It comes down to a straight-forward clash of values, an irreconcilable difference: those who think that no one should be excluded from a school on the grounds of their sexuality, and those who think religious bodies should be able to exclude people because of their sexuality.
It is very difficult, mind you, to get anyone to come out and admit the latter – which is a testament to how much public attitudes have changed on same-sex attracted people. Religious organisations know they cannot openly say: “We want to retain the right to exclude gay teachers” just as they would not publicly declare their right to shut out divorcees, people who have extramarital sex, sinners who eat meat on Fridays, or mothers who have given birth to “illegitimate” children. The religious texts haven’t changed, but social mores have.
The Religious Discrimination Bill forces us all to take sides.Credit:AFR
But let’s be real: there are still pockets of Christianity and Islam, in particular, that believe same-sex sex is wrong and the debate over the Religious Discrimination Bill comes down to that. And that is what is so invidious about this legislation, which fixes a problem the government’s own religious freedom review found does not exist. It forces us all to take sides, and it brings into the political realm something which is most often worked out peaceably between people at a community level.
And for what? It is tempting to conclude that Prime Minister Scott Morrison, knowing his political stocks are low in Victoria and West Australia, is focusing his re-election efforts on NSW. It is his home state, he used to be Liberal Party director here, and he knows that key constituencies in the culturally diverse seats of western Sydney respond well to a man of faith.
It is the ultimate wedge for Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese – a Labor man to his boots, perhaps, but also an atheist. Albanese’s own electorate of Grayndler in Sydney’s inner west would riot (and vote Green) if he wasn’t seen to be protecting gay children. The detail after that matters little, and this is why the debate over gay children being excluded is so cynical and so gross.
Morrison declared at his press conference on Thursday that “gay students should not be expelled from religious schools and nor should gay teachers, who have been employed at those schools, be dismissed if they are gay”. But Morrison knows better than anyone that the bill he is putting to Parliament does nothing to change the status quo. And the status quo is that the Sex Discrimination Act already gives schools a legal basis to expel students or sack teachers for being gay.
Scott Morrison is angling for re-election in NSW.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
This is a lousy trick and a broken promise: in 2018 Morrison vowed to legislate to remove the exemption for students. Now he has kicked the issue down the road – it will be examined by the Australian Law Reform Commission, which will report back 12 months after the current legislation is passed.
Whatever the ALRC recommends would then have to be taken up, drafted into legislation and passed. That’s if a political consensus could be reached, which we now know is impossible. It is a never-never non-solution, and it’s deliberately designed that way. If any further proof was needed of how craven our politics has become, then this is it: a fight over an issue that hurts our most vulnerable, and does nothing to address the very real problems the country faces.
