Essendon drops ball on the right to religious freedom

Andrew Thorburn, white, male and Christian, is a prized trophy of the cultural warriors who are intent on tearing down what thousands of years of Western civilisation have delivered.

City on a Hill founder and pastor Guy Mason speaks with Andrew Thorburn, who quit as Essendon CEO after one day over his links with the church. Picture: YouTube

The obvious intolerance and hypocrisy are easy to demonstrate; just flip the story around, changing the key characters and institutions.

Let us imagine Moham­med Thorburn was appointed chief executive of a profes­sional football club and he was sacked days later when critics pointed out his links to a Sunni Maliki mosque and its anti-homosexuality and anti-abortion teachings. The club bowed to critics and told Mohammed he could quit his mosque or his club but not remain at both. So, the devout sports fan chose his faith over his footy and hoped to embarrass neither.

We know it would not happen. We know it could not happen – not to a Muslim, not a Hindu, not to any religious devotee except a Christian. Media outrage would be instant, denunciations would be forthcoming from human rights lawyers and activists, politicians of all persuasions would rail against the club, government and semi-government commissions and off­ices would inject themselves into the controversy and Australia would be shamed internationally.

This would be true if the shunned CEO were a Jew, Buddhist or Hindu; only Christians are fair game, only Christians are held to the virtue-signalling standards of the woke left.

Should a Muslim complain about criticism of their faith or practices, the public broadcasters, leftist politicians and woke business leaders will scream Islamophobia. And when Waleed Aly, for instance, dismissed terrorism as an “irritant” the caravan quickly moved on.

Do any prominent Muslim Australians denounce homosexuality? Well, we do not know, because Aly, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Jihad Dib, Bachar Houli and any other Muslim community leaders are not asked. They are afforded the appropriate respect so that their religious faith and moral views are their own, unless and until they seek to force them unwillingly on others. All Australians of all faiths deserve the same respect, the same rights.

When was the last time you heard someone publicly mock the spiritual beliefs of Indigenous Australians, or attack traditional practices of arranged marriages and polygamy? This is a no-go zone; instead, smoking ceremonies are incorporated into secular and even Christian events.

But Christianity is belittled and derided, from its fundamental reliance on a spiritual creator (“sky daddy”) to aspects of various churches’ practices such as the Catholic vow of celibacy for clergy. Increasingly, activists seek to remove traditional Christian prayers and references from our institutions.

When members of some religions do awful things – such as the horrific cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests – the sins of the few are used to smear the lot. Yet often the same activists and commentators who indulge in those generalisations react in precisely the opposite manner when demanding we do not allow the obscenity of some Muslim extremists to colour our views of the majority.

There is a right way to approach these matters. It is right to respect people’s religious views until they seek to impose them on us, and it is right to resist tarnishing all the members of one group with the vile deeds of some of their brethren. The problem is we do not apply the standards equally.

Or at least the green-left activists, public broadcasters, bureaucrats, academics and social media warriors do not apply them consistently. Personal respect and reasonable civic conduct seem to be suspended when it comes to politically and/or socially conservative Christians. Hate triumphs over love, intolerance over tolerance, and partisan grievance trumps equal standards.

Andrew Thorburn, white, male and Christian, is just collateral damage or something more, a prized trophy of the cultural warriors who are intent on tearing down what thousands of years of Western civilisation have delivered. They pine for some green-left nirvana of Woodstock morality coupled with Pyongyang-style enforcement. And Thorburn’s demise shows their progress. They conduct their fundamentalist cam­paign against religion, as popularised by Richard Dawkins, primarily against easy Christian targets. They preach, dare I say it, with a religious zeal. But they dare not take their campaigns against homosexuality to the local mosque or defence of abortion on demand to a Hindu temple.

Partisanship, too, rears its ugly head because this is mainly a movement of the left. So Kevin Rudd, perhaps the most devout prime minister of modern times, was seldom attacked on issues of religion or morality, even though he regularly held court outside churches.

Penny Wong too, professes an active Christian faith but is never challenged over issues of morality or homosexuality, even though within the past decade she has argued against gay marriage and claimed victory for delivering it. The double standards in this debate, like the large theological questions, seem impossible to reconcile.

Thorburn’s sin was not to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. Indeed, as National Australia Bank chief executive he led the organisation’s diversity campaigns, including sponsorship of the AFL’s first pride game, declaring the importance of tolerance and welcoming people of all “gender diversity and sexual orientation”. He is no poster boy for bigotry. Indeed, some would say he has been done in by a virtue-signalling culture he helped to instil in the corporate world.

Yet the point remains that his personal words and actions are not criticised. Thorburn is denounced only because he belongs to a church where homosexuality is considered a sin and someone else, a decade ago, expressed strong views on abortion with a crass analogy. On this basis no Catholic, Anglican, Muslim or Hindu should be allowed to play AFL. The transgression is that broad and that ridiculous.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews condemns Thorburn and revels in his demise, even though Andrews himself and no doubt hundreds of AFL staff and players belong to the Catholic Church, which also teaches homosexuality is a sin. How can public debate and private hiring practices be so blatantly contradictory?

Still, this episode is not really about establishing rules or standards, is it? It is an opportunistic attack to make a point and claim a scalp. It is Thorburn this week, it was Israel Folau a while back, and some NRL players earlier this year. Meanwhile, Muslim Greater Western Sydney AFLW player Haneen Zreika is again afforded her right to boycott a gay pride game with the appropriate level of respect and tolerance denied the Christian men.

Scott Morrison felt the sting of this reverse crusade. The usual vitriol directed against a Coalition leader by the left had an extra feroc­ity and vengeance against Morrison because of his fundamentalist Christianity; they hated his “happy clapping” even more than Tony Abbott’s Catholicism.

We all know it, we all saw it. But we allow it to gather momentum.

Essendon Football Club president David Barham admitted that he was not allowed to ask Thorburn about his religion during the job interview but boasted about how he “acted” once he subsequently learned of his religious affiliation. This seems to overlook the purpose of not being allowed to inquire about matters of religion – to avoid discrimination – and he dispensed with Thorburn regardless. It is extraordinary that any politicians or public figures believe this is acceptable. Yet there has been commentary blaming Thorburn, and still more criticising Essendon for not doing due diligence – what have we become?

Essendon was lucky Thorburn was a lifelong supporter who chose to resign rather than go into battle against a club he has passionately supported all his life. But perhaps Thorburn was unlucky that Essendon has had such a tortured period of controversies over drug policy abuse, on-field performances and coaching changes that the club did not have the courage to defend him through even 24 hours of social media backlash. Digital devices deliver to society a broad array of advantages and drawbacks. But who would have thought a phone in our hands could turn our minds to mush and our spines to jelly?

Our commitment to freedom of religion can be judged only by the same criteria on which we assess freedom of speech. That is, it really counts only when we accept the freedom of people to express opinions or religious beliefs with which we disagree. Tolerating only those who agree with us is not tolerance at all; and including only those who are just like us is not inclusion. Applying differing standards to people of different faiths is diversity all right, but it is diversity in a space where consistency is required.

There are principles here to be upheld, culture-war battles to be joined, and an entire set of values to defend. Perhaps the only slim hope for now is that three decades on from the original economic version, the Coalition hardheads can devise a cultural Fightback.