Closure of magazine can be tied to the same-sex plebiscite

Activists won’t be satisfied until gender is eradicated.

Alas, my fears have come true (“Religious freedom lost as magazine shuts”, 17/11). The main reason for my No vote in the same-sex marriage plebiscite was that there would be a push for more.

Threats and intimidation have forced the closure of this magazine business and, in a separate matter, a wedding photographer has been sued for his beliefs. This lobby won’t be happy until all public toilets and government documentation are gender free. Our right to differing opinions is being lost at an alarming rate. I have no problem with how they wish to live their lives, but I have a problem with their values being forced on me.

Elizabeth Jobson,
Tamborine Mountain, Qld

At stake here is not the rights of religious people in general, or of Christians in particular, whatever one might think of their views. What is endangered instead is the survival of the very ethos of pluralist liberalism, by which the whole population enjoys freedom of expression — including the right to publicly dissent from hegemonic dogmas — and the destruction of which, in favour of “might is right” censorship, will ultimately threaten everyone.

Bill James, Frankston, Vic

Borders under threat

Why isn’t anyone pursuing Scott Morrison on whether he intends signing the UN global compact for migration in Morocco next month? This is a matter of national importance.

What’s at stake is control of Australia’s borders. The compact seeks to classify migration as a human right. It is a push by the UN for a worldwide open-borders policy. The obligations such a pact would impose on its signatories are formidable.

With his final decision required in Morocco in a matter of weeks, Morrison has yet to inform the public if he intends committing Australia to this folly. One would expect The Australian, which excels in covering matters of national significance, to be in hot pursuit of the PM on this issue.

Dale Ellis, Innisfail, Qld

Liberal use of paradox

Jordan Peterson (“We’ve been warned”, 17/11) bases his piece on the new edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, a masterly denunciation of the Soviet Union’s persecution of its critics. For Peterson, Solzhenitsyn is a kind of new messiah, warning the West against the horrors of communism.

Along with hyperbole, Peterson makes liberal use of paradox, for example in asserting that the deaths of millions were a consequence of the philosophy (worse, perhaps, the theology) driving the communist system”. The theology of the godless Soviet state? Peterson later draws an analogy between the human desire for a better future with “the Judaeo-Christian vision of the promised land, and the kingdom of heaven”. Whatever better future may or may not eventuate, the fictions of religion will play no part in it. Solzhenitsyn got a lot of things right about the iniquities of Soviet communism, but he was wrong about God. Betterment will come only from our pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

Dennis Biggins, Cooks Hill, NSW

Tasmania’s reforms

The article “Tribes take their positions in Tasmania’s battle of the transgender reforms” (17/11), failed to explain that there has already been an inquiry into reforms before state parliament. It endorsed the reforms now being debated. The state government’s refusal to implement any recommendations from the inquiry shows its motive is to delay reform.

Hate speech against transgender Tasmanians was prohibited for many years until the protection was accidentally removed a few years ago. The present proposal is about restoring the protection, not creating it anew.

Rodney Croome, Hobart, Tas