I protest the exemptions from law granted to a church whose head insists that condoms should not be used in the fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa, the church that continues to preach that any form of birth control other than abstinence is a 'sin'.
I protest against religious institutions that proclaim themselves the moral arbiters of our society, while fighting against the efforts of the United Nations Human Rights Council to end violence and discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgender individuals. At what point is it appropriate for an organisation of the size, wealth and power of the Church to claim victimhood for itself, when the true victims are being imprisoned, tortured, raped and murdered?
I protest that, even as the furore over the Royal Commission has barely died down, our government has proposed changes to anti-discrimination laws at the national level, yet has failed to remove clauses exempting religious institutions. This means that those essential services that have over the years been handed by preference to religious operators, including employment agencies, can continue to discriminate against persons on the grounds of sexual identity and marital status; we can only hope that the proposed amendments for aged-care facilities will succeed! Even now, even after everything that has come to light concerning the nature of these mediaeval institutions, not only will my taxes, your taxes, everyone else's taxes continue to make up the deficit engendered by the churches, but these same churches will continue to be considered above the law that's good enough for everyone else, and will continue to be free to impose their dogma on any Australian that doesn't measure up to some stone-age concept of morality.
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It is high time Australians woke up to these injustices. We, as Australians, need to keep this issue in the spotlight. We must demand further reforms. We must insist that organisations whose sole and actual purpose is to perpetuate themselves are not of benefit to society, do not deserve privileges, and that truly charitable groups must be free to operate effectively without interference from their parent religious institutions that do little, if anything, to provide financial assistance.
Let us hope that the Royal Commission does its job effectively, and does not submit to the inevitable pressure to protect those institutions that have successfully evaded the law for so long. This hope is no doubt shared by most secular Australians. I now challenge religious Australians, of all faiths, to not only demand that these organisations clean up their acts when 'caring' for children and other vulnerable individuals, but to also insist that religious belief is a private matter, is not grounds for receipt of public funding and tax breaks, and should not be imposed on others as a matter of government policy.
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