If you haven’t read Peter FitzSimons’ column lately, you’re not missing much. Last week, FitzSimons took a swipe at Israel Folau for suggesting homosexuals will go to hell unless they repent.
Now, naturally, FitzSimons was deeply concerned about all those poor homosexual people who might read the rugby star’s “homophobic comments” and feel bad about themselves. Solution? Heap ridicule on all Christians, because you know, tolerance and inclusion, and what not…
In his piece titled, Folau’s comments are an anathema to the greatest of rugby values, FitzSimons ironically claims: “the greatest of all rugby values is inclusion. We want everyone on board: white, black, tall, small, fat, thin, abled, disabled, straight, gay, men, women, young, old, etc.”
FitzSimons congratulates himself for being inclusive, but evidently this only extends to how you look, not how you think. And if you think something that he doesn’t agree with, then in the name of tolerance and inclusion, he’ll ridicule you. And how does FitzSimons ridicule Folau? By making a mockery of the faith cherished by millions of Australians.
But, if you say: ‘‘I seriously believe, as a grown adult, that there is a really good supernatural being, called ‘God’, in a paradise above the clouds called ‘heaven’, and a really bad one beneath us, called the ‘Devil’, living in ‘hell’, and though God must have created some beings as being attracted to their own gender, because he created everything, he still so hates his children for having that same-sex attraction, he will send them to hell …’’ we’re all meant to back off…
Most of us can laugh off such nonsense.
And this isn’t the worst of what FitzSimons has to say about Christians. The self-professed atheist, in his own language has often branded Christianity “absurd,” “brainless,” “infantile,” “embarrassing,” “transparent nonsense,” “deserving of simple mockery.” Just look at the derogatory way in which he summarises what Christians believe:
…that a cosmic Jewish zombie who is his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, while telepathically telling him that you can accept him as your master, so that he can remove an evil force from your soul which is present in all humanity because a woman made out of one rib bone and a mound of dirt was tricked into eating fruit from a magical tree by a talking snake.
Please, pirate Pete, do tell us more about tolerance and inclusiveness…