we all know what happened…
Today I received in my inbox a petition to the Victorian parliament to remove the references to religious vilification in the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 (discussed previously here and here. The petition has been circulated by Salt Shakers which is fine and not really anything to comment on. Which is a perfectly admirable way to go about getting your views point (except when it lands as spam in my inbox).
However, they did go a little overboard with the explanatory letter to signatories of the petition. An extract:
Understand the issue
The CTFM case is not the only case brought under the Victorian Racial & Religious Tolerance (vilification) Act. There have already been a number of others including a ‘witch’ who took a Christian, (Rob Wilson, formerly the mayor of Casey) to the Victorian Tribunal for speaking against witchcraft. The witch won an out of court settlement!
The decision to find these people guilty of vilification for talking about another ‘religion’ has highlighted the serious flaws in the Victorian Act. This Act will greatly restrict our basic rights to freedom of religious discussion and will have serious ramifications for all sections of the religious community.
Please act on this matter today. Please don’t leave it for someone else to do – that is what happened prior to the Second World War and we know the catastrophic results of that lack of action by Christians. If you think that is alarmist, please find out about the legislation and its possible consequences . . . we are sure you will change your mind. [emphasis mine]
Hyperbole much?
February 15th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
quote: The decision to find these people guilty of vilification for talking about another ‘religion’
err no - that would be found guilty of vilification for vilifying another religion. Don’t they know how to talk about what they think of another religion without misrepresenting it or drawing discriminatory conclusions?? Obviously not.
May 17th, 2005 at 1:26 pm
What a wonderful tool the internet is. As part of Salt Shakers, I’m glad you support the principle of expressing views on the vilification laws…
Just two things - first, you say it arrrived in your email box by ’spam’. If so, it certainly didn’t come from us. We only send emails to those who sign up to receive them; so I would appreciate it if you’d correct that inference. Secondly, what part of the statement do you object to? The reference to World War 2 or the statement that inaction by some Christians had unfortunate consequences? Hope to hear from you. Jenny Stokes
May 17th, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Jenny, thanks for your comment. I am prepared to clarify that I didn’t receive the circular direct mailed from salt shakers, but forwarded on from someone I do not know and from whom I have not elected to receive emails. So, if I have suggested that salt shakers spammed me, then I unreservedly withdraw that.
The part of the statement I object to is the comparison of the religious vilification laws with “what happened prior to the Second World War”. I find the reference to the Holocaust even by implication in a statement like this astounding. As I have stated, I think that it is hyperbole, and it is alarmist, and I can’t see that such a reference would assist your cause.
May 17th, 2005 at 4:50 pm
As far as I understand it (and I’m ***way*** open to correction) the true nature of Christian inaction during the build up to the second world war was, infact, christological. The terrifying portrait of Jesus published by Albert Schweitzer so rattled the academic world of German christological thought around the turn of the century that the entire discipline abandoned historical Jesus study altogether. As such, German Christology no longer found its basis in the actual history of Jesus and first century second temple judaism, allowing alternative pictures of Jesus to emerge (pictures of Jesus who wasn’t really very Jewish; wasn’t actually Jewish at all; actually, was anti-Jewish, and was killed by the Jews).
This is not simply a case of inaction, of passivity or apathy. This was a wholesale coopting of the identity of God, or at least a relenquishing of it which allowed it to be coopted by other forces whose purposes were served by constructing a picture of Jesus in their own image.
Like Dan, I really struggle to see how anyone could be making any meaningful connection between these events and the current religious vilification laws. In fact to make such a connection I personally find offensive. At stake in the Victorian debate is punitive damages against defamatory abuse and vilification of other religions. Is that comparable to holocaust Germany? That I should be forced to pay a fine and retract my words if I say something defamatory and libelous about another’s religion?
If there is any coopting going on at the moment, it sounds more like certain parties trying to emotionally manipulate others by equivilating their inaction on this domestic political issue with the horror of Nazi Germany, thus coopting the ensuing sense of guilt and abject horror which we all feel about the holocaust, and channel that towards their own political agenda which appears to be the right to slander other religions with impunity. Then again, you’d have to believe in a different Jesus to me to consider such an agenda, or such tactics, to be acceptible.