Labor gay student plan ‘will curb religious freedom across Australia’

The government and senior religious leaders warn Labor’s gay students protections will impose consequences that extend far beyond the classroom.

Archbishop Glen Davies is one of the leaders warning over Labor’s gay student protections. Picture: Manly Daily.

The Morrison government and the nation’s most senior religious leaders are warning Labor that its plan to halt discrimination against gay students will curb religious freedoms across Australia and impose consequences that extend far beyond the classroom.

The Coalition will seek to oppose a Labor amendment to section 37 of the Sex Discrimination Act, warning that it will capture -- not just religious schools -- but any “body established for religious purposes” that provides an educational service.

The government is concerned this proposal will prevent churches, mosques, synagogues, Sunday schools, prayer groups, monasteries and convents from promoting their own views of marriage and gender identity in line with the tenets of their faith.

A number of examples of the practices that would be legally exposed to claims of discrimination under Labor’s proposal would include:

• Koranic study sessions that mosques organise separately for boys and girls because the refusal to admit girls into the boys’ study session, and vice-versa, would amount to discrimination.

• The ability of a rabbi at an orthodox Jewish synagogue to admit only one sex to a service at which the Torah is taught.

• The ability of a convent to refuse to educate a nun on how to be a missionary because the nun is pregnant or has entered into a relationship that is a prohibited by biblical teaching.

• The ability of a Buddhist monastery to impose a rule stating that those participating in a course on how to follow the Buddha cannot get married.

• A Sunday school, run by a church, teaching the ‘traditional’ view of marriage, given that this likely treats gay men and lesbian women less favourably on the basis of their sexual orientation.

• A Catholic marriage education group, run by a church, refusing to offer services to a gay couple, or to a heterosexual couple where the woman is already pregnant before marriage.

The Australian reported this morning that a range of religious organisations had written an open letter to Scott Morrison, Bill Shorten and crossbench parliamentarians sounding the alarm on what was described as an “extraordinary and unprecedented incursion on religious freedom”.

The letter -- obtained by The Australian -- warned that Labor’s bill “represents an extraordinary attack” on basic freedoms and, argued that, if government amendments were not accepted, there would be consequences that extended beyond the classroom.

The letter was signed by the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Glenn Davies; Moderator-General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, John Wilson; Christian Schools Australia and the Australian Association of Christian Schools.

“In the amendment to s37 of the Sex Discrimination Act proposed by Labor, anti-discrimination law would extend beyond the schoolyard and into churches, synagogues, mosques and temples nationwide wherever their actions are ‘connected with the provision … of education’, censoring doctrines that are thousands of years in the making,” the letter said.

Attorney-General Christian Porter this morning said the letter was an “absolutely critical” development.

“They’ve said that Labor’s anti-discrimination changes to Section 37 of the Act would extend beyond the schoolyard and into churches, synagogues, mosques and temples nationwide wherever their actions are concerned with the provision of education, censoring doctrines that are thousands of years in the making,” Mr Porter said.

“This is an extraordinary and unprecedented incursion on religious freedom in this country. I have to say not being a religious person but being a legal person, legally these church leaders are absolutely right”.

“The Labor amendments that have been put in the Senate go beyond schools and schoolchildren. They seek to amend a section of the Act, Section 37. that protects all religious organisations in their practices from discrimination complaints.

“Labor’s amendment would strip that protection away and that would make unlawful and would outlaw all practices of a teaching and instructive nature in all religious organisations that anyone considered to be discriminatory”.