Coalition of Concerned Citizens
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The Coalition of Concerned Citizens was a New Zealand Christian conservative pressure group, and one of several attempts to form pro-censorship, anti-abortion, anti-gay and sex education opponents into a comprehensive social conservative political coalition. Its founders included Keith Hay, Peter Tait and Barry Reed.
The CCC was originally formed to fight the New Zealand Homosexual Law Reform Act, although its membership also tried to defeat David Lange's Fourth Labour Government at the general election of 1987, through infiltration of New Zealand National Party branches. However, the Lange administration won a second term of office, and the perceived extremism of Coalition-sponsored entryist candidates contributed to several urban constituency defeats for the National Party, which quietly centralised its electoral candidate selection procedures.
According to Laurie Guy, the Coalition was disproportionately dominated by members of the Reformed Churches of New Zealand and Pentecostals, and suffered from political naivety. It produced a newsletter called Coalition Courier. Some of its more moderate membership left and joined the Christian Heritage Party (later renamed Christian Heritage New Zealand, now defunct) after 1989, disgruntled at the Coalition's perceived tendencies toward right-wing extremism. During its existence, the Coalition also produced an anti-gay booklet entitled The Social Effects of Homosexuality (1985), which relied significantly on the work of controversial US psychologist Paul Cameron. The Coalition ceased to exist in the late 1990s.
[edit] Bibliography
- C.James Bacon: The Social Effects of Homosexuality: Christchurch: Coalition of Concerned Citizens: 1985: ISBN 0-908747-00-4
- Laurie Guy: "Evangelicals and the Homosexual Law Reform Debate" Stimulus (November 2005):13(4):69-77: [1]
