Rev. Dr. Peter Barnes
I think it was Harold Wilson who first commented that a week was a long time in politics. Given the present decrepit state of Australian politics – and for that matter, Western politics in general – even a day can seem too long. The stories change but the underlying problems remain the same. Groucho Marx sounds almost prophetic: ‘Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies’. The same might be said of most journalism and social studies components in universities.
Recently we were treated to former Prime Minister Gillard’s attack on men in blue ties who, she said, wanted abortion to become ‘the political plaything of men who think they know better.’ This was followed by some lewd emails from members of the armed forces; some less than tasteful remarks about Ms Gillard on a menu linked to a Liberal Party dinner; and then the radio announcer Howard Sattler’s show of disrespect in referring to the supposed sexual orientation of Ms Gillard’s ‘partner’. The media, who do their level best to lower whatever standards are left, were all up in arms in pronouncing that the problem was sexism, that some men still looked down on women. Therefore, the solution was to treat men and women the same in every way. The mantra was ‘The situation is getting better, but we still have some way to go.’ To top it all off, one of Ms Gillard’s last gifts to lawyers was to launch an inquiry by the Australian Human Rights Commission into the treatment of women in the workplace.
This may sound reasonable in parts but overall it is off-beam. If the diagnosis of the problem is in error, then the prescription to solve it will also be wrong, and may indeed make the situation worse. The first diagnosis is that in being coarse, men are despising women. The reality is quite different. The Bible recognises sexual differences, and so warns men against looking at women with lustful intent (Matt.5:28), which means they are loving women in a wrong and selfish way. Women are to dress modestly (1 Tim.2:9), not in a way that flaunts their sexual appeal. So the first diagnosis ought to be that we live in a society full of sinners. It is not that men hate women, but they hate the God of the Bible. And, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, promiscuity will hurt both sexes – and both sexes are under God’s law of sexual purity (see Hos.4:14) – but it will hurt women more. Feminists are yet to wake up to this fact.
Edith Lyons, who gave birth to twelve children, was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives, and that was in 1943. Her speeches were such that Robert Menzies said she could move him to tears when she spoke on the condition of a railway track. In those far-off days of rampant sexism, she was almost always treated with considerable respect, and needed no gender inquiries to help her. As a contrast, the Australian of the Year in 2013 was Ita Buttrose, whose great contribution to Australian culture was to co-found the trashy magazine Cleo.
The second diagnosis is that men and women are equal, and therefore the same. This, again, is fallacious. Equality is not sameness. Some lewd efforts in the armed forces recently led Stephen Smith, the Minister for Defence, to assert that the solution was that women should be treated equally, meaning they could serve in the front lines. In the USA, it was reported in January 2013 that more than 130 women had been killed and over 800 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gail Collins, writing for the New York Times, predictably saw this as an impressive step forward for women’s rights, concluding: ‘We’ve come a long, sometimes tragic, heroic way.’ Ms Collins is a better writer than she is a thinker. Her approach in the Australian context would lead to affirmative action in football circles to solve a culture of male crudity. Ah, if only we had six or seven women in each team during the State of Origin matches, the moral tone would improve!
Without God’s diagnoses and His solutions, we are left to make up our own, and are not doing a very good job of it.