Right on cue

Yesterday I blogged about the government’s quasi-eugenics plans to offer “voluntary” long-term contraceptives to women on a benefit and their teenage daughters. I mentioned that our far-right “Christian” lobby was taking a position both ways, but, nevertheless, the debate here was quite different from in the USA. Naturally, that couldn’t last.

Today New Zealand’s most prominent fundamentalist Christian politician rubbished the plans because only sluts use contraception. That wasn’t quite how he put it, of course, but it was his clear meaning. Speaking to Radio New Zealand, Colin Craig, the leader of the rightwing “Christian” Conservative Party said:

"Why should, say, a 70-year-old who's had one partner all their life be paying for a young woman to sleep around? We are the country with the most promiscuous young women in the world. This does nothing to help us at all."

He apparently thinks that no monogamous woman would ever use contraception when, in fact, most women do, statistically speaking. And his assertion that New Zealand’s young women are the world’s “most promiscuous”? Utter nonsense.

Craig said “international research” had shown our women were promiscuous and living what he called a “destructive lifestyle”. That “research” was actually a 2006 survey conducted by a manufacturer of condoms to help them better market their products. The manufacturer says, “we can confirm this survey is reliable and credible.” And so, they disclose their margin of error, their confidence level and so on, right? Well, no. Instead, they declare it’s credible because:

“We have used a sample size of 1,000 for the majority of countries surveyed which is the recommended sample size required for social policy and PR activity.”

So, they say their survey is accurate because they had a thousand people and that’s the right number of participants. Okay, then. The surveys were conducted online in all but one country and taken among people invited by email, mainly from a marketing research panel—not a truly random sample at all, in other words.

To sum it up: We have a non-representative sample, no data on whether there’s even a shred of scientific method involved, all of which makes the entire thing suspect, but Craig, who John Key thinks could be a coalition partner for National after the 2014 elections, thinks a dubious marketing survey qualifies as “international research” on which he’s happy to blast ordinary New Zealand women for being sluts:

"We are faced with a reality that the constant changing of partners is a decision young women are making. It's a destructive decision on a lot of levels. Health is one of those, and it is a big cost to us."

Either Colin Craig is an idiot, or he’s allowing his personal religious prejudices to get in the way of reason and intellect. Actually, it’s entirely possible that both are true—the jury’s still out on that.

Prime Minister John Key may have begun to see what a nutter Craig is. He stated that there’s no credible evidence to back up Craig’s slurs, but still didn’t rule out working with him in the future: "We work with lots of partners and we don't always agree with everything they say and they don't always agree with us. It doesn't mean that we can't work constructively," he said.

However, for the first time Key said he might consider working with New Zealand First and Winston Peters after the next election, even though in the past he’d flatly ruled Peters out. With the Act “Party” all but sure to die when John Banks leaves Parliament, Key is becoming desperate to find coalition partners—one could even say he’s being promiscuous, politically speaking.

I think we should be glad Craig has no censor connected to his mouth. By saying what he really thinks, he’s helped ordinary, mainstream Kiwis see how loopy he is.