Former leader of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) Lyle Shelton has come forth with yet more of the persecution narrative. This time, the issue is the ‘suffering’ that christians have faced following the passage of marriage equality. Ah yes, the great and crushing suffering that takes place as a result of having your privilege removed. How utterly oppressed you are, you petty, empty-headed bigot. Let us do this.
The Non-Suffering Servants
Vile decided to go on the conservative echo-chamber of choice, sky so-called news, to spread his lies. He told the host
We ploughed ahead with the change the definition of the marriage based on the Yes campaign saying there were no consequences. I’m going to say that was a lie and not true. There’s big complications and implications for people’s freedom of speech and freedom of religion and parents’ rights about gender indoctrination at schools
The parliament proceeded with the extension of marriage rights (which is all it was) because there were no consequences. All that was happening was that an institution, which humans made up, was being extended to a group of society previously denied access for arbitrary reasons. For no other reason than that they were gay, otherwise loving couples were denied access to marriage (and all the rights that came with it) in the same way blacks were half a century ago. The parallel is apt.
Vile then proceeds, without evidence, to say that the claim from the yes campaign that there would be no consequences was a lie. There are, this ill-informed and quite openly bigoted moron said, ‘complications and implications for people’s freedom of speech and freedom of religion’. Sigh. Freedom of speech – in marriage equality? What, Vile, are you not allowed to say ‘burn faggot’ in public anymore? Is it no longer socially acceptable to say ‘gays need not apply’? Can you no longer advocate for the murder of people because they violate carefully selected tenets of a book of bronze age mythology? Grow up and get over yourself!
Tellingly, the SBS article said that Vile could not name a single incident of actual christian suffering. Could that possibly be because – oh I do not know – no such incidents exist!?
Placating Petulant Children: The Religious Freedom Review
You may recall that, in response to this long overdue piece of social progress, the government ordered a review into religious freedom. I imagine that this was designed to make sure that christians’ right to dick people about because bronze age book was not restrained by social progress. The government handed the review to former LNP Attorney General Philip Ruddock. Nothing quite says impartial, apolitical review quite like handing it to one of the boys. But even this stacking of the deck could not get ‘the right outcome’. Ruddock said he ‘didn’t find a lot of evidence of actual material discrimination that would be of concern’. In other words, Vile is full of crap.
Devil in The Detail
However, never one to let facts get in the way of the agenda, the Morrison government has decided to pursue some form of Religious Discrimination Act by the end of the year. Is it not ironic that, for once, a piece of legislation has an accurate title? Since this law, if the details are accurate, would indeed allow discrimination by the religious?
So, what little gems does the government have in store? Details are sketchy, but here are some details I have been able to find. We start with the guy calling himself the Attorney General, (Non) Christian Porter.
This weasel told The Guardian that
[The Bill] would provide an overarching rule that places limitations on what an employer could do by way of general rules that affected all of their workforce, if those general rules, in an unfair and unreasonable way, had a negative – or what the legislation calls a disadvantaging – effect on a person of faith
So the government is going to tell corporations how to run their businesses if any of the rules they put in place have ‘a…disadvantaging effect on a person of faith’. This government, the so-called small government crowd, are going to dictate the terms companies can put into their own contracts, if the government thinks those terms disadvantage a person of faith. Seriously. What happened to getting the government off the backs of businesses? Greasy hypocrites.
The second point to note here is that this is, as the more secular among us have been warning for months, about legislating religious privilege. If you do not believe me, note please that the restrictions to the terms employees can put in their contracts only apply if they effect ‘a person of faith’. So if the terms of a contract affect a non-believer, they have to live with it. But there is now, as we warned, separate rules (and thereby separate contracts) for people of faith, lest their delicate sensibilities be troubled by the fact that it is not 1364 anymore. This is crap and needs to be fought against with every fibre of force possible.
Conclusion: Y’aint Oppressed!
A message to Vile and the rest of the persecution posse: you are not oppressed and you are not entitled to different status under the law. You privileged pendejos have sat atop the social pyramid for millenia and are annoyed that others get to share the same space.
Spit your dummy out and grow up.
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I wonder if they have a gay Mardi Gras in Jerusalem? I also wonder when the Christians will have their own Anti Defamation League?
pathetic excuse for a Christian.
Jesus would weep
The only suffering they are experiencing is the dwindling attendance at their so called ” places of worship” and the consequent decrease in their precious collection trays. Although Morrison’s ” mentor” Brian Houstons mob seem to rolling in the stuff. Having had some business dealings with them in a former existence I can certainly attest to their hard nosed business sense but saw nothing of the humanity their supposed exemplary leader Jesus espoused.
Of course that idiot ignores the fact that many Christians and congregations voted in favour of marriage equality. Precious little twat wants the right to say anything and to complain of persecution if anyone disagrees.
These people are not christians. If you are a believer, and I am not, and you know and understand the book by which you live, you cannot act towards others as these pretend christians do. Morrison is another who is not a Christian, he and his henchmen demonstrate it on a daily basis.
David Bruce: yes they do have a Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem, which was held in June 2019. Tel Aviv boasts of being the Gay Capital of the Middle East.
https://news.google.com/?hl=en-AU&gl=AU&ceid=AU:en
Google News has a ‘View Full Coverage’ link for most of the news stories it carries. Click it and you will see how different media sources are covering the same event.
The Deeming Rates story shows the same ‘Cash boost for pensioners’ angle being uniformly applied by all NewsLTD and ABC mastheads, and only the Guardian and The Age carrying reports of criticism from pensioner groups.
You can see this with every political story, our ABC being prostituted as Murdoch’s ‘bitch’.
Christians do suffer . . . . . . at the hands of OTHER Christians.
Particularly at the hands of those who claim to have super duper beliefs, attend their churches – step outside and then continue their daily practice of ‘not loving thy neighbour’, until the following weekend when they piously turn up to receive a salve to their consciences ( if they have them ).
Christians are their own worst enemies.
For the christians to accept the jew’s bible is to share the god of Abraham with them and with muslims.
To protect christ from questions they will have to be careful not to give anything to the muslims.or to question the muslims they must be careful not to expose the jews. Oh what a tangled web we weave when christians practise to deceive.
The lnp boys have cocked up practically everything they have touched and this could be a beauty.
The risk is great for scummo whose religion has been courted with jokes like:
the hillsong millionaires are not waiting to inherit the earth they are taking it now and it’s tax free.
My hope is that the bible religions will be exposed a by men for men and the women will see themselves as worthy above the breast. I pin my hope on the 60% who voted yes and the acceptance of global warming as being influenced by man not god.
Wam, from one looney to another, I agree with your last sentence.
Personally I blame this whole marriage equality imbroglio upon the “Christian” English Parliament that legislated to prevent men from selling their wives as chattels in 1757. Then there was the “Christian” Duke of Wellington efforts of the 1830s that allowed married women to own any real or chattel property that they brought into the marriage rather than pass that property into the proprietorship of their husbands.
Naturally the Scottish “Christian” judge Lord Mansfield must bear some of the blame for abolishing slavery of both men and women in the British Empire about 1833.
All these confusing changes gave some women the idea that they deserved the same civil rights as men, even though in Australia, the divorce laws penalised women for their husband’s extracurricular indiscretions, frequently with the assistance of a local Christian church person, until the Family Law Act (1975) introduced ‘No Fault Divorce’ and destroyed the legal marriage surveillance industry conducted predominantly by males associated with the predominantly “Christian” male legal fraternity.
Now add the actions of our professing “Christian” male politicians opposing equal pay for equal work, child care allowances, Aboriginal land rights and unwillingness to confront constitutional racial discrimination.
Yep! The male “Christian” God Squadders have a lot to worry about because their self-important position in a “Christian society” receives no economic advantage in return for their (sometimes) weekly attendance at church. Why even the Prim Monster can enjoy the earthly delights of public office by ignoring the new testament directive to sell all your worldly possessions, distribute the proceeds to the poor and follow me.
So where were the “Christian” women during this prolonged debate? Probably bare-foot, pregnant and in the kitchen waiting for hubby to return home from the pub ….. late!
Christians who pursue this persecution agenda are not doing themselves any favours. You are not special. You do not deserve or need special rights or special dispensation to harm others. I don’t think Morrison and Shelton are doing you any favours. They are alienating you, as a minority (30%) from mainstream Australians. I don’t think that’s helpful in an already divided country.
Let’s hope labor gets in next and abolishes this stupid minority obsession. I also hope that the harm Missions did to brainwash First Peoples is reversed- let everyone believe what they want, say I. If Uluru is sacred- let it be. I too am free to practise my religion, the Spaghetti Monster Cult. I don’t demand that people stop eating spaghetti on pain of hellfire.
ACL seems mostly inspired by US white conservative evangelical Christian movement which is more about money, authority and political influence (and being used); whatever it takes including usurping more established mainstream churches.
However, while noisy, the evangelicals have become weak due to liberal minded leaving (or being compelled to) while the dominant ageing Conservatives against abortion, gay rights, minorities etc. have become a tool of the GOP/Koch’s et al., flirt with white nationalists and have become dependent upon other codes converting.
Trump is quite dependent upon VP Pence who converted to evangelicalism from Catholicism while the likes of Bannon tries to influence Irish/European (not Hispanic) Catholics while demonising the Pope for asking people to support refugees and immigrants.
The Nativist or white Nativist ideology fits like a glove including the ‘great replacement theory’ where white Conservative Christians see themselves as victims.
I dont have a problem with christians having a voice in parliament. I have a problem with the right wing thinking they have a monopoly on it, and that every facist ideology that comes out of their wretched mouths is inspired by the Holy Ghost. Worst of all they are useful idiots of CUFI. Christians united for israel for Zionists in the middle east wars for a greater israel who build up Zion with blood as scripture says. They take fellow white christians like myself as their slaves with manevolent schemes like work for the dole and mutual obligation just as the Hebrews were taken captive by Pharaoh. They even govern under three pyramids structures in Canberra.
They will fall and it will be with America
Here is Lyle Shelton from the ACL having a beer with the Proud Boys and tweeting a photo of it as they do a white power hand signal that the Christchurch murderer used in court.
“Good to catch up with the Proud Boys at the Mt Gravatt Bowls Club. Contrary to popular opinion they are not Nazis, just blokes who are sick of all the PC nonsense.” tweets Lyle.
The local Proud Boys are an offshoot of the US-based group with the same name. They call themselves “pro-Western Chauvinists”, but the FBI classifies it an “extremist group.”
https://www.eternitynews.com.au/opinion/lyle-shelton-right-wing-men-a-drag-queen-and-a-split-in-the-right/
I Hate fascism and why wouldn’t I say, with all the death and destruction caused by this insidious theology, fck God!!!! All of them. We have record upheaval and war on this planet all caused by greed and religion. I’ll say it again, FCK God, all of them.
Christians should have liberal rights LIKE EVERYONE ELSE ; this is best achieved through a Comprehensive Bill of Rights and not narrower legislation. And whatever you think of Israel Folau and what he said, a person’s religion should not be a cause of discrimination by an employer. Though certainly when you say certain things that are against modern social expectations you have to expect criticisms. Rational criticism is not persecution. Though some criticism crosses the line into hatred.
So there are very large bunch of people around the world, including Australia, who have chosen to live in a fantasy. They pray to the fictitious sky fairies of their choosing, sometimes even giving a whole lot of money to the scam artists who supposedly represent their sky fairies. Scam artists are the only part of religion which is not a fantasy. It is not a fantasy that they secure vast amounts of money under a veil of charity without ever actually giving any to those in need. It is not a fantasy that they are a haven for paedophiles hiding behind the veil of the confessional to protect their fellow scam artists from the law. It is not a fantasy that their flock are well brainwashed into the provision of countless excuses as to why their fictitious sky fairies allow horrendous and tragic events to occur.
So how exactly can a government produce legislation to protect a fantasy??? How can a government not produce legislation to protect the people from the scam artists???