The Political Hat

     Australia’s 1975 Racial Discrimination Act, in section 18c, makes it illegal to cause someone else to feel offense if that offense is racially based.  In effect this means that incorrect thinking will be banned.  There are a few “exceptions” in 18d, but that is an affirmative defense where one must show that the statement was made in “good faith” and was not a “lie.”

     A recent case where a man, Andrew Bolt, was found guilty of giving racial offense and “lying” by simply saying that some people who call themselves “aborigine” are mostly racially and culturally not “aborigine” and that is was ridiculous that they should put themselves forward as leaders of the “aborigine” people.  Apparently, that that the targets of his belittlement disagreed somehow proved that their opinion was fact, and that those who dissented were thus guilty.

     Australia’s Attorney-General wants to change that.  Unsurprisingly he is being attacked for saying a person has a right to be a bigot:

“People do have a right to be bigots.  In a free country people do have rights to say things that other people find offensive or insulting or bigoted

— Australian Attorney-General George Brandis”

     The proposed change, though, does not completely get rid of the restrictions, but rather just restrains the law to cover propagation of hate rather than simply giving offense.  The new proposed amendment of the act would also only make statement prosecutable if “an ordinary reasonable member of the Australian community” found it offensive, rather than the standards of any particular group.

     This is a minor step forward, but an important one.

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     The typical whine of the Progressive Left when it comes to Same Sex Marriage is that their enemies are “intolerant” and won’t treat people equally regardless of people’s possible predilection to snog those of the same sex.  Tolerance, then, was mandated, even if it meant working with people who are forcing you to endorse a moral message you disagree with.  In the case against the New Mexico photographer who refused to photograph a gay wedding (before such a thing was legal), New Mexico justice Richard Bosson stated:

“[They] are free to think, to say, to believe, as they wish; they may pray to the God of their choice and follow those commandments in their personal lives wherever they lead. The Constitution protects the Huguenins in that respect and much more. But there is a price, one that we all have to pay somewhere in our civic life.

“In the smaller, more focused world of the marketplace, of commerce, of public accommodation, the Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people. That sense of respect we owe others, whether or not we believe as they do, illuminates this country, setting it apart from the discord that afflicts much of the rest of the world. In short, I would say to the Huguenins, with the utmost respect: it is the price of citizenship.”

     This, of course, was not a call to tolerance, but a demand that some violate their beliefs as a condition of citizenship!  It was “the attempt of a group of people who have long contended that they merely wish to be left alone to live their lives in peace suddenly feeling a little power and deciding that now that they have a short-term burst of political muscle, they may now indulge in the bullying and coercion they once thought was kind of a bad thing.”

     Those plaintiffs who demanded that bakers, florists, and photographers suspend their 1^st Amendment rights in order to earn a living were nothing more than bullies.  This opinion has been enshrined by the City of San Antonio which sought to exlude from eployment of contract anyone who uttered a “biased” statement… in the opinion of the grievance-mongers, of course.

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