Burqas: because we’re all against special privileges for religion

Apparently the tiny number of Australian women in burqas is causing a great deal of upset around this Wide Brown Daily Telegraph.

And you can understand why. After all, when the police pull us over, ordinary balaclava-wearing Australians have to take them off. When we go into the bank, we’re forced to remove our menacingly dark-tinted motorbike helmets. When we go fencing, those wearing those wussy total face masks that protect against epee-in-the-eye are mocked for the UNAUSTRALIAN NANCY BOYS THEY ARE.

So it’s entirely legitimate for us to be up in arms about the full face-covering burqa and for Today Tonight to compare it with fanatics in Afghanistan who MURDER OUR TROOPS. We don’t want weird exceptions for religious groups – why shouldn’t they live under the same rules as the rest of us?

Except of course that obviously religious organisations shouldn’t pay taxes like ordinary Australians.

Obviously they should get exemptions under anti-discrimination legislation to enable them to discriminate against employees in ways that no other organisation can, for entirely arbitrary prejudiced reasons that have nothing to do with the requirements of the jobs in question.

Without a doubt they should get special funding from the taxpayer to run their own schools.

Naturally we should pay religious organisations to provide unqualified school chaplains in place of qualified counsellors – what they lack in actual ability to provide proper care to vulnerable children, they make up in ability to provide taxpayer-funded religious indoctrination.

And why wouldn’t we accede to the demands of the minority of people who oppose marriage equality on religious grounds and continue to discriminate against gay people in the law?

So yes, special rules for some religions. But not the bad ones we don’t like (not that we’re being racist, because Muslims aren’t a race, they’re just a cultural group that we can single out and stereotype in ways indistinguishable from racism).

Because that just wouldn’t be fair.