Fred Nile ruins it for everyone

Keith Binns writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday). With all due respect to Tips and Rumours I object to the heading “How to vote, according to the Christians”. I’m a Christian and I’ll be voting Green and cannot discuss Fred Nile without reaching for a bucket. The lumping together of all Christians as far right in the media has led to a lumping of them all together in the popular imagination which is very frustrating. One of the great joys of joining the Refugee Action Committee’s activities in Canberra has been finding a group of people who aren’t Christians who don’t automatically assume I am a homophobic, Islamophobic, misogynist prick. The Faith Based Working Group of RAC is the biggest group, consisting of Christians, Jews, Muslims etc etc working together for a common humanitarian goal.

On US gun laws

Ian Lowe writes: Re. “The politics of hatred” (yesterday). Just to point out the bleeding obvious after the Orlando shootings: since the Sandy Hook massacre of school-children there have been 998 shootings causing death in the USA. Two of them have involved shooters who were identifiably Muslim. Several hundred involved the sort of weapons that have no place in a civil society. Oh yes, and 998 of the shooters were male.  So is the most serious problem Islam, or should more attention be given to ludicrous gun laws or masculinity?