The language of the right: sex education debates in South Australia

Abstract

In 2003 a campaign took place against a new model of sex education in South Australia. This campaign, organized primarily by Christian Right1 groups, included community forums, a letter‐writing campaign, extensive media coverage and a parliamentary debate. This paper analyses the language, arguments and strategies used by those who opposed the programme and explores some of the challenges in responding to this in a way that destabilizes the ‘family values’ discourse rather than reinforcing it through entrenching predictable binary positions. While this debate did not result in the withdrawal of the programme, it provides an important insight into the emergence of a more active Christian Right in Australia and signals that the gains made to implement comprehensive sex education should not be taken for granted. It also reveals the influence of the US Christian Right where similar language and arguments have shaped their government's conservative abstinence approach to sex education.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank colleagues at SHine SA and Associate Professor Margie Ripper at the University of Adelaide for support in the development of this article.

Notes

1. In this paper the term ‘Christian Right’ will be used to refer to those groups who form coalitions around a traditional Christian vision and a defence of the traditional nuclear family formation (Buss & Herman, 2003).

2. The South Australian SHARE project is called SHARE: respect, health, life. This should not be confused with another SHARE programme in Scotland called Sexual Health and Relationships: Safe, Happy and Responsible.

3. According to Kaplan (2004), The Medical Institute for Sexual Health, founded by Joe McIlhaney, has become ‘one of the most prominent peddlers of fake science’ (p. 107).

4. The close links between the family values organizations in the United States and Australia can also be seen on the South Australian website for the Australian Family Association, which begins with the following statement from the US Republican Patrick Buchanan: ‘There is a religious war going in this country, a cultural war as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America’ (available online at: http://www.family.org.au/Printer_friendly_docs/Paul Russell_address.htm, accessed 4 January 2005).

5. Howard himself has used this rhetoric in the successful passing of the Marriage Amendment Act by Federal Parliament on 12 August 2004, which resulted in marriage being defined to exclude people of the same sex. See Maddox (2005) for further discussion of the rise of the religious right in Australia.