The attack upon religion in Australia is not what one would call a direct assault. It is also not unique to just Australia. This is simply the way prosecutors expand the envelope of power. They look at a single issue and seek to address that issue alone. They rarely look at the implications beyond their immediate objective.
Take FACTA in the USA. The objective is to catch people avoiding taxes by putting their profits offshore. They begin with that assumption and ignore the fact that NOT everyone doing business offshore is to hide taxes. They then obstruct businesses from expanding globally. In my own case, despite the fact that we do business around the globe, because I am an American, I cannot open an account anywhere outside the USA because nobody wants to deal with the FACTA reporting back to the USA. My only solution is to go public since an American citizen can no longer own and operate a multinational business privately. Here we have a law designed to get tax evaders, but it blocks the legitimate business from operating. The only exception is the multinational corporation.
This is the entire problem with regulation. In the case of Australia, they may have a noble goal and demand that religion should abolish celibacy and report child abuse crimes confessed to priests to be able to punish people. But such noble goals end up altering the entire structure of a faith. Once you make one exception, you open the door for all crimes.
The same thing with the Muslim secs that demand women wear the full burka. Yes, on the one hand, anyone could put on a burka and hide from the public. So how do you deal with this? The Australian Senator Pauline Hanson entered the Senate in a burka to demonstrate the point. You can outlaw a burka and effectively tell them to leave your country or go to jail. Is that what you tell Christians if they do not report specific crimes to the State? Once you take that first step for one specific crime, you have taken it for all crimes. There is NEVER a line in the sand that remains uncrossed.
This is a very complex and touchy issue. How do we address religion that clashes with the State?
