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The Australian Human Rights Commission and religious freedom

By Laurence Maher - posted Monday, 1 June 2015


In truth, international human rights experience is a not so Holy receptacle for the "the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family"; it is a fiercely contested political battleground.

In its report, Combating the Defamation of Religions(2008), to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the then Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission expressedsome sympathy for the cause of an international standard for the medieval type of State censorship found in contemporary theocratic forms of government and promoted by the signatories to the Cairo Declaration (1990) which calls for an international convention outlawing blasphemy, an aspiration somewhat less extravagantly expressed in a recent UN General Assembly resolution.

One salient illustration of the defects of fine-sounding international human rights instruments concerns Article 18 of the ICCPR which conspicuously omits express mention of the individual's right to reject all religion and to say so out loud. Readers who are prepared to spend time navigating the AHRC web site will eventually discern that the AHRC contents itself with a passing feeble suggestion that such a right is implied in Article 18.

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There are increasing indications in Australia and elsewhere that the criticism and ridiculing of religious ideas, beliefs and practices, and even to suggest that a religious belief is in need of modernisation, is to be deprecated.

No less a person than former Prime Minister Gillard, addressing the UN General Assembly in 2012 asserted, "Denigration of religious beliefs is never acceptable". Never? If this pronouncement were to be accepted, religious freedom in Australia would have been taken back to the pre-Reformation era.

Beware favouritism

A person who is convicted of a crime of any significance will be described as being disgraced. A person who encourages others to support attitudes repugnant to the Australian community or encourages violence against women, homosexuals or various ethnic groups and supports child suicide bombers and acts of terror or when given the opportunity fails to condemn these views would be similarly described. Justice McClellan, Trad v Harbour Radio Pty Ltd(2009)

In a world of competing one, true faiths and where democracy endeavours to co-exist with theocracy, and in which a fanatical religious war is being fought in the Middle East, the AHRC's plight in being trapped in the hate speech maze is made worse by treating religion as if it were an inherent human attribute when it is no more than a category of ideas and beliefs which, like any other ideas, offer themselves for acceptance or rejection (including ridicule).

The fact that religion so often comes to grip the adult mind because it has been drummed into the mind of the believer as an innocent child is further reason why the proposition that the substance of any religious belief (say, Catholic doctrine on transubstantiation) should command respect has no place in a free and open secular society.

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The AHRC's case that s 18C has to be maintained to protect "vulnerable minorities" who are "marginalised", "demonised", "victimised" and/or "stigmatised" manages to combine florid rhetoric and the group libel that entire communities of believers lack the strength of their religious conviction. In the real world, witness the events in Sydney on 15 September 2012, there is ample evidence to the contrary. It is of a piece with the condescension of the Preamble to the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 which preaches that vilification of religious belief or activity of "some Victorians . . . diminishes their dignity, sense of self-worth and belonging to the community." Far from being well-served by the new sectarianism, the efforts to censor debate about religious ideas is an affront to religious freedom.

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About the Author

L W Maher is a Melbourne barrister with a special interest in defamation and other free speech-related disputes. He has written extensively on Australian Cold War legal history.

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