Beliefs don't deserve the force of law

[Kiwi]

Beliefs don't deserve the force of law

Michael Costello | December 21, 2007 From the Australian.

IN 1993, Bill Clinton took office for the first time as US president. His victory would have been hard to predict a few years earlier. After all, Clinton was just a boy from a small town called Hope in Arkansas who had achieved not much more than becoming governor of this small, obscure southern state.

Something potentially equally remarkable is happening in the race for the Republican nomination for next year's US presidential election. Mike Huckabee also hails from Hope and his sole claim to fame is that he became governor of Arkansas.

During the past few months Huckabee has rocketed from nowhere to take the lead in the polls in a number of states that hold the early primaries, particularly in Iowa and South Carolina. In a couple of polls he has even hit the lead in the national vote.

Coming out of the blue, Huckabee has supplanted nationally famous figures such as Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. He has pushed aside the long-standing frontrunner in Iowa, Mitt Romney, a prominent former governor of an important state and a rich man who has spent tens of millions of his own dollars in trying to grab the early state caucuses and primaries.

The attack guns of his Republican opponents and the media have now turned on Huckabee as he emerges as a top-tier candidate. With relatively little money, and without the on-ground organisation that is so important, especially in Iowa, he may fade.

But why have the Republican faithful suddenly flocked to him? It's simple: religion. Huckabee pushes his Christianity as his politics. And not just any Christianity: he's an evangelical Baptist pastor, and he is using a combination of the Bible and populism to appeal to the conservative religious base of the Republican Party, which until now has been unable to find a home among the candidates on offer.

Huckabee has employed not very subtle dog-whistle techniques - all too familiar in recent years in Australia - to turn Republicans off Romney, who is a Mormon, a creed considered by evangelical Christians to be a cult rather than a Christian denomination.

Romney consequently felt compelled to set out his adherence to basic tenets of the Christian religion in a speech. It had become obvious to Romney and his camp that if he wanted to become the Republican nominee, let alone president, he had to convince voters that he was a true Christian.

Just in case you're feeling a twinge of pity for Romney, don't. He's not much better. He has stated he would have no Muslims working in his administration. McCain was at least sufficiently shamefaced to back off when he slipped and suggested you had to be a Christian to be president.

Not Romney.

So what, you ask. This is America, not Australia. Well, this is what. We're all appalled at the insistence of religious fundamentalists that sharia be applied as the law of the land in Muslim states. We say that it's inconsistent with democracy and basic civil rights that religious injunctions should govern what you can eat and drink, your sexual standards, marriage law, property law, indeed every aspect of your life.

We say the state should be neutral on matters of religion, and that the law and religion should be separate. We're appalled that under sharia law a woman who is the victim of rape may be deemed guilty of a crime, or someone who leaves Islam for another religion is considered guilty of a capital offence.

Yet in the US today it appears you have to be of the Christian faith to qualify for the highest political office. And in Australia we're now told that the Judeo-Christian religions are the basis of our society. Catholic Cardinal George Pell, Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen and Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby are busy telling governments what the law should and should not be.

I have nothing against people believing in their religion. I respect their democratic right to hold different versions of what they believe to be the ultimate truth. Whether they are Christians or Muslims or Jews or astrologists or believers in fairies at the bottom of the garden, good luck to them all. These are all based on faith, and by definition there's no reasoning with faith.

Moreover, I don't care whether they preach and convert and bind their followers, as long as those people are followers by choice, not by compulsion. If people want to engage in odd rituals and dress in funny ways and adopt particular social and cultural behaviours, let them go to it.

But what enrages me is that increasingly they insist that their beliefs should become the law of the land. They want the power of the state to be used to force me and others who don't share their beliefs to abide by their beliefs. By what right do these believers demand that the power of the state be used to enforce their particular moral views?

For example, if Catholic members of parliament are debating abortion, let them not be told that they must vote to ban it for everybody because their church says it's not for them. Let churches bind those who voluntarily choose to be their members, but they have absolutely no right to demand that those who are not of their faith be forced by the state to abide by their particular code.

We have had this interference by church in state affairs in the past. We need to be careful that we do not allow the return of these tendencies as a result of the influence of American Christian politics, just as we rightly reject them in our Islamic communities.

To borrow a phrase from the Bible: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." In other words, believe what you want, but leave me alone.