So we finished up talking about the sexual revolution and about the creep of cultural Marxist ideas into the universities. As I said at the end of my talk, all of this starts to spill out into mainstream society — out of the universities, into mainstream schools, into popular culture — over the course of the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, and certainly up until today.

I’ll give you a couple of examples. The most famous example of the spilling out of the Marxist worldview — of overthrowing everything Christian, overthrowing everything Western civilisation, if you like — is one of the most famous songs of the twentieth century, and that would be John Lennon’s song Imagine.

Now, when you actually look at the lyrics of this song — and I have to say, I like the Beatles. Maybe I shouldn’t, I don’t know, but I actually do like them — this is a song I’ve always hated. I can only feel that the Lord, the Spirit of God, has just kept me from it somehow. I’ve just never liked this song. And when you look at the lyrics, you might see why that might be.

What is it about? Well, “Imagine there’s no Heaven” — that’s the very first verse. “Imagine there’s no Heaven, no Hell below us, above us only sky.” So: no God. Like the Russian cosmonaut joked when he came back to Earth and said, “I didn’t see God up there.” John Lennon is saying the same thing.

Second verse: first verse atheism; second verse, “Imagine there are no countries. Imagine there’s no religion.” So: no countries, no religion. Hmm. Sounds like a particular ideology. Atheism, no belief in countries, only a belief in — oh, I don’t know — “workers of the world”? No religion.

Third verse: “Imagine no possessions.” What are we describing here? It’s communism. John Lennon wrote a communist Marxist hymn, and it’s become one of the most famous, loved songs of the twentieth century, but no one ever really seems to think about what he’s actually suggesting. Maybe a lot of people do and they like it. Well, now that you’ve seen it, I know you’ll never unsee that.

Another instance of how these Marxist ideas of overthrowing basically Christian civilisation escaped the universities and went into more general culture was the gay liberation movement. One of the most well-known and important members of the gay liberation movement in America was Harry Hay — who’d ever guess he was gay, but he was Harry Hay. And this is what Harry Hay had to say. He said, reflecting on the history of the gay liberation movement from 1969 to the early nineteen nineties:

“To the Marxist Left we queers have to say thanks. Thanks for the spiritual tools and concepts you furnished us with which got us launched on our long walk.”

So this idea that the modern same-sex marriage movement, the modern gay liberation movement, the whole modern rainbow movement has nothing to do with Marxism — I mean, a lot of Christians like to say that. Guys like me, guys like Mark Powell, we’re just crazy, finding reds under the bed, talking about Marxism as though it’s still influential. They’re like, “Guys, that stopped being influential at the end of the Cold War,” and they think we’re nuts.

The actual people who spearheaded these LGBT movements — they don’t think we’re nuts. They actually agree with us that Marxism as an ideology did not just stop having an influence outside the political borders of the Soviet Union or East Germany or Yugoslavia. In actual fact, it did have a tremendous influence in countries like Australia, in countries like America, in countries like the UK, in countries like Canada — but in a very, very different way. Rather than overthrowing capitalism, it sought, and to a large extent successfully, to overthrow Christian civilisation in a way. And one manifestation of that was the gay liberation movement.

Now, I feel a little bit like a guy from the nineties named Tim Shaw, who used to run those infomercials, and he’d always say, “But wait, there’s more!” And you’d wind up — when you thought you were buying a steak knife — you’d wind up buying a whole camping set. But if you’re not happy with that, there’s even more.

Some of you will remember — and this was really big around about ten years ago and it’s still in our schools — but there was a program called the Safe Schools program. The program was ostensibly about reducing rates of bullying in schools. What the program was supposed to be teaching kids was to respect one another, be nice to one another. But what it really was, was a Trojan horse to teach kids queer and trans ideology. To teach kids things like that homosexuality is fine, to teach kids that whether you’re a boy or a girl is not up to anyone to determine except for you. And if you feel like a boy, then you can be a boy; if you feel like a girl, you can be a girl.

One of the masterminds — I use that term rather loosely — one of the masterminds of this program was Roz Ward, and here’s a photo of her in pretty fine form. And she had this to say quite publicly about the Safe Schools program:

“Programs like the Safe Schools Coalition are making some difference, but we’re still a long way from Liberation Marxism,”

she goes on to say,

“Marxism offers the hope and the strategy needed to create a world where human sexuality, gender and how we relate to our bodies can blossom in ways that we can only try to imagine today.”

What is wrong with the current marriage laws that say only a man and a woman can be married? It’s causing — it’s literally causing people to kill themselves. Mental health. And many politicians went down this path. Trish Crossin, Labor, in the Senate:

“Legislating for marriage equality would nurture inclusion and acceptance for same-sex couples and their family and friends in society. There is also strong evidence from psychologists indicating that marriage equality would lead to improved mental health and physical health outcomes for the LGBTI community.”

And she went on. This is another part of the debate: there were a lot of people who didn’t actually think there should even be a debate, because they thought a debate on same-sex marriage would actually be mentally harmful to Australians. And so she goes on and says:

“A plebiscite

— or a survey, as it turned out —

is a political fix that will do harm and put lives at risk.”

In this therapeutic society that we’re in now, discussing certain issues publicly is literally something that is deadly. Literally something that is deadly  and I don’t mean in the good sense of deadly. I mean in the bad sense that it can kill people.

Bill Shorten — yes, I choose the pictures very deliberately — Bill Shorten, Opposition Leader at the time, was very much opposed to Australia having a debate on same-sex marriage. As far as he was concerned, it should just be rammed through in Parliament. Why? Because he met with, quote,

“Professor Patrick McGorry and other mental health experts to discuss the mental health consequences of a plebiscite.”

And he basically goes on to argue that we shouldn’t even be having a debate  we shouldn’t be debating this because of people’s mental health.

Again, in a therapeutocracy, or an emocracy, where emotions really govern everything, democracy, which includes people discussing things freely, is trumped by people’s emotions. And of course, what’s going on is that the whole mental-health card is being used very opportunistically. Very opportunistically, very cynically, by opponents of true marriage, real marriage.

I’m sorry to say that even during the Voice debate, people were pulling out the mental-health card, saying we shouldn’t even be debating this. This should just be put through in Parliament because this is a very detrimental debate for Indigenous Australians. So Indigenous Australians can’t speak for themselves? As though there shouldn’t be a debate that they can contribute to?

Our therapeutic society is pretty insidious. It’s actually quite anti-democratic.

Andrew Wilkie, in a way, let the cat out of the bag. Do you remember during the same-sex debate when some Christians were saying, Look, if same-sex marriage is passed — I just call it fake marriage — if fake marriage is passed, is that going to have any impact on what Christian schools can teach? And of course the advocates of same-sex marriage were saying, “No, no, no, don’t be ridiculous, Chicken Little, rah rah rah.”

This is Andrew Wilkie talking about religious liberty. Because we’ve been debating whether we can get a nice, robust religious-liberty bill through now for years, and it hasn’t really happened. And this is what Andrew Wilkie had to say. One was being discussed which allowed more freedom of speech than Andrew Wilkie liked. And what was the problem with that? He said:

“Well, this bill is going to allow people to make harmful and arguably discriminatory statements.”

Now, what is some of the therapeutic language that we use — and that we should probably try to start avoiding — these days? The word safe.

I mean, now we talk about — in the classroom situation, in a university classroom — instead of saying, “Hey, everyone should feel free and comfortable to voice their position,” we say, “Oh, everyone should feel that they’re in a safe space, that they feel safe.”

That is psychotic. I mean, that is just ridiculous. Do you literally feel unsafe in a classroom?

We’re taking the language of psychology and we’re applying it to everything in society, turning every uncomfortable situation you can be in into a medical emergency. That is what we are doing. We’re literally turning society into a mental-health clinic.

This is fascinating. He says, you know,

“If we allow religious freedom, then it could allow faith-linked schools — Christian schools — to teach students all sorts of horrible things.”

What’s he talking about? It might allow them to teach that marriage can only be between a man and a woman — despite the overwhelming majority of Australians voting in favour of marriage equality.

He said the quiet bit out loud. He let the cat out of the bag. As far as Andrew Wilkie is concerned, since the passing of fake marriage in — whenever it was — 2020?  Was it December 2017? Anyhow, now you’re not supposed to even talk about it, according to Andrew Wilkie. You’re not supposed to teach true marriage.

So again, the therapeutic — the therapeutisation of society — has implications for religious liberty. Because once upon a time, things that you could say which would be considered perfectly reasonable to say, even if you disagreed with them, now, once upon a time people might have said, “Oh, that’s offensive, you shouldn’t say that,” and they might even have said, “That’s offensive, you should be charged for saying that.” These days, they don’t say, “It’s offensive.” They say, “It’s harmful.”

Harmful.

And I’d love to talk to you more about that, but I can’t. But if you go onto YouTube, there’s a fifty-minute presentation of mine at an ACL convention from South Australia, and it’s called “Is Christianity Harmful?” And for fifty minutes I attack that particular argument. So you might be interested in that.

But in our therapeutic society, traditional Christian teachings about sexuality, sex, male, female — again, they’re not just considered irrational or even immoral. They are considered literally harmful. They are considered medical liabilities against people. And I want you all to be training yourselves to start hearing this language as it occurs, because you’re going to be hearing it all the time.

Listen to when people say things like, “It’s harmful.” Ask yourself: harmful in what sense? Oh — you mean it makes them feel really uncomfortable. Okay. As though life isn’t full of that.

When they use things like, “I feel unsafe.” Okay — what do you mean by unsafe? Once upon a time, unsafe meant that your physical safety was at risk. Nowadays, unsafe just kind of means, “I’m feeling uncomfortable and not feeling particularly good about being in this situation.”

Well, I don’t want to sound callous, but welcome to life.

And so what are we getting now? Marriage equality means we need freedom from religion, not freedom of religion. So again, religious liberty in a therapeutic society is something that is kind of threatening, because it allows people to say things that can make other people feel just not so good about themselves. And again, no one should set out deliberately to say things that don’t make people feel good about themselves — no one should say things with that intention, or at least with that intention as an end in itself. We don’t want to be mean to people, okay? But we do want to tell people the truth, knowing that sometimes the truth will pierce the heart — which is the conviction of the Holy Spirit — which is a step in actual repentance.

And here’s the thing: central to Christianity, and central to the Gospel, is frankly us feeling bad about ourselves because we’re sinners — all of us. And in a therapeutic regime where the worst thing you can do is make someone feel bad about themselves, Christianity becomes public enemy number one. And that is what we are witnessing.

So it’s quite ironic. In a happiness culture, where the meaning of life is happiness, it turns into a culture that’s profoundly authoritarian and totalitarian. Things that you say, things that you do — even your prayers for people in another state — become a matter of government suspicion. That is what we are heading into. The tyranny of empathy, you might call it.

And it’s very spectacularly on display.

With a law that Reverend Mark Powell mentioned earlier: the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Act in 2021. Now, I’ve spoken to you about the rise of the therapeutic society and the therapeutic ideology; now I want you to read this Act again, and you’ll see where it’s all come from.

Look at it:

Now, this is the Act which says you’re not allowed to pray for someone to help them manage or overcome same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. You’re not allowed to do that for someone. You’re not allowed to help someone through that in another state. It is an incredibly draconian law. It is a very, very draconian law. I’d love to speak for half an hour on it, but I don’t have time.

In enacting this Act, it is the intention of Parliament to denounce and give statutory recognition to the serious harm

—therapeutic language—

“caused by change or suppression practices, and to affirm”

—again, that’s therapeutic—to affirm someone is basically to make them feel good about themselves.

That’s what it really means. That’s what it really means to affirm — therapeutic —that a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity is not broken and in need of fixing.

Again, therapeutic concepts there: that you’re not unhealthy, you’re whole.

“To affirm that no sexual orientation or gender identity constitutes a disorder, disease, illness, deficiency or shortcoming. To affirm that change or suppression practices are deceptive and harmful.”

And so again, with the rise— now, who writes these laws? Who is behind them? Well, in a way, who knows? There are lobby groups, academics, public bureaucrats, experts. They’re behind them. They hand these things to politicians, and politicians read them and think, “Yeah, looks good to me,” and they ram them through.

So what are we seeing in terms of religious liberty in Australia? The outworking of the administrative state — where experts trained in Marxist, Foucauldian, therapeutic universities have imbibed the doctrines of cultural Marxism and the triumph of the therapeutic. And they have imbibed the sexual revolution as well. And they’re creating laws that, by their nature, cannot tolerate the biblical understanding of what it is to be a human being and how we are to relate to one another. It cannot be tolerated.

This is one of the reasons we find ourselves in the situation we’re in, in Australia and in much of the West, regarding religious liberty.

Now, I’m going to end there, but I just want to assure you that my next talk is going to be much more optimistic. So please stick around for it, okay?

God bless you.