Third Parties and Sex - Who Knew?

In Queensland, Australia, the big news that everyone is talking about is the upcoming state Parliamentary elections. Many parties have been offering their candidates for election on March 21st, and while the two major political front runners are stealing the limelight, a few smaller parties have introduced their own candidates just under the radar. One in particular that I've noticed is the "Australian Sex Party", a small third party founded last year by Fiona Pattern (a little bit about her and her team can be found on their website, here), described as a party with a "Social Progressive" policy. This is an interesting development, as Queensland's censorship laws have been described by Pattern as "far stricter than any other state in Australia and the same as laws on erotica in totalitarian states like China and Iran."

While her view is likely somewhat extreme, the opposition towards this suggests that her statement has at least some element of truth, as the opposition to the party has been strong and targeted, using a variety of flashy words to demonize pornography as much as Pattern demonized Queensland's censorship policies.

Despite this, I find the most interesting thing about this is that political organizations so specialized have sprouted out of these greater movements and have actually stolen some of the spotlight. They don't generally get this kind of attention Stateside, but parties like the Green Party with their candidate, Ralph Nader, possibly tipping the election towards former president Bush, and independents, like Ross Perot, who took nearly 19% of the popular vote and later, under the Reform Party, grabbed a respectable 8% percent, have really began to tip the scales in the political environment.