Rob Hulls, Christian zealotry and discrimination, and time for secularists to take a stand in honor of Barabbas

(Above: why not try Luis Bunuel's Nazarin as a refreshing sorbet after da Vinci? Time for a little discrimination in your movie viewing habits?)

Well here's a go that will please the right wing commentariat.

Yep, that's the ongoing right of Christians and other loons (Scientologists and fundie Islamics amongst them) to discriminate against others, or so The Age advises in its story Government bows to religious right.

Attorney-General Rob Hulls will today announce a controversial compromise struck with the state's religious groups that will allow them to continue to discriminate against gays and lesbians, single mothers and people who hold different spiritual beliefs.

In a move that has delighted religious groups but angered gay activists and discrimination experts, Mr Hulls will protect the right of hundreds of church-run organisations - including schools, hospitals and welfare services - to refuse to employ or provide services to people who they believe may undermine their beliefs.

Yep, that's right, government-funded schools and hospitals and welfare services. Funded by taxpayer mug secularists, sending buckeroos in the direction of creationists and Xenu haters.

Well how about I get to exclude my tax dollars from the discriminationists?

And what's this about undermining their beliefs? What - a few secularists, gays and single mothers will undermine their cloud cuckoo land beliefs? I thought only cults worried about their members interacting with the real world and having their beliefs undermined?

Poor old Professor Margaret Thornton is quoted as paddling against the extremist tide:

''In terms of a person's private life … their sexual preference or marital status really has nothing to do with their ability to perform a job. Being able to discriminate on marital status is particularly absurd. It is really out of date. It really amounts to the policing of women because the focus is on single mothers, not on men.''

Yep, if you're a single father, come right in. What's a bit of sowing of wild oats up against the fornicating ways of unclean women. Well certain times of course you can't allow them in the office for seven days:

If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything that she lies on during her impurity shall be unclean; also everything that she sits on shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. And whoever touches anything that she sat on shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. If anything is on her bed or on anything on which she sits, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening. And if any man lies with her at all, so that her impurity is on him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean.

By golly, that'd mess up a school or a hospital routine, right there.

Religious groups have mounted a campaign to save their exemptions, which mean, for example, that conservative religious schools can refuse to hire single mothers or gays - even as cleaners - and that an Islamic organisation can decline to employ a Christian.

Well heaven forfend that I'd suggest secularists should strike back. You know, like finding out whether an applicant for a position testifies for the lord, and then - after praising the Yahweh worshipper for their strange beliefs, perhaps even hinting they might introduce a little clean living into an office full of vile secularists, single women and gays - immediately do not pass go, but instead offer the job to any passing ratbag humanist on safe anti-discriminatory grounds, such as the way the humanist's MA in arts is a better fit for the skills requirements of a cleaner.

Trust me, without a Christian in the office, you're spared a lot of clucking and frowning and righteousness, not to mention covert sexual harassment and secret stashes of pornography.

That cheerful rogue Charlie Waterstreet today published his usual column of genteel self-mockery with the preposterous title Work is love made visible, and proceeded to quote Kahlil Gibran. So we'll do the same, since Charlie is a jolly barrister, and unlikely to sue us for filching his digital content:

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

If you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

To which, in view of the carry ons and cavortings in Victoria, we can now add a coda:

And if you turn away from the person, and love them not but view them with distaste, and fail to think of work is love, but prefer those who are different to be unemployed rather than near you, you muffle your ears to Christ's message (or Mohammad's message, or your inner Thetan, or whatever other loon message you have running around in your oddly wired brain).

But then we all know that Christian institutions have little to do with the actual Christ or the actual Christ's message, which is worth reading every now and again, and which reminds me of that zen koan:

A university student while visiting Gasan asked him: "Have you ever read the Christian Bible?"

"No, read it to me," said Gasan.

The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: "And why take ye thought for rainment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these... Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."

Gasan said: "Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man."

The student continued reading: "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened."

Gasan remarked: "That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood." (here)

Sadly there are a lot of Christian institutions a long way from Buddahood, or even Christ-hood.

So let's have a few more thoughts from the man close to the Budda:

You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

If you greet, or employ only your brothers? What are you doing more? Never mind:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Guess that the nonsense about Christ wandering around with working class bums, fisher folk, proletariat stiffs, hanging on the cross with criminals and passing the time of day with hookers is all just so much nonsense. Look at the bishops in their preening finery and how absurd they are up against the real thing.

Which reminds me of how I strayed into the deeper waters of theology recently:

Has contemporary Christianity watered down Christ's teachings? I do not think they have been diluted; however, I do think that we often become inexorably bound to legalistic man- made dogmatic prescriptions that do not necessarily appear in the gospels or were not espoused by Christ himself. We fail to appreciate that Jesus' life (not dogma) is the moral compass of how we should live. Stanley Hauerwas (2001) writes: " Indeed, the very announcement of the reality of the kingdom, its presence, here and now, is embodied in his life. In him we see that living a life of forgiveness and peace is not an impossible ideal but an opportunity now present. Thus Jesus' life is now integral to the meaning, content, and possibility of the kingdom" (p. 117). We are theologically misguided if we judge, accuse, deceive, banish or cause enormous angst to individuals based on their sins. We are not practicing the moral maxims set forth by Christ. We lose the direction that he set forth for us. In essence we lose him as our Lord and myopically worship the agenda-based standards written by reactionary men. When our emphasis is on man-made moral codes rather than the words and examples set forth by Christ, I believe that we are embarking on a misguided path of moral impoverishment reminiscent of the Pharisees.

Don't worry Dr. Stanley M. Giannet, writer of the above (The Radical Ethics of Jesus, A Commentary on Feasibility), in Victoria they've already arrived at that level of moral impoverishment. It's just a question now of how much further they can elevate it to a canonical view of the world...

(Below: sheesh, how many millennia have the mob got to live down the freeing of Barabbas? After all, Christ wanted it to happen, and so did God, it was in their mission statement, and their free will analysis of the future, which just happened to be pre-destined. As if Christ cared anyway. Didn't he get Dismas off the hook and on the way to paradise with him? Oh yes, there's plenty more, but we haven't got the time to go into the good samaritan and all the other parables about this kind of thing, not when discrimination is all the go.)