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Kristina Keneally is hopelessly muddled about how freedom works, specifically freedom of speech and freedom of religion. I’m sure she’s had it explained to her before, but comprehension yet eludes her – an alarming observation to make of a Senator. Leftists are often so mired in the prejudice of their anti-freedom propaganda they often end up shadow boxing, fighting against things no serious person believes.
See also: Kristina Keneally summons the feral Left
Take, for example, yesterday’s eleven-part Twitter challenge to the Prime Minister doubling down on her insistence that someone who tweeted something vile he then regretted, deleted and apologised for three years ago should be banned from speaking within our borders. Never mind the fact such censorious tactics only ever serve to amplify the voice leftists seek to silence. Here is the stream-of-consciousness series of tweets Ms Keneally shared with the world:
Been thinking a lot about a John F. Kennedy quote over the weekend, and what religious freedom in Australia really means. Short thread 👇, starting with the quote from the first and only Catholic President of the USA, JFK
“For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew – or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist …
“Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you – until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.” – JFK
When we allow speakers to come & vilify our Islamic citizens, or speakers with links to anti-semitism & Holocaust deniers, or when our (Liberal) MPs stand on stage with them as they will this weekend at CPAC, what damage to we do to “the harmonious fabric” of Australian society?
I agree with @ScottMorrisonMP that Australians have a right to practice their faith free from vilification. I support freedom of religion. Unlike Senator Stoker, I think the Morrison Govt was right to ban Milo Yiannopoulos for his comments that Islam is “alien” & “barbaric”
Freedom of religion isn’t just for one faith – it is for all faiths. This is what I don’t get when I look at the @ScottMorrisonMP Govt’s stance on Mr Raheem Kassam.
The Liberals seem to think Mr Kassam’s “free speech” to call Islam “fascistic and totalitarian” or say that the Quran as “fundamentally evil” is more important that the right of Muslim Australians to practice their faith free from vilification.
Here’s a question for the PM: @ScottMorrisonMP – where, in your mind and within your goverment, does free speech become hate speech? What do you do when one person’s “free speech” buts up against another person’s freedom of religion?
If a speaker was coming to Australia to speak at a conference with Liberal MPs, and that speaker described the New Testament as “fundamentally evil” & Christianity as a “fascistic” – I imagine Mr Morrison, like me, would be very angry. Such comments would vilify us & our faith.
Frankly, I suspect such a speaker would be banned immediately under Section 501 of the Migration Act. I can’t even imagine we would be having a discussion.
So why isn’t @ScottMorrisonMP standing up for the religious freedom and beliefs of our Muslim citizens? Why is he allowing the harmonious fabric of our society to be ripped apart? Why are his MPs supporting this conference?
John F. Kennedy was indeed a great president, and Democrats would defeat Donald Trump in 2020 if they could find another so far removed from their current extreme positions. Here is another of his quotes, far more pertinent to Ms Keneally’s topic which — surprise! surprise! — she conveniently ignored:
The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
I appreciate what President Kennedy did not do, which was to censor those whose speech he did not like or agree with. He did criticise them from his convictions of right and wrong. I could end the article there, highlighting the classical conservative position on freedoms of speech and religion. The expression of my convictions in articulating criticism of ideas and ideologies – be they Christian, Islamic or Spaghetti-Monstarian – does not extend to me being authorised to limit other people in the expression of theirs.
Freedom of speech can never “but (sic) up” against freedom of religion. They don’t exist on the same plain, certainly not if we’re talking about a Western democracy and Christianity, which doesn’t seek and has never enjoyed freedom from criticism, even open ridicule. Christians and Christian beliefs are openly and frequently criticised by both sincere cynics and Christophobes – and it is absolutely their right to do so, however distasteful many will find it.
Freedom of religion must never be considered to require freedom from criticism. Any religion, ideology or agenda seeking the State’s protection from criticism is admitting it has much to lose upon closer scrutiny. In seeking the State’s protection Ms Keneally would extend by way of visa cancellation, it turn the State into a weapon with which to wage war on critics. The State has becomes its shield, servant and enforcer, bearing no resemblance to the liberal democracy it should be.
Ms Keneally willingly complies with this tendency to tyranny when she employs confusion tactics typical of the radical Left by conflating attacks upon ideologies as attacks upon identity — but only to protect just a favoured few. In effect she is calling for blasphemy laws to protect just one ideology. Her Nibs is mute when Christianity is critiqued. Did she utter a peep, for example, when comedienne Judith Lucy’s ABC-broadcast series on religion made repeated sport of Catholicism?
Freedom of speech, far from butting against freedom of religion, is the essential ingredient not only to safeguard freedom of religion, but also the longevity of liberal and inclusive democracy itself.
It is for each person to decide what is “hate speech” and to ban it only from their own lips. The only democratic remedy to what we perceive as hateful ideas is not to ban them from entering the nation or otherwise censor them, but to publicly expose their flaws with better ideas and superior arguments.
The ALP wins seats either with the Muslim vote or the preferences of the Greens so it is no surprise that Keneally, Burke and Company prostrate themselves before the followers of Islam. The ridiculous thing is that most of their electorate is non-Muslim, probably Christian and supportive of Israel yet the ALP continue to laud the Palestinians and do what they can to upset Christians. They truly are mad.
Only mad if the tactic doesn’t work. Sadly, large slabs of the electorate haven’t woken up to what is happening. Fortunately, more and more people appear to be doing so.
Keneally appears (is ?) truly vacuous. Her mendacity is a given stock-in-trade. She was given the Senate vacancy because she is perceived by ALP strategists as photogenic. In their world, that equates to votes.
I keep wondering whether she should be off someplace, losing another election.
“”Julie Passas, who was the deputy mayor of Inner West council at the time, told neighbour Daniel Comensoli the flag he erected to celebrate the 61% Yes vote was “offensive to my culture and religion” and that he should not be allowed to marry “until you could breastfeed and have children”.
Two days later, she told visiting police officers “the rainbow flag was as offensive as the flag of Isis”, in a voice loud enough for neighbours to have heard it from inside their houses.
The NSW Civil and Administrative tribunal found that the initial conduct on the day of the vote amounted to inciting hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule towards homosexual people, under the Anti-Discrimination Act. The tribunal found that Passas’s behaviour on 15 November had amounted to vilification. The test for vilification is an objective test, which means it is judged by reference to “an ordinary member” of the public.
“The manner in which the respondent made her demand was inappropriate and objectively likely to incite hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule of homosexual persons, and other LGBTQIA+ persons for whom the rainbow flag is an accepted symbol of identity, in an ordinary member of the general public.
The tribunal found that an objective understanding of Passas’s statements inferred “that a person who can’t breastfeed or have children should not be afforded an equal right to marry the person of their choosing”.
It also found the statement “is objectively likely to rouse, stimulate, urge, stir up or animate hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule of homosexual men.”
The tribunal found her comments created the impression that “homosexual men are ‘worthless’ or of ‘little account’”.”
Guardian Australia
Strange days, indeed.
The comment attributed to Raheem Kassam might have been vulgar and unpleasant, but it was not vile. I thought it was a marvellously inventive insult. As for Mr Kassam’s views on Islam, he clearly knows more about the problems associated with that politico-religious cult than Ms Kenneally.