Bandwagon jumping and George Christensen, the worst youth group stunt ever + best use of church car wash

Bandwagons are for jumping on: There’s a very attractive bandwagon that started its journey in Canberra yesterday, courtesy of Coalition backbencher George Christensen.

Opening up a new front in the fight against the Safe Schools Coalition schools material Christensen linked a Latrobe University academic to a report published in 1982.

The ABC reports Christensen told the House that the academic was a “long-time advocate of intergenerational sex, otherwise known as paedophilia”. He added, “I think it would shock many parents to learn that a paedophilia advocate was overseeing the organisation that came up with the Safe Schools programs” according to The Guardian. The academic’s name does not appear in the SSC material Obadiah has seen.

Christians would be wise NOT to jump on this bandwagon.

It is true that organisations such as the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) did get a respectful hearing, and some support, from some parts of the Australian student left in the late seventies and eighties. Obadiah was there. It was a time when new ideas were received relatively uncritically by some young people. Support for NAMBLA soon dried up, and the left, which was in the process of adopting “cultural marxism” settled into support for adult sexual minorities.

Whether the academic mentioned by Christensen ever endorsed paedophilia is something Obadiah has no direct knowledge of.

But he would like to point out that a fleeting advocacy of paedophilia by students three decades ago at a theoretical level is one thing. The evidence before the Royal Commission into the Institutional Response into Child Sexual Abuse has been of actual paedophilia, on an industrial scale, extending over many years. Real crimes. Real victims. Real ruined lives. And many of the perpetrators have been Christians, often in leadership positions.

To leap on this bandwagon will open up Christians to an accusation of hypocrisy.

Worst youth group stunt ever: News that Otto Warmbier, a young visitor from Ohio has been sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean jail for attempting to steal a poster with Kim Jong-un’s name on it is tragic. But it gets worse with the additional detail that he had been offered a $10,000 car from someone in his local church who wanted some North Korean propaganda as a trophy.

Best re-use of a church car wash: St John’s Darlinghurst is just metres from Kings Cross, Sydney, and has leased part of its church yard to a car wash for as long as Obadiah can remember. The church has a great ministry to homeless people and news that the rather odd carwash will be replaced by accommodation for aged homeless people in partnership with independent Christian charity Hammondcare is great news. The new building will look better too.

True: “If print is dead, then I must be in hell” – Anonymous Fairfax employee via Mumbrella.