Cancel culture is killing tolerance in the public sphere

Frank Brennan shows empathy for those who reject traditional teaching on homosexuality and other issues raised in the Thorburn case, but his call for inclusion to be reciprocal will fall on deaf ears (“Keep faith in respectful debate”, 10/10). The neo-Marxist doctrine of repressive tolerance that has spawned cancel culture exhibits nothing but intolerance of all views not in accord with its own. This selective tolerance is a one-way street that seems to have cowed the corporate and now even the sporting world into marching in lock-step.

Virtue-signalling now demands treating former norms and beliefs as “hate speech”, while freedom of speech is compromised. Even one’s presumed beliefs are able to be treated as “thought crime”, as George Orwell so eerily foretold 70 years ago.

It is regrettable that Brennan is so conciliatory as to call the catechism of his own church “outdated” instead of unfashionable, but it will win him no support from those who practise intolerance with a blinkered certainty, nor from the timid followers of their diktats.

John Morrissey, Hawthorn, Vic

Frank Brennan’s approach of what seems to be a “go-with-the-flow” approach to public opinion, rather than adhering to established standards, appears to me to be on the proverbial slippery slope. With that approach, anything goes in the attempt to avoid offending anyone. It takes little imagination to see where that path eventually leads.

Don McGregor, Baulkham Hills, NSW

I greatly appreciated Frank Brennan’s thoughtful article regarding how we can civilly navigate a possible pathway through the social minefield that is the clash of cultures. In a previous age, it was safe to assume most citizens were somewhat familiar with the things of God, and were largely accepting of the traditions and teachings from the Christian scriptures, which have percolated over time through our institutions, conventions and conversations. To be sure, three of our national public holidays are solely based around the birth, death and resurrection of the most compelling and divisive teacher in human history.

However, the rise of identity politics and the worship of individualism have ensured any communal sense of personal accountability or adherence to a divine moral code is progressively being jettisoned by the mainstream. Self-control is now deemed to be self-denial; sin is considered an archaic word for the oppression of expression of one’s true self; an authoritative bible is now seen largely as a collection of historical pithy sentiments you can essentially pick and choose from, according to the spirit of the age at hand.

By way of example, most Catholic and Protestant members of parliament took their recent parliamentary oaths on the Bible. And yet the Victorian Premier felt emboldened to pronounce that any citizens who hold to the traditional ethical mores of those respective denominations to be haters and bigots.

Concerning ousted executive Andrew Thorburn, heading up a football club is presumably a matter of aspiring to win premierships, not souls. Is there no scope for being able to sensibly separate character and creed? Who now sets the acceptable benchmark for private morality and determines how much of that is allowed to seep into the corporate arena? Relentlessly tearing down others for perceived guilt by association or thought crimes is no way for a tolerant and harmonious society to exist.

Peter Waterhouse, Craigieburn, Vic

I am regarded as an oddity in my family and among my friends for still believing in some other reality besides the ever-present and obvious one. I am considered slightly unhinged, as a practising Catholic, for sharing my faith with an organisation that seems to be so wide of the mark on what it says and does about human sexuality. Discredited on sex, how can the church have any credibility on theology? My long-suffering detractors are not consoled at all by my confession that all religion may be a figment of human imagination. How can I be such a hypocrite? Only by recognising that all religious people believe they are on the right track and ought to be respected for their beliefs. As science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke pointed out, either we are alone in the universe or we are not, and either proposition is mind boggling.

Peter Breen, Bellingen, NSW