The reptiles never waste an opportunity to induce nausea in the pond … and this day they played the "faith at heart of family values" card …
Well they could hardly play the "faith at heart of religious values" card, could they …
What a tempting line up, and look, there's the Pellist being axed from the team, apparently because he was an "elderly senior tautologically compelled adviser" to the Pope …
But the pond is inclined to perversity, so it turned to our Henry for inspiration …
… and the pond's intuition was immediately rewarded. Our Henry as Richard the Lion Heart? Our Henry as crusader in chief?
Even more weird … just look at the Krygsman illustration the reptiles prepared for our Henry's hole in the bucket crusade ...
Logic? There's logic to transubstantiation, or for that matter homophobia? Ah, was that portrait of crusader SloMo meant to be deeply ironic, and post-modernist, post-reflexive, because we're all French relativists in this "truth ain't truth" age …
But no, our Henry is a genuine crusader ...
With the greatest respect, our Henry isn't much of a philosopher, nor apparently does he understand much about lives lived with integrity …
Ah, but that's an irony for another day. It's back to our Henry explaining why it's perfectly legitimate to indulge in homophobia, living one's life of fundamentalism with an integrity that produces supreme good … poofters off to eternal hell, and all's well in the world …
And so to more blather about deep conscientious convictions …which somehow reminded the pond of the days of conscription to serve in Vietnam, which deep conscientious convictions were met with jail and much mocking…
But do go on ...
Flippant? The pond always prefers to be flippant than to be sanctimonious and righteous, or a fanatical crusader, especially when the freedom to live in accord with one's faith cuts two ways …
When will our Henry mount a campaign to cut state funding from church schools? You know …"being allowed to live one's life with integrity is a supreme good", so living like a pimp off the taxes of atheists, secularists and other ne'er do wells is certainly not a life of integrity, but rather the sort of cheap hustling that has seen religious fundamentalists get into bed with sleazy crooks of the Donald kind …
Never mind, our Henry is winding up ...
What a silly old shouter at clouds he is … as if it was some matter of teaching that "gender is a question of choice". The pond has yet to come across a TG person who saw their sexuality as a matter of choice, of wandering down the supermarket aisle and saying, "oh I think I'll have that sex today…"
It's a bit like the old saw that homosexuality is a matter of choice, and so it should be easy to argue gays out of their choice …
Well faith-based schools can't teach creationism as science, and perhaps they should learn that teaching that homosexuality is inherently wicked and evil isn't an entitlement, or a right, or a necessity, or a way of living life with integrity…
That kind of integrity is just the sort of superstition that supports mixed cloth, a hatred of shell-fish, beef-eating, and stoning witches and gays to death ...
Besides, before reaching for that stone, are the faith-based in a position to throw stones?
And so it was on to nattering "Ned", blathering on the same topic, with the temptation irresistible because "Ned" ran out of steam, and that's always a wonderful sight to see ...
Will anyone ask "Ned" …."do you believe in the right of fundamentalist Islamics to exclude and discriminate against, with bigotry and determined aggro, homosexuals, and such like people, to whom certain fundamentalists of the bigoted homophobic kind would assign an inferior legal status, and not just in schools, but wherever they might happen to encounter them?
Never mind, as the pond promised, "Ned" is short this day, and "Ned" actually believes in that Krygsman portrait of a crusading pentecostalist speaking in tongues SloMo ...
Yep, SloMo has kicked the crusading can of worms down the road, and what a pity because it could all be sorted if the religious were simply to pay for the education of their spawn.
Then the state might have nothing to do with them, and they could speak in isolated glory about Adam and Eve and creationism and the young earth and the wickedness of homosexuals, and all on their own dime …and the Australian education system could end up as silly as some of the schools in the deep American south ...
And finally, as we're on the subject of SloMo, the pond thought it would take in the Oz editorialist dealing with a very sensitive pre-Xmas issue …
More Pope here, and there's the pup that worries the reptiles…
You see, at least once a week, as well as being haunted by Malware, and religious freedom, and the need to mount a crusade, the reptiles have been haunted by thoughts of a federal ICAC or integrity commission or some such thing …
It therefore must have come as something of a shock for the reptiles to discover that as well as being a crusader, SloMo was a flipper, and so the reptiles had to open a crusade on several fronts, and as both Napoleon and Hitler discovered, crusading on a couple of fronts can be a little tricky ...
Yes, the reptiles are worried by the flipper's tendency to shoot from the hip, and not always at targets designated by the reptiles.
It works exceptionally well for Fox and Friends, but the local reptiles haven't quite mastered the art, and every so often, the likes of SloMo head off to the pound for a new pup with which to torment the worried reptiles ...
Hello, earth to reptiles. In its infinite wisdom, the High Court of Australia asked whether Scientology qualified as a religion, and concluded it did, and the reptiles might seek out the matter of pay-roll tax which provoked the question and the court's arcane ruling here ….(Scientological faith also including a canny attitude to paying for taxation, while receiving government grants for the Athena school just around the corner from the pond).
Yet only now are the reptiles seeing a few tricky issues in the crusader's crusading?
Indeed, indeed, the world must be made safe for the likes of Eddie Obeid, and the pond is always pleased when the reptiles deplore the terrible things done to the Obeid family …
But enough of whimsy, there's just time for one last reptile editorialist gobbet ...
Indeed, indeed, and given the failing, flailing business model of the lizard Oz, the pond routinely wonders where all the Murdochians will find jobs … but don't worry, there's always a neofascist out there in the ether somewhere, and in urgent need of followers …
And so to the Rowe of the day, and strangely, since cartoonists sometimes think alike, it also involves a pup … (with more Rowe here).
Ok, so the Ruddock Report apparently says "... freedom of religion is not subordinate or secondary to the other rights which it will necessarily be balanced with."
ReplyDeleteYet our Ergassian pushes the views of Locke that "the state's inescapable obligation was to ensure the security of its subjects." And that: "Religious freedom therefore conferred no right to injure others, engage in plainly abhorrent conduct or incite disorder."
But nonetheless that "Preaching that infidels were doomed to eternal damnation was consequently permissible." But: "There could, however, be no justification for preaching that they should be summarily dispatched to their fate."
Ok, so 'religious freedom' clearly involves state enforced censorship of at least the Christian Bible. Deuteronimy 17:1-20 will just have to be excised and never, ever referred to again !
Now can anybody please tell me how subjecting religion to state enforced curbs and censorships doesn't clearly make it a secondary right to the state's inescapable obligation to ensure the security of its subjects ? And the subjects' inescapable right to have their security ensured?
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteI like the anonymous editorialist’s description of a possible Coalition constituency as ‘punters of faith’.
It highlights what the reptiles really think about the religious. That they are a bunch of mugs who are happy to be fleeced and led around by the nose on the anticipation that they will be able to win big in the afterlife.
No wonder the reptiles think that these rubes can be encouraged to vote for Morrison and his dysfunctional team of shysters by simply fear-mongering that they could have their pokie machine of faith and bigotry taken away if they don’t.
DiddyWrote
So true, the religious are a bunch of mugs who imagine that they will be able to win big in the afterlife but they also like to misuse their belief system as a way of feeling superior to others right here right now.
DeleteOne has to continually remind oneself that these fools and charlatans are not bad people who should be bred out of the human race but are in reality just badly raised people who make poor choices.
You reckon they all should have gone to a better class of school then, Anony ?
DeleteYair, you have a point there DW. Some years ago I recall watching some fta tv that included a documentary about what Americans believe. And they interviewed this bloke who really, truly, wanted taxes to be reduced, because "one day he could get rich and he didn't want to be paying for all those poor folk" !
Now this guy was in his mid seventies, lived in a tin shed and barely had a buck to his name, but, by golly, he could be rich some day. No wonder these "punters of faith" (is there any other kind ?) can be fleeced by the reptile cohort.
It may just have been unlucky but my experience over the years has been that the overtly religious folk I have worked with have tended to be grifters who were on to every lurk and dodge available. I've known others that were good people but they weren't the "in your face" types.
DeleteWell you see, Bef, if you know that it just doesn't matter what you do - mortal sin or venial, or just plain bad manners - because your God has promised you forgiveness and entry into Heaven provided you "atone" - ie, say all your assigned Hail Marys - then you can just do anything you like to anybody at all and get away with it. And they do.
Delete