Australia: How do we show love when activists call us “hate merchants”?

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Eric Metaxas touches down in Brisbane next week for the first stop of his East Coast “Fearless” tour. ACL is delighted to host the New York Times best-selling author of biographies on Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer.

For those who don’t know, William Wilberforce was the 19thcentury English parliamentarian who was instrumental in abolishing slavery and Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the courageous Lutheran pastor who defied the Nazis. Both faced intense opposition from politics and religious people. There are obvious echoes of the challenges we face today. Eric’s books on these men have inspired tens of thousands to be courageous Christians.

With pressure mounting on Christians to be silent on issues like changing the definition of marriage and human rights for the unborn, we at ACL thought a visit by Eric would be just what us Australian Christians needed at this time.

If you have yet to register for an event in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne, please do so. (Apologies to our friends in other states, we just couldn’t make a national tour work this time). The Sydney event of course incorporates ACL’s National Conference with speakers such as Treasurer Scott Morrison, indigenous leader Noel Pearson, bioethicist Dr Megan Best our own Wendy Francis and many others.There are still a handful of tickets available for the conference dinner ith Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine, but you’ll need to be quick.

Sadly there are those who do not want us to have a voice in Australian politics.

The Greens political party is organising a protest of LGBTIQ activists and today called you and I “hate merchants”.

Like me, I am sure you are tired of this characterisation which is designed to intimidate us into silence.

I was disappointed because the writer and editor of Buzzfeed, Rob Stott, has interviewed me before, knows me and knows that I am not a “hate merchant”. Yet he allowed the Greens to call us this unchallenged and with no evidence to substantiate this. It is especially upsetting because as Christians we serve the God of love who commands us to love everyone, including and especially those who cast insults at us.

Activists are also targeting our conference venue and Mr Morrison in an effort to sabotage the event. They even called it an “Anti-LGBT Conference”. For the record, ACL is not anti-anyone and our conference is not this.

Yes, we wish to preserve marriage and ensure children are not inducted into harmful practices that have more to do with dangerous gender theory than anti-bullying messages.

But the conference will be focussed on issues like indigenous recognition in the constitution, commercial surrogacy, freedom of religion and the sexualisation of children. The “news” reporting here also wrongly states that ACL has opposed reforms which have removed discrimination from same-sex attracted people.

In 2008, ACL backed virtually all (we did not support children being defined nonsensically as the “product of a couple relationship”) of the 84 laws put forward by the then Rudd Government removing discrimination from same-sex couples.

I hope the Buzzfeed is good enough to publish a correction. So we are in challenging times in which to stand for the truth. All the more reason to get along to one of the Metaxas events or the national conference. I hope to see you there.

 

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