Painting Fakes

The Climate Strike and associated heightening of social media discussion has also brought the usual trolls out of their caves. I have no positive proof of this, but I'm pretty sure one or other of the Koch Brothers-funded entities has produced a 'Guide for Climate Trolls*' which is circulating somewhere on the dark web. It contains a short compendium of appropriate trolls from which followers are encouraged to select one or two and elaborate to taste. While I have never personally seen this document I am fairly sure I can list its contents. They are presented below, with handy counter-troll responses in brackets, and now numbered for easy reference . Part 1: For the Striking Children Children are easy prey for trolls and bullies because they are smaller than the rest of us.  The guide makes bullying them even easier with some handy tips.  Here are some replies to help you stand up for the small people in your life. 1.1 -  'I bet they drove there in cars.' (Yo

In my previous post I introduced the question of religious freedom and discussed Israel Folau's case from the point of view of Christian teaching.  Now, on to the heart of the matter. Whether or not Israel Folau has accurately represented the Christian faith, he has clearly presented his own deeply held personal belief. So much so that he has refused any kind of compromise. He is not prepared to make any kind of apology, even a half-hearted one, nor to take down the post, because to do so would go against his own conscience. So it is arguable that his religious freedom is being infringed.  This is the argument he appears set to make in his potentially eye-wateringly expensive crowd-funded legal challenge. So how should we view this claim? To assess it properly we need to think about how human rights work. This is rather complex in Australian law because our human rights legislation is very piecemeal, split across various State and Commonwealth statutes that operate in various di

Our newly re-elected Commonwealth Government has introduced new legislation to protect religious freedom.  It is not really clear that we need it (in what ways is religious practice currently restricted?) but there are a number of stalking horses in the debate, like whether Christian schools are free to sack gay teachers, whether preachers can say strong anti-Islamic or anti-gay things in public, and whether bakers can be forced to bake gay wedding cakes.  Bigger and noisier than all of these is the Israel Folau affair. All this kind of turns up the heat on religious freedom without necessarily providing much light, so I thought I'd use the Folau business as a way in to talking about the wider question of religious freedom in Australia and how we might approach it sensibly. First of all, by way of clearing the decks, I'd like to address the question of the relationship between Israel's pronouncement and Christianity. For those living under a rock (or perhaps, living i