This is fucked reporting right? The quote they use as evidence is her saying something is “in God’s hands”. Elsewhere articles are run using quotes of her praying to god.
This is like, extremely normal lexicon for even casually religious people right? I’m an atheist with a pretty negative view of religion and to me this looks like pearl clutching.
Lots of extremely normal people say “I am praying for guidance” when they’re reflecting on something. That in isolation doesn’t mean they expect a hedge to catch fire and tell them what to do…
If our standard is pollies never mention religion then we might want to do some stuff about the Lord’s prayer, the oaths, and the magical mace of the Royal cult.
I don’t give a fuck what she says she’s guided by. Whatever word she uses for it is really just a placeholder for “morals”. And in this case she’s the only Labor MP or Senator with any of those.
Alright, gonna take some heat for this but I want to say it: I don’t want anyone at any level of government making decisions based around god. Dont care what god, dont care what decision. And yes, I ABSOLUTELY have this criticism of scomo!
I think she was morally right, I support her. But if she did it cause its what her god wants her to do I’d argue that’s doing it for the wrong reasons.
Your morals and ethics can be inspired by your faith, but faith should not be the backbone of your morals and ethics.
Just imagine if one of these ‘guided by God’ people ever managed to attain the Prime Ministership. Then we’d be in real trouble.
Look, I’d call it fair if the Christian side had the same level applied to it.
I want no religion in my politics thanks. Full stop. Even handed.
Depending on what you mean that might be naïve. As it stands something like half of us are religious and many people who are religious would say it significantly shapes their views on things.
It’s not even clear where the boundaries between religious and nonreligious views are sometimes.
I think it’s reasonable to ask for a politics that’s reasonable, earnest, compassionate, and understanding. I think it’s also true that fundamentalism can be awful and used to make frothing bigotry seem more reasonable than it is.
But idk, if someone says “a fundamental creed of some system I believe in is non violence and helping the weak, and I meditated on that in my appropriate cultural building last night, so I will be voting against the ‘kill the target minority’ bill proposed” is that such a bad or unreasonable thing?
I think there’s some nuance, and it doesn’t seem that much more silly than standing before an ocean storm, feeling the sublime, and that moment triggering a reduction in ego or whatever.
yeah nah. My grandmother was religious as fuck and she never said shit like “it’s in gods hands” she just made a decision and if questioned said “Because it’s the right thing to do you bloody drongo”
Really? I got kicked out of Christian Education in highschool for eating a bible and I’ve said “It’s in God’s hand’s now”. Admittedly as a humourous way to sum up “I’ve done what I can, now we see how it shaked out” but all the same.
It’s just an idiom. No doubt sometimes people literally mean it as handing off responsibility to a supernatural, interventionist entity but I would not assume that without seeing evidence someone was a fundie.
I have no issue with the ABC reporting. They’ve reported this fairly straight. I do have issues that we are spending a lot of time talking about a senator that none of us had heard of a week ago. I have issues that the author of this piece is on the other side of the country to the senator in question. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she hasn’t even met the senator. That said, I respect that she gave the senator more airtime than she gave the supposed concerns of caucus:
Senator Payman said the suggestion she was “being guided by god” in her decision-making and would campaign on other “Islamic propositions” was an insult.
“I don’t know how to respond to that question without feeling offended or insulted [at the suggestion] that just because I am a visibly Muslim woman I only care about Muslim issues,” she said.
Fair enough. Both Senator Payman’s response and the reporting of it. Sounds like the drama is coming from those ‘faceless men’ we all love so much.
It’s a higher standard than tabloid rags but I feel like they’re doing this a massive disservice by repeating it at all, especially without adding context such as the number of times various senators have mentioned religion, the mandatory religion in Parliament, and consequently that this is obviously an islamophobic smear campaign.
Their own stats say that very few people read more than the first paragraph (I can’t find them but they had this whole campaign on it using their metrics). It’s obviously inflammatory and most readers won’t remember the nuance, they’ll remember vague concerns of scary Muslim god stuff and not supporting Israel.
