Same-sex marriage, trans identity force religion bill that could backfire

Will this government and Mark Dreyfus, under the guise of a religious anti-discrimination act, turn something that was supposed to protect people with religious motivation into the opposite?

The promised religious anti-discrimination bill has been a long time coming. Last year the Australian Law Reform Commission put out a consultation paper with the draft proposals for a bill, which was thoroughly criticised by all faith groups and rejected by some.

Nevertheless, a religious anti-discrimination bill probably will be one of the first bills this year, probably next month, and one of the biggest issues.

Despite the peaceful coexistence of Australians of many religious faiths and none, and despite the many years of social integration of religious institutions into education, health and welfare in Australia, this government is trying to implement an unnecessary act to ban discrimination on the grounds of religion.

So the question arises: what discrimination? Why do this? Where did all this come from? The answer is that it came out of the controversy over same-sex marriage.

Whether it was a Catholic bishop being hauled before an anti-discrimination tribunal for teaching Catholic doctrine on marriage, graffiti sprayed on church walls or venues threatened with boycotts, the attacks were unrelenting. Hence Scott Morrison’s hasty decision to formulate a religious anti-discrimination bill.

Many of us who opposed same-sex marriage warned that the implementation of identity ideology into the law would not stop at legalising gay marriage, and with the advent of the trans movement the ideological goal posts have been moved to encompass an ever-widening theory of identity. But is a religious anti-discrimination act the answer?

The original ALRC consultation paper proposals were roundly condemned as unacceptable by all faith groups because it placed more restrictions on religious liberty, particularly through getting rid of all the exemptions in articles 37 and 38 of sex-discrimination legislation.

These exemptions have operated without any problems and have protected religiously based schools, hospitals and other institutions from unnecessary lawfare and allowed them to operate within their own moral paradigm, unthreatened by identity ideology and anti-religious bias.

Now, the government seems determined to do what it wants, whether affected religious institutions like it or not. So, it is employing some fairly underhand tactics.

It is feared the revised ALRC recommendations and the government’s response will be released on the same day, which means the recommendations will be released before the churches and other religious groups have time to respond. This is a departure from normal practice. In effect the government is saying: “No consultation. This is what we will do.”

This is true to form for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, whose last hasty act before leaving government from his previous stint as attorney-general was to get rid of the sexual anti-discrimination exemptions within aged care, and for a government that dumped equal shared parenting, with no public consultation.

There is great fear the ALRC report will not have changed from the original recommendations that would, in the words of the respondents from all faith groups “place unnecessary and unreasonable restrictions on the freedom of religious schools to give effect to the international human rights of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions”.

So, if a bill based on these recommendations is enacted it will effectively get rid of all exemptions from the anti-discrimination legislation and Fair Work Act. It will all be wrapped up in this one bill.

The obvious fault lines will be on student sexual identity. It means religious schools will have almost no disciplinary scope on any of these matters. Everything from single-sex education and what to do with transitioning students to how the school can discipline publicly recalcitrant stud­ents, even what to do with sport and the toilets – a controversy that arose in the US – will open schools to obvious ideological lawfare.

But the worst difficulty is that this legislation, by removing the anti-discrimination provisions of the Fair Work Act, will make it difficult for schools to hire teachers who have expressed a sympathy with the religious ethos of the school. The recommendations will allow only religion teachers to be hired with a specific religious ethos or sympathy. This ignores the school’s entire ethos, which is supposed to permeate the atmosphere of the school as a faith community.

Nor will it prevent teachers being hired who publicly express views and have an attitude that is overtly or even aggressively against the school’s religious ethos, an opening to more lawfare if, for example, a Catholic is hired over a non-Catholic who cites discrimination and the school is forced to justify that decision.

Don’t think that the same provisions used to limit the religious scope and independence of religious schools won’t be used to take over religiously based public hospitals and hospices, whether Catholic or other, as has happened in the ACT. The takeover of Calvary public hospital was an obvious precedent. It was completed by stealth; as ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith crowed at the Labor conference, “they didn’t even realise”, and the Prime Minister refused to intervene.

So the broader question is: will this government and Dreyfus, under the guise of a religious anti-discrimination act, turn something that was supposed to protect people with religious motivation into the opposite? Will an act aimed at lessening religious discrimination, rather than aiming to help religious people and institutions, instead help to narrow the scope of religion in public life by placing restrictions born of other anti-discrimination provisions, effectively pushing people with religious faith and the institutions that support it to the edge of the public square and out of the marketplace of ideas?