The mainstream media is shoving the Paris Olympics down our throats. But like many other Australians, I want nothing to do with it.

The French have done everything possible to Woke it up this year. A current meme that suggests Norway took all the gold and silver at the Paris Olympics in 845 A.D. has my vote.

France is a free country, but so is Australia, and I hope none of our young working class men harm themselves in defence of France ever again.

My great-grandfather and several of his brothers fought in France in the Great War. (My great-grandfather was gassed at Villers-Bretonneux and never really recovered.) Their father, my great-great grandfather, was a sergeant-major in the Salvation Army in Guyra in the 1890s.

I was not brought up as a Christian, but after joining the Australian Army, it confirmed for me what I always knew: those without faith are kidding themselves. When I was in third class at Duntroon, an expert on Islam, who was also a second world war veteran, put this to us:

‘Hands up those who believe in God. Now let me tell you this. When the Japanese caught us in an ambush in New Guinea, every single one of us prayed. We were all believers that day.’

While my theological experience has been quite the journey, I am not one to mock others’ spiritual encounters. It is part and parcel of living in a secular society.

As French President Emmanuel Macron said of the Charlie Hebdo incident:

‘The freedom to blaspheme went hand in hand with the freedom of belief in France.’

And so it is with the Olympic Games opening ceremony and the gender bender of women’s boxing.

That doesn’t mean we have to like it or support it.

But it also doesn’t give us licence to rant at other religions as if all individuals are following the Woke agenda. Far from it.

In 2006 I met with a Muslim sheik in a mosque in downtown Amman, the capital of Jordan. He said to me that the terrorist nonsense that was happening in the world was not Islam. Muslims have an individual relationship with God that was nobody else’s business. If they took up radical ideas it was not Islam but on their own heads.

He encouraged me to read more and discover for myself the nature of Islam. In many ways, his approach to Islam mirrors the approach of many Protestant religions that were averse to the clergy’s power to exact money from the poor through access to relics. For the Protestants, one could read the New Testament and establish a personal relationship with Jesus.

To be fair, the French mocked Islam previously and this time it was Christianity. But the opening ceremony in Paris marked the battle lines for the Woke versus Conservatives. While many Christians were rightly upset, the ceremony mocked much more than religion.

The French organising committee’s response was a non-apology:

‘If people have taken any offence, we’re of course really sorry.’

The blue whatsitsname with tackle out seemed like he was poorly plagiarised from Paul Giamatti’s character in Big Fat Liar. Only it wasn’t funny. It was lame. It was political. And it was unnecessary.

Then the French went on and on about inclusion and celebrating ‘community and tolerance’. The Woke version which excludes more than it includes.

While I am writing this, I am listening to Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy. The song, released in 1984, is known as a ‘queer anthem’. As a confirmed fan of AC/DC since I first heard TNT at the age of five, as a teenager I never admitted that I liked the song.

I am also a fan of the song Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode. I am sure many readers would prefer the Johnny Cash version, but Depeche Mode wrote the original. It merges ideas about Christianity and sexuality and reminds me of gay and lesbian friends and family members who lived agonised lives in a period where genderless toilets were unthinkable, let alone same-sex marriage.

I have no issue with genderless toilets at some of the openly gay pubs I’ve been to. In one popular venue, the sign reads: ‘Male, female, whatever, just wash your hands!’ In Quebec City I recall a pub where the crowd morphed between the toilets and the dance-floor in the strangest ways. It was 20 years ago and it was fun.

It happened in adult-only venues and it was not televised globally.

But in polite society, it is an invitation to cross the line. Don’t want to cross the line? Go to a different venue. But when it is shoved in everybody’s face, or encouraged at primary schools, it is little more than political grandstanding.

I recall young Canadians living on the street as a lifestyle choice, demanding that passersby ‘at least acknowledge’ them. For what I still have no idea.

I also remember an older man who asked me for money for something to eat. I took him into a pizza bar and ordered food for him, and he expressed his gratitude effusively.

Some will suggest that my comparisons above are not relevant to the Paris games. But it’s the same thing. Grandstanding versus real tolerance. ‘Look at me’ versus ‘leave me alone to live how I choose’.

And how did the French earn the right to live as they choose? Through the blood of their Allies.

According to contemporary French logic, inclusiveness means everybody else except men. And that label doesn’t exclude gay men. Unless those gay men are happy to share their toilets with anybody else in all public spaces. Which many are not.

And who will be called to defend France again in the future? Not the blue and orange bloke. Not those who mocked the Last Supper. (Give me a break – it had nothing to do with anything other than grandstanding at Christians’ expense.) Not those who have ‘overthrown’ the old, pale, male, and stale patriarchy.

It will be working class men just like it always has been.

And while many Parisians are leaving the city as it implodes under the weight of its Wokeness, the France of today deserves none of the lives of our young men. Lest we forget that their legacy is currently being mocked by Woke fools.

For me, the Paris Olympics has driven home one thing. Next time, working class men should let the French Wokerati fight their own wars.