LEGAL EXPERTS and gay rights lobbyists are outraged after the Victorian state government announced that religious groups will be allowed to discriminate against gays, single mothers and people of other faiths.
Victoria’s attorney-general Rob Hulls said the move would protect the right of church-run schools, hospitals and welfare services to refuse to employ or provide services to people whom they believe may undermine their beliefs. The changes will be introduced to the state parliament early next year.
Religious groups had campaigned to continue discriminating as they saw fit. This could mean, for instance, that religious schools refuse to hire single mothers or gays or that a Muslim school could refuse to employ a Christian.
In a compromise reached with religious organisations, they will be allowed to continue discriminating on the grounds of gender, sexuality, marital and parental status and gender identity, but they will no longer be able to discriminate on the basis of race, disability, age, physical features, political beliefs or activity or breastfeeding.
Prof Margaret Thornton, a discrimination law expert, said it was a win for fundamentalist religious groups. “A person’s private life . . . their sexual preference or marital status really has nothing to do with their ability to perform a job. Being able to discriminate on marital status is particularly absurd,” she said. “It is really out of date. It really amounts to the policing of women because the focus is on single mothers, not on men.”
Gay rights lobbyists have also reacted with dismay to the proposed law change. Rodney Croome of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group says the right to employment and education should not be bound up with religion.
“Too often this issue is seen as gay rights versus religious freedom when, in fact, it is about the right to a job you’re qualified for, to attend the school of your choosing and to receive essential services,” he said.
Rob Ward of the Australian Christian Lobby welcomed the decision. The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Denis Hart, also praised the decision as “striking a fair and correct balance” between competing rights.
Dr Hart’s predecessor as archbishop, Dr George Pell, consistently refused communion to gay and lesbian parishioners. On one occasion Dr Pell, who is now Archbishop of Sydney, said God “made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”, after refusing Communion to gay and lesbian Catholics who came to the altar wearing rainbow sashes.
In the run-up to next year’s state election, the new laws may appease religious groups angry with the Labor government for decriminalising abortion a year ago. Pastor Danny Nalliah of the Pentecostal Catch the Fire Ministries said the Victorian bush fire disaster, which killed 173 people last February, was caused by God because of the decriminalisation of abortion. Pastor Nalliah said God told him in a dream that “His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb”.