Sanders, Discrimination, and Leftist Double Standards

By now most of you should know about how Sarah Huckabee Sanders and a few others were munching on some cheese snacks while waiting to be served at the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia. When “concerned” staff realised the evil Trump Press Secretary had invaded their safe space, they asked the owner Stephanie Wilkinson, a card-carrying leftist, what they should do. The answer was as brief as it was draconian: kick them out!

Sarah did not throw a hissy fit. She did not threaten to sue them. She did not take anyone to court. She did not stay there and cause a stink. She politely got up and walked out. This tells us all we need to know about her, and her political opponents.

As Sanders said in a tweet: “Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”

Yep. Not that long ago blacks were not allowed in many places, including restaurants. If they got on a bus, they had to go to the back of the bus. Now conservatives and Republicans have to do the same it seems. The double standards and hypocrisy of the left is completely off the charts here.

When Christian cake makers regularly and cheerfully serve homosexuals, but draw the line at specially designed requests like a homosexual wedding cake, the left goes ballistic, the activists drag people to the courts, and many Christian-owned businesses have had to close down.

That is how the left operates. That is their idea of “tolerance”. That is their idea of “diversity”. That is their idea of “love”. They go on search and destroy missions, deliberately seeking out Christian establishments and deliberately seeking to create hell on earth for the Christian and/or conservative owners.

They SEEK confrontation and they seek division. They know just what they are doing. It is all part of their program to shut down ALL opposition to their militant agenda. This is how the left operates. This is standard procedure for the left.

But when a Republican walks into a restaurant, she and her party are kicked out. Hmm. The owner of Red Hen tried to justify her bigotry and hate by saying she had to do that which was morally right – at least in her eyes: “We just felt there are moments in time when people need to live their convictions.”

Um, was that not what the Christian florists, photographers, bakers and all the rest were simply trying to do? To stay true to their moral convictions? To remain steadfast to their basic core values and beliefs? The left absolutely blasted all these people for daring to live lives based on moral conviction.

But if you are a leftist business owner, then it is perfectly acceptable to remain true to your beliefs, and to discriminate against others. Um, double standards much? And again, let’s not mix apples and oranges here. As I said, these Christian small business owners regularly and routinely served lefties, homosexuals, Democrats, and others.

It is only when a special order for something like a lesbian wedding cake is asked for that the owners feel the need to say no. And given that there were plenty of similar businesses nearby, those asking for the special order could easily have gone elsewhere.

But they deliberately targeted these Christian businesses, knowing they could trap them and make a massive media stink about “discrimination” and the like, even though these were hardly cases about genuine discrimination. However, with the Red Hen, this WAS an obvious and blatant case of discrimination.

Yet crickets are chirping here. The left is silent on this. The feminists are silent on this. The media is silent on this injustice. What is that word again that starts with “h” and ends with “ypocrisy”? This is the same old lousy double standards we have always seen from the left. Nothing new here at all.

As Lauren DeBellis put it:

Both The Red Hen’s owner and many others are pointing to the recent Supreme Court decision that ruled Masterpiece Cakeshop did not have to make an off-the-menu cake for a gay wedding to justify kicking Sanders out of the restaurant. However, there is no comparison. For that logic to work Sanders would’ve had to order food that wasn’t on the menu and then use the government to try and force them to make what she wanted.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/06/24/red-hen-teaches-sarah-huckabee-sanders-that-virginia-is-for-pc-bullies-not-for-lovers.html

When it comes to the issue of using a business or providing a service, the double standards of the left are always in full view. For example, Chick-Fil-A is a Christian-run chain of chicken restaurants. Because the Christian owner was pro-marriage, but not pro-fake marriage, the leftists went nuts and sought a national boycott.

That is their right. But their attempt to take the high moral ground, and seek to see it shut down altogether is just part and parcel of the totalitarian nature of the left. Their idea of “tolerance” always has a totalitarian sting in the tail. Plenty of other examples could be mentioned here.

Remember the recent Starbucks episode? One social media commentator nicely put it this way:

So two African American guys go into Starbucks, don’t order anything, and they ask them to leave. The media and the leftist movement has a field day against Starbucks. So Starbucks shuts down all their stores for a day to make all employees go thru diversity training. Sara Sanders goes into a restaurant and they ask her to leave because she works for the White House. Why isn’t the media mad about this? Because she’s a white woman that works for Trump? Where are the feminist movement supporters? Yes, an establishment should have the right to refuse service. However, that got thrown out with the dishwater. Now you can only refuse service to those that disagree with the progressive/communist agenda.

Or as Jeannie DeAngelis put it:

Wasn’t it just a few months ago that two men loitering in a Starbucks, who happened to be black, asked to use the restroom and were arrested after they refused to free up space for paying customers? Didn’t bias allegations and diversity training result from the incident? Now, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a paying customer, is refused service because of her religious and political convictions and bigotry is entertained as moral conviction?
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/red_hen_bigotry_or_moral_conviction.html

Yes, I also believe that there may be a place to refuse service in certain cases. As I said elsewhere:

I do think there is a place for small businesses to offer some discretion as to who they employ and serve. I think a Jewish small business should not be forced to employ a neo-Nazi. I think a black baker should not have to make pro-KKK cakes. I think a Christian florist should not have to serve at a homosexual wedding. And I even think a lesbian photographer should not be forced to work at a Christian function if she does not want to. So I am NOT saying small business owners should have no freedom in this regard.
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/04/27/leftism-the-pink-mafia-and-double-standards/

Thus I am not against a small business owner being somewhat selective in what services they provide. But what I AM against is all the blatant and appalling hypocrisy going on here. What we see at Red Hen is nothing but obvious ideological and political bigotry. It was a clear-cut case of discrimination. Again, if the owner wants to treat others like dirt in this way, it is up to her I guess.

But I am sick and tired of hearing the loony left going on and on about the evils of discrimination and the like. There is no bigger group to be found in the discrimination camp than the left. They specialise in this. And at the same time they constantly moralise about it.

They are stinking hypocrites, and most people are now seeing through their disgusting double standards. Let me finish with the concluding words of Rod Dreher on this incident:

Are we really going to be the kind of country in which businesses drive those whose politics offend them out of their premises? Are we really going to be the kind of country in which activists enter restaurants and drive particular customers out, because of their politics?

Who does this help? I’ll tell you who: Donald J. Trump. Conservative people see this, and they imagine themselves being thrown out of a restaurant, either by the owner or by left-wing protesters, because they are conservative. They see themselves being driven out of the public square by the left — which all the while congratulates itself on its superior morality — and it makes them furious. For the woke left, even trying to eat out with your spouse and your friends at a restaurant is now political, and must be punished.

A Washington Post caption under a photo of the restaurant reads: “A placard quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — ‘Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend’ — sits in the window of the Red Hen, which opened in Lexington in 2008.”

They don’t believe that at the Little Red Hen. They like to think they do, but they don’t. I wonder how things might have gone if Wilkinson had asked Sanders for a private word after dinner, or had sent over a round of dessert, and come by the table to talk. I don’t think it’s a restaurant owner’s place to address the politics of their customers, but at least that would have been better than throwing them out. (And yes, I would feel exactly the same way if a right-wing restaurant owner had treated Hillary Clinton’s staff so rudely.)
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/sarah-sanders-little-red-hen/

I think it is perfectly clear that from now on to speak of the hypocritical left is as much a tautology as to speak of unmarried bachelors.

[1675 words]

25 Replies to “Sanders, Discrimination, and Leftist Double Standards”

  1. Its not just Christian and conservatives the left hates. I have notice that the left has this weird hatred for white people as well and there are plenty of examples of this whenever someone on their side complains about a movie, show or anything for having to many white people in it. But whats scary is that its always a self hating white. Take a look at this recent headline where the BBC wouldn’t launched a new monty python unless it was quote”diverse” (aka no white people). Not to mention, i don’t know if you herd but there are white farmers that are getting killed in south africa and no one on the left cares about it. It wasn’t until one of your politicians in Australia tweeted out that he wanted to offer asylum to these people and some other politician on twitter blasted him as a racist for wanting to help white farmers. There’s plenty more of this anti white stuff out there but i can’t post it all. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/06/21/bbc-rejects-its-oxbridge-comedy-past/

  2. A really “telling article” Bill, the all embracing leftist hysteria that you’ve so aptly described, will provide very useful ammunition for “The Donald”. In a similar situation here, I was disgusted to watch yesterday’s outright attacks by our own lefty moonbeams on Malcom Turnbull. The man has worked hard in his private life as an investment banker, and has been financially successful as a result. Tall poppy syndrome is one of the main fertilisers feeding the left movement in our backyard. Good on you Bill for the in depth balance and analysis that you’ve provided. Regards, Kel.

  3. They are in strong delusion, which God had sent them.
    So their situation is from God as they are enemies of God.
    For twenty million dollars or more i would not want to be in their shoes, for the short time in this life they can live their horrid convictions rooted in an ungodly seared conscience.
    2 Thess 2:11: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
    12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

  4. It is the amount of noise that counts.
    That’s why big trucks, trains and ocean liners can scare the living daylights out of you.
    “Get out of my way, I’m coming through whether you like it or not”, is the message.

    That is how the left works.
    Might looks to be right, and if you are neither righty or mighty, make a noise as though you are.

    Most people will give way, because they are startled and or don’t want to fight right now.
    Besides, Jesus said some amazing things about how to behave with enemies.

    So, we don’t want to stoop to their tactics or level, but we do need to fight to the death.

    OK, I will share it. A few days ago Prov 16.29 got my attention.
    “A violent man entices his neighbor, and leads him down a path that is not good”. NIV
    How easy it is to be enticed in the face of violence, or blatant injustice. or crazy insanity.
    How easy it is then, to be led in the way that is not good.

    My diary meditations;
    “React/respond – probably neither is good because that gives leadership to the oppressor.
    Re ‘in a path that is not good’, may be the ‘not good’, is sometimes the best that can be done.
    If we are not enticed we are much less likely to be led.
    Perhaps we should do the leading; e.g. Jesus always took control of a situation.
    He always framed an occurrence in his own terms and in his own values. eg the values in the Sermon on the Mount.
    Let me then always step back from being enticed.
    Let me work always from God’s view and values.”

    Sarah H Saunders did not react, and very much good on her.
    She did respond though.
    Any constructive/redemptive response to that owner was going to be a tough call and certainly beyond many of us, including me.
    Her response was to tell others.
    Now she has burnt her bridges and cannot face that owner in any redemptive way.
    That response is easy to criticize, anyone got any better ideas!?

    This case also deliberately plays into the much bigger scene.
    It is not Sarah and her friends only that are involved, but apparently the connection with the White House. These factors Sarah also had to take into account in her response.

    Oh, for the wisdom of Jesus in these cases. I would love to know what he would have said.
    If any lack wisdom, let him ask..

  5. Thanks again Bill, for bringing these matters to our attention. Another example of these double standards is happening right now in Hobart. David Walsh put up three 20m upside-down crosses on Hobart’s waterfront, and dug up Macquarie Street in front of the Town Hall, so a “performance artist” could be buried for three days, then exhumed in a mock resurrection. The same sycophantic media elites that praise Walsh’s every word, are busy condemning the Lord Mayor, Alderman Ron Christie, for his rather mild suggestion that Walsh’s festival has gone too far.

  6. I rejoice at how like Jesus Sarah H Sanders was in that situation, but I wonder if we want Christian bakers and florists to have a protected right to refuse to serve homosexuals can political conservatives let alone Christians demand a right to be served by other service providers?

    A friend who is a well know lawyer once told me in the states and over here the right to object to a political point of view was “protected” while being of any particular race, religion or cultural background means you’re also “protected” from discrimination, so if you are a cafe owner you could refuse to serve a dreadlock wearing Greenie but you couldn’t refuse to serve a Jew, or now a Muslim I guess. If this is true that means service could be refused to Mrs Sanders if it is because of her conservative politics but not because she’s Christian or Caucasian.

    As an economically conservative Christian and business owner I go further – I believe all businesses should be able to serve or not serve whoever they wish. I think we just play into the progressives hands by playing the victim card just like they have for decades – Mrs Sanders didn’t, much to her credit I think. The Pharisees were hypocrites, but that doesn’t meant the followers of Lord Jesus could be.

  7. Thanks Gene. Yes but…! A number of times in my article it was said that there can be a place for a small business to be selective in who it serves, and there is no comparison with Sarah’s treatment and that of the homosexual activists coming to Christian businesses. Thus there is no hypocrisy here by Christians and conservatives. The only hypocrisy and double standards here are clearly with the left, as I also sought to show in some detail here.

    And Sanders was NOT playing the victim – all she did is report what happened, and then I and others ran with the story, showing how the left is once again guilty of gross hypocrisy in these matters. Having said that, there ARE such things as genuine victims, and Sarah was clearly one here. But homosexual activists who deliberately go to pick a fight as they specifically target Christian businesses are NOT victims.

    Finally, I am not aware of any antidiscrimination legislation in America which says it is OK to discriminate on the basis of one’s political views.

  8. While I appreciate you willingness to promote freedom I actually think you are slightly wrong on this occasion Bill. I don’t think people do have the right to deny other people food. They either provide food as a service to the public or they do not. This certainly has always been the Christian approach. The problem with wedding cakes and wedding flowers and hiring out church halls etc. is the statement it makes. It is a basic freedom of speech principle because the state has no right to force people to make a statement they do not want to make. You can ask any artist and they will tell you a work of art is a statement. This is very basic democracy and secularism – the very foundation of Western society – that is being undermined here. If, on the other hand, people have the right to expel others from their restaurants because they don’t like them then there really should be a far greater right for people to not have to open their B&Bs etc. to homosexuals because this is not just a matter of feeding someone. With B&Bs people have been put completely out of business becasue the court said immoral sexual acts have to be accommodated. You can’t have it both ways and we have already bent over backwards way too far. In this instance I think the restaurant should be taken to court so we can have a ruling on this matter and so the hypocrisy is highlighted. truth will prevail but as long as it is obfuscated it will be prevented from doing so.

    Personally I think immorality and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible. Sooner or later people are going to have to realize that sexual perversion “rights” are actually in complete opposition to true human rights because true human rights are very closely related to the natural bonds of kinship. God does not give us His laws for no reason. They are not just random things. They are based on objective truths. In the meantime we will have to put up with increased amounts of propaganda against Christianity – claiming it promotes racism, slavery, discrimination and other lies but the only discrimination God has ever promoted, and will continue to promote, was on the basis of morality. I’m certainly not going to back down. These are the basic fundamentals that Western society was built on and which allowed it to become better than societies that had gone before. We certainly had not arrived at anywhere near perfection but this sort of nonsense is just taking us back to the dark ages.

  9. Thanks Michael, I hear you but I am not quite with you. This really has nothing to do with “the Christian approach”. No one is going to starve to death if they are denied entry into the Red Hen, much less if they cannot get a lesbian wedding cake. I am not aware of any human rights document that says restaurants must serve everyone all the time. Plenty of them have signs for example saying: “No shoes, no shirt, no service”. They have not been found to be guilty of violating any antidiscrimination legislation or basic human rights laws.

    If you want to serve everyone who comes your way that is up to you, but if I, say, had a cakemaking shop, and someone came in saying they wanted a cake with the words “Kill all Jews’ or “Kill all Christians” on it, I would not make it for them, and I should have the right to refuse them. The lesbian couples could easily have gone to any other cakemaker, and Sarah and her party simply went to another restaurant without making a big stink about it. And if I had a restaurant and some drunk, loud-mouth abusive KKKers or neo-Nazis came in demanding to be fed, I think I should have the right to tell them to take a hike as well. Of course Sarah and her family were guilty of none of these outrages, and just wanted a quiet meal.

    I DO favour limited government, and the rights of small business owners to have some freedom in who they hire or who they serve – within reason. and if one is concerned about “the Christian approach,” one might forego suing everyone like the Red Hen and add to the ready far too litigious society we live in. So in this particular case I think Sarah and CO may have done the right thing: unlike the sue-happy cry-baby homosexual activists, she simply left and ate elsewhere. But she rightly shared her story so the whole world could see what stinking hypocrites the lefties can be.

    But yes, I fully expect the anti-Christian persecution to continue to get worse in the West.

  10. I know that in the Sweet cakes By Melissa case and the florist case, the gay couples were already regular customers of long standing who were happy with the products and service they received. So they went there for their wedding products because they were already familiar with the shops and their products. As we all would, if we were familiar with the place and the people and happy with the products. Not every thing is a conspiracy. Whether in the other cases they were activists trying to cause trouble or not I don’t know.

  11. Thanks Louise. Of course I did not say every thing is a conspiracy. And I too know that many of these homosexuals who later sued were regular customers. That does not mean they were free of any nefarious aims before they did sue. They obviously had some agendas in mind to engage in such nasty anti-Christian actions.

  12. Well said Bill, yours is the only site I have come across to exclaim in disbelief at the glaring inconsistency here. all because she is an official spokes person for the POTUS. Sarah is 100% better than the other spokes persons from the previous US administration who all, male and female alike, looked shifty, dishonest and amoral as they tried to cough up the narrative that had been dictated to them which was clearly divorced from the truth – in my opinion.

  13. You make my point about freedom of speech, Bill. The reason you would not decorate a cake with those slogans is because they are saying something you do not want to say. Forcing people to say things they do not want to say is against all principles of democracy and freedom of speech and only ever occurs in totalitarian states.

    There are at least three conflicting rights that I can see here. Freedom of speech, property rights and conscience rights. I include freedom of religious under conscience rights. The argument previously about accommodation for homosexuals was based on the idea that they may need to travel to make a living but this was very quickly overridden and people were forced to open holiday B&Bs as well. This, of course, completely overrode people’s property and conscience rights for no good reason that I can see and people were put out of business. I believe this was very much against all, very basic principles of freedom and human rights and property rights and was also based on the very obvious lie that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality but having said that I do believe people have the basic right to access food, water and work. There may be some argument to override property rights for these, although this does not seemed to have ever been properly addressed, and I simply cannot imagine any moral person not wanting to feed people. How can any half decent person have a moral objection to feeding someone no matter how much they disagree with them? Surely this is a much larger indication of hate than not making a wedding cake on conscience grounds could ever be. Not feeding people strikes me as a very immoral act but on the other side of the coin, forcing people to not be able to go to the a university of their choice like in Canada or to force people to not make a living in their chosen field or forcing people to allow immoral sexual acts under their roof, to me, is outrageous and against all very basic principles of secularism and property rights and basic freedoms plus, very importantly, people’s right to make a living is the very right that was used to “accommodate” homosexuality in the first place.

    I can only hope that once people start to think about things they will realize that what I have been saying for well over ten years now is correct – that the made up homosexual “rights” are in fact in complete opposition to the real human rights.

  14. Thanks Michael. Again I am with you in general, although I do not relish belabouring the point about food. This post was about what the folks at Red Hen in particular did, along with some cake makers. Thus this does NOT have anything to do with “the basic right to access food, water” or “any moral person not wanting to feed people”. If the Red Hen or a cake maker were the only food source in an entire state, then we maybe could talk that way – but that of course is not the case, so it is rather foolish to speak in such terms given the discussion at hand.

  15. Bill, help me out here. Wouldn’t the case that if there is no legislation saying you can discriminate on the basis of political views, and no court has “discovered” such a protection, then there is none? I’d love to argue this point with my “learned friend”.

    On the crossroads between law and religion, what do you think of Bernard Gaynor and Professor Dr Augusto Zimmerman’s submission that religious freedom laws must only protect Christianity?

    http://bernardgaynor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/180125-Submission-Freeedom-for-some-Australias-war-on-Christianity.pdf

    I would love if this were possible. As a business owner I value my right to discriminate more than my right to be protected from discrimination. As a Christian, I feel the same way especially if the same “protections” can then be abused and weaponized by Muslims. But if their proposal was possibly would that be the best of all possible worlds? I’m wondering why they’re such lone voices arguing for this? And sadly Mr Gaynor has recently been silenced by the Waffen-SSM and their plants in the courts and tribunals.

  16. Thanks again Gene. A few brief replies if I may. I am not a legal expert by any means, and of course I am not fully up on every federal, state and county law on equal opportunity and discrimination in America, so I cannot say with any certainty what exactly the state of play is there in all respects. There would be many hundreds of laws on the books there concerning these matters. Generally speaking political speech is protected in both America and Australia to an extent. And recall that America also has a Bill of Rights including the first amendment on religious freedom and free speech. But of course Sarah and Co. were not making political speeches at the Red Hen – they were just trying to have a lousy meal! And my main point, again, was the shocking hypocrisy and double standards of the left.

    As to Gaynor and Zimmerman and their views on the issue of religious freedom, let me say two things. One, I know both men, and I do not think they have ever argued that only Christianity should have legal protections in Australia – or anywhere else. Two, I have not read all of the submission you linked to, but what I did read, and based on what I do know of these two men, they would only be saying – and quite rightly – the following general sorts of things:
    -Australia and the West are the products of the Judeo-Christian worldview.
    -Overwhelmingly our laws and values are part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian worldview.
    -These laws and values are well worth protecting and preserving.
    -Whenever and wherever Islamic beliefs and values come into conflict with Western laws, freedoms and democracy, they should be resisted, and not be allowed special recognition or status.
    -Sharia law is incompatible with Australian law, and we should not tolerate even parts of it, resulting in a two-tiered legal system operating in Australia.

    I am not aware of them saying anywhere that religious freedom only should apply to Christianity and no one else. They are not saying – as far as I am aware – that all mosques should be shut down in Australia and all Muslims deported. If they did say such things, I might beg to differ. But I do not believe they have ever made such claims, although I am open to correction!

  17. Dear Gene: You have completely distorted my position on that matter. I am broadly known in this country as a strong advocate of human rights for all. Perhaps you should read my articles on freedom of speech. And I also recommend you read a book I have co-written. It’s called “No Offence Intended”. There is indeed a freedom of religion and this freedom encompasses such things as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of conscience. These fundamental freedoms must be afforded to every religious person and protected by every democratic government. However, religious freedom is never absolute and, as Mason CJ and Brennan J once pointed out, ‘general laws to preserve and protect society are not defeated by a plea of religious obligation to breach them’. Religious freedom is therefore a properly qualified freedom. The protection of any form of liberty as a fundamental right within a society necessarily involves the continued existence of that society as a society. Otherwise the protection of liberty would be meaningless and ineffective. It is consistent with the maintenance of religious liberty for the State to restrain actions and courses of conduct which are inconsistent with the maintenance of civil government or prejudicial to the continued existence of the community. This is particularly so in the context of religious extremism. Indeed, it is important to consider that religious freedom is not an absolute right, and that the Australian government is constitutionally obliged to protect the community from any violent extremism, religious or otherwise.

  18. Yes, I agree Bill. It’s not the act that is the primary issue here, it is the hypocrisy of the Left. Right discrimination is the act of a healthy and sane society. When society loses it’s capacity to discriminate properly it is a sign it has begun to break down. It has discarded it’s foundations and will not stand.

  19. “It follows from this that the government, if it is to ensure true freedom of religion, must ensure its laws do not prevent citizens from practicing the true religion. [..] The truth is that God is knowable and so is his religion. The true religion is the religion founded by Christ. [..] If the state is to fulfil its role of providing for the common good so that citizens can do good and avoid evil, or, in other words, provide the ‘human right’ to religious freedom, it must ensure that its laws grant freedom to Australians to practice this religion. Further, it is a matter of justice that the state, which is part of creation, recognise its creator and Divine King, Jesus Christ. [Amen!] And I say Christian religion specifically, not religion in general. The same people who strenuously oppose Christianity will applaud when a Muslim is sworn into parliament using a Koran. We are not facing a war on religion, but a war on the true religion. [..] It is false to argue that the state must grant freedom to all religions. The only requirement the state has in regards to religious freedom is to grant freedom to true religion. It can justly limit the public practice of false religions in order to provide a safe and stable society for the common good. [!!] As Islam is not the ‘true’ religion, it is not a religion at all and the government has no obligation to allow Islamic practices that undermine the common good. It would be perfectly legitimate for the state and Commonwealth governments to pass laws limiting the approval of mosques, Islamic finance and madrassas. If the government fails to do so, we can expect to see further and increased violence in Australia as a result of Islamic ideology”

    These are the beautiful (dare we say inspired) words of Bernard Gaynor. They should be a manifesto for Australian Christians.

    (Dr Zimmermann, I am profoundly sorry if I have wrongly attributed Mr Gaynor’s words to you.)

  20. Thanks again Gene, and thanks for bringing that paragraph to our attention. Of course at the end of the day we simply need to ask Bernard what exactly he believes on all this. I suspect he would undoubtedly have much more to say on this issue than what we find in this one paragraph. And I really do not mean to be his spokesperson here! Yet even here he may not quite be saying what you originally claimed he said: that only Christianity deserves any sort of government protection.

    I take it that he is not a theocrat who thinks Christianity should have full state protection while all other religious beliefs receive none. If he did, as I said above, he would want to see Islam banned altogether and Muslims driven out of the country. But what he said in the paragraph is perhaps rather more nuanced: “It would be perfectly legitimate for the state and Commonwealth governments to pass laws limiting the approval of mosques, Islamic finance and madrassas.” And as I also said above, that I do agree with. Any extremist religious system that fundamentally goes against some basic goods of the West such as the rule of law, various sorts of freedoms, and so on are not something governments can promote or permit if they want to survive. While Christianity allows for a separation of church and state – properly understood – Islam does NOT allow for any separation of mosque and state. So I share Bernard’s concerns about Islam here.

    So we all may agree on that point at least. And as a Christian I too do believe Christianity is the one true religion. But how that works out in a secular state with a pluralistic emphasis is always a juggling act. The first amendment in the US talks about the government NOT establishing any one religion as an official state religion. Augusto would certainly go along with that, as would I, and most Christians as well.

    But again, we would need to ask Bernard to further explain just what he thinks here, and let him offer a bit more clarification of what he in fact believes on this. If he does claim that all religions except Christianity should be banned – and I am not sure he would say that – then I would beg to differ. But maybe I can see if he would like to come here and comment further.

    But thanks for your thoughts.

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