IT IS amazing how a relatively small youth organisation can attract national publicity with a change to the promise its members make.
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Just over a week ago Girl Guides Australia changed its promise by removing references to God and the Queen.
It is not so amazing that zealots such as NSW Christian Democrat Fred Nile would seek to denigrate Guides for the change.
It might surprise Nile and many others that Guides, established by Olave Baden-Powell, was founded on the same principles as Scouting. It seeks to welcome people of all creeds, social standing and nationalities. Yet Nile, ordained a Congregational minister in 1964, thinks Guides should be ashamed of themselves for this act of disloyalty. It is not clear to what or to whom he believes there has been disloyalty.
In this country, organisations are, within reason, free to express the guidelines under which their members participate. The change of the Guides' promise provides a broader interpretation of a spiritual belief in keeping with the organisation's founding principles.
The new promise, which has also attracted support and opposition respectively from republicans and monarchists, is: ''I promise that I will do my best to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve my community and Australia and to live by the Guide Law.''
There was much less fuss in 2001 when Scouts Australia made two changes to their promise. Previously Scouts promised to do their duty ''to God and the Queen''.
The word ''my'' was inserted before God. This recognises people have different understandings or interpretations of their God. The other change was to provide an option to do one's duty to Australia, or to the Queen of Australia. Other Scout leaders will no doubt have a different experience, but I can report that not one Scout who I have invested since has chosen to include the Queen in their promise.
Scouting and Guiding do not require a religious commitment of their members but both encourage members to seek a spiritual belief - to recognise something greater than themselves. An important principle is that adult leaders are not to proselytise their particular beliefs but to encourage youth members to seek spiritual truths. It is also to respect people who hold different beliefs. That is something Nile seems to have found difficult throughout his public life.
He has campaigned against Sydney's gay and lesbian mardi gras and expressed concern that Muslims were favoured over Christians as refugees. More recently he objected to ethics classes in government schools for students who chose not to attend religious classes. He said the ethics classes were based on a philosophy linked to Nazism and communism.
I should declare that under my questioning in 2010 over the alleged use of his office computer to check pornographic websites, Nile said I was a humbug.