God botherers unite … Litigation arm of the Australian Christian Lobby to fight for religious bigotry … Legal swat teams at the ready … God controls human rights, not the state … Naaman Zhou investigates
A Canberra-based outfit called the Human Rights Law Alliance is a front organisation for the Australian Christian Lobby and has been created with the mission of campaigning against same sex marriage, abortion and other ungodly activities, such as the “homosexual lifestyle”.
The legal affairs scribbler at The Australian, Chris Merritt, gushed about the Alliance in a recent article, saying it will “fill the void left by the publicly funded human rights commissions and legal centres”.
The Alliance is headed by Martyn Iles, a former chief of staff at the ACL and a giver of sermons at the Pentecostal Southside Bible Church in far off Kambah.
The fresh-faced Iles complained to Merritt that “there was no transparency about the methods used by the Australian Human Rights Commission when it conciliated complaints that are lodged under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act“.
Iles told a gathering when the HRLA was launched nearly six months ago that organisations like the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Law Centre “advocate for social engineering and the coopting of the power of the law to severely punish those who believe in the unpopular, and the declaration that the state is the redeemer and the judge”.
Martyn Iles launching the Human Rights Law Alliance – for freedom of religion, belief, conscience. #aclconf16 pic.twitter.com/mHzgPwo5ou
— Lyle Shelton (@LyleShelton) April 23, 2016
In the view of the Human Rights Law Alliance there is a “higher law … the immutable law of God and the authority vested in Christ”. This higher law provides the “solution for our society and the human condition”.
However, the Human Rights Law Alliance is hardly itself a model for transparency, with public details of its mission still vague.
Iles has never hidden his links to the Australian Christian Lobby, yet when we visited the Lobby’s website this month we found all evidence of his existence was missing.
His author profile has been deleted and an article he wrote with the headline The Human Rights Commission and gay marriage (which was shared by ACL boss Lyle Shelton on Twitter) has also disappeared.
Seriously, with analysis like this, more people really should be following @MartynLloydIles on Twitter https://t.co/EPfiIbKUO4
— Lyle Shelton (@LyleShelton) October 26, 2015
Sheton’s exhortation for Twitterers to follow Martyn Isles has gone largely unheeded. Martin has managed to produce one tweet since August 2015 and has 40 followers. His solitary Tweet was to retweet The Australian’s article.
Alliance takes up freedom fight https://t.co/CsHdN2qiI7
— Martyn Iles (@MartynLloydIles) September 6, 2016
Iles explained to Justinian that ACL’s website had been updated and that there have not been any “deliberate or selective deletions” – but it does leave us wondering what he had to say in The Human Rights Commission and gay marriage that got Shelton so enthused.
More vanishings have afflicted the Alliance’s own website. At present it is a near-empty page that promises a “website coming October 2016”. But cached versions of the page show it was actually very active in September, before being wiped recently.
This earlier version of the site said the Alliance was looking to “run training programs” for lawyers and students to resource strategic legal cases … engaging only the highest quality legal expertise”.
From the launch video it is apparent that Adelaide barrister Christoper Brohier and Melbourne solicitor David Burr will be involved in “training top Christian lawyers”, with the assistance of the Lachlan Macquarie Institute.
Both Shelton and Burr are on the board of the Institute, which is devoted to “developing public leaders” that would make Jesus Christ a proud man.
“There will be a ready-to-go team on call whenever anybody gets in trouble with the law for living out their faith.”
This will keep open the door for the gospel and “so that people can seek the truth and find it”. Needless to say, “all rights belong to God”.
Iles also told the launch crowd that the Alliance “is so called because human rights law is a … field in which there is a new battlefront emerging in the culture wars”.
There was also a touch of the persecuted minority about the proceedings with Iles declaring that, “they don’t want us to gather, as we are now”.
The mission of the HRLA is to protect “freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience”.
“We are finding legal cases increasingly brought against people over their beliefs and what they say,” said Iles, who has s.18C of the RDA firmly in his sights.
The identities of the Alliance’s private backers are also a mystery.
“Other than the fact that they are private individuals, I can’t provide further details as this is confidential information”, he told us.
As for sharing the same ABN with the ACL, he explained this was done as a method of “minimising administrative expenses and maximising the funds that can be applied to cases”.
“This cheaper and simpler organisational structure was considered practical. HRLA will ultimately incorporate independently.”
Expect to see this “human rights” outfit defending zealots who are arrested for holding photos of aborted foetuses outside abortion clinics and out on the stump with a dire message about the “homosexual lifestyle” if ever we get a same sex marriage plebiscite.