The Rev. Fred Nile and what the meaning of is, is.

The big news of the day was that NSW Ports and waterways minister Paul McLeay has resigned after admitting to using his parliamentary computer to visit gambling and adult websites. He says although the websites were not illegal, it was a mistake to visit them and he accepts he acted inappropriately.

Actually it’s not all that big, NSW Labor politicians seem to be resigning in disgrace so regularly they are starting to resemble lemmings charging toward the abyss. There are indications that other MPs are likely to be called to account on this one.

Here’s where it gets interesting though. New South Wales Christian Democrat MP, the Rev. Fred Nile has made a statement that neither, he or his staff have been "perving" at internet pornography videos on their work computers, but they have been researching the issue. This sounds like those Japanese whalers down in the Southern Ocean researching whale populations.

There are reports the audit also found Fred Nile's computer had been used to access internet porn.

Mr Nile says, for research purposes, a senior researcher viewed the websites of organisations like the Australian Sex Party and the Eros Foundation, and then followed links from the sites.

The Sex Party have made a press release, making their position clear:

The Rev Fred Nile should not feel guilty about accessing pornography per se but should resign over his appalling response to the current situation, according to the Australian Sex Party. His excuse was to blame and defame the Australian Sex Party and suggest that he was looking for ‘criminal links’ off the Sex Party website.

Sex Party President, Fiona Patten, said that Rev Nile should get over his guilt and shame and explain to the public exactly what sort of ‘porn’ sites he and/or his staff were surfing. “Most adult sites that originate in the US or Europe contain large amounts of Refused Classification (RC) material because they do not meet the tight criteria of Australian X rated guidelines”, she said. “Those conducting the audit should not be using the word ‘porn’ to refer to any of the 200,000 sites that the Rev Nile’s office is reported to have accessed. They should be telling us if they were R rated, X rated or RC. This gives us a truer picture of type of material that he was looking at.”

Ms Patten said that Rev Nile had a right to look at R and X rated porn in his office if he wanted to and that his constituents would be the final arbiters of his actions. “However if he was looking at ‘religious BDSM*’ for example, which is a new genre involving flagellation and sexual bondage scenes, most of which would fall into the RC classification, then that would be a bridge too far”, she said.

She called on Rev Nile to make public all the links to crime and the Sex Party that he found in his ‘research’. “The NSW tax payer has funded this research so let’s all have a look at it”, she said. “I’d like to publicly debate him about the links between religious organizations and child sex abuse vs. the links to sex shops illegally selling classified X rated films in NSW”.