Christian Heritage still have a problem

I was glad that only 0.12% of NZers voted for Christian Heritage this election. However that is still 2,495 people too many from what I have recently learned.

Now I’ve been of the view that the actions of Graham Capill were so bad they stained the party forever. Others have argued you can’t judge them off one bad apple.

However what do you do when you end up with an e-mail which shows a current Christian Heritage board member has been effectively minimising what Capill did. Well in the interest of public disclosure, I enclose below the e-mail which came from a yahoogroups list. The sender of the e-mail is the policy director for Christian Heritage.

My comments are in italics with no > > in front of them.

> —– Original Message —–
> From: “Mark Munroe” [mark.munroe@address deleted]
> To: [name deleted]
> Cc: [name deleted]
> Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 10:17 PM
> Subject: Graham Capill
>
>
>> Hi [name deleted]
>>
>> Hope you and the family are going well.
>>
>> I noted the other day that you consider Graham Capill deserves the death
>> penalty. I am not sure how you came to this conclusion except by
>> misinformation. Graham’s offences were against [INFORMATION DELETED BY DPF AS IT BREACHES NAME SUPRESSION ORDERS, ORDERS ACTUALLY BROKEN BY MR MONROE]
>> ,
>> offending which stopped more than three years ago. The offences were not
>> rape as understood from what I understand the Bible to mean, which is why
>> Graham had such a concern about how to plea (as mentioned in the email
>> that
>> was leaked to the media).

So firstly he claims that what happened wasn’t rape, because the biblical definition of rape is different.

>> Rape of a married woman carried the death
>> penalty. Multiple convictions of any offence could merit the death
>> penalty.
>> But neither of these cases apply to Graham

Now he is claiming that if the rape is not of a married woman, it is somehow deserving of a lesser penalty. Well I don’t know about you, but I regard rape of an eight to twelve year old as far worse than of an adult. Not that either are anything but heinous.

>> As you know, I am a strong advocate for the death penalty, but only where
>> the Bible prescribes it. The “eye for an eye….” is a wonderful point
>> of
>> justice – the penalty must balance the magnitude to the offence, not more
>> and not less.

So they should die if they rape a married woman, but not if they rape little girls!

>> Please note that these is still a media ban from publishing material that
>> would reveal the identify of the victims.

Which did not stop Mr Monroe from doing so in his e-mail.

>> I was speaking to [name deleted] tonight who is aware of your site and
>> concerned about it. I hope that now that you know more information that
>> you
>> would remove the point about the death penalty applying to Graham.
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Mark

I do not know Mr Monroe from a bar of soap. I hold no animosity against him. However I am very very concerned that people in senior leadership positions in a political party continue to minimise what Graham Capill did, on the basis it was not against a married woman, but against children. Christian Heritage needs to state whether they share their policy director’s views that Capill’s offending is somehow lessened because it was not against a married woman.

Incidentally I am informed by those more well read on the bible, he is also wrong on his interpretation of the bible.