Those who scream the most about tolerance, acceptance, diversity, and the need to stamp out bullying often are the last people to be making such a stink. Far too often they are the most intolerant, non-accepting, anti-diversity, and pro-bullying bunch around.
The secular lefties hate anything to do with faith, freedom and family, so they put a lot of effort into ensuring that those who value such important goods are hounded out of existence, shut down, or shouted down – all in the name of tolerance of course.
These thugs do a great job of shutting down debate, preventing freedom of speech, and denying anyone with an opposing point of view from getting a hearing. Examples of this are never ending, and we have had two more extreme cases of this in Australia just in the past few days.
And they are real shockers. The first case comes from NSW, as reported in the weekly student newspaper of the University of Sydney. Its story begins:
The University of Sydney Union (USU) has threatened to deregister the Sydney University Evangelical Union (EU) from the Clubs & Societies program over the latter’s requirement that all members must make a declaration of faith in Jesus Christ.
The Board views the requirement as exclusive to participation in the society and a discriminatory religious litmus test for eligibility to join the society. The EU has until the 31st March to change the constitutional requirement. This ultimatum was received by email on 17th February. Article 3.2 of the EU’s constitution states that each member must sign a statement that they “desire in joining the EU to declare my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour, my Lord and my God”.
Members of the EU attended the USU Board meeting of Friday March 4 to petition the board to reconsider their position. President of the EU, George Bishop, gave a three minute speech to the Board. In it, he cited human rights treaty provisions protecting freedom of religion. The EU has received formal legal advice on the matter.
Wow, imagine that: a Christian group not allowed to be a Christian group. Will they take the same action against Muslim groups, and force them to take in Christians or atheists? Will they take the same action against atheist groups, and force them to take in Muslims or Christians?
One commentator has weighted into this ideological bullying. Chris Ashton wrote a helpful article in which he said:
The EU has been a presence on campus since 1930, encouraging Christian students, evangelising pagan students, and earning a generally good reputation in the process. Among unbelievers, EU and its 600 or so members are regarded as generous, friendly, honest, and good-humoured, even as they are mocked, derided, and debated. Theirs is a clear message of the Christ of the Bible, which some embrace, many ignore, and an increasing number seem to take gross offence at.
He concludes with this about the University “bully-crats”:
This is an embarrassing and indeed depressing development at Australia’s oldest and formerly most prestigious university. The EU is a net contributor to Sydney University campus life, and not just in the aforementioned conduct of its members, or in the tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of free food they seem to distribute in O-Week and during their various evangelistic campaigns each year.
More important than any of these is the intellectual contribution the EU makes to the life of the institution. Of course you can deride and mock their beliefs as naive or incorrect, and you can do so safe in the knowledge that you’re unlikely to get attacked or prosecuted for hate speech.
But as this episode shows, the EU has inadvertently become the last place on campus where students are encouraged to think for themselves, to push boundaries, and to challenge orthodoxies, and it is an intellectual tragedy that the students’ union won’t acknowledge this.
So much for freedom of speech. So much for freedom of assembly. So much for religious freedom. These things are all but dead at most Western universities today. Even a non-Christian like commentator Andrew Bolt can see how bad this is: “Who are the authoritarians running this union?”
Protesters have trashed Senator Cory Bernardi’s electorate office over his opposition to the Safe Schools program. Earlier today a group of protesters marched to his office in the Adelaide suburb of Kent Town leaving its contents in disarray and scrawling slogans on its facade including “stop homophobia” and “Australia’s Trump”.
The Safe Schools program is designed to reduce bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning (LGBTIQ) students. In a series of Twitter posts, Senator Bernardi blamed “lefty totalitarians”, saying they “trashed my office and threatened my staff because their agenda has been exposed”.
“What a bunch of cowards,” he wrote. The Safe Schools program underwent an independent review after Senator Bernardi raised concerns in the Coalition party room that it “indoctrinates kids”.
“It beggars belief that we’re asking 11-year-olds to identify themselves or imagine themselves as having no genitals,” Mr Bernardi told the Senate last month. “Schools should be places of learning, not propaganda.”
Yep, the tolerance brigade in action. Feel the lurve baby. And the real howler in all this is this craven and ugly attack was carried out on one of the activists’ favourite annual days. Yep you guessed it: today is “National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence”!
Nothing conveys the sentiments of a day aimed at resisting bullying and violence better than resorting to bullying and violence! Yep, we got that. Thanks for demonstrating how that works. Stamp out bullying with more bullying. Stand against violence by resorting to violence. Makes perfect sense to me.
This my friends is the world we now live in: ugly and fascist PC madness and anti-Christian bigotry. And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. While we have had plenty of such episodes already, we can simply expect things to get much worse in the days ahead.
And just imagine what these folks would be like if they favoured bullying and intolerance!
http://honisoit.com/2016/03/usu-threatens-to-deregister-evangelical-union/
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/christians-banned-for-simply-being-christian/news-story/b7bfd9323c723d1dc22d101bf59a39f8
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/student_union_objects_to_christian_group_wanting_christians/
http://www.news.com.au/national/politics/senator-cory-bernardis-office-trashed-by-protesters/news-story/aa8176a1d91f6b7bb2fac5575cf87365
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