The Sydney Morning Herald thought this week’s Q and A was a significant cultural moment. They compared it with another one in 2008 where the shibboleth question for our culture , that of homosexuality, came up.  It was indeed a revealing programme – telling us a great deal about where Australian culture, politics and religion are at – and where we are heading. 

Hamish MacDonald, the host, was joined by Trent Zimmerman, Liberal Member (Homosexual) for North Sydney; Anika Wells, Labor Member for Lilley;; Antoinette Lattouf, Journalist, diversity advocate, and author; and Teela Reid, Wiradjuri/Wailwan, Lawyer; and Martyn Iles, Managing Director, Australian Christian Lobby.   

It was the appearance of Martyn Iles that was too much for some people – even before he had been on the show. Those who believe in love and are opposed to hate speech were quick to share the love…

“Just saw the line up for #QandA and omg the creep from the Australian Christian Lobby is on? “

“Honestly, giving people like Martyn Iles a public platform is very unhealthy for society. The ACL is a hate group. I dearly wish we had laws against this”

“I’d rather hear from a Satanist or someone other than that man…”

The Church that believes in love, unity and diversity was also quick to show us just how loving, united and diverse they are:

“Just want to pre-emptively comment on tonight’s #qanda. This man is likely to slander and bear false witness against LGBTIQ+ people and communities. He does not represent the Church, nor the majority view of Christians in Australia.”  Leichhardt Uniting Church.

And it’s not just liberals – mention Iles name in some evangelical circles and eyebrows are raised, knowing looks exchanged and a general impression is given that we don’t really want to be associated with that sort of thing.  

What did we learn from the show? We learned a great deal about contemporary Australian society… Here are some of the lessons….

1. For some, ‘lived experience’ trumps everything.  

Facts, truth, democracy, morality, religion – everything is subordinate to what is called ‘lived experience’.  Martyn was asked “have you lived experiences, heard, shared and acted upon?”  The implicit statement being that unless you have walked in their shoes then you cannot represent, speak about or disagree with.   “I don’t think Martyn can walk in a gay man’s shoes”.  All of this sounds so true.  But in ABC culture that only applies to some groups.  Nobody on the panel (which was largely hostile to Martyn) seemed to grasp that they did not have Martyn’s lived experience as a Christian – but that did not stop them commenting on it and condemning it.

One panellist spoke of Lil Naz X as being a hero because of his Satan’s shoes video.  She declared that this shows that you cannot speak unless you feel the hate, it doesn’t matter what the intention of the speaker is. She has a point? I felt that her speech, and much of the rest was full of hate for people like Martyn and me – i.e., biblical Christians.  By her own standard she was guilty of hate speech.  Or does this not work both ways?

When Martyn mentioned the story of the Canadian man who went to jail because he misgendered his teenage daughter, he was told – “I think that’s a very specific example and we don’t know all the details…I’m not interested in speaking this specific example”. So, some stories are not worth telling and don’t count as evidence?

Within a few minutes of that we were listening to someone who identified as “an aboriginal queer non- binary person” who went on to tell the story of a relative who died in prison.  That very specific example was of course not going to be questioned.

Just before the programme I saw an advert for another ABC show – You can’t say that – where we were told that everyone has a story and deserves to be heard!  But is that true?  Would the ABC allow my story to be told?  Or that of a transgender detransitioner?  Or someone who is ex-gay?  Sadly, in our society today, your story only matters if it fits in with the pre-determined narrative?

1. Identity Politics is polarising and dividing Australia.  

Martyn was told that ‘you don’t have skin in the game when it comes to women’s issues”.   That assumes a narrow fundamentalist individualistic view of what a human being is.  All of us were ‘born of a woman’ and most of us had a mum as did Martyn. Martyn is young and not married but he has colleagues and friends who are women.  I would suggest as a Christian he has a lot of skin in the game.  He cares about issues such as the sexual exploitation of women and the trans attack on the very notion of what a woman is.  

2. Most Australians don’t have a clue about Christianity and are hostile to what they do not know.

This was exemplified by the tweets that ABC put up on the screen. In itself it was revealing that the only tweets that I saw them put up were hostile.  I’m sure they received some supportive ones for Martyn but that did not fit their narrative.  He was there to be mocked and abused. 

3. Shallow superficial soundbites have largely replaced substantive discussion as the primary discourse in Australian politics and media.

There were so many examples of this in the show.  The lack of depth and thought was quite frightening.  Take this one example.   Anika Wells stated: “In the Bible there are 3,000 references to poverty and very few to homosexuality, so why can’t the ACL spend their money on that? “  This was retweeted as Gospel truth – but it’s just factually wrong. Clearly they had not bothered to read Mark Powell’s response to this oft made fake claim a couple of years ago – https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/11/abc-anything-but-biblical-christianity/

The point is that it sounds right, and they want it to be right, so the claim is made and left completely unchallenged.

Or take Trent Zimmermann’s claim that “any person should be able to decide what future they want from their own life and their body is part of that”.  So if someone feels they are too fat they should be allowed to starve themselves?  Or if people decide they want to change sexuality they should be allowed to seek conversion therapy?  After all its their body!

Trent Zimmermann then went on: “we have to be careful about questioning whether transgenderism is a legitimate course for an individual to take…’ after pointing out that transgender people are much more likely to attempt suicide.  Again, the host and other panellists, seemed to miss the rather obvious point that if being transgender does lead to such a high risk of suicide, perhaps we should question it a lot more?

But transgender is a very protected category on the ABC – the host gave out the Lifeline number after the discussion on trans….“if this conversation raises any issues…” which of course led to the inevitable tweet “If you have a guest on #qanda that makes you need to announce the LifeLine phone number that should tell you what sort of guest you have”.

4. The Cultural Elites don’t do diversity or equality.  

At times this whole show felt like a put-up job.  I think four of the questions were hostile to Martyn.  The host questioned whether Martyn was just raising the Israel Folau issue (Israel was sacked from playing rugby after a Biblical post on Facebook that stated homosexuals were destined for Hell) as an attempt to increase the ACL’s membership, he also challenged Martyn’s figures on transgender. These are legitimate questions – the problem is that he made no similar challenges on the rest of the panel.  He stated that Rugby Australia officials were not there to defend themselves – but permitted a series of attacks on Folau, who also wasn’t there to defend himself.   He told Martyn ‘you’ve had plenty time, make it quick’ which again would have been fair enough if it were not for the fact that it was four (five?) against one and most of the questions were directed against him.

The audience seemed far more diverse than the panel (something noted by the Twitterati – some of whom objected that such people were even there). One young man made the telling statement “if you express your faith, then you will be met with severe career ending consequences”.  This show was ample evidence of that.

Adapted from a report in The Australian Presbyterian by David Robertson