Humble Wonderful

Friday, October 4, 2013

Jesus and the State of Faceless Men.

This is the third post in a spontaneous blog-conversation with my brother. We’ve been discussing a short passage in John’s Gospel (John 8:1-11). Both I and my brother feel this passage is poorly represented by its usual title of “Jesus and the Adulterous Woman”.

After that we disagree on what the passage is about. It’s fascinating because we are reading the same words. We’re not even disagreeing over translations yet we still read very different things.

In this specific case I think our conflict is more confused than anything. The most important element of my interpretation is to read this story with a similar historical respect to what I use in an old post The Massacre of the Innocents. I’m resisting making a modern and middle class metaphor out of a 1^st century reality by discussing stoning as if it were mere moralizing. After all stoning remains an actual reality in this century too. I know Simon appreciated the sentiments of “The Massacre of the Innocents” so I suspect we don’t have a broad argument with this approach here.

I think we’ve gotten confused because John 8:1-11 is a red flag within certain religious culture wars. Some Christians use this story as if it had a punch line in the phrase “sin no more” – a message to the woman which they turn into a very different message to them selves.

The phrase “sin no more” is used as an example from Jesus to not be silent on naming sin. It even pops up in conversations about homosexuality (Here, for example in the second last red comment). It is treated as a justification for the line of “love the sinner but hate the sin”. The argument goes:

Jesus did not just let the woman go but commanded her to “sin no more”.
Therefore a Christian, while opposing violence against sinners, must also instruct people in what is their sin.

John 8:1-11 is not in my opinion a valid support for that position. To say it is you have to jump over most of the story for one thing. Nor does it need to be. If a Christian wants to bang on about other peoples sins they have biblical examples of Jesus doing just that, far clearer, at other times. Those sins are just most likely to be sins of selfishness, self-importance and hypocrisy (Luke12:13-21, Luke 11:37-53).

Neither is John 8:1-11 however an argument against calling out others sin. It’s easy and tempting to use this story to promote a culture which silences any moralising. Many people have gotten used to translating “stoning” into any form of judgement – even a judging statement that has no power to harm behind it. Then it follows since none of us are without sin we shouldn’t “stone” others by saying anything about their wrong doing.

There are other verses that can make a biblical case for something like that position (Matt 7:1-5), but this story is not one. This is because this story involves the prevention of wrong doing. At the beginning of the story the woman is to be stoned, at the end she is not. In our consideration of how Jesus achieves this we shouldn’t ignore what is achieved. We can’t use this story as some sort of encouragement to ignore the moral actions of others and focus only on our own. That would be the result of a story in which Jesus told the men, “Don’t ask me about stoning her, do what you want,” or even where the Jewish men’s total religious freedom to follow their law was defended.

What I’ve just said merely reprises my previous comments. If you have read the two previous posts then you may think all I have to say is what this story is not. I’ve hesitated to express what I think it is actually teaching – and how that’s relevant to me – because it’s a big deal. It answers some questions I’ve grappled with for a long time –from an anarchist perspective in particular.

I hope you’ll tolerate a little back grounding to what I think this story teaches first.

The Kingdom of God.

The teachings of Jesus are the teachings of a Jewish teacher from the first century and as such they have to grapple with the greatest Jewish question of their time. The Jews were a conquered people. Much like today, the power of a civilization was seen as the proof of its religion and philosophy. How then could Israel, the Jewish nation, be God’s Kingdom on Earth, and yet under pagan rule?

The implications of pagan power (first the Greeks before the Christian Era and then the Romans) were many. Upon entering Jerusalem only sixty-three years before Jesus’ birth, the Roman army had massacred twelve thousand Jews with very few Roman losses. The Romans controlled the most important position of Jewish religion, the High priest of the Temple and the most important Jewish secular authority, the Jewish King. It was a total defeat.

Any Jewish movement in the first century had to speak to Roman power over the Jews. The obvious answer was that God’s Kingdom was a lie and the Jews were just one more people who could be conquered like any other. Jewish cultural survival depended on forming a philosophical resistance to that idea.

Some 1st century Jews would have remained committed to a physical empire as the only idea of a kingdom. There were certainly supporters of military rebellion. Recent history helped their case; the Greeks had not so long before been thrown off by a violent revolt. Israel had then returned its empire to its own historic height. In fact even today Hanukkah still celebrates the re-consecration of the temple by Jewish guerillas in the Maccabean revolt of 165BCE. By God’s will this had succeeded. Was God just waiting for Jewish courage to bring such a military victory against the Romans?

Others would have emphasised that to be God’s people meant to be faithful to his commands. Perhaps God would intervene for God’s own glory when their people kept their side of the covenant (agreement with God) or perhaps merely obedience was its own reward. Maybe the covenant defined the kingdom rather than borders and city walls. This view assured the Jewish nation’s resilience. After all if God’s kingdom was defined by the covenant, then a single faithful Jew (a contemporary Noah or an Abraham) could preserve it – even as temple and citadel were overrun.

Jesus was a part of this discussion. He also claimed that the capacity to be in God’s Kingdom was not distant in the future but immediately possible. In this regard he was in agreement with the covenant keepers.

Jesus recognized (along with others in his time) that lawyers twisted the laws of the covenant to make life harder for people. They hid injustice with it. Jesus wanted the law to be a tool for justice and ultimately subservient to the purpose it was meant to fulfill. In just one example he claimed that the Sabbath was made for peoples sake, not people for the Sabbath. The purpose of the Sabbath was to give workers a day of rest – but lawyers had turned it into an onerous obligation. (Luke 6:1-11) In naming this Jesus would have made both political allies and enemies of his peers.

Jesus may have seemed “soft on sin” for his friendships with sinners and his enjoyment of food and wine. (Luke 7:34). He certainly wasn't an ascetic. However he was far harder than the religious institutions of his time on specific sins like wealth, hypocrisy, and in-hospitality Perhaps the biggest “sin” this teacher spoke about was choosing to ignore the suffering of others.(Matt 25:31-46, Luke 10:25-37)) Jesus was talking about a very high standard of collectivism and asked it of a conquered people who must have felt tempted to just look after their own individual survival.

Jesus also extolled a spirit of fearlessness. Rather than allowing poverty or persecution to cow him, this teacher told his followers to embrace both in the confidence that God provides. His movement proposed non-violent separation from Rome rather than violent conflict, but that separation was not physical. It was a renouncement of the values of Rome – both the pursuit of gross luxury and its glorification of military victory – for the embrace of poverty and the love of enemies. Jesus wanted the Jews to act as people of God even towards and among their pagan oppressors.

Dangerously, it seems Jesus’ followers referred to their teacher as a king and received him with messianic anticipation. Such claims were provocative to both the Jewish puppet king and to Roman power. Consequently this Jewish teacher was brought to trial and executed by crucifixion around 33CE.

We have a reasonable record of Jesus’ ideas. He wrote nothing himself but within about forty to sixty years accounts of his life emerged which are fairly intact to this day. Those are the four Gospels of the Christian Bible. As ancient documents go they are well preserved.

The Gospels don’t read like texts of political philosophy in a modern sense. In an ancient sense though, they are deeply political. Any reference to the Jewish God is absolutely also a reference to the proper common purpose of the Jewish people. That purpose defines the nation. For the Jews of the 1^st century redefining their nation was the most immediate task of any prophet.

The Definition of a State

A state is a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain geographical territory. – Wikipedia on the State (polity)

The words state and a nation refer to two different things. A nation is a culturally homogeneous people. It is defined by a common language, religion and history.

A state however is a legal entity. The fundamental definition of a state is its claim to a special legal status and the moral/legal exemptions that come with it. If you or I did on our own time what our governments’ spies, soldiers or even police do we would be arrested (by those institutions) and incarcerated. Only the state can order our incarceration or even our assassination and it not be illegal.

Crucial to the state being able to exempt itself from its own rules is the anonymity of its functionaries. In fact anonymity isn’t quite the right word. It is more that a functionary of the state is no longer quite a person. This is because they are acting as the state; the state is not a person so neither can its actors be.

We can experience this whenever we ourselves belong to any kind of “chain of command”. We may no longer feel responsible for what we do – instead we are following orders or policy. Whether that feeling is legitimate or not is essentially the argument for or against the legitimate statehood of our organization.

Seen in this light there are lots of modern mini-states attempting to assert themselves. If you work at a fast food venue for example, then you are often reminded that your own identity isn’t required while you are an agent of the company. God forbid you should have an opinion about the food you’re serving. Many work environments operate on the same principles – any employee is ideally interchangeable. These “states” may seem silly up close – complete with their own flags, logos, songs and costume – but less so when you look at the size of some corporations. (The revenue of Exxon Mobil is larger than Bangladesh’s and Wal-Mart’s is larger than Norway’s. - link)

The ultimate expression of the moral exemption of the state and the non-personhood of its functionaries is when the state kills with impunity. The state is exempt from the moral rules which call killing murder. The individuals who do the killing are not murderers.

Back to the Story

This is how the “scribes and Pharisees” came up to Jesus. They did not approach Jesus as persons out to commit murder. They approached Jesus as functionaries of the Jewish state. The law was clear – the woman must die – and whoever threw the stones was not responsible for her death when acting as an agent of the law.

To accept this was politically dangerous in the 1^st century. Rome, not Israel was now the state. In 30CE Rome had explicitly forbidden the Jewish courts from pronouncing the death penalty. Rome claimed for itself “a monopoly of the legitimate use of force” within its territory. If you accepted Rome’s rule then the men who brought forward the women had no right to act as her executioners. If on the other hand you accepted the men could act according to the law, as functionaries of a Jewish state, then you opposed Roman rule (which Jesus would eventually get killed for even if it was a poor understanding of his views).

This wasn’t the only trap set for Jesus here. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts Jesus is put in a spot between supporting literal scriptural authority and respect for the sanctity of life which also can be drawn from scripture. But I think this question of who does Jesus support, Israel or Rome as the state, is the key one. Jesus was after all, known for this complicated idea of separatism that isn’t. The gospels demand an extreme repudiation of Roman values but reject isolationism. Where does Jesus stand therefore on this issue of whose law should be enforced?

For some people it would have been seen as a natural conclusion from Jesus’ teachings that the Jewish law must be enforced. The consequences of that would be arrest by the Romans and death but it would be a heroic death. To enforce God’s law in the midst of the Roman Empire would be suicidal. It would be a martyr’s death for the sake of the Jewish state.

What Jesus does in response is deeply radical. Jesus de-anonymises the men. In doing so Jesus denies them statehood. Jesus words are an invitation to the men to be people – not anonymous functionaries of a morally exempt state.

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

These words have a powerful effect. They take us inside ourselves to the place where we are real. This is why I think this story does get translated to cover all manner of situations including any kind of judgment. We want to hear these words spoken to us. They are so refreshing in a paradoxical way. Although they accuse us of sin they return us something that serving the state can take away – ultimately they accuse us of our humanity.

The consequences of Jesus’ reaction.

Jesus is saying that the Kingdom of God he is declaring is not a state. When these men come up desiring to act anonymously to complete the law I believe this is an act of kingdom definition. Jesus then defines the nation of Israel differently. He does this not only by refusing to accept the accusing men’s non-personhood. He does this by staying in person himself.

“Neither will I condemn you too.”

This has particular meaning for “the church” that emerged after Jesus death. By “the church” I mean the community of Jesus’ followers across time and denominations. Based on certain biblical passages “the church”, used in this way, is seen as the inheritor of the mantle of Israel. This church is (ideally) the people of God, a nation in the sense that it is defined by a common history and culture (broadly), but has always had to exist inside hostile states and empires.

That hostility can be especially true when those states and empires have been nominally Christian. When the state takes the identity of Christian then it can become even more necessary that the sort of Christianity that rejects statehood will be persecuted. The latter is too thorny a prophet against the former. Regardless of that persecution I think this story should tell non-statist Christians that they are on the right track.

Non-statist does not simply mean that a Christian shouldn’t try to make a government’s use of force their own. A Christian should also resist the state-making tendencies in their own communities. The crucial element here is anonymity and special legal status. Christians need to reject the idea that actions by authorities are not in the same moral category as actions by “ordinary people”. Killing is killing no matter who does it.

In more general ways where even our employers may want us to become agents of their mini-states a Christian is never allowed to adopt a “just following orders” mentality. Christians are reminded in this story to always be people on their own spiritual journeys of overcoming sin; never faceless perpetrators of policy.

Taking this stance will lead to conflict with society. The state in times of war for example has no tolerance for non-combatants. Most industry, even in “peace” time relies on people who truncate their moral selves for their employers. Refusing to comply has historically brought people closer to the heart of state power; that spiraling towards the murderous center is reflected in Jesus’ own path to the crucifixion. The greatest gift of this story is the example Jesus gives about how to confront a state-mentality in others. Jesus invites the “scribes and Pharisees” to be fully human again.

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

This is exactly how peace work treats figures of authority. The soldier, the clerk, the lawmaker, the judge are all reminded of their full humanity. They are called by the peace activist to re-occupy their self-hood, their relationship with God and their own sins.

Monday, September 16, 2013

A response to a response to Jesus and the Murderous Men.

This is a response to my brothers comments on my previous post. To make sense of this please read my previous post and my brothers comments below it.

What we're discussing is how to interpret the passage of John 8: 1-11 (or rather John 7:53-8:11 as I've had corrected). For those not familiar with biblical notation this means the first eleven verses of chapter 8 in the Gospel according to John. This is a story traditionally titled Jesus and the Adulterous Woman (or similar), which I propose re-titling as Jesus and the Murderous Men.

_____________________________________________________________________

Simon,

I’m glad this post and this passage has engaged you. I think you are partly right.

Firstly you are right that I am making a decision to name the gender of the scribes and Pharisees; a decision the texts author doesn’t make. The author only names the accused gender. That naming of the accused gender has been a part of the history of this piece for a good sixteen centuries at least. No-one would dispute that all the accusers are male so I think a few years of having that mentioned would be fairer to me than suddenly not identifying any gender matters. The experience as a man of feeling even slightly tarred with the same brush, when the scribes and Pharisees are called men, is the experience women have had in relation to this story from the moment of its titling.

Secondly you may be right when you say that the motive of the men is to accuse Jesus rather than to actually stone the woman. It may be that whether or not she has committed adultery is incidental to them. It might even be that whether or not they stone the woman is incidental to them. This had occurred to me when writing, however that charge against the men is so damning I was reluctant to make it on scant evidence.

We should stop and reflect for a moment. We need to take into full account what stoning is. (http://www.neurope.eu/article/iran-death-penalty-stoning may help) And only then can we appreciate the magnitude of what it means to say that whether or not they stone the woman is incidental to them; that the point is to test Jesus and the stoning of the woman is merely a prop in that.

What is a culture where the stoning of a woman is secondary to a religious point being made about it? What are women to that culture? What is religion and religious leadership in that culture?

What does Jesus say to that culture? What do we say to that culture?

I feel strongly Simon that the danger of titling this piece according to the intent of the Pharisaic men is that we continue a culture in which the stoning of the woman is incidental. I don’t think we can allow for a conversation to occur between Jesus and “his” accusers that considers the woman’s stoning as secondary, even unimportant – whether or not even the author thinks that is appropriate.

I should add that I don’t think Jesus buys into that culture either. He doesn’t engage with the Pharisees about “this woman”. He addresses the men but not about the woman. He speaks to the woman directly as well. She is not merely a prop for Jesus in a theological debate about grace.

Regarding this comment; “To imply that maybe the woman wasn't a sinner at all, is such a terrible twisting of this story as to miss the whole point of Jesus' interaction with her.” I certainly don’t mean to suggest that she is not as much a sinner as we all are. I simply think people often tell me this story as if the woman has had some New York modern affair or downloaded pornography or something else that translates to adultery in their mind. I want people to realize that this is grossly interpretive in a way we shouldn’t ever read the Bible. The story merely tells us that she is accused of adultery by the men who bring her to Jesus. In the first century that could be in a context that would outrage us for a multitude of reasons.

I really think that your translation of this story into one about her and her salvation from the law by grace – is a huge insertion of your own point. Fortunately you show me your arguments so I can understand why.

Firstly you place the context for this story in the debate between those devoted to the law and Jesus authority (and perhaps his “seeming disregard for the law”). I don’t have a problem with that particularly and I think what I have to say and what you have to say are not so different after all. Jesus is claiming that the only authority to “stone” belongs to God which is not what the Mosaic Law says. It may be that Jesus as God then declines to use that authority. That second point is a slight stretch but not one that bothers me. I would just urge caution before inserting any suggestion Jesus might have stoned her as he would have qualified. That’s borrowing from elsewhere too much for me.

Where we disagree is that I think capital punishment is not at all a minor issue in Judaism. The more and more I read the more I realize that it was actually a pre-occupation of Jews in the time of the early Christians. It is definitely not just sentencing or judgment of any kind but belonged in its own special category. I find it bizarre that both theological liberals and conservatives want to ignore this distinction so that stoning becomes general sentencing or even just dissaproval.

Capital punishment is in its own category especially for Jews. It offends against the commandment not to kill. A person in Judaism is an image bearer of God and a Jew is one of God’s chosen people. To legally sanction murder is therefore theologically akin to burning down the temple…. And yet the law of Moses requires it.

Even outside of Judaism capital punishment was a special type of punishment by the way. Around 30CE the Jews lost the right to impose capital punishment to the Roman empire. The question for the Jews about capital punishment would have included whether or not to pursue it as a right. Given its connection to Empire and “Babylon” was it a part of being a people of God? Indeed what was the kingdom of God supposed to look like without the capacity to impose the death penalty? This “what is the kingdom of God” is the salient question of the age.

The first century is a world of rigorous debate in which Jesus is a leading figure. Be careful not to flatten all these debates into a dichotomy of law and grace with a monolith of Jewish thought on one side and Jesus on the other. That’s a historical flaw with how Christians have understood 1^st century Judaism that is only now being corrected. Jews (including Jesus) disagreed with Jews.

Of concern to me is how you seem to negate the clear restriction in the text. There is a kind of commandment here that I believe you are overlooking. Subsequently you have no need to ask how this commandment could apply to you. That’s a real shame because I reckon there is such amazing fruit for growth here that you are missing. This is one of those stories that could change your life. More to the point it could change mine and so I’m sitting with its challenges. I'm allowing it to be outrageous and unsure what it would require of me.

I’m glad at least that you don’t seem to focus in this story on the commandment against the woman which some people make out of “sin no more”. I’m not saying that also isn’t an instruction. However the irony of modern male religious leaders (who refuse to share their pulpits with women) finding that instruction loud and clear while changing and negating the instruction against the men in the passage… perhaps deserves a harsher term than irony.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Jesus and the Murderous Men.

Passages in the bible have traditional names that aren’t original to the text. These are headings that have been given to the passages by people studying them or simply a printer’s decision to make the Bible more readable. The names can be very revealing (and dictating) of the way we predominantly read these passages.

For example, The Prodigal Son is a title given to a parable that is only partly about that son. The Prodigal Son arguably aims its teaching more at the son’s hard–hearted brother instead. Because it is named The Prodigal Son though, it takes effort to see that teaching. I’ve even heard abridged or children’s versions of the parable which entirely omit the older brother. The title has led to a misreading of the text.

Likewise the following is also misnamed. Here is the passage (John 8:1-11) from the 21^st Century King James version;

8 Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.

²And early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came unto Him; and He sat down and taught them.

³And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst,

⁴they said unto Him, “Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

⁵Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned but what sayest thou?”

⁶This they said testing Him, that they might have cause to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground, as though He heard them not.

⁷So when they continued asking Him, He lifted Himself up and said unto them, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

⁸And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.

⁹And they who heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the eldest even unto the last, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing in the midst.

¹⁰When Jesus had lifted Himself up and saw none but the woman, He said unto her, “Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?”

¹¹She said, “No man, Lord.” And Jesus said unto her, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.”

This passage is called the Pericope de Adultera (Passage about the Adulteress) in Latin. In the Contemporary English Version of the Gospel of John this passage is titled The Woman Caught In Sin, in the popular Good News Translation, The Woman caught in Adultery and in the New American Standard Bible, The Adulterous Woman. Not every printing of the Bible gives this passage a title but those that do invariably follow this theme.

The effect of this titling is to decide who the story is about. Our focus is put on to the woman in the story. We may even end up viewing adultery as the sin in question in the story as if the story was meant to say something about that in particular. Unfortunately this plays into a very pious anxiety over whether Jesus was making light of adultery or not. We the reader, end up in the position of the men with stones in hand saying “Come again Jesus? What are you really saying about her actions?”

This concern about making light of adultery has both a legalistic and an empathic aspect to it. Legalistically a person might be concerned about the contradiction between not punishing adultery and the instructions of traditional moral law. In such a concern the affront of tolerating adultery is to the authority of moral teaching against it – even to the authority of God. I think this is the author’s assumed motivation for the men who approach Jesus in this story.

On the other hand to make light of adultery is something which could ignore the pain of those who have suffered cheating spouses. This is the empathic reaction to making light of adultery. This is probably not the motivation of the men in the story. The wronged husband is certainly not featured. However this empathic concern about making light of adultery can be a challenge for modern readers. Surely Jesus is not asking this of us?

My response to this is to challenge what we know of this ancient woman’s “sin”. In Jesus’ time a woman could be married at the age of puberty, at least as young as thirteen. However she also was commonly betrothed from much younger and always without consent. If while betrothed she had sex with another man she could be stoned for adultery. Furthermore if she was raped in a populated area and her cries were not heard according to the strictest definition of the law she was a willing participant.

It is within the Jewish law of Jesus’ time that a nine year old girl could be flung down at Jesus feet by a group of men, intending to stone her, because she was raped. The “offended party” (not offending) might be a man who was much older and unknown to the girl – who has lost the virginity of his future child bride or the child’s own father whose family has been shamed. That’s an extreme case, and unlikely (given the language in the passage and Jewish culture at that time) but it gives us a sense of how little we really know of this woman’s situation.

Whatever her age the following is plain; her husband could beat her legally, she probably never chose to marry him and she had an extremely limited means to divorce him (he could divorce her much more easily). Her husband may have had multiple wives as well. Polygamy was legal for Jewish men in Jesus’ time with different families in different towns for those who traveled, though probably uncommon.

We shouldn’t think that our ignorance of the woman’s situation is accidental. A function of saying “this woman was caught in the act of adultery” is that what needs to be said about the situation feels like it has been said. Adultery is a word which locates the woman’s “act” within a legalistic moral system. Detail that might muddy the situation is washed away to reveal the relevant kernel of the woman’s action vis a vis the rules that make up that system. That’s what a process of naming-the-sin does.

Naming-the-sin happens in the story but is more importantly reinforced by the titles given to this passage. In the story it is merely the one of the discredited men who names her sin but as a title it has the authority of the Bible. This even enables us to make a 1^st century story into one in which we evaluate modern actions that also correspond to the legal category of adultery. Identical logical kernels of a deed (i.e. adultery) are locatable now and then once we no longer pay any attention to the muddy detail of either the 1st century or an individual’s situation today.

I don’t think the Jesus of this story buys into this notion of sin as the context-less kernel of a deed. When all the men have retreated Jesus refuses to condemn the woman and he bids her to go “sin no more”. We can choose to hear in Jesus’ answer that he had a perfect, miraculous, insight into the woman’s broader circumstances. We could speculate that Jesus knew exactly what the woman’s act of adultery meant in her story – maybe she was part victim and part sinner and both she and Jesus knew how those parts combined. Thus when Jesus says to “sin no more” he and she knew exactly what he is referring to; perhaps even some sin other than adultery.

However it’s also possible that Jesus says what he says in this passage from ignorance of the woman’s situation. Jesus knows she’s done something these men call adultery but perhaps the why and the how and the whole context of that is as unknown to Jesus as it is to us. Does her husband spend most of his time with his first wife and family? Has she succumbed to another’s attention in order to put food in her children’s mouths? Or to feel something good for herself in a community where she is mocked as if a concubine? Jesus won’t condemn her from ignorance but still asks her, in a general way, to live a holy life.

As interesting as this speculation might be if this story leaves us with merely speculation then we can say it’s not a very good teaching tool. It’s too vague. It doesn’t really tell us anything about adultery. That however is because, thanks to the title, we have been misled. This is not a story about adultery at all – the sin in this story is something else entirely.

It’s very easy in white middle-class Australia to completely minimize what stoning is. It is the brutal public murdering of a person. In contemporary Iran this practice continues. Women are buried up to their neck and stones thrown at their head until they are dead.

Stoning is a torturously slow way to execute someone, however there is another reason why it might have developed. No single stone can be large enough to kill a person in one or two blows. This shares the responsibility for the murder amongst the mob. In a way, all modern executions by the state do the same thing. They diffuse responsibility so that nobody is considered a murderer. But someone is still killed and dies outside of their community.

This is the action that these men propose.

In the first century, precisely because it was understood to be ordered by God, stoning was a part of the Jewish legal system. This passage is not the only time it is mentioned in the Christian bible. The apostle Paul states that he participated in stoning a Christian before he converted to Christianity himself. However it also seems that doubts existed in Jesus’ time as to the legitimacy of capital punishment. There is a record of rabbinical debate in the first and second centuries known as the Mishnah. In the Mishnah one Jewish teacher is cited as describing as “destructive” any Sanhedrin (Jewish Temple Court) that executes a single person in seven years. Another says that such a Sanhedrin is destructive if a single person is executed in seventy years. Over the next two to five centuries complicated requirements will be developed within Rabbinical Judaism to effectively make the death penalty impossible to impose.

This debate is the context in which this story belongs. It is the sole reason why “the scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery” rather than just stone her. The same sort of exchange occurs in other passages in the bible where Jewish scholars test Jesus for where he stands on other debates of their age. When Jesus is asked about divorce (Mathew 19: 1-10) it is also a question that divided the schools of two major Jewish teachers (Hillel and Shammai). When Jesus is questioned whether Jews should pay taxes to the Romans (Matthew 22:15-22) that was a particularly divisive issue in his time and his answer could have put him between the zealots and the authorities. In all these cases (including John 8:1-11) Jesus’ answer is a rhetorical dodge that opens up alternative conceptual spaces to what readers might have imagined.

We can read these interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees in one of two ways. Perhaps these are accurate records of events. In which case the questioners of Jesus would have imagined that whatever answer Jesus gave would have placed him in one camp or another and alienated him from their opposite. That’s a very plausible political tactic. It drags Jesus into disputes between two other schools and reduces Jesus to a commentator on their positions. Cynically they might have been attempting to split Jesus own followers or expose him to ire and ridicule. In John 8:1-11 that seems to be expressed in the bible verse, “This they said testing Him that they might have cause to accuse Him”. Alternatively as Jesus was teaching at the temple they may have been trying to gain his support for their own position.

We can also see this as a story concocted to show a Christian position on these issues. This is not an unusual way to write history in ancient times. Ancient speeches could be inventions by historians in the style of the speaker. This scene seems to be a little too neat to me to be an actual event. Both the men and the woman go from and to nowhere else in the gospel narratives. The “Pericope de Adultera” is also almost definitely not an original part of John’s Gospel. It appears in none of the earliest copies still in existence and is ignored in important biblical commentaries up to the fourth century. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t recorded elsewhere but we don’t have those records. It does raise doubts as to whether there ever was an actual woman charged with adultery at Jesus’ mercy.

Whether this story is a record or a concoction however the point of the story is to show Jesus’ response to the requirement under Mosaic Law to stone people and the debates of Biblical times about that issue. For that reason the passage ought to be retitled if it’s going to be titled at all. It could be called Jesus and Capital Punishment, though I like Jesus and the Murderous Men myself. “The Adulterous Woman” misses the point.

I also disagree with attempts to make the story more relevant to middle class Australian choices by broadening what is understood as the men’s behaviour to include all negative comment or judgment. “Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone” is not the same as “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”. Only the second refers to metaphorical stones. In the first there are issues of violence and the sanctity of life. In the first there is also the institutional power held by some over the lives of others. Jesus is expected to take a place in that circle of power as a fellow man and teacher but he doesn’t.

If you really are so removed from the type of violence depicted that the story bears no direct relevance to you (a claim that mightn’t survive scrutiny) then I think it’s still best to keep the stories original intent clear. As a second step of interpretation you can contemplate how its principles, for example that a life is only God’s to take, might apply to you in other ways. Changing stories in order to “middle – class” the gospel, produces a Jesus who came to save the “worried well” from their malaise. That removes any challenge to the perspective of the worried well. Maybe the hardest part of the gospel for us privileged Australians to swallow could be that it isn’t always about our priorities.

Having outlined what question I think John 8:1-11 is about I’m not actually going to say what I think is the teaching in this passage. Jesus answer is genuinely a complex and intriguing one that I am still pondering. I encourage you to ponder John 8:1-11 too. I merely hope I’ve refocused your attention to what I feel confident the story is about. It’s not the woman’s alleged adultery.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Part two of One Biased Guide to the Victorian Senate Election

Welcome to part two of my grueling investigation of the Senate preference ticket groups. Check out part one for an explanation of what I’m doing and of the first half of the Victorian Senate ballot paper.

In this section I’ll discuss the Democrats out of ballot order because their situation has ramifications for understanding other parties' preferences and it also ties in with my last post’s ending.

Australian Democrats.

You could say pretty much what I had to say about the Greens at the end of my last post in regard to the Australian Democrats. That makes it a poor description, sorry. It’s true both parties tend to like “sin taxes” or “nudge economics” – government incentives to affect economic decisions for health, social and environmental reasons. Emphasising that in my description of the Greens reflects my own bias that I’ve always felt the Australian Democrats and the Greens could have worked closer together.

I say could’ve because the Democrats have pretty much imploded now. In fact when I first searched for the Democrats website a week before posting this I had to click through a letter from the National President of the Australian Democrats. Confounding what my eyes see on the ballot paper it reads ; The National Executive of the Australian Democrats did not put forward candidates at this election, nor did it authorise any preference deals.

The party has split into warring factions who are contesting who actually is a Democrat. There are two Democrats websites. http://www.australiandemocrats.org.au and http://www.australian-democrats.org.au (Succint coverage of the issue can be found here.) It’s the latter website that has the candidates.

This continues a public disintegration begun when Cheryl Kernot knifed her own party to join Labor back in 1997. Who would’ve thought that an activist party like the Greens would hold their shit together better than what’s been labeled a small business party? Probably anyone in small business perhaps.

As historically a party for small business the Democrats are supposedly on the economically conservative side of Labor. Yet when in office the Democrats called for increases in foreign aid and public funding for health and education along with the Greens in excess of Labor usually. It was the Democrats who negotiated to keep the GST off fresh food too. They’d look pretty left in our current landscape with those policies despite their desire to call themselves centrist. Given how Labor has drifted past the centre the Australian Democrats are probably now only to the right of the Greens and the Socialist Equality Party.

I wouldn’t count them out just yet. They or at least half the party have done quite well out of preference allocations this election. The Democrats seem to get a lot of love even from people who can’t stand the Greens. If they can get over their internal toxicity they may yet make a come back but that’s a big if.

Their own preferences will be heading either;

1. Australian Democrats 2. Family First 3. Greens 4. Labor 5. Liberal/Nationals

Or on ticket two with Labor and Liberal reversed;

1. Australian Democrats 2. Family First 3. Greens 4. Liberal/Nationals 5. Labor

Stop CSG Party

The “practice of fracturing the ground for coal seams can damage underground water reserves with toxic chemicals that are dangerous to humans, animals and plants” according to the Stop CSG party.

According to the CSIRO this risk is “low”. How low? Well that, in the words of CSIRO bigwig Dr. Peter Stone, is “related to the probability of contamination occurring and the actual nature of the risk associated with that contamination, so it's not something that can be answered with a simple number.”- http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2012/04/16/qa-csiro-scientist-discusses-impacts-csg

This is a response that makes me rethink our society’s choice to abandon augury. No witch would have earnt her silver with that hedged bet.

Everyone agrees that CSG has a lot smaller carbon footprint than the coal industry. But understandably if you were a farmer or local townie whose water supply “might” be contaminated those are benefits you wouldn’t care to pursue. Is this just a case of NIMBY politics or the last ditch defense of our nations' food basins? That’s “related to the probability of contamination occurring and the actual nature of the risk associated with that contamination”, so it's not something that can be answered with a simple vote.

But that’s all you’ve got. Your preferences might be heading this way;

1. Australian Democrats 2. Family First 3. Greens 4. Labor 5. National/Liberal

Katter's Australia Party
I have a soft spot for Bob Katter. Not only is he like some daft fun uncle but when he talks about suicidal farmers he drops the larrikin act quick smart. It’s rare to find a single character who can do both quirky and gravitas.

Katter's fierce opposition to the Greens is along the lines of those of the Lifestyle Rights parties (with recreational fishing a primary concern) and in relation to the impact of marine parks on aquaculture. Yet the party’s website also makes a great case for action on reducing emissions with acknowledgement of the scientific consensus around climate change.

The Katter's Australia Party also has possibly the harshest policies for refugees wrapped in a strangely welcoming rhetoric. It’s very confusing. They will forcibly turn back boats, only grant successful refugees temporary protection visas, monitor them electronically and make them build their own housing under a work for the dole scheme. But they do make a lovely reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan as inspiration.

Where Katter shines is the championing of economic protectionism over pure rationalism. The Nationals have been obliged in coalition with the Liberals to support the sale of public assets and oversee the abandonment of protection for Australian manufacturing and farming. That’s never been a winner with their constituents. Those who are truly disgruntled by it can jump ship with Bob Katter.

When they do their vote will roam in this way;

1. Family First 2. National/Liberal 3. Labor 4.Australian Democrats 5. Greens

Palmer United Party

Palmers first policy is to prevent paid political lobbyists from holding senior positions in political parties. Abbott denied Palmer this goal in the Liberal Party and maybe wishes he hadn’t now. As Palmer said at the time, defining the key issue of World War Two, we wouldn’t want to live in Nazi germany where a person couldn’t even put forward a resolution.

That’s just one way this billionaire empathises with the victims of tyranny. He has a novel way to “stop the boats”; let refugees fly here. He’s also deeply committed to “Ending the Class War” and replacing it with a system where tax revenues are returned to the regions they are collected from. When your local hospital depends on attracting a mining magnates investment (for example) class war probably will fracture. But without more detail we can’t know if our huts will be inside or outside our Lords castle walls.

Preferences from Palmers party are in the national interest only;

1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Greens 4. Liberal/Nationals 5. Labor

Justice For Animals Party

A specific policy on wombats; that is the level of detailed commitment you are dealing with here. I don’t mean that lightly. These people have held gun shot native animals in their hands, screaming at the absence of a God who protects, and broken the creatures necks to spare them slow agonizing deaths. You think they won’t then put sugar in that roo-shooters gas tank? They will beat him to death with a roo skull.

That’s the kind of drive behind these folks. And as we consistently chew our way through the unidentifiable ammonia-washed pink slime of a trillion sentient beings we know we deserve the judgement they bring.

To be clear Justice For Animals are not “greenies” who idealise an abstract idea like “the environment”. These are people whose constituency are non-human animals. No kill animal shelters for example are a goal without anything directly to do with environmental sustainability.

A fall-out with the ACT greens over a Green support for a cull of kangaroos has led to preferencing against each other in some places.

1. Australian Democrats 2. Family First 3. Greens 4. Labor 5. Liberal/Nationals

The Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party

The Australian Motoring Enthusiasts party claims to consist of “a very diverse range of average Australian families”. They pledge to keep this in mind as they “moderate extremism” in legislation. There’s a vague but strong suggestion of threat on their website to the honest practice of modifying ones motor vehicle based upon “freedom of expression.” I have absolutely no idea what this describes. Did we recently stop people putting spikes on their cars or something?

I am touched by their efforts on their facebook page to overcome differences in their own community based on the cars that people drive. Too many Ford loving parents have rejected their children for driving a Toyota. It’s time to heal.

Most importantly the first of their long list of core values is a belief in the Australian people. That’s fairly crucial to running for election.

Ticket one;

1. Family First 2.Australian Democrats 3. National/Liberal 4. Labor 5. Greens

Ticket two splits the National candidate from their Liberal peers;

1. Family First 2.Australian Democrats 3. Nationals 4. Labor 5. Liberals 6. Greens

Wikileaks and the Pirate Party

Governments are free to know everything about their subjects and we are not free to know a thing about that. Both Wiki-Leaks and the Pirate party aim to reverse this.

The Wikileaks campaign has unfortunately stalled. The second spot on their Senate ticket left the party after the National executive council was circumvented and mistakes were made with preference deals. Fundraising is massively below target. In straw polls amongst my friends Julian Assange isn’t a vote winning figure head either. It’s a shame because those same people still believe Gillard should have tried to defend him from U.S. prosecution on principle (instead of treating Assange like John Howard treated David Hicks). If this election was meant to show that support, it probably won’t.

The Pirate Party have avoided any possibility of Wikileaks mistakes by choosing to have an entirely open and transparent process of allocating their preferences. In fact they are the only party to do so. (They still got duped by the Australian Democrats candidates into believing they spoke for the whole party though but so did everyone it seems).

This transparency plus their easily searchable policy wiki suggests an impressive skill set for such a young party. Honestly I have looked at twenty seven political parties web sites so far and this was the second easiest to comprehend (Justice for Animals was number one actually). I liked what I saw of Pirate policy from their stance on refugees to the reform of pharmaceutical patents.

In fact I was so impressed I joined the party.

Preferences for Wiki Leaks;
1. Australian Democrats 2. Greens 3. Labor 4. Liberal/Nationals 5. Family First
And for the Pirate Party;

1. Australian Democrats 2. Greens 3. Labor 4. Liberal Nationals 5. Family First

Sex Party

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am down with the sex positivity. Hence it might be a surprise that I am not a fan of the Sex party. That springs from the suspicion that this is really a sex-business party with a sex-positivist gloss. The links between this party and the Eros Foundation (lobby group for the sex-industry) are extensive. For fucks sake one of their candidates in NSW promises to get rid of the ban on plastic bags on the Sex party website. What’s that got to do with the size of orgasms?

Another of the Sex party’s policies is the legal sale and regulation of cannabis. The model they propose for this is perfect for the Eros Foundation members who already sell legal highs through their “adult” stores. There’s the question of whether business or pleasure is really the motivator here.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Sex shops are not necessarily dens of iniquity. Bliss in Melbourne is a sex-shop specifically for women with a lovely and healthy vibe. Why can’t good drug or sex policy also have a capitalist expression and a business constituency that will benefit from it?

Because in our culture the filter of commercialism is almost invisible. This means that the replacement of a DIY sexyness with one from the gift shop is even more troubling than one mediated by religion. You can think you are getting “raw” sexuality from a sex shop but in fact it is very well cooked to create the relationship of customer to seller that such a business relies on. More specifically to this election, if the sex party is all about gay marriage and legal dope why do they put Labor before the Greens;

1. Australian Democrats 2. Labor 3. Greens 4. Liberal/National 5. Family First

Australian Labor Party

Just for a moment let’s forget that the Labor party has been its own circus/abbatoir for three years. Let’s breathe deep of the lavender and imagine all that is behind us.

Two things ought to get Labor re-elected. We have a national disability insurance scheme now. That’s huge. Secondly the Gonski education reforms have been developed (blame Western Australia, Queensland and until recently Victoria for holding them up). These reforms are the fix school funding has needed since John Howard made it a coke-fest for the wealthy. Health and education; when you consider there’s no real debate about defence or law and order in this election, that’s politics sewn up.

But then the issue of refugees has been made into both a defence and law and order issue for some people. If you can’t walk the beaches for fear of being mugged by a group of people rowing ashore for the first time what good is a properly funded education sector? On that issue even if Rudd personally decapitates an asylum seeker on public television he will still come off second best to a Liberal party prepared to feast on the victims still warm heart. And everyone knows it.

Also Labors big tale of preventing recession from reaching our shores like a boss (as if they personally were buying our minerals from China) doesn’t correspond to how people feel. It’s fine to say GDP is healthy overall but people are hurting from factory closures even if other people are making a mint importing waistcoats. The two only balance on paper. A new extension in one home and an eviction at another don’t cancel each other out at the polls. In that context, and because even the winners of our economic lottery “feel” poorer than they are, a government whose message is success seems out of touch.

Finally the party is like a beacon of anti-excitement. They underwhelm on the elections sexiest issue by promising to have just another conscience vote about gay marriage. They take the hot-button issue of Abbott’s sexism and defuse it by appointing a leader who undermined the first female prime minister more than the opposition. They have hands down the most boring website so far in this review. Perhaps the last legacy of Kevin Rudd will be that the word selfie can now no longer be used by anyone under the age of twenty.

For those who like dry white toast;

1. Labor 2. Greens 3. Australian Democrats 4. Family First 5. Liberal/Nationals

Drug Law Reform

This is a really recent party, founded in March this year by the son of the founder of the Australian Democrats. They draw on the support of people who have lost loved ones to drugs more so than drug users themselves. At least that’s the vibe of their web site. Their take and I get this, is that were those drugs legal the fatal harms associated with them might not have been there.

Although from just their slogans you can guess what they stand for, it’s almost impossible to pin it down online for sure. You can join the party having agreed to no more than humane legislation, discussion and education which someone could claim are already features of the current system. Only after asking through their facebook site for directions could I find an actual policy page. It seems like the only definite stance they have is to call for a Royal Commission into the War on Drugs. That’s frustratingly bare and hopefully something they fill out soon.

Are they calling for the legalization of Marijuana? Almost definitely. What about all drugs across the board? Maybe?

They went with two tickets;

1. Australian Democrats 2. Greens 3. Labor 4. Liberal/National 5. Family First

Ticket two has the ALP and Liberals reversed;

1. Australian Democrats 2. Greens 3. Liberal/National 4. Labor 5. Family First

Bullet Train For Australia

One of the questions in the leaders’ debate this election was when will Sydney build a second airport. Flights between Melbourne and Sydney, Australia’s peak route include around 110,000 seats per week. Between Brisbane and Sydney air traffic is almost as heavy. Sydney airport is considered choked and travel along the Eastern seaboard is a big part of why.

Showing a complete lack of faith in teleportation and a general snub to the benefits of slow travel, Bullet Train for Australia have a plan to solve Sydney's airport congestion. Along the way they might just help with some other small problems like the environment and the East coast economy.

The very fact that only this party exists instead of an actual Bullet train is an affront to common sense. By promising clearly not to weigh in on any other issues they’ve made it safe for fans of either Family First or the Sex Party to vote 1 for a Bullet train and then personally number the rest of their ballot how they’d like.

But if you tick 1 for the Bullet Train above the line it’s odd that your preferences go here;
1. Australian Democrats 2. Family First 3. Labor 4. Greens 5. Liberal/National

Australian Christians

This kind of party makes my blood boil a little. It’s bad enough that Labor get’s away with calling itself Labor or The Country Alliance implies they have allied the country but the chutzpah hat gets taken off them by Australian Christians and then ridden around like it’s a pony. I’ll just check with my friend the Christian drug and alcohol worker if she feels represented by a “zero-tolerance approach” to drugs that rejects any harm-minimisation education. What’s that sound? Is she breaking things?

Of course language being what it is, there is no more stopping me from claiming to represent all Zoroastrians than there is this crew from claiming to be particularly Christian. In fact I’m tempted to start a party called the True Christian Faithful Party.

Celebrating further the beautiful fluidity of language Australian Christians express the desire to “create a better Australia for all Australians, no matter what their faith and belief”. Then they have the following policy;

Regarding refugee intake in general, we believe Australia should re-balance the refugee intake to reduce the number of Muslim refugees and take more persecuted Christians from various African countries.
I guess there’s a loophole in that they aren’t Australian yet. A refugee policy that discriminates on the basis of ones own religion is one way to increase your parties support.

Preferences;

1. Family First 2. Liberal/Nationals 3. Labor 4.Australian Democrats 5. Greens

Citizens Electoral Council

As described in the CEC “Fighting Platform” the powerful global British banking system are not only laundering drug cartels money but they are financing the legalization and decriminalisation campaigns for their drug cartel allies. The basthards. Except legalization would devastate drug cartel profits so that doesn’t make sense.

It’s little things like this where a perfectly ordinary hard–left party can betray the crazy. The Citizens Electoral Council is just such a party. However you could also call them hard-right because they prove the adage that such extremes meet at some point. That meeting point can thrive in the land of conspiracy politics, where every single aspect of our time is part of one totalizing power structure; the left and right of politics are only two hand puppets of the shadow government after all. If you thought land rights or environmentalism were resistances to power these guys explain how both are somehow just a new way for the British banks to turn us into slaves. Only the CEC can provide the true red pill.

I actually believe it’s our responsibility to listen carefully to conspiracy theorists. Firstly to deny all conspiracies is the most inane position of all. Of course people in power work together. Secondly the way my brain wants to stop thinking just because the CEC describe the royal family ( a classic conspiracy villain) as the masterminds of a plan to cull the human race, well that’s exactly what would happen if I was a programmed sheep of such a global conspiracy. I would want to stop thinking about it, right? So it’s true?

That’s why I only say after calm consideration that the policies of the CEC are wrong. I’m not balking at their history of political violence or the fraud convictions against the economist whose ideas they worship, both of which could easily be fabrications of the shadow government. I’m talking about their plans to re-develop the biosphere through irrigating deserts and to colonise new planets so that humanity thrives without any population limits or use of alternative energy.

Now here’s the rub though. In order to argue against these ideas I have to rely on general scientists to back me up. People like David Attenborough who is a part of the conspiracy, are obviously going to say the CEC are wrong.

These poor guys had to choose which part of the conspiracy to preference first and couldn’t quite. So on Ticket one;

1. Family First 2. Liberal/Nationals 3. Australian Democrats 4. Labor 5. Greens

And Ticket two;

1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Labor 4. Liberal/Nationals 5. Greens

Group AJ

Bob Nicholls is a small business man with a common sense, level-headed approach. He’s no dandy but he can wear a tie and not look silly. Him and about everyone’s dad are going to get along.

He knows from running a business that you don’t sell off money making public assets to pay off debt. Not only that but his policies include to “Collectively uncover and root out misogynistic tendencies hidden in our cultural background” and in regard to abortion, same-sex marriage and euthanasia he states “It is not my role to tell other people how to live their lives.”

Let’s clone him and never have an election again.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find much on his running mates under the AJ ticket. On Facebook Bob informed me one is his daughter and another a business friend with various skills.

Like a true independent thinker Bob has scattered his preferences all over the place, a single green and then a single ALP member, then a Liberal National and so on. The Democrats are split up but all of Family First are last. I have no idea what effect this will have.

Socialist Equality Party
This is a Trotskyist party. Leon Trostsky was a Russian Communist who was expelled from the party and eventually assassinated for opposing Stalinism. Stalinism was that style of KGB driven communism that looked exactly like Nazism except for minor aesthetic differences. That makes Trotsky a good guy, though some claim this is only by comparison to one of history's worst dictators.

What this means today is that the Socialist Equality party is economically communist but unlike the communism of Stalin and Mao they believe in democracy.

They use the word “expropriate” to describe putting institutions under public ownership. Banks and major corporations are to be expropriated under their policies. The money that presumably would bring in can be spent on free public education and housing. I wonder whether in the transition period would this mean kids will use bank pens at school and people will live in refurbished McDonalds? Who cares? It still sounds great.

One reason not to vote for these guys is that most of their party are probably members of ASIO under cover. Still if they stay in role does that matter?

Actually now I look at their preferences I hate them. Ridiculous. Ticket One;

1. Liberal/National 2 . Democrats 3. Family First 4. Greens 5. Labor

Ticket two;

1. Labor 2. Liberal/National 3. Family First 4. Greens 5. Democrats

Ticket three;

1. Greens 2. Democrats 3. Labor 4. Liberal/National 5. Family First

Democratic Labour Party
The Democatic Labour party are famous for forming after many of their members were expelled in 1955 from the Labor Party. They were predominantly Catholic and saw as their main enemy the communist influence in the Labor Party. This is classic cold war stuff and the mere mention of the characters in play when the DLP began, B.A. Santamara and Archbishop Mannix cause grainy black and white news footage to play in my head.

When the 60’s swung round the D.L.P. moved their focus of criticism to the new “permissiveness” opposing abortion, pornography, drugs and the removal of electrodes from the nipples of lesbians and gay men. Today they not only oppose gay marriage but same-sex civil unions or relationship registration of any sort.

They also make dog-whistle comments about the Family Courts unfairness and express “solidarity” with non-custodial parents which I suspect may be part of a fathers rights paradigm but can’t be sure. Our Family Court is explicitly biased towards the child’s rights.

In the 70’s the DLP lost a lot of their support when the country opposed the Vietnam War which they had strongly supported. The cold war was over and although the DLP were opponents of neo-liberalism and small government as much as they were communism no-body cared for them and they lost representation in the 1974 double dissolution election. Their preferences had kept Labor out of office for two decades until Whitlam won in 1972.

Cue bugle call. For several years the DLP were that sort of surprise nostalgia jolt on polling day when some old dude with a comb over hands you a green and gold pamphlet of their particular hue. Then all of a sudden in 2006 a Victorian DLP candidate wins a state senate seat. They lose it at the next election but in 2010 another DLP candidate won a Federal senate seat for Victoria narrowly and on preferences. Feck me. It’s alive.

Preferences flow to;

1. Family First 2. Liberal/Nationals (mostly) 3. Labor (mostly) 4. Democrats 5. Greens

Group T

Joseph Toscano and Beth Matthews are “anarchist independants” according to some site I stumbled on. That site and a Wikipedia entry with no particular relevance to the election campaign are the most clear indications I could find of their candidacy.

I left this group to last because I wanted to crack the case of what they stood for. I was keen to write awesome things about an anarchist running for senate. Then I got waylaid by some out of date 2010 site where all their links to policy were dead links. Joseph Toscano’s website invited me to renew his expired domain name. I can’t figure out how to contact them… aaagh. Is there some anarchist rule that you have to be terrible at self-promotion?

Backtracking I managed to download a sort of policy document which included a 1% stock market turnover tax and a wealth tax, the replacement of Australian states with a Federation of fifty Regional Councils and the creation of an economic system of co-operatives and collectives.

They say they are running for the senate to raise their issues rather than to win but I think they are on track to do neither.

Preferences go for;

1. Greens 2. Labour 3. Democrats 4. Liberals 5. Family First

_____________________________________________________________________

And that's that. I hope its been helpful.The second half got delayed by the start of a new job which will probably keep me from regularly blogging for a while. Sorry if you were kept hanging there.

I've actually been impressed by quite a few of the people and groups running for the Victorian Senate this year. Most of them are sincere at the very least. I'll probably end up voting below the line, now that I have an idea of many of the candidates. I most likely will put the Pirate Party first followed by the Greens. But how do I decide whether Bob Nicholls goes higher than Wiki-Leaks? Or whether Animal Justice goes lower than the ALP? And then there are all the candidates and parties I didn't research (because I was focusing on the above the line groups). Good luck with your own decision and no matter how you vote may it be with your mind on the disadvantaged in our society

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

One Biased Guide to the Victorian Senate Election

When Australians vote at their federal polls in a few weeks time they will face a bewildering amount of choice. Particularly in the Senate, many minor parties and independents that no-one will have heard of before will be listed. In Victoria, my home state and senate electorate, there are ninety seven candidates vying for six senate seats.

Voters can register a legal vote by numbering in order of their preference every individual box below the line on the senate ballot paper. Voters can also choose to register a legal vote by putting a one in a single box above the line next to a grouping’s name, usually a political party. If they do it’s as if their ballot below the line is filled out automatically according to the grouping’s preference ticket. These preference tickets are made available online by the Australian Electoral Commission. Not every candidate has a box above the line. Some have missed the deadline to submit their preference ticket to the commission.

With ninety seven boxes to number this year I began to worry that I will stuff up my usual voting below the line by listing two people with the same number. That wouldn't actually render my vote invalid as I first thought;
“The act and the ballot paper instructions state that a below the line vote must have preferences for all candidates, but there are a couple of savings provisions. You only have to fill in 90% of squares, which in NSW means 99 preferences, and your vote will be able to survive up to three preference breaks, that is duplicated or missed numbers.” – From Anthony Green’s election blog.

Voting below the line also got easier with this great online tool.You can basically construct your own how-to-vote card before the day.

I still might vote above the line this year though. There’s the benefit (or curse) of letting a party research where my preferences go. I can also check what any above the line grouping will do by checking their preference ticket online. Groups with more than one preference ticket will be splitting their above the line votes between each ticket sending equal portions one way or the other.

For the benefit of people still trying to decide their votes and because it’s interesting to see who is really aligned with who despite the rhetoric I've tried to give a break down of each of the Senate groupings and their preference tickets. To do that I've reduced each preference ticket to five parties that I think could reasonably be the destinations for all the preferences from all the other minor parties.

Of course it’s impossible to absolutely say who will win an election before it’s held. However it’s reasonably possible to predict a party’s chance of gaining one or more seats based on recent history. It’s hugely unlikely that a senate seat will go to anyone other than a member of the Liberal/National Party coalition, the Labor Party, the Greens, Family First, or the Australian Democrats. In fact it’s unlikely to be any more than one Victorian senate seat that doesn't go to Labor or Liberal and probable that none will. That means we can estimate that votes for any party will end up here.

This is a particularly dangerous year to make this kind of estimation because there are some brand new parties contesting. Wikileaks, Katter’s Australia Party and Clive Palmer’s vanity project are brand new contenders. I’m taking an educated punt that they won’t be winning a single seat in Victoria at least. (Katter and even Clive Palmer have bigger followings in Queensland). If I could have one wish it would be that we don’t wake up to a surprise win on preferences for some pure racist party like One Nation. Fortunately no-one is predicting this.

So without further ado here are the groups and the flow of their preferences in the order (pretty much) that they appear on the ballot.

Rise Up Australia

Why are anti-multicultural groups also consistently climate change denying? That’s just one question raised by a party that in its “manifesto” states that our country is founded on both the Ten Commandments and freedom of religion. Do they not know that the first of the Ten Commandments is to worship no other gods but Yahweh?

By freedom of religion Rise Up Australia does not mean freedom to wear the Burka. That is number one of the religious freedoms they do not mean as it is actually their first policy to ban it. Interestingly they describe climate change as a quasi-religious claim but this is insufficient to base government policy on. I presume only fully religious claims will do.

This party has the good fortune of being first on the ballot paper. That alone might net them some accidental votes. Their party song failed to move me.

Votes above the line here will flow;
1. Family First 2. Liberal 3. Democrats 4. Labor 5. Greens

Senator Online (Internet Voting Bills/Issues)
Here is a party with pretty much no policies. To be fair they can’t really have any. This is because they propose that any of their successful candidates will follow the majority vote of the general public via online voting.

Is that a good thing? Indicate yes or no in the comments below.

How on earth did they decide how to allocate preferences?;

1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Greens 4. Labor 5. Liberal

Liberal/ Nationals

If you squint they look a lot like Labor. That’s what Thatcher looked like before she was elected too. Or Joe Hockey the last time. Or that German Charlie Chaplin who wasn’t funny. You only think you can estimate the range they can possibly destroy. Imagine something totally evil like Native Title overridden in a northern economic tax-free zone for mining interests or Little Ted, homeless and forced to perform tricks for bucks and these people have imagined it too with a chardonnay in hand and laughing.

Oh God, they are going to win aren’t they?

For some reason the Liberal National Coalition have two preference tickets. Both follow the same path;
1. Liberal/National 2. Family First 3. Australian Democrats 4. Labor 5. Greens

HEMP (Help End Marihuana Prohibition Party)
From their website “Our sole purpose is to agitate for the re-legalisation of Cannabis for personal, medical and industrial use.” and that it seems to be.

The prospect of a Liberal victory sure makes this party much more attractive. I even find their unwillingness to be distracted by any other legislative concern admirable. It’s like when you can’t find any papers at the party and someone tries to talk to you about the music that’s playing.

What is annoying is that they have three preference tickets. Two of them have:
1. Australian Democrats 2. Labor 3. Greens 4. Family First 5. Liberal

One of them has the Greens before Labor:

1. Australian Democrats 2. Greens 3. Labor 4. Family First 5. Liberal

Family First
One of the few parties that put house-affordability and work-life balance on the agenda. I want to go to church with them for that. Then they drop the ball with climate change denial and support of a voucher system that will undermine public education. That house you can afford will be on a sinking island of your separatist subculture.

This may be a party particularly attractive to young earth creationists who will appreciate not having to teach their kids about the devils science but don’t underestimate their support. Family First is arguably the fourth or fifth (or sixth if you count National and Liberal separately) choice in Australian politics. As we will see that’s out of a squillion.

Voting above the line here will probably result in a vote for the Liberals;
1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Liberal 4. Labor 5. Greens

Country Alliance / Shooters and Fishers / Australian Fishing Lifestyle

Country and Alliance; only the Country Fresh Alliance could possibly be more attractive at first glance. But don’t be fooled, this is not the voice of all rural people but a movement who have drawn a sharp line of division in their communities.

Along with the Shooters and Fishers Party and the Australian Fishing Lifestyle Party the Country Alliance aim to defend the right to fish, hunt and drive motorized vehicles through the bush. The AFLP call them “Lifestyle rights”. These rights are supposedly under threat by the Greens and Greened Labor (rather than actual overuse) who it’s claimed are locking up the environment through native land and marine parks based on bad science.

These Lifestyle rights parties are not insignificant when it comes to mobilizing and that’s a real problem for the Greens in the country. I’ve never handed out how to vote cards without one of these parties being represented alongside me as well. Even when they don’t win votes they shape hearts and minds to be suspicious of “urban” greenies.

I can’t help but feel that this is a conflict that will only get worse as our regional populations grow. I find that a shame as a greenie voter who appreciates the hunter and fisher’s sense of independence and history to their craft. That said I worry these parties are potentially manipulated by big industry and developers. And what kind of a sport is four -wheel driving seriously?

Each of these parties differs on their other policies, a little. But their publicity all sounds very similar and they all hate the Greens.

Country Alliance send their preferences;

1. Liberal 2. Labor 3. Family First 4. Australian Democrats 5. Greens

The Shooters and Fishers Party and The Australian Fishing Lifestyle Party both send their preferences along the following route;

1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Liberal 4. Labor 5. Greens

Australian Voice Party / Building Australian Party.

Why was the question I couldn’t stop asking when reading about these parties.

The Australia Voice Party’s largest policy area is its own party’s structure. The Building Australia Party “has grown out of discontent from within the building industry and the building design profession” according to their website. Really? Do we all need our own parties by profession now?

You can read either party’s policies for a handy sopoforic effect. These groups may be a way of doing politics differently – outside the usual paradigms of left and right – as both suggest but they will need some copywriters if they are going to be successful. Unfortunately those people have all joined the Copywriters party.

One positive; don’t let the Australia in their name fool you. There’s no evident racism or cultural conservatism in these groups.

If you are into Building Australia your preferences will flow as follows;
1. Australian Democrats 2. Family First 3. Liberal 4. Labor 5. Greens

If you want to raise an Australian Voice;

1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Liberal 4. Labor 5. Greens

The Secular Party of Australia

Does what it says on the tin I guess. This might gain some votes from people annoyed at the chaplaincy program in state schools where convoluted hiring processes enable anti-discrimination laws to be evaded. With their support for the removal of religious exemptions to the tax act they are also probably the party whose policies will most balance the budget. Sure it’s not enough policies to govern as a major party but then this is always going to be a protest vote.

What such a protest vote does next is;

1. Australian Democrats 2. Greens 3. Labor 4. Liberal 5. Family First.

The No Carbon Tax Climate Change Skeptics Party

Backed up by no less that six peer reviewed scientific papers (according to their website) here is the worlds’ first party for truth in science. Beyond that issue they just want government to get off our backs and let us make some mon-hay while the sun shines on with no significant increase in intensity.

Strange that they preference Labor before Liberal;

1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Labor 4. Liberal 5. Greens

The Stable Population Party

No.

The Stable Population Party has three separate group voting tickets and I’m just not going through them all. Here’s a conversation starter for your next social mixer though; Should child benefits only be paid for the first two children of each mother?

Smokers Rights Party

Of their policies only one actually might benefit smokers (lower prices) while the rest simply helped new smokers get recruited (relaxed advertising restrictions). I call bullshit, Smokers Rights, and if you don’t like it I will run up a hill away from you.

They don’t even have a ticket so I didn’t actually have to review them. Crap. Bed time, I'm done.

The Australian Independents
This might be the only party to actually say upfront that they will ban the sale of puppies from pet stores. (Justice for Animals, I will get to you in my next post.) Braving the under five backlash, this is one of a raft of bold but sensible policies.

Sure singling out specifically Christian welfare agencies as deserving of increased funding is odd and I’m no fan of their off-shore processing policy but they do want a significant increase to our refugee intake. Furthermore they prioritize homelessness and mental health. We could do a lot worse.

Just when you think we’ve done every possible combination;

1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Greens 4. Labor 5. Liberal.

Bank Reform
Not only Banks but the supermarket and legal oligarchies are in this parties sights. Competition is their goal and they aim to pursue it from the government. Irony aside they have some good arguments that we can regulate against market concentration whereas at the moment we regulate for it in some sectors.

In my own opinion if peer to peer borrowing and crowd sourcing took off we wouldn’t need to care about reforming the big banks. Given that’s years off making a difference maybe the Bank Reform party has a purpose. On the other hand the Bank Reform party is many more years off making a difference so you do the math.

Not sure what they have against the Greens;

1. Family First 2. Australian Democrats 3. Labor 4. Liberal. 5. Greens

The Greens

The Greens are equal parts evil and incompetence if you believe many other parties. There’s even one called Stop the Greens whose policy is self-evident. As a participant in their pagan canabilistic orgies however I’ve found them to be generally integritous and thoughtful.

The Greens are really the champions of a certain economic philosophy. This is the philosophy that supports subjecting economic activity to social and environmental assessment. It was ultimately a deal to govern struck with the Greens that forced Gillard’s Labor to introduce a carbon tax.

The Greens don’t view all economic activity as equal. Instead they do what makes traditional economists squirm. They “pick winners and losers” in the marketplace like fresh food over potato chips, clean energy over coal and fair trade over free trade. They then reflect that with taxation and subsidies from government.

That’s not all the Greens are about. With the demise of the Australian Democrats they have taken over the role of the progressive and humanitarian party. If you draw a spectrum of views on issues like marriage reform, access to abortion, foreign Aid levels and our response to refugees the Greens are on one side, Liberals on the other and Labor is in the middle. This makes life hard for those conservative Christians who despite opposing marriage law reform and reproductive freedoms want to see a Green party response to Foreign Aid and Refugees.

The Greens have had my first preference for years. This year I’m tempted to give it to a smaller party so long as I know it will flow to the Greens before any other possibly successful candidates. The reason for my change is that the Greens are sounding too much like a proper political party lately even putting spin on negative polls. It was always their straight talk through the bullshit that I admired most of all.

Here’s where the Greens send their polyamourous love;

1. Greens 2. Australian Democrats 3. Labor 4. Family First 5. Liberal

This is the first page of the preference tickets. There’s another page and twelve more groups to discuss. That will be the next installment of One Biased Guide to the Victorian Senate Election.