Like someone who comes out blinking from having seen a crime movie in the cinema only to find a crime scene in real life, I have emerged from being obsessed with the most important British election campaign of my lifetime to find that while I wasn’t looking politics has only gone and happened in other countries too.
Apparently the Australian government is trying to bring forward a bill banning religious discrimination. The Australian edition of the Guardian has an informative article about it:
Religious discrimination bill: what will Australians be allowed to say and do if it passes?
Statements of religious belief
Protection received: statements of religious belief will not be found to breach other federal, state and territory discrimination laws.
Examples:
A Christian may say that unrepentant sinners will go to hell, an example cited in the EM which mirrors the facts of Israel Folau’s case A doctor may tell a transgender patient of their religious belief that God made men and women in his image and that gender is therefore binary (EM)
I can see why the coalition between the Liberal and National Parties that is currently in power in Australia wants to pass this bill. In the Anglosphere the politically correct Establishment continues its left wing course even when a vaguely right wing government is in power, as is the case in Australia now. It is common for this Establishment to try to suppress the freedom of speech of religious people, particularly Christians. If it became law this bill would redress the balance somewhat. It also does related things like give religious doctors the right to “conscientiously object to providing what the Guardian calls “a health service”, meaning contraception and abortion, and allows religious institutions to require their employees to hold the relevant religion.
This will help some individuals who are being bullied by the Australian State, but only at the cost of cementing yet more firmly the idea that the only way to escape such bullying is to get your particular group defined as a “protected category”.
I have an idea. Let’s put everyone into one big protected category.
