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The Manly Sea Eagles rainbow jersey saga represents the new progressive Holy Trinity of diversity, inclusion, and equality with a steep social penalty for failing to toe the line.

Anyone declining to affirm this new godhead, even if remaining neutral, find themselves denounced as heretics and subjected to public shaming. Progressives claim to promote tolerance but hypocritically exclude those with different views or beliefs, including those who do not actively demonstrate allegiance to progressive orthodoxy.

Identity politics has been weaponised to divide the believers from the non-believers and manufacture divisions that create unnecessary polarisation within society.

The Australia of today is accepting, open-minded, and very far from the bastion of homophobia and transphobia that fringe rainbow activists would have you believe. In 2017, over 60 per cent of the population (myself included) voted in a plebiscite to approve changes to the Marriage Act 1961allowing same-sex couples to marry. Same-sex couples now enjoy equal rights with heterosexual couples under the law, and many Australians have celebrated the joy of seeing loved ones able to marry their same-sex partners.

People with same-sex orientation are protected from discrimination under an array of federal and state laws. They also enjoy significant funding and support from all levels of government in addition to the private sector contributions.

Prominent LGBTQ+ charity ACON receives over $12 million annually from the New South Wales Minister for Health to promote their agenda, with an additional $12 million earmarked earlier this year specifically for the New South Wales LGBTQ+ Health Strategy including gender-affirming care. The City of Sydney is hosting World Pride in 2023, assisted by a generous grant of $500,000 from Lord Mayor Clover Moore. The annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (that has its roots in 1978 when gays and lesbians were shamefully subjected to police brutality and arrested on Oxford St simply for protesting for equal rights under the law) is now a fully corporatised, sponsored, family-friendly televised event that is attended by politicians, businesses, and government departments. During Pride Month, the Sydney CBD and Town Hall are festooned with the ever-more inclusive Progress flag. On Transgender Day of Remembrance, New South Wales Police fly the trans flag over their headquarters for a week. The taxpayer-funded ABC also has an entire platform, ABC Queer,dedicated to LGBTQ+ issues.

The battle for LGB rights has been won with the achievement of equality under the law, yet fringe activists operating under the ever-expanding LGBTQ+ rainbow umbrella are acting as if we are back in the dark ages of the 1970s when being gay or lesbian meant you could lose your job, be shunned by your community, excommunicated from your faith, denied healthcare or housing, lose custody of your children, be arrested, bashed, or even murdered.

Activist groups needed to pivot their ideology to continue to justify their oppression status, bloated taxpayer-funded budgets, and generous remuneration packages for professional activists.

Adding the T, I, Q, A, and thepluswas a stroke of marketing genius as it created new oppressed minorities to fight for. The legacy sympathy of the general public was capitalised upon, meaning that the previous acceptance of ordinary Australians for the legacy movement was no longer enough. Fringe activists using the rainbow as a cultural sword have morphed into an aggressive and retaliatory movement that denounces anyone as transphobes, homophobes, or bigots if they do not actively demonstrate allegiance to their ideological zealotry.

The demands of the LGBTQ+ movement know no bounds and they wield an inordinate amount of power in both public and private institutions through Diversity and Inclusion programs.

In New South Wales, ACON uses their Pride in Diversity program to lobby for ubiquitous influence within organisations, corporations, and government departments. Organisations that have signed up to the scheme are ranked on ACONs Australian Workplace Equality Indexwith trophies handed out at a glittering annual awards night.Points are earned for the index by the implementation of policies and procedures detailed in a lengthy compliance form that embeds an LGBTQ+ centric worldview.

Sport is not immune from this activism. ACONs Pride in Sport program, launched in October 2020, saw the NRL sign on as one of the nine major sporting codes to get involved. This has resulted in the prioritisation of LGBTQ+ activism about above all other minority groups. It has also had the unexpected consequence (from the publics perspective) of removing sex as the basis for sporting categories while granting access to facilities and resources on the basis of a self-declared gender identity. Women and girls are no longer assured of female-only teams, competitions, or change rooms.

Ian Roberts is an NRL champion who had the courage to come out in the 1990s when the gay community was still suffering the aftershocks of the AIDS epidemic. It was a tumultuous time for Roberts, exacting a personal toll with some players and sections of the media refusing to accept him. Roberts was recently used as the spokesperson for the Manly Sea Eagles Pride jersey announcement. Reportedly, it was an initiative of the marketing department where the shock announcement was foisted on players without consultation and, apparently, without the knowledge or consensus of the Sea Eagles players, the teams board, or major sponsors.

This tale should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with themodus operandifor institutional capture by Pride activists. Policies and campaigns are deliberately negotiated by stealth to avoid scrutiny or criticism, then presented as a fait accompli a common tactic used to prevent the involvement of other stakeholders who may object. Arguably, little or no consideration is given to other minority groups.

There is no suggestion that the Manly Sea Eagles marketing department was lobbied by ACONs Pride in Sport, but Roberts was a spokesperson for the Pride in Sport launch in 2020 when nine major Australian sporting codes, including the NRL, announced policies displacing biological sex as the characteristic for sporting categories in favour of self-declared gender identity.

Australia is a liberal democracy, and people are free to hold beliefs and practise religion without interference by the state, even if that includes offending those who believe in the LGBTQ+ orthodoxy.

Professor Peter Kurti said:

Religious discrimination bills that were presented in the last Parliament were not about upholding the right to religious freedom but rather provided an anti-discrimination framework that would protect religious people from discriminatory practises in public life.

Kurti added:

In a modern society such as ours, such legislation really should not be necessary, however, Christians are being singled out for attack and vulnerable to discrimination.

Other religious practises do not attract the same opprobrium when their followers make decisions based on the tenets of their faith. AFLW player Haneen Zreika, for example, did not attract the same level of vitriol when she declined to wear the Pride jersey due to her Muslim beliefs earlier this year.

According to professor Jioji Ravulo, the practise of the Christian religion in Pasifika culture is intertwined and indivisible from family and community. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, same-sex relationships were not shamed or othered, but regarded as an expression of connecting socially and relationally with others. The notion of fear and shame about homosexuality was imported into Pasifika culture by the colonisation of the West.

Kat Karena, a Maori woman of Rangitne and Ngti Kahungunu, Lesbian, and founder of LGB Defence said:

With many Polynesians, Christianity is a major part of family life and culture. If these Pacific Islanders choose family life and culture over sports, its their right of choice. It seems strange to me that Westerners are quick to cast slurs on those of a Polynesian culture who have had a longer history acceptance of homosexuality, than they.

Karena went on to add:

And it wasnt so long ago, it was the waving of the crosses and demands by their forefathers to kowtow. Nothings changed, now people are waving rainbow symbols instead of crosses and behind all of it is still about compliance over choice. I know that NRL signed up to ACONs Pride In Sports compliance audit. Under that rainbow audit most club players and members arent aware that public marketing of LGBQTIA is not a choice, as well as allowing males in womens changing rooms is not a choice for clubs, allowing me in womens sports, celebrating the many days of LGBQTIA, are not choices either under that audit. As a gay woman those are my reasons to reject Pride in Sports rainbow agenda, its not good for women, culture, or freedom of choice.

To their credit, Manly coach Des Hasler and the Manly Sea Eagles acknowledged that they had made a mistake in being insensitive to the culture and religion of the Manly Seven, although it came too late for the games against St George Illawarra Dragons, where the benching of those key players resulted in a 20-6 loss.

Australians overwhelmingly support LGB rights and are entirely comfortable with people of same-sex orientations, but the forced teaming of LGB with the T and the mandatory demonstrations of allegiance are creating a backlash. It is no longer possible to accept the existence of difference in our multicultural society. The Pride flag has morphed from representing gays and lesbians into a catchall Progressive banner which now includes self-declared Woke identities trans, queer, intersex, asexual, questioning, two-spirit, and any of the multitude of gender identities to be found in social media bios or on Tik Tok.

Rainbow activists profess to represent the most vulnerable and oppressed. Yet the refusal of the Manly Seven Pasifika men of faith to acquiesce to activist demands drew abuse, and they were sidelined. The hopes of Sea Eagles fans may have been dashed for the season, demonstrating to us all that LGBTQ+ activists are not the exemplars of diversity, inclusion, and equality that they claim to be. Rather, they are nothing more than authoritarians draped in rainbows and glitter.

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The progressive Holy Trinity is far from divine - The Spectator Australia