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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