Opinion
Many years ago, I found myself “between jobs”, as they say. Mrs Brady, diligently scanning the job ads, found a position open in a health food store. “Must have a commitment to sharing organic and vegan lifestyles”, the ad specified. I pointed out that I was, if anything, diametrically opposed to both. Why on earth would I go for a job with a company whose entire philosophy I vehemently disagreed with? I’d have to lie through my teeth even to get through the interview. And they’d fire me the first time I laughed at some weedy soy-boy inquiring about organic, free-trade, vegan quinoa.
It would be fair on neither them nor me.
I always think of that whenever I read of some person or other from the el gibbety community, whining and throwing a tanty after being sacked from a Christian school. After all, what’s it to do with the school authorities if Miss Brian has an OnlyFans account, or shows up to the Easter fete in a leather bondage harness, leading their half-naked they/them on a lead like a dog?
(I’d note, too, that such types never seem to want to work at Muslim schools. Funny about that.)
But never underestimate the government’s ability to take a non-issue and completely screw it up.
An “Orwellian’’ law to stop religious schools sacking gay or adulterous teachers or expelling transgender students has been attacked by church groups.
The Australian Christian Lobby blasted the Queensland government’s “draconian’’ draft anti-discrimination bill, which would ban Jewish or Christian schools from sacking any teacher or expelling any student who converts to Islam.
“This bill reads like an addendum to Orwell’s novel, 1984,’’ ACL Queensland director Rob Norman said on Monday.
Worse, it reads likes something co-drafted by Kafka and Mao.
For instance, the Bill declares that a school can discriminate on the basis of religious belief, but not gender identity. Yet, the very notion of “gender identity” is a strongly contested religious belief.
“If tabled and passed, religious schools will be required to surrender some of their deepest-held theological views and values and be subjected to the invasive oversight of the Department of Justice and the Attorney-General.
“State-controlled religion has, until now, been the domain of the old Soviet Union or China.’’
Anti-discrimination lawyer Mark Fowler warned Queensland’s proposal would “legislate the most restrictive regime for religious institutions in Australia”.
“It would prevent a church from disciplining a bishop or imam who engaged in extramarital affairs, whether heterosexual or homosexual, or even where they engaged in prostitution,” he said.
The Kafka-esque contradictions continue.
It singles out science teachers as a group who could not be discriminated against on religious grounds, given religious instruction is not part of that job.
Except that scientific teachings frequently contradict religious scriptures. If students argue in class that, say, the world was created in six days, or that Muhammad flew from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night, and the science teacher states that both are scientifically impossible, how are they not giving religious instruction?
These are all, of course, part of the normal discourse of religion and science. That they are somehow the state’s business to regulate is a sinister overreach.
“The QHRC concluded that it is necessary to limit religious freedom in this way to uphold the privacy and non-discrimination rights of staff in religious bodies.’’
If staff are openly gay, or even more obviously a man in a dress, what “privacy” can they claim to need upholding?
The bill spells out that schools can discriminate against students on the grounds of religion and sex when they enrol. But if a student changes sex or religion, a school would not be able to expel them.
Under the proposed changes, it would be illegal for a Jewish school to expel a student who converts to Islam, for a Muslim school to expel an existing student who is homosexual, or for a Catholic girls school to expel a transgender student who transitions to a boy […]
Queensland’s Labor government drafted the bill in the wake of a public furore in 2022 when Citipointe Christian College in Brisbane tried to force parents to sign an enrolment contract accepting their children must behave “on the basis of the individual’s biological sex’’, and describing homosexuality as “immoral and offensive to God’’.
The Australian
Both of which are straightforward Christian orthodoxies, unequivocally attested by Christian scripture. Why would anyone who believes otherwise even want to attend a Christian school?
Still, they could always try the madrassah down the road. I dare them.