Church and state in NSW

Described by Kristina Keneally in 2006 as "the godfather of the extremist right of the Liberal Party," Clarke has connections to right wing Catholic sect Opus Dei, and has been viewed as a major power broker in the Liberal Party.

Supported by Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, Clarke's position has been under threat since 2010 from more moderate forces in the NSW Liberal Party. However, he has recently been identified as one of the State Opposition's "faceless men" tipped to exert considerable influence over Barry O'Farrell to install conservative Christian MPs in Cabinet, should the party win government.

Clarke is also a supporter of shadow attorney-general and Liberal Member for Epping Greg Smith as a future party leader. Smith is a former president of the anti-choice NSW Right to Life Association, and Clarke himself is reputed to have recruited party members on the strength of whether they took an anti-abortion stand or not.

Dissent is divisive and censorship is fundamental

The religious right belief is that to succeed, a society must operate within a framework of common assumptions. Dissent is divisive and must be smothered. Censorship through protest is a cornerstone of what some describe as a dominionist theological form of political ideology, and a sexually and socially ultra-conservative theocracy.

Christian conservatives have profound issues with homosexuals, public representations of female sexuality, abortion, divorce, the role of women in society and marriage, censorship and popular culture, and the sexualisation of children. (On the latter I share some of their concerns.)

(A warning; if you open the society and marriage link,turn off your sound unless you want your senses assailed by the most spectacularly awful piano rendition of Rock of Ages known to humankind, rivaled only by the pianist accompanying Elvis's cover of Unchained Melody circa 1977.)

Narratives of propaganda

Moral campaigners are not required to provide any evidence that the object of their disapproval is what they say it is. They simply have to use florid rhetorical propaganda to frighten enough petitioners so that corporations will be equally frightened, and for the sake of peace and unwanted attention, pull the offending material.

If at all possible, Christian conservative propagandists such as the ACL will also make at times extremely tenuous links to the welfare of children. The threat of being promoted as acting against the interests of children will cause just about anybody to fall to their knees, begging the Christian conservatives for mercy.

The US neo-cons, Tea Party supporters and the religious right are enabled in their endeavours by such luminaries as Rupert Murdoch, and his Fox News media slaves Bill O'Reilly, the Mormon convert Glenn Beck (renowned for his incendiary rhetoric) and Megyn Kelly. Fox News is apparently the trusted news source for a majority of Tea Party followers, more than twice as high as in the general population.

In Australia we have the rabid rants of radio shock jocks. Not in the same league by any means, but they exist and they have their followers, to the extent that prime ministers are keen to be interviewed by powerful shock jocks. Even when the shock jock, in a routine attack of megalomania, tells them off on air for their tardiness.