Religious freedom is being threatened by gay marriage
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| English: the moment of the Marriage Equality Act vote at the capital building in Albany NY June 24, 2011. In the balcony of the chambers. photographed by the Celebration Chapel of Kingston NY (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The concerted push to legalise same-sex marriage in Australia
threatens to undermine the religious freedoms of our faith communities.
Earlier this month, the private office of Australian Marriage
Forum President David van Gend was the target
of vandals who spray-painted the word ‘Bigot’ across the building’s
edifice.
Despite cautions from Australian Marriage Equality to ‘not jump to
conclusions about the perpetrator’, it’s hard to believe that van Gend was
targeted for any reason other than his opposition to same-sex marriage.
Regrettably, the AMF President is not the first casualty of this
war against religious freedom – nor will he be the last. Over the past four
years, public opponents of same-sex marriage have been subject to a coordinated
campaign of censorship and vilification.
In January 2012, tennis legend and now Christian pastor Margaret
Court was ruthlessly
vilified for voicing a conventional heterosexual view of marriage. Gay
rights activist Kerryn Phelps demanded that Margaret Court Arena be renamed to
purge it of any association with supposed bigotry or homophobia.
Just four months later, Victoria’s deputy chief psychiatrist
Professor Kuruvilla George – a former Christian missionary – was forced
to resign from the Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. The
professor’s unpardonable sin was to sign a submission suggesting that children
raised by both a mother and father fared better than children without a parent
of either sex – a relatively mainstream view shared by many Australians.
Despite Professor George being cleared of any misconduct, his
position on the EOHRC was made untenable by the vendetta of vilification waged
against him.Shortly after, he resigned.
“
This culture of censorship is also infiltrating the sections of
the media which are prosecuting a partisan agenda in support of so-called
‘marriage equality’.
”
This culture of censorship is also infiltrating the sections of
the media, which are prosecuting a partisan agenda in support of so-called
‘marriage equality’.
In March, SBS management pulled
a television advertisement critical of same-sex marriage that had
already been booked and paid for by the AMF. Instead, the station broadcast an
uninterrupted telecast of Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Three weeks ago, ABC Radio National’s Fran Kelly shut
down an interview with Australian Christian Lobby Managing Director
Lyle Shelton who simply asked: ‘If you remove the gender requirement, why
wouldn’t you then remove the numeric requirement?’
Instead of acknowledging that polyamorists are in fact publicly
demanding to be included in so-called ‘marriage equality’ reforms, Kelly
accused Shelton of ‘scaremongering’ and guillotined the interview within 30
seconds.
Those of us who watched last week’s Q&A Special, ‘Between a Frock and a
Hard Place’ would have noticed that the panel was stacked five-to-one
against Fred Nile, the single advocate of conventional heterosexual marriage.
Indeed, the special episode was aired with the specific purpose of highlighting
and presumably normalising ‘changing attitudes to sexuality and gender’.
This debate is the single most decisive step in Australia to
curtail the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion – a freedom
protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
By contrast, the European Court of Human Rights has expressly
ruled that same-sex
marriage is not in fact a human right, as so-called ‘marriage equality’
advocates would have us believe.
It’s a worrying sign when emotive rhetoric rides roughshod over
supposedly inalienable rights protected at international law.
This is where the Shorten-Plibersek ‘marriage equality’ bill –
currently before the Parliament – falls so short. It fails to provide
sufficient protections for private service providers who have a genuine
religious objection to facilitating a same-sex marriage.
Sure, it provides that ministers of religion will not be forced to
officiate same-sex weddings. This is the very least it could do.
But what about the Muslim wedding planner who has a genuine faith
objection to plan a lesbian wedding? Or the Jewish marriage counsellor who
cannot in good conscience provide sex therapy to an engaged homosexual couple?
And this is no mere rhetorical question.
In 2009, a Christian relationships counsellor in the United
Kingdom was sacked
for standing by his religious conviction to not provide sex therapy to
a gay couple. His employer could have easily reallocated his caseload. Instead,
it fired him. The UK Employment Appeals Tribunal upheld his dismissal as
lawful.
If the Shorten-Plibersek bill is passed in its current form, there
will be no protection at law that would prevent the UK experience from being
mirrored right here in Australia.
The bill fails to appreciate the significant consequences of
legalising same-sex marriage for Australia’s faith communities. Instead, it
buys into the superficial rhetoric that any opposition to same-sex marriage is
bigoted discrimination that should be censored, silenced and outlawed.
Much more than the institution of marriage is at stake in this
debate. At risk is the freedom of faith communities to not just believe but
also express their religious convictions in what is supposed to be a modern
liberal democracy.
