Bruce Logan

Bruce Logan (born 1938) is a New Zealand conservative Christian who has been involved in opposition to liberal social policies within his country for over two decades.

History

Logan was originally Head of English at Orewa College in Auckland, until he moved southwards to Christchurch in the mid-nineties. He became curriculum director at Middleton Grange School, New Zealand's largest evangelical/Christian (Integrated) school, at the same time. While employed there, Logan also acted as Director for the New Zealand Education Development Foundation, which attempted to interest centre-right political parties in education concerns, like school choice, school bulk funding, the abolition of outcome-based education strategies and a deregulated post-compulsory tertiary education sector.

In "Cutting Edge", Logan often reprinted articles from the Institute for Economic Affairs (United Kingdom), British journalist Melanie Phillips, First Things (United States, edited by Richard John Neuhaus and other Anglo-American and Australian social conservative publications.

In addition, he wrote several books for NZEDF, including "A Questionable Conception" (1998), which opposed comprehrensive sex education; "A Level Playing Field?" (1996), which advocated school 'choice'. He also wrote "Marriage: Do We Need It?" (1998) which explored the critical role marriage plays in civil society.

In 2000, the New Zealand Education Development Foundation metamorphosed into the Maxim Institute. Logan served as its first director and also operated out of Christchurch-based offices, as the Institute had offices in Christchurch and Auckland. Middleton Grange provided premises for their Christchurch offices. Logan also published "Evidence", the Institute's 'policy journal,' which ran for fifteen issues (2001-2005).

After the formation of the Institute, Logan wrote "Same Sex Marriage?" (2000) for Affirm, a Tauranga-based New Zealand Presbyterian organisation opposed to civil unions, and lesbian and gay ordination within their own denomination. As well as this, he authored "Waking Up to Marriage" (2004), which repeated and supplemented earlier conservative social scientific research which encouraged promotion of heterosexual marriage over heterosexual cohabitation, and legal recognition of lesbian/gay civil unions, for the Maxim Institute.

During his time at the Institute, Logan campaigned against New Zealand's prostitution law reform, euthanasia, lesbian and gay civil unions in New Zealand and other issues related to feminism, family policy and bioethics.

On October 17 2005, Paul Litterick of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists used Copyscape [http://www.copyscape.com/] , a web-based plagiarism detection service, to analyse Logan's published newspaper work. He alleged plagiarism in Logan's work, and published the results in the "Fundy Post" (Issues 18 and 19), an online chronicle of the alleged excesses of New Zealand conservative Christians and other faith-based elements. Litterick found that some of Logan's work was taken (in most cases with permission) from Anglo-American sources, which include the Heritage Foundation, Institute for American Values and National Fatherhood Institute, Maggie Gallagher (a US social conservative journalist), Melanie Phillips,(UK), Conservative Christian Fellowship (UK) and Digby Anderson, Social Affairs Unit(UK).

Supporters of Logan say that his mistake was simply poor citation technique, rather than theft of intellectual property; in some instances, Logan had permission to quote but had apparently neglected to properly demarcate work and explicitly give credit Fact|date=February 2007. By contrast, his opponents say that the systematic nature of the plagiarism -- involving blocks of text being cut-and-pasted into his articles over a period of several years -- is evidence that Logan cannot be trusted as a contributor of original ideas Fact|date=February 2007.

In November 2005, Logan retired from the Maxim Institute.

In the year following the he published a handful of articles: one article for New Zealand's fundamentalist newspaper "Challenge Weekly", four others for the "Otago Daily Times", and two online opinion pieces for ex-ACT List MP Muriel Newman's New Zealand Centre for Political Debate (now renamed the New Zealand Centre for Political Research).

On September 24, 2006, Logan contributed an article opposing central government administration of welfare state policies to the New Zealand Centre for Political Debate, which is fronted by former ACT List MP and neoconservative Dr. Muriel Newman.On April 14, 2007, Logan followed this with another article critical of Sue Bradford's private member's bill to abolish parental corporal punishment of children in New Zealand, which referred to the earlier abolition of corporal punishment in New Zealand schools in 1990.

Additionally, on October 26 2006, Logan was a workshop presenter at the conservative Christian organisation Family First's presentation of "Principles of Marriage and the Family" during a symposium entitled the New Zealand Forum on the Family at Butterfly Creek, Auckland. He was not a keynote presenter at the symposium in question. Gay community opponents of the New Zealand Christian Right have questioned whether that movement understands the implications of copyright and intellectual property infringement. [http://www.familyfirst.org.nz] .

More recently, Logan has been become a commentator on the New Zealand Centre for Political Research [http://www.nzcpr.com] , the website of former ACT New Zealand List MP Muriel Newman.

Bibliography

*Bruce Logan: "A Level Playing Field?" Christchurch: New Zealand Education Development Foundation: 1994: ISBN 0-473-03168-X
*Bruce Logan: "Marriage: Do We Need It?" Christchurch: NZEDF: 1998: ISBN 0-473-05628-3
*Bruce Logan: "A Questionable Conception": Christchurch: NZEDF: 1996: ISBN 0-473-03261-9
*Bruce Logan: "Same Sex Marriage?" Tauranga: AFFIRM Publications: 2000: ISBN 0-9582113-2-9
*Bruce Logan: "Waking Up to Marriage": Auckland: Maxim Institute: 2004: ISBN 0-473-09787-7

Newspaper Articles

*Bruce Logan: "How a Government Taxes is the Best Indicator of its Character" "Otago Daily Times:" 4 July 2006.
*Bruce Logan: "Real Men Should Be Strong and Good:" "Otago Daily Times":25 August 2006.
*Bruce Logan: "Individuals Rights Lost in Rush to 'Freedom'" "Otago Daily Times": 15 September 2006.
*Bruce Logan: "Denial of Evil Utopian Delusion" "Otago Daily Times": 10 October 2006.

Online writing

* [http://www.nzcpd.com/Guest29.htm] Bruce Logan: "Welfare- Who Needs It?" New Zealand Centre for Political Debate (24 September 2006)
* [http://www.nzcpd.com/Guest49.htm] Bruce Logan: "The Rise of Violence in Schools" New Zealand Centre for Political Research (14 April 2007)

External links

* [http://www.maxim.org.nz Maxim Institute: Logan's previous employer]
* [http://www.challengeweekly.co.nz Challenge Weekly]
* [http://www.familyfirst.org.nz Family First Lobby]
* [http://www.fundypost.blogspot.com] . Blog site of Paul Litterick, responsible for Copyscape analysis that resulted in Logan's retirement from Maxim Institute.]
* [http://www.nzcpd.com] Muriel Newman's New Zealand Centre for Political Debate. (Now renamed the New Zealand Centre for Political Research).

Criticism

* [http://www.gaynz.com Gaynz.Com Politics and Religion columns have frequently covered Bruce Logan, the Maxim Institute and other New Zealand conservative Christian organisations]