National Day of Secularism – May the 26th

Sorry, it’s not the National Day of Thanksgiving (NDoT) anymore. I think we need another name for it. “National Day of Secularism” perhaps?

Bye-bye, ta-ta, theocrats take your disingenuous political stunt with you. You haven’t fooled me or anyone else with a functioning brain.

The NDoT, is unfortunately not quite all it’s promoters would like you to think it is; a time where we can all reflect on our lucky nation and the roles that certain groups have had in supporting our communities and culture.

Sure, I’m grateful to these people and I thank probability (rather than God) for my luck, but I’d rather be thankful on every day of the year and you know what? I have another problem. I think there is a dichotomy between “thank” and “use politically”. You can’t exploit groups of people as political capital and simultaneously be genuinely full of thanks; if they had given you that for which you are truly grateful you wouldn’t be squeezing them for more!

But of course, I’m getting off track here. The NDoT has diddly-squat to do with gratitude for one’s peers. The Australian Prayer Network came up with the NDoT after calls for a kind of Christian nationalism by its followers.

“Many people wrote to the Australian Prayer Network expressing a desire to see our nation called to prayer one day each year to acknowledge our Christian heritage and the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our nation.“

(NDoT “About Us“, 2007)

Australia isn’t a theocracy. There is no “Lordship” over our nation, not by Jesus, Howard, Sir Donald Bradman or the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

We are a secular constitutional monarchy and we are secular for a reason; so one narrow group of denominations can’t gain privilege and have the state oppress those of other or no-faith on their behalf. It’s a core part of democracy that one is not subjected to such oppression, but in latter years we have seen George Pell call for such oppressive privilege in the guise of “Normative Democracy”, Brian Houston call for it in the form of Creationism in the science class and various Mufti’s, Mullahs, Bishops, Reverends, Popes and other assorted theofascists call for it as well.

Worse still, we have seen politicians clambering aboard the theocracy bandwagon, either in support of this national day of prayer lordship under god thanksgiving, or in support of other theocratic scams such as funded chaplain programs that can’t possibly cater to the diversity of religion in a school or having the “Judaeo-Christian” officially recognised as the wellspring of Australian values in proposed citizenship tests.

Note: there is a reason that Australian values are called Australian values; because they are constructed by Australians (be they of Asian, Aborigine, Anglo-Saxon, Middle Eastern or whatever origin)!

So on May the 26th, or at least during the remainder of this week (or sometime soonish), I’d like Australian bloggers to do something about it!

That’s right! A tagging meme!

National Day of Secularism
May the 26th

 

How the “meme” works

This “meme” works in two steps; first the “Tagging stage” and then the “Blog against theocracy stage”.

Tagging stage

If you are tagged by the meme, then it’s the same old format; mention this entry so people can see the rules and then tag five other bloggers (preferably Australian given the nature of the NDoT.) You can link back to these rules and display the above (rather modest) banner by inserting this code at the end of your entry (unless you are using “blogspot”);

<p align=”center”><a href=”http://thinkerspodium.wordpress.com/2007/05/22/national-day-of-secularism-may-the-26th/”><img src=”http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s210/thinkerspodium/Theocracy.png” style=”width: 198px; height: 33px” />
National Day of Secularism
May the 26th</a></p>

Feel free to copy the PNG file to your own host and alter the code accordingly, and wordpress users remember when entering the code to enter it into the “code” window of your blog editor (I know there is a tab for this above your editing window)! Blogspot bloggers note the updates below (you won’t need the above code).

Blogspot Update #1: I’ve noticed that the reference to the .PNG file has been garbled when posted on a blogspot blog, so blogspot bloggers, just keep an eye on the “IMG SRC” and make sure it points to a copy of the .PNG image.

Blogspot Update #2: A solution! In order to prevent blogger from mangling the code, just use your ordinary edit window and highlight the above banner, right click and copy and then paste into your blog entry where you want the banner to appear. You don’t need to enter the HTML code.

This meme does however have somewhat of a difference; an additional stage…

Blog against theocracy stage

If you have been tagged (heck, even if you haven’t, it doesn’t bother me) then in addition to tagging others, it is also hoped that you will write a blog entry about the separation of Church and State in Australia. It could be a critique of Pell’s “normative democracy”, the historic anti-democracy sermonizing of Archbishop Daniel Mannix, inevitable discrimination by the funding of (approved) chaplains in public schools, the state backed imposition of bans on forbidden women’s dress or whatever Church-State issue you find important.

Preferably, such a blog entry would be published on the 26th, but I’ve been lazy in getting around to this and I’ve left people little time so there is no deadline as such.

Just a couple of caveats; 1) the church-state anti-theocracy blog entry should mention the phrase “National Day of Thanksgiving”, possibly mentioning that the entry is a response to the NDoT, and 2) feel free to add the (again admittedly modest) banner.

Okay, so who do I tag to start this off?

Matt at “Matt’s Notepad” – An Australian atheist blogger who I’ve only just come across recently, I think this would be a great way of keeping the lines open.

Ninglun at “Lines From a Floating Life” – I know he’s a bit busy at the moment, but there is no deadline. Also, I think it’s crucially important to get a critical theist’s perspective on the topic. Theists are just as easily discriminated against by violation of Church-State as atheists are!

Legal Eagle at “The Legal Soapbox” – We need a woman’s perspective and given one of her recent comments about the origins of Australian values, I thought I’d twist her arm.

Mikey at “Harrangueman” – Because who’d want to blog without Mikey?

and…

Arthur at “Five Public Opinions” – Because let’s face it, I wouldn’t have come up with this meme without him inspiring it.

and for a supplementary sixth;

Romana at “It’s About Time” – I know she’s quite busy of late, but I suspect she could really get stuck into Tony Abbott

~ Bruce