Cont..

Many claim Israel was a victim of political correctness, so why can't Josiah be deemed a victim of religious correctness?

Your argument that “There is a case for viewing a community organisation like a football code as a utility.” is an interesting one. I suppose a response would be that Rugby Australia is attempting to maximise that utility by being as inclusive as possible to all Australians both as players and as spectators. Israel's actions were deemed a threat to that inclusiveness and so he was asked to refrain from public statements which RA felt was undermining their efforts. I don't agree with their response but do agree they were within their gambit to take some form of action.

Inconsistency is your forte, not mine Steele. I have always said that Israel should not have been sacked because his beliefs have nothing to do with the job that he is paid to do. I would be inconsistent if, in a case where someone's beliefs did have something to do with the job they are paid to do, they shouldn't face some sort of reprimand.

Whether the comments are on twitter, or in an email, is irrelevant.

It is inconsistent to argue that anyone getting government funding has to employ anyone, whether they agree with their belief system or not. RA gets government support, so on that basis it has no right to exclude Israel because of his religious beliefs. So there you go. You say you don't agree with RA but they were within their rights. But you disagree with the Catholic church, and that weren't within their rights. How's that for inconsistency within inconsistency?

Your problem is you don't like religion, so you twist and turn to entertain your prejudices.

BTW, check out the word "utility" in a dictionary. In another inconsistency you're using it in a different sense to the one I was using. A utility is a company or organisation that provides a public good, like electricity, or water, or gas etc. We treat utilities differently from other businesses because they supply a staple commodity and have a monopoly or quasi-monopoly.

Dear GrahamY,

“Your problem is you don't like religion, so you twist and turn to entertain your prejudices.”

Please show me a single example of me doing that in my response to you. If you can't then why even bring it up?

I can just as well say “Your problem is you like religion, so you twist and turn to entertain your prejudices.”

This is an example.

The Catholic School wants Josiah to essentially hold views that he doesn’t believe to be true because they say so, not because of his free choice.

A civil society is also a secular society. That doesn’t mean that no religion has a place, but that all religions have their own place, but none may be enforced, and religion includes the idea of positive non-belief, like atheism.

Yet the Catholic school is taking an essentially sectarian point of view in our secular society and seeking to compel a particular religious view of the world on its teachers. This is outrageous and needs to be called out.

Whichever way you look at it, Josiah should have been permitted to stay.

Full stop.

As to the utility I can't see why our interpretations of it differ at all. I just made the point that a policy of inclusiveness was completely consistent with delivering a 'public good'.

This is a very interesting article. I love examining moral questions where the intrinsic difficulty in delineating where moral boundaries begin and end, has to take into account moral priorities and moral quandaries.

One gets the impression that given the furore over Israel Folau's sacking, and his defence by free speech advocates (like me), gave his brother Josiah a chance at his own 15 minutes of fame, by emulating Israel, with a twist. That is, Josiah got sacked for claiming that the religious organisation that he worked for was in league with he devil.

Now that is interesting. Does Josiah have the right to publically criticise his own religious employer? I would have to say that under freedom of speech, he does. Although most people would consider what he did to be completely reprehensible as it violates the tacit rules of polite behaviour. Why does Josiah even work for people he utterly despises? And why should any organisation be compelled to hire people who publically attack them? But under our present crazy Anti Discrimination Laws, all organisations, including religious ones, must hire people who's values or lifestyles are opposed to that very organisation's religious teachings. In western societies, religious organisations have traditionally always gotten legal exemptions when it comes to laws that their religion expressly forbids, on the grounds of religious freedom.

But under political correctness, not anymore. The priests of this new religion of Leftist Humanitarianism can see an opportunity to give their religious competitors some grief using their entrenched bureaucratic power within the supposedly secular state. And naturally, they have grabbed that heaven sent opportunity with both hands. Hence the furore.

Surely the best compromise is to allow religious organisations to discriminate over the kinds of people they hire? Especially since Christian religious organisations seem to be the ones most disadvantaged by anti discrimination legislation. The idea that a homosexual would even apply for a job in a Muslim religious organisation is a bit of a stretch. Muslims have a bad habit of reacting violently towards any person who gets in their faces over their religious beliefs.

I think some of the comments in this thread certainly give credence to the following adage;

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."