Will mandatory “Safe Schools” programs follow the introduction of same-sex marriage?
The Conversation article today was one by Emeritus Professor Bill Louden, “FactCheck: will Safe Schools be ‘mandatory’ if same-sex marriage is legalised?” (The Conversation, Oct 2, 2017). This was in response to a claim made on advertising issued by the Australian Conservatives:
If same-sex marriage is legalised, Safe Schools and others like it will be mandatory in schools.
It is worth noting, of course, that Professor Louden, as the Conversation makes clear:
was previously on the board of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). In 2016, Bill Louden was commissioned by Education Minister Simon Birmingham to conduct an independent review into the appropriateness and efficacy of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia program resource.
The result of Professor Louden’s previous, very quick, review was that the Turnbull Government withdrew some of its support for the “Safe Schools” program, although not immediately and not completely (and some jurisdictions have announced they will proceed with it themselves).
So Professor Louden is not an unabashed advocate for the program, and his views need to be taken very seriously. For comments on the outcome of the previous report see here; and for a detailed and carefully researched critique of the Program by an expert in law and child safety, see the paper by Professor Patrick Parkinson from the University of Sydney Law School, “The Controversy over the Safe Schools Program – Finding the Sensible Centre” (September 14, 2016; Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 16/83.)
So, is the claim made in the pamphlet incorrect or not? From the black-letter legal perspective, yes; proposals for changing the law to allow same sex couples to marry have not included any direct authorisation of the Safe Schools agenda.
However, the claim needs to be seen in its context. The Australian Conservatives pamphlet was issued in the midst of a political debate where what is at stake is not simply the immediate change to the law, but the pragmatic question of what will follow from this change. The view being put is that it will be a consequence of changing the definition of marriage to make gender no longer relevant in marriage, that there will be increased support in government circles for a school program which stresses the irrelevance (and “fluidity”) of gender in all aspects of life. Put in that way, I think the claim is one that has some validity.
Indeed, one can in fact see this consequence again in the UK. Recently the UK Minister for Equality, Justine Greening, announced wide-reaching changes to “streamline” processes by which a person can register a change in their sex without medical advice. In doing so she is said to have commented that this was a result of a movement which included the change to marriage in 2013:
Justine Greening, the UK minister for women and equalities, called the move to give more rights to transgender people the third great “step forward” after equality for women and the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2013.
These changes around the area of “gender fluidity” are clearly closely connected to educational changes requiring children to be taught from a young age that there is no such thing as a “real” gender, an underpinning of the Safe Schools program. (For commentary on these issues from the UK in response to these announcements, see here.)
The other aspect of the statement which is critiqued in Professor Louden’s Fact-Check is that in no States or Territories is it said that the Safe Schools material (even where it will continue to be offered by individual jurisdictions) will be “compulsory”, in the sense of it being required by the Government that it be offered at every school. This is true, but there is an interesting caveat offered by one of the Fact-Check’s “fact-checkers”, Murray Print, Professor of Education at the University of Sydney:
There is one clarification regarding the term “curriculum”. Many people argue that the school curriculum is the list of school subjects that are taught to students. Safe Schools is not required as a school subject, or within a school subject.Others claim “curriculum” consists of all the planned learning offered to students. Using this definition, if an individual school or state required Safe Schools to be part of the student learning experience, then it would become a mandatory part of a school curriculum. Even in such cases, the engagement with any program would be the responsibility of individual schools. Again, this has no relation to the outcome of the postal survey, or any subsequent legislation.
While not challenging the overall thrust of Professor Louden’s comments, Professor Print makes the important point that, even if no jurisdiction makes the material compulsory for all schools, from the perspective of a concerned parent, if the school their child attends decides to adopt the material, at that point it will be “mandatory” for that child. (And no doubt the political pressure on schools to offer this material will be very strong.)
These are important caveats that, with respect, I think ought to have been made very clear. Reasonable minds may differ on whether, as a pragmatic political outcome, support among educational authorities for the Safe Schools program will be increased by a “Yes” vote for same-sex marriage. For a child whose school has adopted the material if there is such an increase in support, it will become “mandatory”, and there is no guarantee that parents will be allowed to object to their children being taught this material. In these senses the claim made in the advertising, while debatable, has not been clearly shown to be “incorrect”.
Conclusion
Concerns over religious freedom and the consequences of a change to the fundamental nature of marriage are genuine concerns that, in my view, constitute good reasons for the Australian public to be very cautious about making this change, particularly in the absence of any clear indications as how religious and parental freedoms will be protected. In my view these (as well as other reasons I have set out previously) are good reasons for voting “No” in the current survey.
In accordance with s 6(5) of the Marriage Law Survey (Additional Safeguards) Act 2017, this communication was authorised by Neil Foster, of Newcastle, NSW.
