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The one-sided campaign that Australia’s national broadcaster is waging against the religious discrimination bill is a disgrace, argues James Macpherson. Soon they’ll be telling us that religious freedom will kill koalas, cause climate change, and create new Covid variants.

It’s only a matter of time before journalists at the ABC claim that religious freedom is a threat to koalas.

The national broadcaster’s relentless campaign against the government’s Religious Discrimination Bill has become that absurd.

Yesterday, the ABC ran a story warning that disabled people were worried that Christians might tell them God loves them or even offer to pray for them if the bill passed.

The story warned that a person in a wheelchair might “enter a shop and a member of staff address the person as being brave and an inspiration and loved by God”.

As if being told that God loves you is not horrific enough, the imagined Christian shop assistant – emboldened by the government’s religious discrimination bill – might “stand in front of the person and say: ‘I will pray for you’.”

That’s right. The religious freedom bill will cause pious shopkeepers to start praying willy-nilly for disabled customers.

Wheelchairs all over Australia will be stopped in their tracks by religious nutcases afflicting the already-afflicted with trite remarks and unwanted prayers.

Lord have mercy!

The Bill Will Discriminate Against Religious People?

The article quoted a spokeswoman from Disability Voices Tasmania. She said, “I don’t want any person with a disability to be on the receiving end of religious beliefs that cause them offence.”

If you think being “on the receiving end” of a belief sounds bad, imagine what people of faith might do to koalas if the bill is passed.

The ABC’s fearmongering over religious freedom is second only to their bet-wetting over whatever the latest Covid variant is.

On the 23rd of November, in a story headlined Queer and Devout, the ABC warned that the religious discrimination bill would, in fact, discriminate against religious people – or at least gay ones.

The article featured a woman who lost her Sunday school teaching role when she came out as queer. It also profiled a former minister (pronouns “they/them”) who lost their leadership role for being gay.

Both claimed they had never been discriminated against for being religious, only for being gay. This assertion was hardly the slam dunk the ABC made it out to be. People are unlikely to be discriminated against when they affirm everyone’s sexual mores as normal and inherently good. 

But what’s the point of a religion that makes no distinctions between anything?

The ABC Assumes Religious Aussies Have No Manners

The ABC found a Sydney law professor who warned ominously that the religious discrimination bill would give religious people “a license to express a religious opinion without being subjected to any discrimination law anywhere in Australia”.

Heaven forbid! Imagine a country in which people have a “license” to express a religious opinion! And that without the threat of being hauled before a tribunal to determine whether their opinion complies with the State-approved narrative.

“There won’t be anything to stop doctors saying what they think of their patient’s lifestyles, accommodation providers saying what they think of single parents and so it goes on,” the professor lamented.

Nothing to stop them at all, apart from manners.

But the ABC imagines my local GP – who worships on Sundays at the Uniting Church – is a religious extremist lying in wait for my first booster shot after the government’s bill is passed, so she can jab me and judge me at the same time.

The very next day, on the 24th of November, the ABC ran a story quoting an Equality Australia spokeswoman. She warned that the government’s bill would lead to nurses telling HIV patients that God was punishing them.

This is self-evidently ridiculous since everyone knows that if God wanted to punish someone, He wouldn’t give them HIV; He’d make them sit through Q&A. But I digress.

An Uncanny Talent at the ABC

Someone needs to explain to journalists at the ABC that the purpose of a religious discrimination bill is not to curb the excesses of a few ratbags who claim to be “religious”. Rather, it is to protect genuine people of faith – who are invariable good and moral – as they practice their religion. 

On the 25th of November, the ABC decided to run a story on what an Anglican priest might say about the need for a religious discrimination bill.

And miracle of miracles: with around 4,000 clergy to choose from, the ABC just happened to pick a priest draped in an LGBTQ scarf!

The bill was “pretty nasty stuff”, and there was no need for it, the priest said to shouts of “hallelujah” from everyone at the ABC.

God works in mysterious ways, but there is nothing mysterious about the ABC. They don’t even attempt to hide the fact that they are in full campaign mode, and for one side.

Religious Freedom May Even Kill the Koalas!

On the 26th of November, the ABC warned that the religious discrimination bill would make life worse for LGBTQ kids. And on the 27th of November, the ABC’s Linda Mottram interviewed a professor of constitutional law who described the bill as no more than “a consolation prize” for people upset about same-sex marriage.

I fully expect that next week, the ABC will tell us that religious freedom will warm the planet, create new Covid variants and, of course, kill the koalas.

Worse, the Labor Party will use this nonsense to pressure their centrist colleagues into voting against the bill.

You can follow James Macpherson on Twitter at @jamesmacpherson and order his new book Notes from Woketopia (Laying Bare the Lunacy of Woke Culture) at jamesmacpherson.com.au.

Image via Public Media Alliance.