Mark Latham, religious freedom, and LGBT rights
By: Dana Pham
Tags: LGBTQ, Law, Religion, Discrimination, Equality

“The trouble they make for others backfires on them.” — Psalm 7:16 (NLT)

Despite popular belief, we have a religious discrimination issue in the West. Bar-Ilan University’s Jonathan Fox has undertaken a painstaking analysis proving this, and Australia isn’t immune. He singled out Australia out for the recent rise of socially-based discrimination against religious minorities, especially against Jews and Muslims. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry similarly warned of a recent significant rise in anti-Semitic incidents. Such discrimination also includes government-based religious discrimination, like restrictions on the construction of religious buildings, controls on religious literature and prohibitions on chaplaincy services in prisons.

Whilst we need religious anti-discrimination legislation in NSW, and Federally, One Nation’s Mark Latham’s Religious Discrimination Bill goes beyond combating discrimination, unlike other anti-discrimination measures in place. It prioritises religion over all other views, practices and attributes, and exempts religious bodies who discriminate and refuse to comply with some existing NSW laws. It also makes it difficult for employers to enforce codes of conduct.

The Bill defines religious belief as either “having a religious conviction, belief, opinion or affiliation” or “not having any”. This is subjective, and hangs the agnostics out to dry. Whilst the Bill tries to prevent another Israel Folau saga, the Bill wouldn’t protect the atheist Folaus out there. Schools would be unable to manage students for engaging in religiously-motivated bullying or harassment against, say Christian students. And if this Bill passes, wouldn’t employers then try to avoid hiring even vaguely religious employees to avoid the potential hassle?

Under the Bill, religious bodies could challenge and avoid criminal laws imposing duties to report child abuse and neglect to authorities. This could be on the basis of religious doctrine opposing unsealing the confessional. Also, religious bodies could be exempt from the operation of the entire Bill, allowing discrimination against people of other beliefs. I would expect a gay teacher to be allowed to teach at a Christian school as long as they teach Christian doctrine on say, homosexual practices, and a student at a Islamic school shouldn’t be expelled if they decide to convert to Christianity at some point, as long as that student agrees to continue studying Islam. With freedom from discrimination comes responsibility to not discriminate, have we not learnt from the stalled Federal Religious Discrimination Bill?

Latham’s other Bill, the Parental Rights Education Bill is a bit more balanced. This Bill would force schools to consult with parents before teaching “core values” or the like (“ethical and moral standards, social and political values and an understanding of personal identity”), and would allow parents to withdraw students from those classes. In other words, students could still be taught “gender fluidity” with parental consent — fair enough. He can’t have this Bill’s cake, and eat the other Bill’s cake too. But I can understand why he’s pushing for these Bills; cultural reset of some sort is needed, and I tend to agree from personal experience.

One of the latest cultural trends is to put your gender pronouns on your name tag, or your email signature block. This serves a practical purpose for people whose gender presentation is not clear, due to gender-ambiguous first name, early stages of gender transition, non-binary status, amongst other reasons. But I’ve seen other people, especially cisgender people, doing the same, and this kind of pressures other people to do the same. The argument for them doing this is along the lines of diversity and inclusion. But what’s the point in this if it doesn’t address real-world issues transgender people face?

Issues such as higher rates of homelessness, discrimination and mental health issues? Every time I see cisgender people announcing their pronouns, all I see is virtual-signalling lip service that usually isn’t complemented with solutions for real-world problems. It’s infuriating because it doesn’t really help trans people, and it’s condescending because it assumes trans people are snowflakes by default. Trans people don’t need coddling, rather, they need to be given the tools to be confident and effective in fully participating in society.

Such wokeness is not genuine, because it’s all only happening in the past few years because it’s trendy to be seen as trans friendly in 2020. Where was the trans friendiness of such from a decade ago? The West is replacing God, with wokeness apparently, and it’s getting out of control.