Tolerance squeezing out conviction

In what was one of the most important elements of the decision, all three justices held that there was no distinction between homosexual behaviour and homosexual orientation.

The youth camp's policy was intended to uphold its view of Christian standards of behaviour. Instead it was found to have discriminated against the persons involved themselves.

Once claims about discriminatory behaviour or beliefs are presented as assaults upon the person rather than as simply being about the content of religious faith, rights become non-negotiable.

One judge in the youth camp's case, Neave JA, said there can be no exemption for religion in situations "where it is not necessary for a person to impose their religious beliefs upon others."

This test invites scrutiny of a wide range of religious practices including marriage. Would the refusal of a minister of religion to perform a same sex marriage amount to such an unnecessary imposition of religious belief?

Indeed, the issue of same sex marriage and the campaign to promote it by groups such as the Australian Greens is an example of the threat posed to religious liberty by aggressive secularism.

Of course, any decision about the changes proposed to the Marriage Act 1961 is ultimately a matter for our democratically elected Federal Parliament.

But the campaign to amend the Act in order to allow for same sex marriage does seek to silence the views of those who might harbour religiously based reservations about such a change.

Proponents of same sex marriage argue that it needs to be adopted in the name of tolerance, dignity and equality.

But the push for what is dubbed 'marriage equality' makes little allowance for those whose religious convictions lead them to stand up for the traditional meaning of marriage.

Instead it imposes what can be described as a 'tyranny of tolerance' under which the individual law-abiding religious believer has no place in the public sphere to express dissent.

The mark of the good citizen used to be the display of personal conviction. Now it is the ostentatious display of open-mindedness often resulting in traditional religious beliefs being supressed.