It’s only a matter of time before journalists at the ABC claim religious freedom is a threat to koalas.

The national broadcaster’s relentless campaign against the government’s Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 has become that absurd.

Last week, the ABC ran a story warning that disabled people were worried Christians might tell them ‘God loves them’, or even offer to pray for them if the Bill was passed.

It warned that a person in a wheelchair might enter a shop and be confronted by a member of staff addressing them as being ‘brave, an inspiration, and loved by God’.

As if being told that ‘God loves you’ is not horrific enough, the imagined Christian shop assistant – emboldened by the government’s Religious Discrimination Bill – might stand in front of the person and say: ‘I will pray for you.’

That’s right. The Religious Discrimination Bill will cause pious shopkeepers to start praying willy-nilly for their disabled customers. Wheelchairs all over Australia will be stopped in their tracks by religious nutcases afflicting the already afflicted with trite remarks and unwanted prayers.

Lord have mercy!

The ABC article quoted a spokeswoman from Disability Voices Tasmania saying, ‘I don’t want any person with a disability to be on the receiving end of religious beliefs that cause them offence.’

If you think being ‘on the end of a belief’ sounds bad, just imagine what people of faith might do to koalas if the Bill is passed!

The ABC’s fear-mongering over religious freedom is second only to their bet-wetting over whatever the latest Covid ‘scariant’ is.

On November 23 in a story headlined ‘Queer and Devout’, the ABC warned that the Religious Discrimination Bill would actually discriminate against religious people – or at least gay ones.

The article featured a woman who lost her Sunday school teaching role when she came out as queer, and a former minister (pronouns ‘they/them’) who lost their leadership role for being gay.

Both claimed they had never been discriminated against for being religious, only for being gay. This was hardly the slam dunk the ABC made it out to be. People are unlikely to be discriminated against when they affirm everyone’s sexual mores as normal and inherently good.

What’s the point of a religion that makes no distinctions between anything?

The ABC found a Sydney law professor who warned ominously that the Religious Discrimination Bill would give religious people ‘a license to express a religious opinion without being subjected to any discrimination law anywhere in Australia’.

Heaven forbid! Imagine a country in which people have a ‘license’ to express a religious opinion without the threat of being hauled before a tribunal to determine whether their opinion complies with the state-approved narrative…

‘There won’t be anything to stop doctors saying what they think of their patient’s lifestyles, accommodation providers saying what they think of single parents and so it goes on,’ the professor lamented.

Nothing to stop them at all, apart from manners.

The ABC imagines my local GP – who spends Sundays worshipping at the Uniting Church – is a religious extremist lying in wait for my first booster shot after the government’s Bill is passed so she can jab me and judge me at the same time.

On November 24, the ABC ran a story quoting an Equality Australia spokeswoman who warned that the government’s Bill would lead to nurses telling HIV patients they were being punished by God.

This is obviously ridiculous since everyone knows that if God wanted to punish someone, He wouldn’t give them HIV, He’d make them sit through Q&A. But I digress…

Someone needs to explain to journalists at the ABC that the purpose of religious discrimination legislation is not to curb the excesses of a few ratbags who claim to be ‘religious’, but rather to protect genuine people of faith – who are invariable good and moral – as they practice their religion.

On November 25, the ABC decided to write an article on what an Anglican priest might say about the need for religious discrimination legislation.

And, miracle of miracles, with around 4,000 members of the clergy to choose from the ABC just happened to pick the priest draped in an LGBTQ scarf!

According to the priest, the Bill was ‘pretty nasty stuff’ and there was no need for it – to which he received shouts of ‘hallelujah’ from everyone at the ABC.

God works in mysterious ways, but there is nothing mysterious about the ABC. They don’t even attempt to hide the fact that they are in full campaign mode for one side of politics.

On November 26, the ABC warned that the Religious Discrimination Bill would make life worse for LGBTQ kids. And on November 27, the ABC’s Linda Mottram interviewed a professor of constitutional law who described the Bill as no more than ‘a consolation prize’ for people upset about same-sex marriage.

I fully expect that next week the ABC will tell us that religious freedom will warm the planet, create new Covid variants, and – of course – kill the koalas.

Worse, the ALP will use this nonsense to pressure their centrist colleagues into voting against the Bill.

You can follow James Macpherson on Twitter at @jamesmacpherson and order his new book Notes from Woketopia (Laying Bare the Lunacy of Woke Culture) at jamesmacpherson.com.au