I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

You do not work for an employer so what would you know about the Industrial Relations and Work Choices Laws which the so called Christian Liberals have shoved down our throats. We have had a leader for 11 years who takes full responsibility for the good but denies knowing anything about it when things go awry. The Children Overboard issue and AWB scandal, etc, are good examples of this. His latest backflip is that he never uttered the promise to keep interest rates at record lows, eventhough he featured on the ads himself and used it as a platform at the last election. John Howard would go to any length to win the election, even if it means lying through his teeth. If these are the traits of a true Christian I am ashamed to be called one.

We are talking about preventing abortion when our Christian Prime Minister is instrumental in killing thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan and putting the lives of our own soldiers at risk. Would you or any of your followers be so adamant in voting him in again if it was your son who was at the war front? Guess not!!!!

We have seen enough of what John Howard is made of. now it is time for a change. Vote Kevin Rudd and give him a chance to prove himself.

Is it the supposedly “Judeo-Christian values” of the Liberal Party that are behind our involvement in the war in Iraq which has seen conservatively 700-800,000 innocent civilians killed? We certainly should support the right to life of unborn children but what about the right to life of living children in Iraq and Afghanistan? Are they of less value? More die every day and the coalition government refuses to withdraw the involvement of our troops. Why do we persist in thinking that “Judeo-Christian values” only relate to matters of personal morality? To state that 60-70% of Labor Party members hold to “totally anti-Christian, extreme left wing ideologies” is outrageous. What planet does this guy live on? Is he saying they’re all Communists? The Labor Party is about as centre-right as any party can be without being the Liberal Party!

As for Labor “supporting homosexuals” what are we supposed to do? Hate them? Marginalise them? Why shouldn’t gay people have the same civil rights as other people? Perhaps we should put them all in special enclosures or make them wear a little symbol so we can identify them and single them out for special treatment. Rudd has made it clear that under a Labor government there will be no change to the Marriage Act that defines legal marriage as a union between one man and one woman for life. The Christian community does not believe that homosexual practice is in keeping with Christian moral and ethical teaching. That is our affair, and we have our own house to keep in order, but we can’t enforce that teaching on the general population, any more than we can make it a law that all Australian citizens must attend church! Let’s face it friends, we live in a liberal democracy, not a theocracy or a Puritan commonwealth!

I’m prepared to go on record to say that, in spite of your “prophetic word,” I for one will NOT be voting Liberal in the federal election and I certainly will not be spiritually blackmailed into doing so by a self appointed prophet. I cannot vote for a government that supports an unjust war, that refuses to engage in a genuine act of reconciliation with indigenous Australians, that places economic prosperity ahead of justice, and imprisons refugees in contravention of international law, all of which are contrary to “Judeo-Christian values.”

That probably stems from having postal mail from loved ones and other supplies withheld from us who served in South Vietnam by strikes organised by Australian trade unions. In 1981 I was a victim of the divorce law brought in by Gough Whitlam’s Labor government i.e. divorce for any reason justified by so-called irreconcilable differences. But since I was saved in 1991 at age 53 I have been praying for truth, righteousness and justice in and through government. Since John Howard came to be PM I have seen an increase in the numbers of Christians in Parliament with each election, particularly in the Coalition parties. Now here are some of my comments, observations, and deep concerns for your prayerful consideration: 1. Back in October 2006 Kevin Rudd published a 5,000 essay (Faith in Politics By Kevin Rudd - the Monthly, October 2006) about why Australian Christians needed to be much more involved in Federal politics. He wrote about his concept of “Christian socialism”. The very questionable bottom line of his essay was for Christians to vote Labor so that the Coalition Government (Liberal & the Nationals) could be removed from office and replaced with a Labor Government. A copy of that essay is attached. 2. I believe that the speech that Kevin Rudd delivered to the Christian leaders gathered on the night of 9 August this year in the National Press Club for the Howard-Rudd on-line Web-cast to more than 700 churches, was one which was very carefully crafted to tickle liberal Christian ears. In that speech he professed himself to be a “garden Christian”, whatever that means. I suspect that garden = liberal. His less-than-forthright answers to the questions put from the floor about homosexuality and religious vilification laws rang alarm bells in my spirit. At the conclusion of his speech that night the words that dropped into my spirit were “velvet tongue.” 3. A Christian ethics ministry have previously reported to their network the following statement from the attached 5,000 word essay Faith in Politics by Kevin Rudd to support his attitude toward the sin of homosexuality: Such supporters tend to read down, rather than read up, the ethical teachings of the New Testament, producing a narrow tick-the-box approach to passing a so-called Christian morals test. These tests tend to emphasise questions of sexuality and sexual behaviour. I see very little evidence that this pre-occupation with sexual morality is consistent with the spirit and content of the Gospels. For example, there is no evidence of Jesus of Nazareth expressly preaching against homosexuality. In contrast, there is considerable evidence of the Nazarene preaching against poverty and the indifference of the rich. Who is the Jesus in whom Kevin Rudd professes to have placed his trust? Is He the Biblical Jesus through whom all things were made in the beginning? Is He the Jesus who was with His Father when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, and when the Law was given to Moses, and when God declared the act of homosexuality an abomination? Is He the Jesus who left His Father’s side, was born of woman as a Jew, and then spent 33 years living among the Jewish people who were fully aware that all sexual relations outside marriage constitute sin, the wages of which is death? Is He the Jesus who gave John the apostle the words of Revelation 22:15? 4. Earlier this year when the Federal Labor Caucus appointed Kevin Rudd as Opposition Leader and the ambitious, pro-choice feminist Julia Gillard as his Deputy, I groaned and said to myself “Oh, no! Not again!” Here we have had that same uneven spiritual yoking of a professed Christian leader (Premier Peter Beattie a professed practicing Anglican) with a pro-choice woman as his Deputy Premier whose Emily’s List principles and values place her in an anti-God stance. During his time as Premier Mr Beattie deceived and betrayed the Church in Queensland during the passage of anti-discrimination legislation, and on other occasions clearly betrayed his professed personal faith in Christ. Recently he has suddenly retired from politics leaving his “anointed successor Anna Bligh” to take the reins as Queensland Premier. The apostle Paul clearly warned about the dangers of this uneven spiritual yoking in 2 Corinthians 6: 11-18. 5. a. Last Tuesday morning in the Federal Parliament House a number of Christian ministries combined to host a William Wilberforce Breakfast. During that breakfast attended by some 60 Federal parliamentarians and Christian leaders the Christian hosts presented Appreciation Awards to those Federal Parliamentarians who voted Pro-Life during the passage this year of the un-Godly bills relating to the abortion pill RU486 and the lifting of the previous ban on further research using embryonic stem cells, commonly known as the Cloning Bill. In both bills parliamentarians were allowed a Conscience Vote i.e. they were able to vote according to their conscience rather than along party lines as is the case with all other bills. b. Before that breakfast some brilliant, very careful research was done as to how each of the total of 226 Federal MPs and Senators individually voted on those bills. I downloaded a copy of that research and consolidated it all to see the extent of the Pro-Life vote in each party. The numbers that came out of that consolidation are very revealing, and as Christian voters we really need to take notice of these figures and what they mean about the social values of the various parties. c. There are 226 Federal Parliamentarians - 150 in the House of Representatives and 76 in the Senate. The Coalition Parties in Government (Liberal, Nationals and NT Country Liberal Party) have a total of 126 parliamentarians, Australian Labor Party has 88, Family First Party has 1, Australian Democrats have 4, Australian Greens have 4, and there are 3 Independents. In the table below I have shown the numbers of parliamentarians, by political party, who voted against each of those bills, and in so doing voted to uphold the Biblical sanctity of life i.e. by conscience they voted Pro-Life. I have then converted those numbers into percentages e.g. 50% of Coalition parliamentarians voted Pro-Life on RU486, whereas 11.3% of ALP parliamentarians voted Pro-Life on the same bill:

Party            Total Members       RU486 %       Cloning %

Coalition               126                63 50%        65 51.5%

ALP                      88                 10 11.3%      24 27.2%

FFP                      1     1                100% 1        100%

Aust Democrats        4 0                      0%           0%

Aust Greens              4 0                      0%          0%

Independents             3 2                   66.6%     100%

What those figures reveal is that there is a huge difference in the attitude to sanctity of life of the individual members of the current Coalition government and the ALP Opposition. 6. Under the democracy in this nation we have the privilege of voting to elect a man or woman from the electorate in which we live to represent our electorate and our interests in the Federal House of Representatives. There are times when the interests of our electorate are contrary to the interests of the political party to which our local MP belongs. In every party except Labor our MP could choose to be faithful to the interests of his or her electorate and cross the floor and vote against his or her party’s view on a particular bill, and do that without penalty. However if a Labor MP crosses the floor rather than vote the party way, he or she will be sacked from the ALP. I suspect that ALP rule stems from trade unionism and it makes a mockery of our democracy.
With love in Jesus.