George Brandis's religious liberty is really about the right to define marriage. The Catholic churchs inclination to censor opposing views on sexuality reveals the limits of its supposed tolerance.
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So deaf have we become to attacks upon religious liberty, Brandis told his audience, so accepting have we been of the open scorn with which their tenets, their liturgy, their customs, their clergy and their congregations have been derided, that the great Dyson Heydon, delivering the Acton Lecture in April this year, was moved to describe anti-Catholicism in modern Australia as the racism of the intellectuals.
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Brandis didnt mention sex. He never spelled it out. But he did call on the apostles, saints and church fathers to approve some remarkable propositions. Here is the attorney general on the hazards of reform in the modern state: For St Augustine, an individuals relationship with God is paramount, and the focus is on the eternal city of God, rather than the city of man. And, since only in the city of god is mankind perfectible, the attempt of the secular authority the governors of the city of man to impose a specious perfection upon citizens is a profound wrong.
