Attack on Scott Morrison over his faith latest in series
THE cultural gatekeepers of the Left are hypocrites in their preening attacks on Australia’s dominant faith.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THE cultural Left prides itself on being tolerant and celebrating diversity and difference but nothing better illustrates its hypocrisy and double standards than the attacks ridiculing Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Christian faith.
Detailed in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, since being elected to the top job Morrison has been constantly vilified — especially by “your” ABC.
The skit on this week’s Tonightly detailed in this paper attacked the new Prime Minister with lines such as: “You’ve got to love thy neighbour unless they vote Labor and are foreign or gay” and “If Jesus was a refugee we would say f … off we’re full”.
Of course, these attacks are entirely hypocritical coming from those who pride themselves on being tolerant of difference and not discriminating against others. That’s why the ABC and others on that side of the divide argue Australia needs strong anti-discrimination laws such as 18C and bodies like the Human Rights Commission.
The cultural Left’s argument in favour of tolerance is so strong that anyone who questions the rate of immigration is condemned as xenophobic, expresses fear about Islamic fundamentalism and you are Islamophobic and oppose same-sex marriage and you are homophobic.
PRIME MINISTER SLAMS ABC ‘NUMPTIES’
Read the Greens’ and the Australian Labor Party’s policy platforms, the Qantas guide to gender free pronouns, the university Sensitivity Toolkits warning against microaggression and offending woman and people of colour and it’s obvious it’s wrong to insult others.
But not when it comes to Christians who, especially if they are involved in public debates or if they publicly acknowledge the power of the New Testament and the word of God, are either ridiculed or driven from the public square.
And the attacks and ridicule directed at Prime Minister Morrison are simply the most recent examples.
Tony Abbott, when he was health minister, was condemned as the “mad monk” for daring to raise doubts about the high rate of voluntary abortions in this country.
Last year during the same-sex marriage debate one of our greatest tennis players, Margaret Court, was attacked for expressing her Christian-inspired opposition with some even arguing that her name should be removed from Melbourne’s tennis centre.
Israel Folau was also abused and condemned for expressing his opinion about homosexuality because it failed to conform to the cultural Left’s understanding of diversity and difference.
And some years ago in Melbourne an exhibition depicting an image of Christ covered in urine that Christians considered blasphemous was exhibited on the basis of artistic freedom of expression. In what is an increasingly secular age where society is becoming more materialistic, narcissistic and self-centred it’s obvious that Christianity is ripe for attack and seen as the cultural Left’s enemy number one.
As argued by Sydney’s Archbishop Anthony Fisher in a recent lecture given at the University of New South Wales’s Warrane College, what he describes as absolutist secularism “tries to minimise the role of religion in every person’s life, to exclude it altogether from the public square, and to remove religious institutions from having any influence over government, law, media, schools, universities, the arts, workplaces, social customs, civil discourse, even the civic calendar”.
This attack on Christianity explains why the NSW Teachers’ Federation is so vehemently opposed to commonwealth funding for the Chaplains in Schools program and against government schools being allowed to teach special religious education classes.
The national curriculum is also anti-Christian with subjects from preparatory to Year 10 including hundreds of references to Aboriginal culture, history and spirituality with minimal, if any, references to the significance and importance of Christianity to our political and legal institutions and way of life.
Ignored is that at the time of federation more than 95 per cent of Australians identified as Christian and as argued by the Perth-based legal academic Augusto Zimmermann in Christian Foundations of the Common Law concepts like the inherent dignity of the person and natural justice are Christian in origin.
The attempt earlier this year by the Greens senator Lee Rhiannon to remove reciting the Lord’s Prayer at the start of Senate sittings provides a further illustration of the cultural Left’s secular agenda to banish Christianity from the national stage.
There’s no doubt in an open and free society based on Western, liberal democratic principles including the right to free speech that all must be allowed to voice their opinions openly and without fear.
At the same time there should be no place for the cultural Left’s hypocrisy and unjustified vendetta against Prime Minister Morrison because he openly describes himself as a Christian.
Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University and author of How Political Correctness Is Destroying Australia (Wilkinson Publishing).