“I disagree with what you say … and will prosecute you to the full extent of the law until you shut up once and for all.” This is what Voltaire would say today if he were a ‘human rights’ activist in contemporary Australia.
Australia is dangerously close to the point where it will be impossible for a religious believer to express a view about society — or even to speak openly about what their faith teaches — because of pressure from those who want to silence dissent. An important test case is already before us.
Simply for proclaiming church teaching about marriage to the faithful of his diocese, Julian Porteous, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tasmania is being hauled before the state’s Anti-Discrimination Commission to face accusations of vilification and hate speech.
The Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 makes it an offence to discriminate against – that is, treat ‘less favourably’ — another person on the basis of their sexual orientation. Critics of the archbishop say they have been treated ‘less favourably’ because his church does not agree with them.
This claim is tendentious at best. What this case is really about is that some people have not only taken offence at the church’s traditional teachings on marriage but they have also speculated about the alleged harms that the proclamation of these views will cause to LGBTI people.
Archbishop Porteous is being persecuted for having dared to send out a pastoral letter containing Catholic teaching to Catholic parents via their children who are Catholic pupils in Catholic schools. The pastoral letter aims only to defend the traditional Christian meaning of marriage.
Porteous’ action has angered those, such as the Australian Greens, who don’t agree with what his church teaches. Far from tolerating different points of view, proponents of same-sex marriage demand acceptance and support for their own view of marriage.
They demand that you tolerate everything for which they stand, but resolutely refuse to tolerate the views of anyone who respectfully and courteously takes issue with them. Their response is to pepper the discourse with words like ‘harm’ and ‘hatred’ for expressing another point of view.
How have we got to the point where expressing a different opinion amounts to discrimination? Are Australians really prepared to allow the law and current public opinion to silence faith communities and prevent the public expression of faith?
The argument for the acceptance of gay and lesbian people in Australia was won long ago, even in Tasmania — and not before time. Greater acceptance has led to changes in the criminal law, to a distaste for discrimination, and to much greater openness and support.
But acceptance is no longer enough for the proponents of same-sex marriage. Agreement and endorsement are now demanded, with ‘lawfare’ being waged against those, like the Catholic Church, who hold against the ‘progressive’ point of view. Religious believers must never offend those with different, or no beliefs.
The human rights revolution, which began with good intentions after the Second World War and gave rise to the recognition of cultural, racial and sexual diversity, has morphed into ‘identity politics’ with its totalitarian concern for enforcing tolerance of group rights.
‘Identity [emphasises] the idea of certain reservations which one is entitled to insist on and which others have to recognise as constraints,” says philosopher Jeremy Waldron. Far from increasing social cohesion, as the forces of tolerance insist, identity politics makes living with difference harder.
Proponents of same-sex marriage resort to the armoury of identity politics to argue that the Marriage Act 1961 is unfair because it only permits marriage between a man and a woman. But this is to mistake the cart for the horse.
Law is one of the ways a society orders itself and maintains a commitment to justice and dignity for all its citizens. The role of law is to protect without distinction or favour. Demands made by the advocates of identity politics do nothing to strengthen the liberal state.
Aside from questions about the fairness of the law’s application, however, we also need to be concerned by the hijacking of the moral language of anti-discrimination in order to achieve the broader objective of driving religion into the shadows.
Of course, Australian Marriage Equality’s national director Rodney Croome says he’s all in favour of religious freedom: it is fine for the church to teach what it likes from the pulpit, he says, as long as that teaching is quarantined from wider society. But what kind of freedom is that?
“Marriage equality is a powerful ideology,” warns The Australian’s Paul Kelly, “and ideologies rarely stop short of complete victory.”
You don’t need to be a religious believer to be worried by the threat this poses to the integrity of Australian democracy. Nor need you have a particular view about same-sex marriage.
You need to be worried because the totalitarian Left is using the ideological push for same-sex marriage to wage war against the liberal values of an open and free society.
Instead of upholding the right of the individual to manifest his or her beliefs, same-sex marriage ideologues are determined to destroy it and put in its place what they call ‘the right to be free from dogma and doctrine’. Freedom of religion is set to become freedom from religion.
By denouncing those with whom they disagree as purveyors of vilifying hate speech, the totalitarian tormentors of the Archbishop of Tasmania are giving the lie to the very values of tolerance and inclusiveness for which they profess to stand.
The Reverend Peter Kurti is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies
Home > Commentary > Opinion > Identity politics threaten religious freedom in Australia
Identity politics threaten religious freedom in Australia
“I disagree with what you say … and will prosecute you to the full extent of the law until you shut up once and for all.” This is what Voltaire would say today if he were a ‘human rights’ activist in contemporary Australia.
Australia is dangerously close to the point where it will be impossible for a religious believer to express a view about society — or even to speak openly about what their faith teaches — because of pressure from those who want to silence dissent. An important test case is already before us.
Simply for proclaiming church teaching about marriage to the faithful of his diocese, Julian Porteous, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tasmania is being hauled before the state’s Anti-Discrimination Commission to face accusations of vilification and hate speech.
The Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 makes it an offence to discriminate against – that is, treat ‘less favourably’ — another person on the basis of their sexual orientation. Critics of the archbishop say they have been treated ‘less favourably’ because his church does not agree with them.
This claim is tendentious at best. What this case is really about is that some people have not only taken offence at the church’s traditional teachings on marriage but they have also speculated about the alleged harms that the proclamation of these views will cause to LGBTI people.
Archbishop Porteous is being persecuted for having dared to send out a pastoral letter containing Catholic teaching to Catholic parents via their children who are Catholic pupils in Catholic schools. The pastoral letter aims only to defend the traditional Christian meaning of marriage.
Porteous’ action has angered those, such as the Australian Greens, who don’t agree with what his church teaches. Far from tolerating different points of view, proponents of same-sex marriage demand acceptance and support for their own view of marriage.
They demand that you tolerate everything for which they stand, but resolutely refuse to tolerate the views of anyone who respectfully and courteously takes issue with them. Their response is to pepper the discourse with words like ‘harm’ and ‘hatred’ for expressing another point of view.
How have we got to the point where expressing a different opinion amounts to discrimination? Are Australians really prepared to allow the law and current public opinion to silence faith communities and prevent the public expression of faith?
The argument for the acceptance of gay and lesbian people in Australia was won long ago, even in Tasmania — and not before time. Greater acceptance has led to changes in the criminal law, to a distaste for discrimination, and to much greater openness and support.
But acceptance is no longer enough for the proponents of same-sex marriage. Agreement and endorsement are now demanded, with ‘lawfare’ being waged against those, like the Catholic Church, who hold against the ‘progressive’ point of view. Religious believers must never offend those with different, or no beliefs.
The human rights revolution, which began with good intentions after the Second World War and gave rise to the recognition of cultural, racial and sexual diversity, has morphed into ‘identity politics’ with its totalitarian concern for enforcing tolerance of group rights.
‘Identity [emphasises] the idea of certain reservations which one is entitled to insist on and which others have to recognise as constraints,” says philosopher Jeremy Waldron. Far from increasing social cohesion, as the forces of tolerance insist, identity politics makes living with difference harder.
Proponents of same-sex marriage resort to the armoury of identity politics to argue that the Marriage Act 1961 is unfair because it only permits marriage between a man and a woman. But this is to mistake the cart for the horse.
Law is one of the ways a society orders itself and maintains a commitment to justice and dignity for all its citizens. The role of law is to protect without distinction or favour. Demands made by the advocates of identity politics do nothing to strengthen the liberal state.
Aside from questions about the fairness of the law’s application, however, we also need to be concerned by the hijacking of the moral language of anti-discrimination in order to achieve the broader objective of driving religion into the shadows.
Of course, Australian Marriage Equality’s national director Rodney Croome says he’s all in favour of religious freedom: it is fine for the church to teach what it likes from the pulpit, he says, as long as that teaching is quarantined from wider society. But what kind of freedom is that?
“Marriage equality is a powerful ideology,” warns The Australian’s Paul Kelly, “and ideologies rarely stop short of complete victory.”
You don’t need to be a religious believer to be worried by the threat this poses to the integrity of Australian democracy. Nor need you have a particular view about same-sex marriage.
You need to be worried because the totalitarian Left is using the ideological push for same-sex marriage to wage war against the liberal values of an open and free society.
Instead of upholding the right of the individual to manifest his or her beliefs, same-sex marriage ideologues are determined to destroy it and put in its place what they call ‘the right to be free from dogma and doctrine’. Freedom of religion is set to become freedom from religion.
By denouncing those with whom they disagree as purveyors of vilifying hate speech, the totalitarian tormentors of the Archbishop of Tasmania are giving the lie to the very values of tolerance and inclusiveness for which they profess to stand.
The Reverend Peter Kurti is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies
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