Last night I went along to the forum organised by the Australian Christian Lobby. I’ve already talked about some of the questions here on the site a bit, so I will try to focus more on the evening itself.
There was a great turnout — Mal Nairn auditorium was almost full, which is unusual for Mal Nairn. I was sitting between David Tollner and Maurice Foley; the upshot is David shared his jokes with me which lightened the evening a bit.
My first problem was that I had mucked up my preparation. A few weeks ago I attended the Women’s Network NT candidate forum and was under-prepared for the 15 minutes speaking time they offered us. This time I was thoroughly prepared. I went over the party’s responses to the ACL questionnaire, did some research on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and even looked up some biblical quotes for my speech.
It is a pity then that I had 15 minutes worth of notes for 5 minutes allowable speaking time.
In essence I wound up skipping a lot of the detail; and taken out of context the quotes I’d picked were a bit preachier than I’d been aiming for. At length the speeches drew to a close and we had questions from the crowd put to us.
In general those questions followed the questions asked in the questionnaire. And I pretty much put the party position on the issues. It was easy because I agree with it. It was hard because I could tell that the crowd thought I was wrong, wrong, wrong.
I also have to say that I admired Trish Crossin’s answers to some of the questions. To explain what I mean, have a look at the questionnaire linked above. A lot of the questions are dog-whistles; questions ostensibly about policy settings which are really about values. The phrasing of such questions makes it easy for politicians to speak in code in a way that seems favourable to those interested in the values question. When a question came up about Emily’s List, Sen. Crossin didn’t hide its purpose or values. And when medicare funding for abortion was discussed, she flatly stated that she supports a woman’s right to choose without fluff or prevarication.
After the official close I took some time to circulate and get feedback. A lot of it was of the “respect your turning up but disagree” variety, which was what I had expected. One couple were real evangelicals and hit me with hard questions on what I believed.
You see, in a way I chickened out. I had originally decided that I would not hide my atheism. I am usually wary to tell Christians that I’m an atheist because it can seem like a slap in the face, a bit like mockery. But I also felt that I should be as honest and open with the crowd as possible. In that respect I failed.
Where I also failed was in giving good examples of Christian libertarians. In particular I ought to have talked about Ron Paul, the Republican running for that party’s 2008 presidential nomination. He’s both a devout Christian and strict libertarian. In practice the people who turned out would have been better off with someone like him, instead of someone trying to cross a very long bridge of understanding.
I think I mostly earned sixes for my efforts, but it was important to turn up. I hope I’ve gotten a few people to consider the merits of a society oriented to liberty and the compatibility of Christianity and liberal-libertarian philosophy. We’ll see come election day.
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