Well, it's kinda funny. I'm a secular humanist (well, that's how I define myself, at least. I also class myself as an envinronmentalist - and I'm certainly not as whacked-out as Al Gore). I'm an atheist. In fact, until recently, I always assumed that my political sympathies lay around 'liberal'.

And then I actually looked at the world, and at how people thought. It was strange, 'cause conservatives have ALWAYS been pitched to me as idiotic redneck hicks, and liberals as liberators who are going to save us from the evil capitalist rule.

I knew a lot of people - no conservatives, and a LOT of liberals. When I got interested in politics, though, I talked to people. And I found out something interesting. Conservatives weren't non-existent - indeed, they're the majority around where I live. But the conservatives I knew were good, moral people - too damn polite to try and push their political views on a kid.

From then, it was merely a few steps away from true conservatism. (Hell, I went through our school history textbooks, and whited out the author's name on the inside of the cover - replacing it with 'Kim Beazley', the Labour Party's leader at the time here in Aus)

Despite my beliefs (Which, I'm sure, are probably unique among Australian Freepers - I hope not, but it seems to be likely), I'm anti-abortion, pro-Iraq, pro-small government, and intensely against hate crime laws.

My stance on gay marriage, on the other hand, is probably a bit weird. It's more-or-less 'who cares?'. Considering gay marriages number in the hundreds, we'd be better off addressing issues that really matter - I'd let a hundred gay people marry to prevent one baby from being aborted.

The last one is probably because our 'English' class is essentially an exercise in liberalism - to be vain, I'm the top student in English in my year. Not because I'm better at writing than other students - rather, because I realise that my teachers want to hear what they say parroted back to them in my own words, and I do so accordingly. It's left me a bit jaded - you say what the teachers want you to say, or you fail. Scale it up a bit - you say what the Soviet Politburo want you to say, or you die. It's not hard to see the correlation.

I don't do much to espouse my political beliefs beyond FR, considering my isolation (the bush is certainly quiet, and a good place to go camping, hunting, and running from half-crazed brown snakes), and considering that I generally enjoy just being a teenager, and doing stuff that older FReepers would no doubt disapprove of, but I take every opportunity I get to try and shut the noisy liberals I know up. (Even if it's taking 'A Skeptic's Guide to an Inconvinient Truth', and reading out rebuttle from it when the appropriate points come up - a movie which we were watching in school, I'm not enough of an idiot to do that a theatre.)

I'm a firm believer in Judeo-Christian morality (I mean, let's be quite honest here. I'm for secularism, and seperation of church and state, but I'll be damned if I can see the problem with 'love thy neighbour', and 'thou shalt not murder'), and I'm quite worried by the love affair the liberals have with the fascists. Or Islamists. Whichever you prefer.