspapers. The Government insisted it have precedence over 200 other important bills which have been waiting for months for debate and approval.
3. Support for gay adoptions was part of a pre-announced program of gay rights. This involved an attack by the Greens and members of the Socialist Left of the Labor Party on every aspect of Church’s rights and privileges gained over the years. This attack in the NSW Parliament was continuous, and our efforts to provide exemptions to faith-based adoption agencies occupied hours of vigorous debate resulting in some good amendments. Due to the forceful and sustained efforts of two Labor Party colleagues, Hon Greg Donnelly, a Roman Catholic and Hon John Hatzistergos, an Orthodox believer, supported by opposition and Cross Bench supporters of a pro-life and pro-family position, we were able to get passed two amendments to protect Christian adoption agencies and Christian workers who on conscience grounds refused to provided same-sex adoption services from being charged under the Anti-discrimination Act.
The Assembly had to vote again on these issues. The Assembly did support the changes and the Council passed the bill 23-15.
4. The long term agenda expressed by the homosexual community was to establish the legitimacy of gay families through gay adoption, to enable future attempts to gain gay marriage.
5. It was obvious that Church Priests, Ministers and Pastors were uncomfortable in urging their Members to contact their political representatives to vote against this legislation. It seems too many clergy are fearful of criticism in entering into political debate.
6. Conversely individual Church Members do not have the hesitancy of their Church Priests, Ministers and Pastors because letters, emails and telephone calls flooded into the office of every Politician. Many spoke during the debate of the annoyance of this form of lobbying. Most emails came through automatic computers that sent emails every 40 seconds day and night. One company told me it was sending me 30,000 emails. Another said they had 40,000 email addresses but I do not think they had permission to write on behalf of the owners.
7. Personally, I answered hundreds of these emails with copies of my proposed speech. This resulted in many appreciative responses. My staff replied and read several thousand messages, and replied to each and every one. Many people stated that I was the only Politician who responded, and the only one who straight-out said “No, I will not support this legislation”, and the only one who sent out a copy of my speech. One of my staff suffered from a stress related health breakdown and had to take three weeks rest under medical orders.
Many speakers in the debate compared the results of bad, abusive, non-caring, alcoholic heterosexual parents, with homosexual and lesbian partners, who were always presented as stable, loving and caring people. The comparisons were usually very one sided and unfair.
9. There was no regard from anyone, to what is known as revealed truth. God’s will is regarded as totally irrelevant. Today’s great values are tolerance, and acceptance of whatever anybody believes is right for them. There is a total disregard and rejection of the authority of the Bible. Church leaders, archbishops and the Cardinal have little power. The days of church power have gone.
10. The issue of adoption is always about the rights of the child. The deep issue of gay adoption concerns the rights of adults, to have what they desire. But children are not a commodity to be traded.
11. The number of children available in NSW for adoption is very small only about twenty per annum.
12. Almost every woman in Parliament in both houses voted for gay adoption rights. Is this representative of women in the community? Certainly the view of hundreds of women who contacted us did not share this view.
13. The so-called conscience vote granted by the major parties is not a privilege available to all Politicians. A number expressed privately that they felt pressured by their party to support their leadership by voting as their leader expressed. The Socialist Left of the Labor Party made it very difficult for pro-life and pro-family members to vote according to their conscience.
14. There was great interest in the public gallery. Support groups from both sides were sighted in the Chamber through both days and nights.
15. The close votes obtained should have led to retaining the status quo. The Government and Clover Moore had no mandate to change fundamental legislation that involved a major social experiment in young lives.
16. Advocates of same sex adoptions and marriage describe themselves as progressive, open minded, enlightened and pressing forward. Those who advocated a mum and a dad as a right for each child were presented as old fashioned, reactionary, and often as religious bigots.
I believe that Christians will be likewise troubled by more pieces of legislation before Christmas attacking Christian rights and beliefs.
It is time every Christian became active at every level of political involvement, in prayer and financial support.
The issue of child pornography and abuse has not gone away
Last March the community was united in its rage against Bill Henson’s photographic display of nude girls. The charges were eventually dropped. We sought to change the Crimes Act 1900 as it relates to child pornography. Artistic purposes were removed as a defence to child pornography charges. Once such material has been found to be unlawfully pornographic, whether or not it is intended to be art is irrelevant.
But we now must work to reduce the amount of this abhorrent material available to anyone with access to a computer. Our opponents oppose any kind of filtering of computer transmission, now also available on Smart phones.
I asked the Attorney General to consider taking the opportunity presented by the bill to improve the law on child pornography by amending the definition of a child for the purpose of these offences from “a person who is under the age of 16 years” to “a person who is under the age of 18 years”.
It is one thing for a child aged 16 or 17 to consent to sex; it is another thing for offensive pictures of a 16- or 17-year-old child to be taken in a sexual context and circulated. Such pictures may remain permanently available on the Internet. The Commonwealth offences treat any person under 18 as a child.
There is a Bill to legalize assisted suicide
Assisted suicide is as old as humanity; it is not a modern phenomenon and the controversies around it are not new. The Hippocratic Oath, written by the “father of medicine”, the Greek physician Hippocrates, and sworn to by new physicians for the past 2,400 years, specifically states, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan”. This was written because the temptation has always existed to end life when it is seemingly unbearable.
The way suicide advocates see it is that everyone should be allowed to decide when and where his or her life ends, as long as there is a framework of safeguards to protect people who do not want to die. In some jurisdictions aid in dying is legal while suicide, whether assisted or not, is illegal.
In May last year, the Dying with Dignity Bill 2009 was introduced by the Greens into the Tasmanian Parliament. We remain totally committed to the principle of the sanctity of human life and to the provision of the best palliative care for the terminally ill.
Thirty years ago, I set up a palliative care centre both home based and hospital based. My particular concern is always for the vulnerable aged as well as the disabled of all ages. Because the profound fear of being a burden upon others is a major risk for suicide, assisted suicide must not be offered as an easy option. If assisted suicide were to be legalised there would be unbearable emotional, psychological and social pressure for so-called socially useless people to allow themselves to be killed, so that the resources they are using up could be used instead for the able bodied. There are already too many cases of elder abuse, by the young or by unscrupulous lawyers or financial advisors trying to get hold of older people’s property and money. Imagine the pressure that could be used by those same people against an old person dependent upon them! The vulnerable person could be methodically and relentlessly cajoled, threatened or tricked into signing the request form for assisted suicide.
This year, the party that I represent, Family First, plus others defeated a similar bill in the South Australian Parliament. There is one such bill coming this month in the Western Australian Parliament.
In NSW such a Bill is on our Notice paper and I place on record that I will commit myself to oppose euthanasia in New South Wales. I believe that we must be always compassionate by protecting the vulnerable, and that that is our duty: to protect and support them, not to lead them into death.
This is another death rattle of a dying Government.
There is a Motion to de-criminalize abortion
The Macquarie Dictionary defines abortion as “the removal of a foetus from the mother’s womb before it is viable”. My definition comes from the Bible: “You shall not murder.” Exodus 20:13; Psalm 139:13
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
There are 100,000 abortions in Australia each year. The total number of abortions in Australia has declined over the last 10 years from around 77,000 to around 73,000 babies most because of the use by teenagers of contraceptives and the morning after pill. But there has been an increase in abortions among women aged 35+.
There are 800 abortions each week in NSW, 40,000 annually. There are 2 aborted babies for every 5 born. In NSW an abortion is not ‘unlawful’ if the accused has an honest and reasonable belief that an abortion would avoid serious risk of danger to the woman’s life or physical or mental health based on ‘economic, social or medical grounds or reasons’. But 98% of abortions are for convenience (these reasons do not include medical purposes, rape or foetal deformities).
This week the Government seeks approval to indefinitely continue the Kings Cross Injecting Room
Here again the Greens and the Socialist Left of the Labor Party, want to prop up their public support among a minority in society. The injecting Room is to be a permanent fixture and no longer a trial.
It was rejected first by the Wayside Chapel, then St Vincent’s Hospital but then accepted by the Rev Harry Herbert, from the left wing of the Uniting Church, against the wishes of members and ministers.
The ALP is adopting the “permissive agenda of the Green political party –first the homosexual Relationship Register Bill, second the homosexual Same Sex Adoption Bill, then the proposed Surrogacy Same Sex Bill and now the Kings Cross Injecting Room” said Rev Fred Nile MLC this week.
I have opposed this injecting room from the very first day because the answer to people abusing themselves by injecting heroin and other opiates is not to oversight the initial injection then leave them, but to properly support all of the alternative treatment and care programs that do not require the continuous use of deadly drugs. The injecting room simply allows people to die in some other premises after they leave.
But the Greens and Socialist Left of the Labor Party have united again because they know if they cannot pass this Bill in the next two and a half months it will be a least ten years before it can come up again. The death rattles of the dying Government is designed to get Green Party preferences for the next NSW State Election on 26th March, 2011?
Next on our agenda in Parliament is the Surrogacy Same Sex Bill
Again another permissive plan to promote the homosexual agenda and to defeat the Christian concerns of pro-life and pro-family supporters. It would involve allowing same sex partners to have children by paying the expenses of surrogate mothers. Babies to order at cut price!
Then there will be before Parliament a move to replace Special Religious Education with Secular Ethics Classes
This is another attempt to hijack the Christian role in society by marginalizing Christianity then other religions. The method is to have the Government support a body snatching exercise of children out of scripture classes into secular classes. Make sure any opposition parliamentarian knows your opposition to keep them strong. I have already and spoken against this death rattle of a dying government and will continue to do so.
I recently advocated safe baby havens and because of a press release I put out, spoke on many radio programs. I have done the same against the sexualization of young girls, and the need for Zoe’s law and Nichole’s Law which I will support if we ever get them to debate. I have spoken and written extensively against using foetus for stem cell research. All of these are available on www.gordonmoyes.com
We have a fragile few who uphold prolife battles. We are always prepared. Always active. Always determined. I am the only pro-life and pro-family member of the Legislative Council coming up for re-election. If I am not elected, our numbers will fall to an unsustainable level.
I ask pro-life people to make sure this doesn’t happen. The only way this can happen is for you and your friends and organizations to vote ONE for the prolife candidate then the other parties of your choice. But do not vote for a major party, then the prolife candidate, as this will defeat the prolife Candidate and most likely elect a pro choice candidate. The pro life candidate must get your No 1 vote.
REV THE HON. DR GORDON MOYES AC MLC