Andrew Bolt: Prime Minister and Opposition Leader’s political posturing is hell on Earth
A few days out from the federal election the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader are arguing about whether gays go to Hell and if such a place even exists. Such posturing is crippling this country, writes Andrew Bolt.
Analysis
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It seems insane in the week before an election that our leaders are arguing whether Hell exists and if gays will go there.
What madness. Could Prime Minister Scott Morrison or Labor leader Bill Shorten pass a law to abolish Hell, or ban God from sending gays to it?
This is the politics of posturing that’s crippling this country. Putting seeming above doing.
Yet this distraction — launched by Shorten — is still important.
SHORTEN PLAYING GOTCHA WITH GAYS AND HELL
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On Monday, Morrison, a Pentecostal Christian, was quizzed on Rugby Australia’s decision to sack Israel Folau for quoting the Bible, which says gays go to Hell.
Morrison was asked if he believed that, too, and replied evasively with a reference to gay marriage: “It’s law and I am glad that the change has now been made”.
Morrison’s answer was all voters needed to know. Whatever he privately thinks of gays, as Prime Minister he gives no sign of passing laws to disadvantage them.
But Shorten, an Anglican, decided on Tuesday to attack what he assumed were Morrison’s private religious beliefs: “I cannot believe that the Prime Minister has not immediately said that gay people will not go to Hell”.
Pardon? Must politicians now be condemned for not always volunteering that they hold the approved private thoughts?
US President Donald Trump has shown in America that even a lying, rude and adulterous braggart can achieve great things — strong growth and incredibly low unemployment.
What do voters care what Trump privately believes, when what he publicly does helps so many?
Shorten, though, threatens to cost us jobs and money with his bizarre policies to tax us much harder and impose massive cuts to our emissions that will shut more coal-fired power stations and drive up power prices.
Yet he damns Morrison merely for allegedly believing that gays, in the afterlife, will be sent to hell by God (Morrison has since said he doesn’t).
Shorten’s distraction tells us something important and not just that he’s a Christian so frightened of his faith, or scared of seeming judgmental, that last week he said: “I don’t know if there is a Hell, actually”.
The intolerance of debate and the persecution of Christians is already bad enough.
Now Shorten, who is likely to become prime minister this weekend, demonstrates that even someone’s alleged private thoughts may be attacked.
So: under Labor, how safe will be your freedom to speak?
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Prime Minister and Opposition Leader’s political posturing is hell on Earth
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