Faith-Based Education and Anti-Discrimination Law in Australia

Photo by Noah Holm on Unsplash

Australia is currently in the throes of trying to adjudicate on how to balance religious freedom with anti-discrimination law, it’s complex, messy, and getting heated!

Multi-Culturalism, Religious Communities, Sexual Minorities:
The Current Debate

Proposed changes to the Sexual Discrimination Act, based on the Australian Law Reform Commission’s report on religious educational institutions and anti-discrimination laws, are intended to neutralize the alleged toxicity of religious schools for LGBTIQ people.

Such legislation is not about managing differences in diversity or restricting discrimination equitably, but rather, is based on a moral hierarchy of identities, buttressed by a narrow definition of religious freedom, and premised on the notion that all disparities are inequalities.

In other words, religion is something to be begrudgingly tolerated rather than celebrated as an enriching feature of a multicultural nation.

Government, Faith-Based Schools, and Anti-Discrimination Laws

The dilemma over whether seminaries and faith-based schools can discriminate against faculty, staff, and students based on their LGBTIQ identity.

In theory, one might legislate that a seminary or faith-based school:

• must not discriminate against a student on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship status or pregnancy;

• must not discriminate against a member of staff on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship status or pregnancy;

Yet at the same time, the school:

• can continue to build a community of faith by giving preference, in good faith, to persons of the same religion as the educational institution in the selection of staff.

Yet that will not work because of the very nature religion means beliefs and practices cannot be neatly siloed.

First, religion cannot be restricted to beliefs.

To reduce religion to “belief” betrays a distinctively Christian and perhaps even Protestant myopia in conceiving religion. Christians have always defined themselves as “Believers” and internally policed the boundaries of belief far more than other religions where the emphasis was on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. But religion more broadly defined is the totality of a life lived before God, something embodied, a way of life, rhythms and rituals, habits of holiness, calendar and community. In many religions it not conceivable let alone possible to compartmentalize religious beliefs away from the daily expressions of religious life.

Second, following on from that, lived-religion extends to practices about family, marriage, and sexuality.

There is widespread diversity between religions and within religions on these matters, but the major religions have beliefs and practices that extend to family, marriage, and sexuality.

The temptation for government here is to insist that religion is either restricted to belief pertaining to a deity, or else, to determine that religious beliefs about family, marriage, and sexuality are not essential to the practice of any religion.

Yet both moves would require the government to define the essence and limitations of a religion irrespective of the beliefs and practices of its adherents. Yet secularity only works if a government does not dictate to religious practitioners what their religion is about nor determine the essential and non-essential elements of their religion for them.

A government that tells Muslims and Catholics that beliefs and practices about sexuality are not essential to their religion is the same government that can tell Muslims that the prohibition of consuming pork is not critical to their religion and transubstantiation is a negotiable tenet of Catholicism.

Attacks on Secularism and Religious Freedom

While some political parties may detect no problem with compelling an Anglican Seminary or an Islamic school to appoint a gay atheist as principal, because such a position is an administrative role and does not require religious undertakings as might be expected for a chaplain or Islamic studies teacher, I can assure you that such an imposition will not be viewed benignly. Nor will the teachers, students, and parents be comforted by government assurances that despite this imposition Anglicans and Muslims are still free to believe whatever they like.

According to international standards of human rights, religious freedom is something that is exercised “in community with others” and extends to “the religious and moral education of their children.” The derogation of that right in the name of granting LGBTIQ people the right to lead, teach, and express their own beliefs at a religious school is going to inflame community tensions to levels not seen since the painful 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite which caused an increase in homophobic and anti-religious incidents.

Is A Compromise Possible? Yes, But Not with the Greens

One could imagine a settlement where, first, seminaries are left untouched by government interference. Then second, faith-based schools are able to insist on religious requirements and codes of conduct for senior administrators and teaching staff, whereas auxiliary staff, like janitors and receptionists, might only be required to respect the school’s ethos as a condition of employment. One could imagine too that most faith-based schools would be prepared to accept changes to the sex discrimination act so that students cannot be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, relationship status or pregnancy. Such a settlement would be agreeable because in many places it is already the current practice.

That would be workable if were not for the fact that the ALP has chosen to find support for their bill, not from the Coalition, but from the Greens, who will not countenance any dispensation to preserve a seminary’s or faith-based school’s religious identity.

The Greens have an ideological commitment to punitive actions against religous communities if only for the glee and delight it would give to their rich white inner-city progressive base. The Greens will accept nothing less than the removal of all religious requirements for any employed position in any seminary, college, or faith-based school. In other words, the de-religionizing of religious schools.

If you want to understand the Green’s position on religious schools you have to think of the movie Braveheart. Remember the scene where the English King Edward I said, “The problem with Scotland is that it’s full of Scots.” For the Greens, the problem with Muslim schools is that they are full of Muslims. The problem with Catholic schools is that they are infested with Catholics. The problem with Christian schools is that they are uncompromisingly Christian. These religious groups must be bred out of their own institutions and in the course of time nationalized.

An ALP-Greens alliance on religious policy is a terrifying prospect because such an alliance will do to faith-based schools at the national level what the ALP-Greens alliance did to Calvary Catholic Hospital in the ACT: forcibly seize it and cleanse it of religion with the infamous pictures of the cross removed from the hospital like a scene from communist China.

The involvement of the Greens in passing any legislation about religion is like asking Dracula to assist in a dispute at the blood bank. This is why all major faith groups have written to PM Albanese and insisted that any deal made with the Greens would be “a betrayal of trust.”

An Electoral Warning

But all is not lost. I think the Albanese Government will be nervous about such legislation for two reasons.

First, the Albanese Government is surely aware that 36% of students in Australia are enrolled in non-government schools, 90% of which are connected with a particular religion. Parents send their children to these schools not despite the religion, but precisely because of it. And those parents vote in many marginal seats.

Second, the Albanese Government remembers too the ALP losing the unlosable 2019 election because, among other things, the anti-religious rhetoric of the campaign, especially the notorious personal attacks against PM Morrison because of his Pentecostal faith. The ALP’s review of the surprising electoral defeat admitted to a failure to connect with “devout, first-generation migrant Christians.”

For those reasons, it is possible that future legislation might treat religion as a protected category along with sex, age, and ability, and come to a reasonable accommodation between religious schools and LGBTIQ kids attending such schools.

I hope for one, but seminaries and faith-based schools must be prepared for the worst-case option and decide how to respond with the full array of legal, civil, and electoral options before them.

I urge my Aussie friends of any faith tradition to Contact the Prime Minister’s Office to voice their concerns about the legislation and any involvement with the Greens.