"Let us think of those children who are victims of the industry of pornography and every other appalling form of abuse, and thus are traumatised in the depths of their soul."

Pope Benedict, Xmas, 2008.

The Australian Sex Party has called on the Rudd government to convene a Royal Commission into child sex abuse in religious institutions as a priority during its first sitting of federal Parliament in 2009. This follows Pope Benedict’s midnight mass Xmas homily in which he accused the ‘pornography’ industry of abusing children.

ALC (Christian Lobby) tries to oust Australian Sex Party

The nation's newest political party has come under fire from Christian groups even before its official launch.

The Australian Sex Party supports the exploitation and degradation of women through pornography and prostitution, the groups say.

The Australian Christian Lobby wants all other political parties to preference the party last on how-to-vote cards to prevent it taking seats in state and federal parliaments

"Pauline Hanson was rightly put last on how-to-vote cards because of her inappropriate views on race," lobby director Jim Wallace said.

"The Australian Sex Party should be treated in the same way for its inappropriate views about women."

The party launched itself at the national Sexpo event in Melbourne on Thursday. The party's platform includes opposition to the national internet filter, supporting gay marriage and adoption of a national sex education curriculum. Party convenor Fiona Patten says the party acknowledges the importance and scope of sexual issues in the lives of Australians.

"I doubt we can be all things to all people," she told ABC Television. Sexuality and gender were important issues not being dealt with properly, she said.

Stephen Conroy’s internet filter is successful, 90% of the sites blacklisted will be thus labeled because of their non violent, sexual content.

Currently 1370 URLs are on the blacklist, 674 were blacklisted because they were child pornography or appeared to be. Of the remaining 696: 441 were X18+, 65 were R18+ and 190 were RC which may means that they contained content featuring sexual fantasy or fetish. So leaving out suspected child porn, 506 of 696 blacklisted URLs are blacklisted because of legal sexual content.

This debate has reached such ludicrous heights that the Young Liberals recently proposed that a searchable database of all Australians caught accessing illegal pornography, be established. Bring back Andrew Peacock!
On a positive note, we have seen the death of the US Child Online Protection Act (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10147171-38.html)which should really have been called the Ban Adult Sexuality Act. We've also seen the end of the US ban on overseas aid for health organisations that provided abortion information or services. Lets hope that these decisions help the Sex Party overturn Conroy’s filtering plans and our own anti-abortion overseas aid policies.