The Centre for Independent Studies has helpfully posted a booklet of last month’s Acton Lecture by Archbishop Anthony Fisher to Crikey, allowing us to really mull over the question “Should Bakers be Forced to Bake Cakes for Same Sex Weddings? Democracy and the Rights and Limits of Religion and Conscience in Contemporary Australia”.
It opens with a hypothetical situation in 2025, nine years after same-sex marriage is legalised in Australia (that’s an optimistic timetable, we think), and Fisher imagines a world where “religious organisations are now required to extend spousal benefits to same-sex ‘married’ employees, have lost their charitable status and now pay the same taxes and rates levied on any other business”.
It may not be the intended effect, but that sounds like a great idea to us.
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