Wilful blindness, religion and free speech

Recent events in Australia have brought into sharp focus the sorry state of public discussion and disputation about religious ideas, beliefs and practices arising from the fact that one of the three Abrahamic religions is receiving special treatment intended to insulate its ideas and beliefs from critical scrutiny.

The inevitability of conflict between secular/humanist and religious ideas is exemplified in the very wide gap in social norms affecting human sexual behaviour and the rights of women. In each case, the constitutive/inviolable secular value of equality in a free and open society trumps religious ideas ancient and modern. There can be no overarching religious justification for invidious discrimination in employment, education, the supply of goods and services in trade and commerce, or in obtaining access to state-provided services.

Two intersecting influential social forces have bestowed a privilege on one set of religious ideas.

The first is the Pollyanna-like insistence upon conformity of ideas and opinion based on the belief that anything that is "divisive" is to be deprecated. We are constantly told that belonging, civility, cohesion, diversity, harmony, identity, inclusion, respect and other approved forms of superior abstract virtuousness must govern what we think and say. Tolerance is in the expanding list of pieties, but dissent is never mentioned. We no longer have debates. Instead, we are exhorted to engage in "conversation".

The second is the contemporary manifestation of puritanical censorship, the "hate speech" phenomenon which is based on an ideology of confected "oppression" of selected "minorities". If, for example, one such "minority" happens to expound medieval religious attitudes to human sexuality and the equal status role of women in a democratic society, then the self-righteous ideologues demand the right to shut down public debate about those ideas.

One characteristic of the combined effect of those forces is that, in the immediate aftermath of any episode of terrorist mass murder in which an assassin has explicitly invoked the Almighty, some public commentators insist that the murder had "nothing" to do with religion and denounce the expression of any and all contrary opinions.

This device tends to be deployed without the benefit of any reliance on reasoning which might support the case for a complete negative. Its exponents claim a monopoly entitlement to engage in public communication about the motivation/purpose of the assassin(s). They casually label commentators who emphasise and criticise underlying religious ideas, beliefs and practices as bigots, racists, and xenophobes and insist on being free to comment on such matters without finding it necessary to deal with the substance of the criticism of the religious ideas.

Even when the clerical leaders of the religious community involved confirm that their religious faith condemns homosexuality as being high on the scale of human wickedness, the response in sections of the Australian media (notably the ABC, the Fairfax Media Group and the Guardian) has been to ignore the religious leaders or suggest that the clerics don't know what they're talking about or that they do not represent some (imaginary) idealised single form of the religious beliefs.

This censorious response was applied to the mass murder in a homosexual nightclub in Orlando, Florida on 12 June 2016. In the context of human sexual behaviour and the rights of women, there are ongoing specific debates in Australia about same-sex marriage and "safe schools". Those who will not tolerate any examination of one set of religious ideas tend to be associated with a willingness to heap scorn and derision on those who seek to make the rather simple point that reasonable persons can disagree about same sex marriage and "safe schools" in reliance on their religious beliefs and convictions. In any secular society which claims to be free, open and democratic, religious freedom has two sides, the right to hold and communicate religious ideas and beliefs and the right to condemn them. No idea or belief is beyond critical examination.

In the immediate aftermath of the Orlando outrage, the Australian media reported that a cleric had recently arrived in Australia for a speaking tour in which he expressed his religious opinion that homosexuality was a sin that could warrant the death penalty. That was followed by speculation that the cleric was facing deportation because of his condemnation of homosexuality.

On 16 June, Prime Minister Turnbull hosted an inter-faith dinner at Kirribilli House to mark the end of Ramadan. In the course of the evening the Prime Minister became aware that one of his guests, an Australian-born cleric (who happened also to be the Chairman of the National Council of Imans) had expressed opinions to gatherings of his co-religionists in Sydney about the sinfulness of homosexuality. The cleric and the Grand Mufti of Australia left the dinner early and the Prime Minister stated that if he had been aware that the Chairman had made his remarks about homosexuals, he would not have been invited.

Would any good purpose have been served if the visiting cleric had been deported (he left Australia on 12 June 2016) or by barring entry to any man of God seeking to echo his predecessor's condemnation of homosexuality? It was suggested that the recently departed cleric had been inciting violence against homosexuals. This was not an altogether surprising contention since it was claimed that the cleric had not long before visited Florida. Common sense dictates that any well-founded apprehension that a visa applicant incites violence (regardless of motivation) is reason enough to keep a person from entering Australia.

However, the general criminal law prohibiting incitement to violence calls for a close analysis of the facts of any given case. The visiting cleric's critics paid little or no attention to the explicit and tacit theological foundations of his view that homosexuality is wicked and contrary to unalterable divine law (or what one group of the cleric's co-religionists in the United States in reaction to the Orlando murders called "a strict Abrahamic morality"). This can be done by viewing the You Tube recording ofthe same cleric's 2013 lecture at the University of Michigan.

It is very hard to see how anyone who is prepared to pay close attention to that lecture could discern any evidence of incitement in the sense of a clear and present urging or encouraging of attendees, viewers or listeners to resort to violence.

In his silken-voiced tone, the cleric systematically sets out the relevant unambiguous scriptural message that homosexuality is evil, that the sinner should encouraged to repent and deserves compassion. The full extent of this theology is that even the application of the death penalty – which can only be imposed in accordance with substantive and procedural religious law - is said to be a release from the evil of physical homosexual acts because the sinner will be despatched to the afterlife which is of far greater consequence than the earthly life. How can any individual be prevented from believing this or anything else?

There is a dreadful internal religious "logic" about the controversial cleric's claim. It is based on the final of the three revealed Abrahamic traditions. By definition, the Almighty's revealed truth is, for its votaries, comprehensively perfect for all time.

For present purposes, it is enough to state the obvious: an overwhelming majority of Australians do not share the views either that religious law should have any paramountcy or that a person's sexual preference/orientation in the twenty-first century free and open society could seriously be put forward as a justification for any earthly punishment. In the case of any similar religious prohibition on fornication, many Australians would regard it as just too silly for words.

It should not be remotely controversial to contend that there is a strong public interest in discussing all religious beliefs. This has been borne out by more recent events and, in particular, the Grand Mufti's detailed statement responding to the Prime Minister's criticism.

Moreover, Australians should not have to remind themselves that we live in a society where freedom of religion includes the freedom to regard all religion as superstition, and to say so, a freedom given both explicit and implied protection in the Australian Constitution.

Moreover, it is widely appreciated that it is inherent in monotheism that the Almighty has compassion and expects all his creatures to act compassionately. Formal Uriah Heap-like hand-wringing expressions of compassion for homosexuals (for being what they are), such as that of the visiting cleric and his co-religionists who share his loathing of sinful homosexual acts, carry no earthly weight and are made at no cost.

A simple test would be to inquire whether the clerics accept or reject the general proposition that in Australia there is as much of a right to criticise religious ideas, beliefs and practices as there is a right to criticise political, economic, social or indeed any other ideas, beliefs and practices. The Grand Mufti's statement reads very much like a rejection.

The visiting cleric's ghastly painstaking 2013 lecture and similar presentations (many of them hate-drenched rants) are available on the internet and are communicated by other like-minded clerics to their co-religionists in Australia. It seems tolerably clear that the theological views - anchored as they manifestly are in scripture and the traditions - are shared by more than just a handful of the clerics' Australian followers.

The dogmatic certainty of the folks who trot out the "nothing to do with religion" trope is further proof positive (if it is needed) of the undisguised anti-democratic nature of "hate speech" censorship. Their selective ideological urge to muzzle critics of religious thinking like that which applauds punishment for engaging in homosexual acts displays contempt for the long struggle to decriminalise homosexuality and to secure redress for persons subjected to discrimination in employment and otherwise on the basis of sexual preference.

The idea that, for fear of hurting religious sensibilities, Australians should refrain from blunt speaking about religious ideas whilst public money should, simultaneously, be outlaid to facilitate the investigation of a statutory complaint (since abandoned) designed to muzzle the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart for distributing a pastoral letter on the same-sex marriage, Don't Mess With Marriage, published by the Australian Catholic bishops is far beyond being merely risible. It bespeaks the reinvigoration of sectarianism in Australia in the name of multiculturalism. It sits well with the anti-democratic proposition that Australians should not be permitted to express their views in a same-sex plebiscite for no other reason than that it will be "divisive" because they might express an impermissible opinion.

The Australian Human Rights Commission should be confronting this issue rather than wasting public money on facilitating proposals for a national blasphemy law to be achieved by amending s 18C of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975 to include a privilege intended to insulate one set of religious ideas from normal public debate.