Mr Costello said

'"Those who have suffered deserve ever support and sympathy. It is beyond the bounds of decency to try to make moral or politcal points out of such a tragedy.''

Mr Brown from the ferals was the first to make a political point in blaming the gw myth. You would think of all people the Greens would keep their trap shut as they have fought commonsense measures for years when it comes to clearing fire fuel.

Ian Robinson appear to be influenced by cheap sensational news. The amonut of research gone into this article is meagre. There are so many points that are ill thought out. Just to point out a few: -
1. "introducing courses in comparative religion.....appropriate to the age of the children": What is approriate in a class of children? They are all at different developmental age in every class.

2. "...being indroctrinated at home..." Just who is responsible for children? The state or the parents? Children are an expression of their parents aspiration and confidence. The state has nothing to do with it.

3. "...a number of pernicious cults...." This is a clear example of sensationalism. Mr Robimson appears to have very little faith in the commonsense of the people of Australia.

4. "...an African child who has been born with Aids because a priest has told her mother the use of condom is a sin...." According to this there is a priest in every village in Africa that telling every lorry driver not to use prostitutes. Where is the evidence Mr Robinson?

Mac's warning to meredith confirms that she let some real stinkers loose on "race". But I wasn't ad-hom when asking "what creepy program of 'racial purity' has meredith been involved in?" Worse than Robinson's simplistic acceptance of race legislation, meredith's further adventures there exposed the seriously dangerous luggage that she brings onto our plane, so to speak.

I identified meredith's dangerous cargo, so perhaps I "played the affliction, not the wo/man" in that case. Strange that someone who talks tough over bombing civilian neighborhoods should cry foul over criticism of her mystical and logically compromised beliefs about "race".

As for "liberties", we can summarize Robinson's liberalist principles as freedom of: "religion/belief; speech; association; from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; privacy; and respect."

Now, mac associates "Stalinist dictatorships" with my emphasis on (often more basic) rights to such essentials as: running water, sanitation, nutrition, education and basic health care. Mac also assumes that notions of "liberty" (presumably as enunciated by liberalists like Robinson) should have precedence, perhaps exclusively, over my concerns.

There are two massive problems with mac's argument:

1) It assumes such "liberty" actually exists in some promised land of western liberalism. It actually does not: there is almost no "free speech" (it costs a fortune), while legal and bureaucratic structures penalize so much free expression where the speaker/writer fails to satisfy oligarchical dictates and conceits of class and property. Similar hypocrisies apply to other "freedoms" that western liberalists assume as givens and grounds for further smugness.

2) Apart from the fact that I never advocated Stalinist dictatorship, my advocacy for universal basic rights to life do not necessarily usurp reasonable precedents attempting individual liberty. Indeed, the developing world still pursues variously self-regulated or foreign-dictated efforts at market capitalism, but prioritizes such rights to life as a matter of course, good sense and moral obviousness for up to 85% of the world's neediest.

There's another intrinsic problem in the above where mac digresses about communist systems' dysfunctionality and collapse; maybe he utters those irrelevancies and their generalizing inaccuracies to fix his stigmatizing "Communist" tag a bit more firmly to myself.

I for one, am a strong believer in the idea of teaching comparative religion.
Pericles makes the point that he has a right to choose where he sends his kids. Fair enough.
But isn't there an age where the kids have a right to make choices of their own? About which subjects they choose, which sports they play, which religion they subscribe to?
I see no reason why comparative religion would not be workable.
In my high school days, one hour a week was set aside for scripture classes (at a public school). These classes were run by the local preachers.Even in a fairly small country town back in the sixties we had a choice of Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist.
Obviously the choices could be far more diverse today, including Judaism, Islam, Hindu etc, but why could not the same mechanism apply?
Except, of course, as comparative religion, students would rotate between classes and religions, giving them freedom of choice.
Surely if one has genuine faith in their faith, the proponent has nothing to fear about their children's being able to choose?
I wonder how many of the faithful -of any religion- have that much faith.

Milly,

It's like your aching for it to be true, I explained there was nothing sinister meant... What's weird here is how you seem ache for it to be true.

lol.

Just shoving your own vile thoughts and words back down your throat.

That faint laughing noise is you choking on them.