Just one worrying aspect of current talk that religious freedom needs to be legislated is that the need is rarely explained. There is vague reporting of the ‘right’ of religious schools to teach faith-based doctrine. This begs the question as to what these schools want to teach that they think is at risk. It seems that this is code for teachings that devalue people of LGBTIQ sexual orientation.
Our newly elected federal government has reportedly decided to prioritise religious freedom legislation to protect religious institutions from being accused of discrimination. And it seems that the Labor Party may well support this legislation, at least one front-bencher strangely perceiving some religious rejection in their electoral defeat.
The matter has been the subject of some recent public discussion in the context of a top Rugby player being sacked for publicly stating that homosexuals will go to hell. Such statements are clearly intended to vilify a vulnerable group in our community and cannot be tolerated from a moral perspective, quite apart from the contractual issues involved or the genuinely held view of the person concerned, albeit both naïve and dangerous. Would we accept as a community any public figure saying all females should go to hell, or that all of a certain race should be damned, or that redheads should be shunned?
Some religions may well teach such ignorant views, but a good society should not tolerate the public and cavalier condemnation of classes of people (based on their God-given characteristics!) and certainly should not give legislative protection to the public expression of those views. There is no moral or other justification for protecting vilification of any gender, or any sexual orientation – and religious beliefs certainly do not justify such protection.
Religions have traditionally claimed a role in ensuring that the best values are practised by communities and teaching that all be treated with respect and indeed love. Is discrimination now part of religious beliefs or doctrine and are religions now to be legally protected in practising discrimination against others? Governments’ obligations to protect their citizens cannot be waived to allow harm to be done by religions.
I am puzzled by any suggestion that people of faith need religious freedom legislation. As a Christian adult with many years as an Australian Catholic citizen, parent and grandparent, I have never felt a lack of religious freedom and on those few occasions that my faith has been questioned by others, I’ve been quite happy to share the reasons for my faith without feeling any oppression.
Where is this demand for religious discrimination coming from? I know of many Catholic schools that accept diverse sexual orientation among their students and teach tolerance of diversity, as they should in keeping with their Christian beliefs. The Catholic hierarchy, in claiming all sorts of exemptions on the grounds of religious freedom, are out of step with the leadership, staff and parent groups of those Catholic schools who have actually had in place for years appropriately respectful policies, protocols and practices.
It seems that some religious leaders live in fear of attacks from an increasingly secular society. If so, the traditional Christian response would be to ‘turn the other cheek’ and let our Christian behaviour be judged on its merits. One might wonder if recent claims by religious leaders of societal prejudice are in fact driven by an obsessive attempt to distract a scandalised community from the humiliation of clerical child sexual abuse. Of course, that scandal resulted from hypocrisy in religion, protecting paedophiles and putting children at risk. Perhaps religions should focus on getting their houses in order and thus earn the respect of our secular society – that would be simply practising their faith.
Much of the religious freedom push seems to focus on a continuing, perhaps remnant, rejection of homosexuality in some religions including my own. This is despite the Australian people, including a majority of Catholics, making it very clear that they saw no room for discrimination against those of LGBTIQ sexual orientation when subjected to a survey on marriage equality in 2017. The Australian people have generally shown a true acceptance of others regardless of differences, an acceptance in keeping with the fundamental doctrine of love that permeates most religions and is the very basis of all teachings of Jesus.
Regrettably, the Catechism of the Catholic Church relies on a limited interpretation of Scripture, presenting homosexual acts as “acts of grave depravity” and claims that ‘tradition’ declares that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” The Catechism further states that homosexual acts “do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity” and describes homosexual tendencies and inclinations as “objectively disordered”. This teaching could cause considerable distress to people of LGBTIQ sexual orientation, particularly young people in Catholic schools.
The Catechism also notes however that those of homosexual orientation “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and that “every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.” That mutual respect is reflected in modern society, as illustrated by the marriage equality legislation passed by Australian and other parliaments throughout the world. The Catholic Church needs to fix this ambiguity in its teaching and dissociate itself from the move to protect unjust religious discrimination of LGBTIQ people.
Freedom of thought and religion is of course fundamental to a democratic society. Australians already enjoy that freedom of thought and religion. The proposed legislation seems to be about a licence to discriminate against LGBTIQ persons, sadly using religion as an excuse. There is a real danger that these laws could lead to young LGBTIQ people, already vulnerable to some ill-informed prejudice, being damaged by explicit rejection of their sexual being in religious schools. This would undo much of the social gains of marriage equality – perhaps that is what the proponents of this mooted legislation for ‘religious freedom’ really want.
Peter Johnstone is a member of Catholics for Renewal Inc.
Peter Johnstone consults in good governance practices and is committed to renewal of the Catholic Church.
Comments
5 responses to “PETER JOHNSTONE. Is religious freedom code for a licence to discriminate?”
Ken is right. Section 116 says it all. I’m hoping Scott Morrison has the good sense to cool down this nonsense. We need to keep religion out of politics. The founding fathers who wrote Section 116 were inspired by the American Constitution but in the Australian setting their immediate concern was conflict between Roman Catholics and Protestants. We should not encourage religious fundamentalism, whether Christian or Muslim.
In this whole sorry saga, has anybody actually looked at the Australian Constitution?
Section 116 clearly states:
The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth
The Government does not have to make any legislation about religious freedom, it’s a nonsense.
If LGBTIQ want to worship at the church of their choice, they can.
The only laws that need changing are the outdated anti-discrimination laws.
I would argue that claims in the name of religion ought to be tested objectively; surely we would not agree to allow female circumcision just because there are people who sincerely believe their religion requires female circumcision.
It may be that discrimination against LGBT may survive objective scrutiny, but we ought to have a transparent process to make that call. My own view as a Christian is that those Scriptural passages that regard homosexual practice as a sin does not require Christians to discriminate against LGBT. In fact, we are taught to love our enemies. The correct response is to do our best to persuade Christians who are homosexual to lead celibate lives, but Christians have no business telling other people to be celibate. Celibacy ought to be a voluntary choice, not force. (And acknowledging that none of us are perfect is in fact central to Christianity!)
The point here is that there are alternative reasonable interpretations of the claims of Christianity, and each claim ought to be objectively scrutinised.
I think ‘religious freedom’ is really a demand for ‘social conservative’s freedom’ to express bigotry and preserve privilege.
We Christians are free to assemble, sing, preach and mostly evangelise how we wish. There is no persecution of Christians in Australia our religious freedom is not interfered with in any substantial way.
As to the rugby player. Employers putting morals clauses into contracts needs to be discussed I think.
Employers putting moral clauses into contracts does indeed need to be discussed – and the default position should be to avoid them and allow employees normal freedom. However, I’m not sure Folau was subject to a “moral” clause exactly – nobody forbade his holding of personal moral and religious beliefs, merely the public expression of a very limited number of them. As there are a great many existing restrictions on public expression, this is hardly a cruel and unusual restriction of personal or religious freedom.
And the position of so public a figure as a great rugby player as a role model and hero for young people does impose an unavoidable responsibility on that individual. This was made clear to Folau from the outset and he had already received a warning for a previous incident.
To paraphrase that American judge, one might have a right to religious freedom, but one doesn’t have a right to play for Rugby Australia.