As the New Zealand Herald appears to have reverted to puffing the Christian Right's prospects and competence again, I thought I'd object. On Boxing Day, Leah Haines reported that Vision New Zealand, a network of three hundred and fifty evangelical and fundamentalist churches, was supposedly negotiating with Catholic and mainline Protestant churches in the wake of the Civil Union Bill. Er, okay, but I don't think the mainliners are going to sign up to anything that doesn't criticise free-market social and economic policies. As for Catholic involvement, the hierarchy says one thing, but Catholic laity tend to do the other, and class background trumps religious allegiance. To put it simply, working-class Catholics vote Labour, liberal Catholics vote Green, and Catholic farmers vote National. Vision wants Future New Zealand to lose its electoral anchor through cutting its links with Peter Dunne, therefore cutting off its only hope of stealthing further social conservative extremists into Parliament. Ex-FNZ Leader Anthony Walton argued against this, but United Future is being attacked for helping to guarantee confidence and supply during the current parliamentary term. Well, what do they expect? And moreover, even Dunne seems to be getting tired of the electoral liability that constitutes most of his caucus. If that idea sounds counterproductive, let's tune in on Alexis Stuart. Stuart is Maxim's token antifeminist. For some reason, Logan and Fleming believe that her art history qualifications enable her to act as a competent critic of social scientists, developmental psychologists and pediatricians when it comes to same-sex parenting. Mind you, as New Zealand has no organised antifeminist groups left, it can't rely on parallel conservative Christian social scientists from that quarter in this country. Predictably, Stuart is distorting Stacey and Biblarz' benchmark paper about the benefits of same-sex parenting, and concentrating on the prospect that children of same-sex parents might turn out lesbian or gay themselves. Actually, that research is ambivalent, according to that paper. In any case, is that more relevant than the finding that same-sex parenting has no negative effect on future employment opportunities and educational achievement for adult children of same-sex parents? And, Alexis - most of that research deals with lesbian parents and coparents because most same-sex led families consist of Heather (or Henry) and her (or his) two Mums. At least they're keeping away from Nagai, Lerner and Nock- wonder why? Actually, Stacey is engaged in a research project that deals with gay male-led families at the moment, so it'll be interesting to read about its outcome. I also wonder why they're not using Patricia Morgan, given that the Business Roundtable imported her to slag off solo mums recently. It could be because she's also an easy target due to her use of Paul Cameron's junk stats and research in her (UK) Christian Institute attack on same-sex parenting three years or so ago. Sorry, Maxim. Repeating the same old porkies won't beef them up. And stuffed vine leaves are still stuffed, rather like their arguments against same-sex parenting. Craig Young - 29th December 2004