The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), their spokeswoman Wendy Francis and the Rip & Roll campaign for safe sex in the homosexual community gave us a fascinating media blip yesterday. ACL’s actions, in particular, were an eye opener in a number of ways.

Firstly, it demonstrated that ACL, despite their stupidity, can be devilishly clever. They didn’t bother protesting directly to QAHC or Rip & Roll, they went straight to the people whose only skin in the game was financial – Adshel. They knew that any direct complaints to Rip & Roll would have been met with the scoffs they deserved; they knew that protesting to government would take too long and they knew that attempting to create a public backlash would be doomed to failure. Adshel, on the other hand, have to be very careful about being responsible for ads the public find offensive.

ACL also knew better than to complain to Adshel under their own banner - an oblique recognition that they have a creditability problem perhaps? They submitted 30 complaints purporting to be from unconnected private citizens. Their clumsy attempt to impersonate the general public was laughable, but effective - for a short while. It’s also interesting that they couldn’t actually find 30 people to explain their various issues with the ads, each of the complaints was eerily similar. How many people do you actually have to upset to get an ad campaign pulled? Because I could throw a latte glass from here and hit about a dozen people who want the National Tiles ad pulled from radio for being offensively irritating.

Every MSM post I’ve seen on the internet about this have had several comments, under different names, using the same arguments, vocabulary and syntax as the initial complaints to Adshel. ACL may like to think that they are very media savvy, but they’re operating under the assumption that the rest of us are as stupid as they are.

Also interesting was how quickly the whole thing turned around. Social media swung into action within hours of Adshel saying they would withdraw the campaign. The Facebook protest page accumulated over 70,000 (at the time of writing) fans and it took less than 24 hours for Adshel to realise their mistake. Yet more proof, if we really needed it, that the internet and social media really has given a voice to the once-were-silent majority.

This, more than any amount of gay sex, must be giving ACL et al nightmares. The power they have had for so long is in being organised and well funded enough to gain the ear of government and other power brokers, while the people they mistakenly claim to represent are busy ironing their clothes for work, stacking their dishwasher and tuning their guitars.

The sheltered communities politicians live in mean that lobby groups like ACL and Access Ministries can convince them, without too much trouble, that they represent a large portion of the voting public. This is just patently not true. Most of the mortgage belt Christians politicians are trying so desperately to appeal to are horrified and embarrassed by public perception that Wendy Francis speaks for them. Take a look at any comment thread polluted by the ACL trolls and you will find at least one disgusted Christian saying “get off my lawn”.

As a devout Christian once said to me, “Jesus didn’t say anything at all about homosexuality, but he did have quite a lot to say about love, compassion and not being judgemental.”

The arrogant, hate fuelled, narrow minded paranoia of fundamentalists of any religion, not just Christianity, is noisier and far more organised than the scattered majority. Anyone, particularly politicians wanting to legislate for the swinging voters, is making a dangerous mistake if they think responding to them will be in their own self interest.

It’s an odd world where an atheist stands up to defend Christians against the likes of Wendy Francis. Evolution moves in mysterious ways I guess.

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