As far as absolute slam dunks are concerned in highlighting hypocrisy and double standards, this is a 10..
‘….Quite recently the leaders of
the Anangu people, the custodians of Uluru, decided to ban people from
climbing to the top of the world’s most famous monolith.
This was explained in a recent
article in the online newsletter the Conversation as follows: ‘The climb
is a men’s sacred area. The men have closed it. It has cultural
significance that includes certain restrictions and so this is as much
as we can say. If you ask, you know they can’t tell you, except to say
it has been closed for cultural reasons.’ (The Conversation, November 6,
2017).
The question then arises as to why
the Anangu men have the right to define what is sacred to them while the
Christian clergy are facing the steady attrition of their right to
define what they hold to be sacred?
According to the website of the
Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority: ‘Sacred sites are important to
the cultural fabric and heritage of the Northern Territory. They are
important to all Australians. They are an intrinsic part of a continuing
body of practices and beliefs emanating from Aboriginal laws and
traditions. …They anchor cultural values and spiritual and kin-based
relationships in the land.’
‘The Authority will not tell
outside people about the secret parts of the sacred sites story without
consulting with the custodians.’
If Aboriginal sacred sites are
‘important to all Australians’ then why is it that the sacred religious
beliefs and practices developed in Christianity over the past 2,000
years are not afforded the same respect?
On the day that the results of the
same-sex marriage postal ballot were announced, several ABC news
programs including the Drum and Lateline focused on the issue of the
right of religious organisations to tell their congregations what is an
acceptable form of marriage and various Christian leaders were forced to
defend their right to argue that marriage should only be between a man
and a woman.
The recent debate about the
sanctity of the confession as an essential element in Catholic religious
belief is another example of where we see a double standard operating.
On the one hand we see a deeply held belief in the inviolate right of
the priest not to reveal information he is offered in the confession box
coming under increasing attack while on the other, we see an increasing
willingness of government officials to allow Aboriginal community
groups to claim rights to control access to public areas on secret
religious grounds.
The Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair which ran and ran throughout the 1990s is a case in point.
A group of activists opposed to the
construction of a bridge to Hindmarsh Island in South Australia,
concocted a story that ‘secret sacred women’s business’ meant that the
bridge should not be built. Millions were spent on a Royal Commission
and several court cases to get to the truth. In the end a bridge was
built but not before people were bankrupted and political careers were
ruined (Hindmarsh Island and the Fabrication of Aboriginal Mythology by
Geoffrey Partington).
To me it seems that both the
priest’s use of the confessional and the Aboriginal right to define
sacred sites are more about the exercise of power and control than
expressions of religious or spiritual belief. But one can also argue
that all religion is necessarily about control of behaviour. After all,
the job of all spiritual leaders is to tell us what we can and can’t do
and so those that argue for the right of Aboriginal leaders to claim
special privileges because of secret spiritual requirements must surely
accept that Christians should have the same rights.
I look forward to the day when the
ABC seriously questions the rights of Aboriginals to define sacred sites
with the same gusto as it attacks the right of Catholic priests to
proclaim their resistance to homosexual marriage. I don’t see that day
coming in the near future…’ Is Nothing Sacred