Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews runs the most dedicated and consistent anti-Christian government in Australian history. And Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, a profile in political cowardice, has given in on almost every case.
In legislation and abusive rhetoric, the Victorian government has acted to restrict Christians from teaching and living their beliefs.
It’s not quite a crime to be a traditional Christian in Victoria but it’s not quite legal in lots of contexts either.
The Equal Opportunity (Religious Exemptions) Bill makes it much harder for Christian schools to employ Christian teachers.
The Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill makes it an offence not to affirm someone’s gay identity or desire to change their gender.
So a school that says to a kid: we’re here to help but maybe slow down on this decision and don’t do anything irreversible for a while, is liable for prosecution.
Similarly, a Christian minister who is asked by a parishioner to pray for or with him over sexual orientation is subject to prosecution. The law has reached the extraordinarily perverse situation in which it’s legal to change your gender but illegal to even think or talk of changing your sexual orientation.
No Christian that I know of anywhere defends former barbaric practices of gay conversion therapy, but in outlawing a practice no one undertakes, the law has intentionally overshot to make it almost illegal even to teach traditional Christian teaching.
In 2016, the Andrews government also made it compulsory for priests to break the seal of the confessional to reveal child abuse – yet lawyers are allowed to retain client confidentiality.
Confidentiality in confession has been Catholic doctrine for more than 1500 years and has strong scriptural basis. As recently as World War II, priests went to their death rather than reveal secrets of anti-Japanese guerillas in The Philippines. There’s no evidence that breaking this doctrine would help in the righteous fight against child abuse but Andrews was happy to make core Catholic practice illegal.
Catholic Archbishop Peter Comensoli was foully abused in the Victorian parliament for defending the confessional.
Andrews’ rhetoric is often inflammatory and foolish. He abused Tony Abbott for visiting Cardinal George Pell in jail but Abbott was right. The High Court unanimously found Pell innocent. Andrews refused to say he respected and accepted the verdict. Next day there was vandalism against Catholic churches in Melbourne.
When Andrew Thorburn was forced tor resign as Essendon chief executive because of decade-old sermons of a pastor in a church with which he is associated, which preached traditional Christian teaching on sex being moral only within marriage between a man and a woman, and against the practice of abortion, Andrews labelled these Christian beliefs as hatred, bigotry and intolerance.
Guy is almost as bad. He expelled MP Bernie Finn from the Liberal Party for being pro-life, then expelled candidate Renee Heath for the views of a church she is associated with, not for anything she said.
This is a dangerous turn for Australia. Andrews is leading a charge of intolerance and bigotry against Christianity, and Guy’s Liberals are too cowardly to offer an alternative.
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