There really is no easy way to explain what happened with Citipointe Christian College and the Religious Discrimination Bill. What unfolded was so bizarre and so illogical that it is almost impossible to comprehend.
But I’ll do my best with this analogy.
Imagine this.
Imagine a war in which both sides decide in one particular skirmish to just shoot themselves to save time.
Now let your mind run free.
Both sides, seeing the damage they can inflict, decide that this approach to conflict resolution is far more successful and efficient than actually trying to defeat the enemy. So they agree to simply replicate this stupidity across the entire front line.
In the devastation that follows, one side excels in self-inflicted injury. Its few remaining survivors then struggle to their feet and challenge the other to a repeat of the battle, boasting that they can do an even better job next time around. The confused enemy, slowly coming to grips with the reality of situation and the opportunity at hand, gives its response: ummm, okay, let’s go.
You could call this imaginary conflict ‘The Great Battle of the Losers’. Except it’s not so imaginary.
Basically, that’s what just happened in the Skirmish of Citipointe and then the First Battle of the Religious Discrimination Bill. Hopefully we all learn our lesson now and avoid repeating this foolishness in a Second Battle of the Religious Discrimination Bill.
So let’s start with the facts. And let’s get the reaalllly simple ones out of the way first.
In the Great Battle of the Losers there are two opposing armies.
Got it? I hope so. This bit’s the easy part.
On one side is the army that we’ll call the ‘Red Team’. And on the other side is the army that we’ll call the ‘Blue Team’.
You should not be confused. This is not complicated yet.
The Red Team’s goal has always been to eradicate our Christian heritage and replace it with the Thought Police. It wants a vast network of government bureaucrats empowered to scrutinise your every word in order to ensure that you do not commit heresy against the new religion of state-imposed woke morality.
That’s it. That’s what the Red Team has been fighting for all along.
On the other hand, the Blue Team claims that it stands for freedom and Christian belief yada, yada, yada. The Blue Team, in principle, opposes the Thought Police and it especially wants to keep their long, ugly noses out of Christian affairs.
The Red Team has battalions of garishly dressed drag queens, a phalanx of stony-faced feminist human rights lawyers, fact-checkers who know only lies, the media, the Greens, Labor and an increasing horde of ‘moderate’ Liberals who act like a fifth column against civilisation.
You’ll also come to see that the Red Team has the Blue Team’s Head Honchos going for it too, although it has only just grasped this fact.
The Blue Team has mums and dads who believe a bloke is not a sheila and that there is something entirely unwholesome about even getting involved in the gender wars. It also has Christian lobby groups, a bunch of week-kneed pseudo-conservative politicians and all of the about three truly conservative legislators remaining in Australia’s state and Commonwealth parliaments.
At this point it’s still fairly simple.
One war. Two sides.
The Red Team are the state-funded baddies armed with rainbows and the Blue Team are the good guys whose primary fighting force is an unorganised rabble of parents juggling toddlers and mortgages and who unfortunately take advice from people like Martyn Iles.
And then we get to Citipointe Christian College.
The Skirmish of Citipointe became the initial clash in the lead up to the First Battle of the Religious Discrimination Bill because Citipointe Christian College basically did in advance what the Religious Discrimination Bill will require every Christian school to do if it ever becomes law: issue a public policy explaining how you wish to discriminate against the ‘Alphabet People’.
For want of a better term, let’s call this statement the ‘Tell-the-World-Exactly-How-You-Want-to-be-an-Evil-Bigot-by-Hating-on-Rainbows-Statement’, or just the ‘Statement of Bigotry’ for short.
We’ll call it that because that is exactly how it will be viewed by the Human Rights Commissars in the Temple of Thought Police which, you should also know, will be given power over Christian schools under a Religious Discrimination Bill.
The Thought Police may be evil. But they are not dumb. A Religious Discrimination Bill is not designed to make their jobs harder. It’s there to make them easier.
And the ‘Statement of Bigotry’ does just that.
It requires Christians to out themselves to anti-Christian activists armed with your money and the coercive powers of state and links to every Christian-hating group in Australia.
The ‘Statement of Bigotry’ has just one purpose: create a Christian school kill list.
Section 7 of the proposed Religious Discrimination Bill required every Christian school to publicly state if they wished to discriminate on grounds of sex or gender identity.
If the Religious Discrimination Bill ever becomes law, the Thought Police won’t have to worry about tedious detective work. They’ll simply have to gaze out from their tower in Mordor and look for the burning school with drag queens picketing the front gate.
That’s much more fun.
Then the Thought Police can move in at their leisure, haul the principal from the ashes, charge him with crimes against humanity and give the orc in a dress brandishing a box of matches a human rights award.
As an added bonus, this generally sends a pretty strong message to other Christian schools that they better not act so Christian next time. And given the generally timid nature of Christians in today’s world, it’s a message that generally works.
Don’t believe me? Just look at Citipointe Christian College. Look at it closely.
It’s been vandalised. Death threats have been received. The school’s taken its logo off its buses. Students are bullied by random strangers. All sorts of investigations have been opened. It faced being shut down. The principal’s career is over.
All of this occurred, mind you, in a state which has already legislated to ‘protect’ the religious freedom of Christians. That should give all Christians a pretty strong hint about the usefulness of religious discrimination laws.
And all the other Christian school principals who might privately support Citipointe’s Christian stance have opted for silence. Christians don’t fight together. They die alone.
The Blue Team told the world: don’t mess with Christian schools or we’ll back down as soon as you make us tell you where we are.
So, yeah, I guess giving the Religious Discrimination Bill a test drive worked out real well for the Blue Team at Citipointe.
Given all of this, the logical person might conclude that during the Skirmish of Citipointe, the Red Team fought for the Religious Discrimination Bill and the Blue Team opposed it.
But you’d be wrong. At this point, all logic disappears. Brace yourself.
In this skirmish, the Red Team (the baddies) went to war with itself. The Thought Police in every jurisdiction condemned Citipointe and demanded that it woke itself up or be shut down. And then everyone else in the Red Team agreed that the Thought Police should definitely not be given any more power.
I can’t explain it. Maybe what happened at Citipointe was just too easy. The Red Team probably wants more sport from Christian schools in the future.
As the anti-discrimination industry attacked Citipointe Christian College, LGBT protestors across Australia campaigned to kill a bill which would give the anti-discrimination industry more power over Christian schools.
The Red Team was so adamant that the Australian Human Rights Commission should not be able to stroll around the grounds of Citipointe Christian College imposing woke rainbow rights at the behest of perpetually miserable activists that those same perpetually miserable activists stood guard at the front gate of the school to protest against that happening. It was truly a sight to behold.
Protestors at Citipointe Christian College opposed the Religious Discrimination Bill.
The Red Team attacked its own long-held position because its most militant crazies would rather give up the opportunity to control Christian schools now in order to gain the power to raze them from the ground tomorrow. It’s proof that you can oppose a bad idea for all the wrong reasons.
Twitter comment from former Army officer and high profile transgender activist, Bridget Clinch.
Meanwhile, the Blue Team (the good guys) also went to war with itself. The Blue Team’s advance guard at Citipointe voluntarily submitted to requirements that were only proposals and issued a public ‘Statement of Bigotry’. You can guess what happened about 30 seconds later.
Citipointe was predictably condemned to death and the gallows were rolled out. But instead of riding to Citipointe’s rescue, the rest of the Blue Team cleared a path for the Thought Police, insisting that they ‘protect’ the school during its voluntary death spiral.
The Blue Team attacked its own long-held position too. It did so, as far as I can tell, because Christian lobbyists are just dumb and addicted to losing. They desperately fought to surrender to the Red Team’s ‘moderates’ who march in the Mardi Gras in the hope that it would stave off the Red Team’s militant crazies who also march in the Mardi Gras. It’s proof that doing good does not always follow from the best of intentions.
So far, losing has been the only winner. And that will not change much.
If you’re not confused at this point, you should be. The actions of neither side make any sense.
As I said, it’s as if both armies, looking out across the trenches said, ‘stuff it, we’ll just shoot ourselves’.
But, I am proud to report, the Blue Team was far, far more effective at doing itself in. When it comes to losing, no one can do it as well or with as much aplomb as a modern Christian.
The Blue Team kicked off the Skirmish of Citipointe with a rather novel approach to combat: it flung all its reinforcements at failure and then capitulated, hoping that this would shock the Red Team into giving up more.
Predictably, this ploy did not work and the situation deteriorated from there. But it was not initially as complete a disaster as you might think either.
The Red Team was confused enough that it didn’t really return fire. Instead, when confronted with the Blue Team’s surprise surrender attack, the Red began lobbing grenades at its own reinforcements: the Thought Police.
Everyone did their best to fail. But the Blue Team just did it better.
Three days into the fight that he kicked off by accepting defeat in advance, the principal of Citipointe Christian College ritually humiliated himself in public and stood aside.
He losered his way out of this losing skirmish so decisively that the Blue Team was almost conquered entirely by an army shooting the other way. The Red Team, helpless in the face of this absolute train wreck to take any action that could possibly keep the Blue Team in the fight, watched on helplessly as the battle petered out.
Take note: Christians who resign in the face of the baying mob do not help anyone.
Now *clears throat*, let’s dial up the bizarre-o-metre.
After all the destruction at the Skirmish of Citipointe, both sides upped the ante and they doubled-down on the whole ‘shoot at yourself’ concept.
The Blue Team, looking at the smoking ruins of Citipointe, decided that this was something every Christian school should go through. Only when Christian schools were under the control of the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Blue Team’s Christian generals cried, will Christian schools be properly protected!
The Red Team, on the other hand, brought out its big guns to campaign against more government control of Christian schools. Ian Thorpe turned up in Canberra and made what was probably the most ironic statement of the whole shebang.
Thorpe whined that the Religious Discrimination Bill would allow “state-imposed discrimination” against marginalised groups.
On this point, he and I are in total agreement. The Religious Discrimination Bill will allow the state to shut down the few Christian schools left on this land.
But Thorpe’s concern was that the Australian government was on the Christians’ side.
I’ll pause here while you laugh uncontrollably for a while.
Poor Thorpey. He may be great swimmer but he’ll never go down in history as a great mind.
He was anxious that, for the first time in history, a new anti-discrimination law overseen by anti-Christian bureaucrats that creates a complaint mechanism against Christian schools would…protect Christian schools.
If only that were true. But Ian Thorpe’s fears are groundless.
Kill the bill, anyway, he demanded.
Ian Thorpe arguing against the Religious Discrimination Bill. I thank him for this unwitting act of charity which has helped to momentarily protect Christian schools. It may be his greatest ever accomplishment.
Then came the pivotal juncture in the battle: the Red Team met the Blue Team on the floor of parliament. And all hell broke loose.
In a contest bereft of logic to that point, the Red Team accepted the Prime Minister’s surrender offer and surrendered more. It unfairly but cunningly gave up fighting against the Religious Discrimination Bill. It was a double, double lose move, kind of like a reversal of a reversal or multiplying negatives.
You get the picture.
The Red Team lost its way to victory using the momentum that the Blue Team had built up losing its way to victory to seal the deal.
Letter from Scott Morrison to Anthony Albanese promising amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act in return for Labor’s support for the Religious Discrimination Bill. Scott Morrison publicly promised that he would make these amendments in the week prior to sending this letter.
In a rare moment of clarity, the Red Team also realised that it had the numbers in parliament all along to win this war the way it wanted: out loud and proud.
Noting that the Blue Team had done a pretty good job promoting the Thought Police but that its proposed laws still contained some rookie errors, the Red Team used its weight of numbers and long experience to polish them up.
No point having stock-standard bad laws when it comes to the Thought Police. Might as well make them blatantly evil.
So the Red Team, much to the horror of the Blue Team which was now allied with its enemy and winning its way to utter defeat, amended the Religious Discrimination Bill package to make sure that Christian schooling would be eradicated within 24 hours.
And then the whole thing sailed through the House of Representatives. Both sides voted for it. It was just like peace in our times and we all know how that ended.
As the sun rose and the smoke cleared, the Blue Team blinked, looked across the carnage and realised that it was standing on its dick.
The only thing that now stood between the Thought Police and Christian schools was the Senate which was controlled by the baddies.
And there, for some unknown reason, the baddies voted to stop winning again. For real. It boggles the mind.
The Red Team was back at war with the Religious Discrimination Bill. But before it could regain its senses everyone else just gave up in exhaustion and the time bell rang.
Thus ended the First Battle of Religious Discrimination Bill.
As the dust cleared, the lone movement on the battlefield came from Martyn Iles, desperately calling for donations while attempting to gee up both sides to repeat this battle all over again after the election.
My strong advice: ignore Martyn and any other Christian organisation calling for more of this madness.
Keep your change. It will be the best investment you ever make in the fight for freedom.
It should be clear to anyone with two brain cells that both sides fought this battle based entirely on the title of the Religious Discrimination Bill and without any idea of what was actually inside it. And the only reason Christian schools have been given a reprieve is because gay activists, at the key point, were even more strategically stupid than Christian ones.
Alas, this brief moment of losing less than the enemy has already evaporated. Savour that fleeting feeling of relief because we probably won’t experience it again. Ever.
Already Christian activists are stirring themselves to fight for the enemy all over again. Apparently, they reason, if they only lose harder next time around victory will be assured.
Meanwhile, the enemy has cottoned onto the fact that it has always had the parliamentary numbers to win the war and that Christians will do most of the hard yards for them anyway.
This is the situation we face as a Second Battle of the Religious Discrimination Bill looms.
Good luck, Christian Australia. You’ll need it.
*****
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