Religious schools group calls for more anti-discrimination exemptions
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Christian Schools Australia has made a submission to the government鈥檚 religious freedom review, calling for schools to retain the right to hire and fire staff over religious beliefs and behaviour, including sexuality.
In a joint submission with Adventist Schools Australia, the group has also asked for the right to eject students from school communities over religious differences, has reported.
Human rights groups including Amnesty International and LGBTI organisations have called for religious exemptions to discrimination law to instead be tightened to protect the rights of minorities.
Last year a Perth teacher was from a Christian school after coming out as gay, under a legal loophole that allows religious schools in Western Australia to do so.
The Catholic Church threatened during the marriage equality debate to fire gay teachers, nurses and other staff if they were to marry someone of the same sex.
鈥淚f freedom of religion is to remain a legitimate hallmark of Australian education then the rights of school communities to operate in accordance with religious beliefs must be upheld,鈥� the Christian Schools Australia submission read.
鈥淭his must include the right to choose all staff based on their belief in, and adherence to, the beliefs, tenets and doctrines of the religion concerned.鈥�
The National Council of Churches in Australia said in its submission to the review that freedom of religion was already 鈥渋n reasonable shape鈥�.
However, the submission claimed that religious people had been verbally and physically abused over the marriage equality debate, comparing their experiences to the persecution of Muslims after the September 11 attacks.
LGBTI advocacy group just.equal called for laws allowing discrimination against LGBTI people to be totally abolished.
鈥淭his includes those provisions that allow discrimination and vilification by religious individuals and faith-based organisations such as schools, hospitals, welfare agencies and aged care facilities,鈥� said just.equal鈥檚 submission.
Initial submissions to the religious freedom review close today.
#makechurchespaytax
I got my submission in. I didn’t get too prescriptive about where religious freedom should begin or end, I left that up to the ‘Expert Panel’, but I did insist that if the outcome of this review is that the only religious freedoms which matter are to discriminate against gay and trans people and to protect paedophiles then it would be a shameful day for Australia’s churches.
So if they get what they want, the onus is on Australia’s religious communities to use their freedoms fairly and equally to discriminate against anyone who causes them a pang of religious conscience, be they people of other faiths, atheists, divorcees, de-facto couples or whatever. If a school sacks a teacher for being gay but leaves on staff someone else who is not in a traditional situation, that’s fucked up. And I think in those cases the government funding of those schools needs to be questioned.
So be wise and responsible, religious types. Freedoms don’t have punishments, that’s why they’re freedoms. But they certainly do have consequences.
Seems like there is some form of favouritism, non equality with biased religions, in bed with certain types of govt? Special favours for them and us, Where is the equality for every person in oz? Fair dinkum?