The Coalition's dwindling commitment to religious freedom Editorial
The Scott Morrison government's long-awaited Religious Discrimination Bill has been a huge disappointment to many Christian voters across Australia.
At the 2019 federal election the Liberal and National parties solemnly promised to enact protections for religious conscience rights. But, as in Latin poet Horace's line "The mountains will go into labour, and bring forth a ridiculous mouse", the result of the Coalition's efforts has been derisory.
The bill, in the form it was introduced into the House of Representatives late last year, was a let-down for many people of faith. Earlier drafts of the bill had contained much-needed protections for "statements of belief". One key provision would have prevented employers from being able to sack employees for expressing their religious views in the social media.
This guarantee (later deleted) was dubbed the "Folau clause" after the public controversy generated by a social media post by rugby player Israel Folau in 2019, in which he loosely paraphrased St Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians 6:9–10. The post declared that "Hell awaits" sinners, including "drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators", and that they should "repent".
Predictably, LGBTQ activists took great offence at these remarks and denounced them as "homophobic", as if Folau had singled out homosexual sinners alone as deserving God's wrath. (In fact, the Corinthians passage he paraphrased listed several other categories of sin, including heterosexual ones.)
Rugby Australia immediately terminated Folau's contract. It was only after a lengthy and costly legal challenge that Folau was able to have this decision overturned.
The Folau affair was only one of the more public instances of employers discriminating against employees on the basis of their public expressions of religious belief. Many other Australian religious believers have also lost their jobs over postings in the social media and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, in producing the final draft of the Morrison government's Religious Discrimination Bill, Attorney-General Michaelia Cash chose to drop the controversial "Folau clause" in order to placate LGBTQ lobbyists and a handful of Liberal MPs who said the clause was "unacceptable" to them.
How far the great party founded by Robert Menzies has declined when it is no longer prepared to defend the right — a right that Australians have hitherto taken for granted — to quote or paraphrase the Bible in public!
The Morrison government's weakened and compromised Religious Discrimination Bill, however, was not enough to satisfy the gender diversity brigade. When it came to a vote in the House of Representatives, five dissident Liberal MPs — Trent Zimmerman, Dave Sharma, Bridget Archer, Katie Allen and Fiona Martin — crossed the floor to vote for amendments moved by the Labor opposition, thereby stripping the Morrison government's proposed legislation of important protections for Christian and single-sex schools.
The government, thus ambushed by both Labor and the dissident Liberal MPs, stopped the amended bill from proceeding to a vote in the Senate.
In the run-up to the forthcoming federal election, people of faith should press hard for the long-overdue restoration of their religious freedoms and conscience rights. Christian voters, in particular, should tell candidates in no uncertain terms that they will accept nothing less than the following four specific legislative protections:
●The right of a religious believer to quote or paraphrase the Bible in public and not be sacked for alleged hate speech.
● The right of a conscientious doctor not to be compelled by law to refer a patient for an abortion or euthanasia.
● The right of a person with unwanted same-sex attractions to be able to seek and receive professional counselling or prayer. (Both of these are now prohibited in the state of Victoria under its recent "conversion therapy" ban, which should more accurately be called the Counselling Censorship Law.)
● The right of a religious school, hospital or charity to employ staff who support its values.
Nevertheless, although the Coalition has failed to remove
threats to religious freedom enshrined in the Sex Discrimination
Amendment Act 2013, the return of another Labor-Greens
government at the coming federal election will bring further
legal restrictions on the lives of people of faith and the rights of
parents to bring up their children according to their beliefs.
