Creeping insidiousness

Recently at work a colleague noticed me playing with a small string of coloured beads and asked about them. "My daughter made these.  It's a rosary ring."  No response besides a quiet 'oh' and a smile.

Why nothing more? In my office I have a few (non-religious) pictures by my daughter.  When first hung, these drew comments and conversation - how cute etc. But why silence when a religious artifact is presented?  I think there may be two reasons.  The first is that many people do not really know how to comment on religion when presented in the public square.  If you and a colleague walk past, say two Mormons, what is said between you?  It is something to be kept at home, in church grounds or maybe as a car sticker. 

Secondly, and I suspect that this probably applies more to the university educated believers in nothing (besides Westfield and evening television) - religious expression in a child is a cause for concern (as championed lately by Dawkins spouting indoctrination etc).  Over the next few weeks I may run a few workplace experiments in this respect to test my theory.

If the above is true, and there is a cringe factor in some circles about things like religious displays children etc, my suspicion for its cause falls on (not solely) media saturation of a particular point of view until you are berated into accepting it.  This morning I came across an instance.

A Federal member of parliament was commenting on marriage laws. He supports gay marriage but does not think it has the numbers to successfully pass as a new law.  He suggested (and note that this was the second story from the top all morning on Australia's public broadcaster) that the Federal government (of which he is not a member - he's in the opposition) try and pass a law about 'civil unions' for gays. He thinks that this law has some prospect of passing, and that it can serve as a needed step to acceptance of gay marriage - ie he suggests an incremental approach. 

Anyhow, and this is the insidious bit, the news story (like so, so many on this topic) was focused through a gay rights group's disgust with the proposal, along these lines:

Newsreader (in his most important voice): "A prominent gay rights group has slammed Malcolm Turnbull's suggestion that ..."

The point, of course, is that if this story is fed to you as a 'rights issue' in the sense of this being an unfair thing to say (because it was not 100% in support of gay marriage), and so to is every other story, and such stories are common, and such stories receive top billing in news, then how can it be long before it becomes very hard to resist this line of thought?  And more so for believers in nothing (besides Westfields).

I am  now wondering if the 'faint praise' or silent response to the rosary ring was an instance of a society manufactured response about religion.