Welcome youths ulterior mission!

The best you can hope to do in my opinion, is to engage your friends in discussion and get them to think critically and rationally about what they're doing.

This does bring up an interesting point, though.  Are many teens freethinkers, but end up using "family values" once they are young marrieds and start having families? 

Replying to all two of you that are here.

When they say "family values" they mean "a man and a man cannot reproduce, they are vile in the eyes of my God and thus incapable of love" and " a woman who works in anything but care giving jobs is a whore". I've tried rational converstion for years but when they skew family values into this it gets hard going. The current swing in politics is something they are using to justify their positions, only the thing about extremist nutters is that they often have the motivation to rise to the top and i really hope they don't.

Yay other british leftie!

That's about it.

That's odd. What religion are these folks? A catholic would probably tell you that if it's god's will, they will reproduce. If they can't, that is also god's will.

So they think that if their god made a man or woman sterile, he thinks his own creation is vile?

I've never heard that one.

Does this include Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth?  Uh oh.  What about the Queen Mother?

Again, this is the first time I've heard "family values" stated like this, but their religion obviously demeans women.

Hang around the forums for awhile and maybe you'll get some fresh ideas on how to talk to these fundies.

Family values are working less hours, increased maternity and paternity leave, subsidised child care, flexible working practices (usually by law) all the things generally considered by left.

Those things that allow parents to actually spend time with their families

Of course none of this options are without cost infact the cost might be too high in damaging the economy so no one works but what family values isnt is anythign preached by the god squad

I can't imagine born again's making any progress in England.
They've got pocket communities but nothing politically threatening.
'Born again' Christian is part of Bible Belt America's self identity and is deep rooted in the culture. The Christianity rooted in English culture is of the more traditional sort, the big churches, wise and serene priest... none of this 'in your face' preaching...

Born agains in England have to face against tradition rather than appeal to it. They do have some things to appeal to, as they can appeal to concepts like 'the morality of Jesus' and 'the sinfulness of man' but there are trying to bring more change to the person's views rather than preservation.

In my experience, their converts are attracted to their way of life. These Christian movements are going through a kind of spiritual honey moon. They're fresh, they've recently found their calling, they're on the up and up and feel like they're making progress. I'm sure you've seen films, read books about people who get caught up in a fresh political movement and what a rush it feels like. The psychological implication is that these guys feel alive and are a happy bunch, and people are attracted by this happiness.

"This is what happens when Jesus transforms your life!"
And people buy it... a few anyway.
Their target tends to be people who casually know a bit about religion, maybe brought up in it and didn't believe it, but disbelieve it intuitively. So when they come across the Christian arguments presented in books like Strobels they are impressed. By then they have already been overwhelmed by the atmosphere, giving them the will to believe, meaning they accept many of these arguments without proper scepticism.

Even so, they're destined to remain a minority.
Their views on sex are unpopular, they take every opportunity to attack opposing faiths and will sometimes use eternal death threats in their arguments. This seriously pisses people off. Combine this with the fact that their views are clearly based on superstition (especially as a large amount are creationist) then you get a group that are loved by the people they enchant with their character but completely disrespected for what they believe.

I somehow managed being both, liking the fundies I hung with but always feeling incredibly frustrated with their theology...
A horrific outlook is undesirable but understandable and even realistic if it's based on fact. Fantasy based beliefs aren't true but you can be forgiven for indulging them if there's hope involved, or if it makes your world that little bit prettier.

These Christians would talk about great hope and then talk about how everyone's going to burn in hell. Tell me I shouldn't rely on man's reason to bring me to God but my reactions to hell were irrational feelings, that I'd been fooled by the lies of the culture of my day while they had absolute truth in what they believed...
A several double standards like that...
In the end, I just saw it all as:
"I'll say good things about what agrees with us and bad things about what doesn't, because what agrees with us must be right!!"

They don't seem to be growing a rate that's gaining political power though. When it comes to religious politics in England, Islam might be the one to keep an eye on.

The only religious problem we have in politics at the moment is these faith schools. Although I was brought up in a Catholic 'faith school', that was fine because my education was 100% secular apart RE lessons and the fact that we had school masses on feast days. It was secular education with a dose of Catholic culture. However, some of these schools have started tampering with the syllabus in order to promote their faith. I've heard that Gordon Brown hates them. We'll get him to sort them out once Blair finally steps down!