In last month’s elections in New Zealand, the ruling National Party, headed by Prime Minister Bill English, won only 56 seats.
The Labour Party, headed by Jacinda Ardern, won 46; with their allies in the Green Party, they had a total of 54 seats… so they were still outnumbered.
However, You need 61 for a majority.
So the big question over the past few weeks was which party the 9-member NZ First Party would agree to form a coalition with. It could have gone either way. Late last night, the Party’s leader Winston Peters made his announcement: His people would work with Labour.
That means the 37-year-old Ardern is now on the verge of becoming New Zealand’s next Prime Minister, the third woman ever in the role.
And, as she said in an interview earlier this year, she’s not religious. She actually left the Mormon faith in her 20s due to its anti-gay bigotry and no longer belongs to any organized religion.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... fewmxiu.99
"For a lot of years, I put it to the back of my mind. I think it was too unsettling. If something like religion is part of your foundation, and then suddenly you start questioning that - it's quite a confronting thing to deal with.
"Even before the Civil Union Bill came up, I lived in a flat with three gay friends and I was still going to church every so often and I just remember thinking 'this is really inconsistent - I'm either doing a disservice to the church or my friends'. Because how could I subscribe to a religion that just didn't account for them?
"It was one of the issues that became a real flashpoint. You drift along a bit, there are always going to be things you can't reconcile, but I could never reconcile what I saw as discrimination in a religion that was otherwise very focused on tolerance and kindness."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/new ... d=11789352
She has moral integrity.