Sandra Paterson: Morality - it's a real issue

COMMENT

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Americans who voted for George Bush were all dungaree-wearing cow-cockies of below-average intelligence.

That was the early conclusion many commentators came to after "moral values" emerged as a significant voting issue.

You could also be forgiven for thinking, based on media coverage, that the only people concerned about those sorts of issues in this country are oldies in cardigans and people who clap in church.

But you would be wrong. And Helen Clark is wrong and worryingly out of touch when she says because church attendance here is so low moral issues are unlikely to be as significant for New Zealand voters.

It is true that less than 10 per cent of our population attends church regularly, compared with somewhere like Ohio where more than a quarter of voters describe themselves as evangelical Christians.

But churchgoers are far from the only ones not happy that 10-year-olds in this country are being admitted to hospital with alcohol poisoning, that 11-year-olds are being propositioned for sex in teenage chatrooms and that 12-year-olds are having abortions without parental consent.

Elderly folk who remember when things were different are not the only ones lamenting that prostitution is now a legal career option, that "family" can mean whatever you want it to mean and that our very young and very old are increasingly vulnerable.

Like it or not, there is a groundswell of people for whom these kinds of issues - such as euthanasia, gay marriage, child abuse, abortion and family breakdown - will affect how they vote. And not just Anglicans and Catholics, but Muslims, Hindus and Jews. And not just people with religious affiliations but regular folk for whom Sunday means a sleep-in or a day at the beach.

Joe Average, if you look closely, is a family man with lawns to mow, bills to pay and two kids he loves fiercely. He doesn't consider himself religious but it makes him mad when a brothel sets up next door or when his 12-year-old daughter is taught how to use a condom and told to experiment with her sexuality.

Ask him in a poll if gays should have next-of-kin and inheritance rights and he will say "yes, of course" (and rightly so). But ask him whether two mums or two dads are just as good for a child as one of each and he will think again and say "no".

Millions of Joe Averages, who deep down hold to what are now known as "old-fashioned values", voted across the United States last week. And the political landscape is changing not just in the US but in Western nations around the world, where people of all ages are looking for stability and asking tough questions about the fallout of social engineering.

In Australia, for example, newspapers are full of articles about late-term abortion, some 30 years after the abortion issue was supposedly debated and decided for good.

It is no longer widely acceptable for babies to be aborted in one hospital room while premature babies the same age are being cared for in another.

In the US, John Kerry said on the campaign trail that he believed life began at conception but his voting record showed he supported partial-birth abortion, by which a baby is pulled out by the legs until only its head remains in the birth canal. The doctor then stabs scissors into the back of the baby's skull and suctions out the brain.

That sort of thing does not sit comfortably with Joe Average.

Of course, George Bush may not deliver what the conservatives were hoping for - in fact, they may end up soundly disappointed for all sorts of reasons - but the point is he was perceived by Joe Average to be the man with traditional family values and so he got the vote.

All moral and ethical issues (such as abortion,) are about culture, about who we are and what kind of society we want to be. They are the issues making the news across the English-speaking world and making or breaking political leaders - and it is the more conservative parties who are now in power in the US and Australia.

It remains to be seen whether the same political pattern will emerge here - but not because few of us go to church. The big difference between New Zealand and our English-speaking relatives is the lack of a truly conservative major-party leader. Don Brash heads the mainly conservative National Party but holds liberal views on most moral issues.

The other handicap is good old Kiwi apathy: 271,000 signatures are required to force a referendum about whether to repeal last year's Prostitution Reform Act. You can bet your bottom dollar there are at least that many people who would like to see it gone, but whether they can be bothered to sign the petition is another matter.

It would be a good thing if they did and if the legislation were then reversed. Because it is high time the Government started listening to what middle New Zealand thinks and cares about.

* Sandra Paterson, of Mt Maunganui, is a freelance writer.