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"Legislating Religious Correctness," The Weekly Standard
Roger Severino
In 2001 the Australian province of Victoria passed the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act with the intention of prohibiting religion-based hatred but with disastrous effects on religious liberty.
On December 17, 2004, pastors Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah of Catch the Fire Ministries were found guilty of “inciting hatred” against Muslims for remarks made at a seminar discussing Islam from a Christian perspective. A group of Muslims who attended the seminar took offense and filed a succesful "vilification" complaint against the pastors.
The judge in the case deemed the pastors' interpretation of Islam from a Christian perspective to be “unreasonable” and “unbalanced” and therefore hate speech. The pastors have been ordered to apologize, retract their statements, and submit to ongoing censorship and face fines and jail time if they refuse to comply.
According to a recent Weekly Standard piece by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross,
One suspects that as religious vilification laws spread [in Australia and other Western countries], the liberal proponents of these laws will end up unwittingly empowering those who believe that their religion should be above condemnation.
The Becket Fund's ongoing correspondence with the Attorney General of Australia over the legality of the Victorian Act is available here.