Religious Freedom, Love and Diversity

Wednesday, 7 August 2019  | Jon Eastgate

Abstract

The debate around the legalisation of same-sex marriage and the government’s subsequent commission of the Ruddock Review on Religious Freedom has generated concern among many Christians about their ongoing freedom to practice their faith in public contexts. It’s easy to become defensive in this environment and to try to place protections around ourselves. Yet Jesus calls us to love our neighbours as ourselves, and even to love our enemies, as a central element of the call to follow him. How can we love those who are different to us, and even possibly opposed to us? This article takes a fresh look at three widely publicised cases of public conflict between Christians who oppose same sex-marriage and passionate supporters of such marriage. In doing so it reflects tentatively on our preparedness to grant others the rights we seek for ourselves, our ability to understand how our words and actions impact on others, and our willingness to engage constructively and lovingly with those who differ from us.

Reading Zadok Perspectives 139 on Religious Liberty in Australia, along with its two accompanying papers (S229 and S230), provided a lot of food for thought about the place of religious faith in a diverse secular society, especially in the wake of the Australian Marriage Survey.

The centrepiece of this edition is three submissions to the Ruddock Review on Religious Freedom by: Timothy Arnold-Moore on behalf of the Anglican Archdiocese of Melbourne Social Responsibilities Committee;[1] Mark Sneddon on behalf of the Institute for Civil Society;[2] and Ian Benson.[3] While these three articles are far from identical their points of view are similar enough to suggest that, if they did not actually discuss their submissions with one another (a common practice among allies in such processes, and one I have been involved in myself in my professional life), they have at least come out of a common framework and approach to the issues.

As you would expect, all three articles are very much focused on protecting the freedom of Australians, particularly Australian Christians, to practice and express their faith under Australian law. They focus strongly, and justly, on the fact that while Australia is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which expressly protects religious liberty, this covenant is very imperfectly translated into Australian law, including as regards religious freedom.

All three authors use this as a starting point for a largely defensive analysis: how can we strengthen Australian law to ensure individuals and religious institutions are not impeded in their right to express and practice their belief? To their credit, all three acknowledge that the international legal framework applies not just to formal religious belief but also to any belief, including the right to no religion at all. Hence what they seek is a general protection of the freedom of belief or, to use the term preferred by Marilynne Robinson in the same edition, freedom of conscience.[4]

While there was much to like in their analysis, I couldn’t help thinking that there was something missing. Reading their work outside the specific context of the Ruddock Review, they seemed to be begging the question, ‘how should Christians behave in a diverse society?’. This disquiet was heightened by reviewing the lists of cases (very similar although not identical) that appear as appendices in Arnold-Moore’s and Sneddon’s articles. These cases are presented uncritically as examples of potential threats to religious freedom, but it seemed to me that looking closer at some of them might help us to think more deeply about our own conduct as Christians. What follows lays some foundations and then looks at three of the cases as a way of highlighting some of the broader issues involved here.

Loving our diverse neighbours

No doubt, most readers will be familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. It begins with a question from a lawyer:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher”, he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”; and, “Love your neighbour as yourself”.

“You have answered correctly”, Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

In response to the lawyer’s request for clarification of the second part of this dual commandment, Jesus tells the story of the Samaritan who rescues an assault victim from the side of the road. The message, in part, is that loving our neighbour involves reaching out in service and common humanity across barriers of race and religion. The Samaritan’s loving act is contrasted with the approach of the religious establishment (personified by the priest and Levite who ignore the man’s plight), which focused inward on purity, ritual and the right interpretation of the Scriptures.

This same message is found throughout Jesus’ teaching, with phrases such as ‘do to others as you would have them do to you’ (Mt. 7:12), ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (John 15:12) and even ‘love your enemies’ (Mt. 5:44). In Romans 13, Paul makes it clear that this is not simply one commandment among many but the foundation for all morality: ‘The commandments… are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Love does no harm to a neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law’.

This love takes us beyond a defensive position into a realm of more active and risky engagement with those who are different from us, even with those who hate us. It asks us to think, not simply about how we can protect our right to express some specifics of our faith and protect the integrity of our own community and institutions (which leads us by easy steps towards the position of the priest and Levite), but also how we can actively reach out and love even the people who might want to suppress our message. If we are not living this faith and love, then you have to ask whether our faith is worth defending.

I have always found it helpful, in such debates, to think in terms of real people rather than abstractions. Hence I would like to lift three of the cases out of Arnold-Moore’s and Sneddon’s appendices and engage with them in more detail as a way of challenging us to think about our own behaviour towards those who are different to us. The first step in ‘doing to others as we would have them do to us’ is to exercise our capacity for empathy, to see the other person’s views clearly and to ‘walk a mile in their shoes’, in order to correctly understand what they might want us to do for them. In the process we will see ourselves in a clearer light and grow in our own faith.

Capital Parties

The case of Capital Parties in the ACT appears as Sneddon’s Case 1 and Arnold-Moore’s Case D. Arnold-Moore describes it as follows:

In Canberra, a young woman contractor to Capital Parties expressed the view that 'It was OK to vote No' in the plebiscite. The business owner sacked her and said she did so because the contractor's Facebook views showed she was a bigot and a homophobe.

Read this way, it seems to be a grave injustice. A young woman is fired for expressing her private opinion on a current democratic process. However, it is worth looking a little closer. The ABC’s Triple J ‘Hack’ column presented a report of the case at the time, with detailed quotes from both parties in the dispute.[5]

Firstly, it is important to understand what sparked the dispute. The young woman, identified only by her first name Madeline, added a Coalition for Marriage frame to her Facebook profile, proclaiming ‘it’s OK to vote NO’ with a Coalition for Marriage logo. Madeline was not simply expressing a private view or an endorsement of democracy; she was aligning herself publicly with the Coalition for Marriage’s campaign. I discuss this controversial campaign in more detail later.

The owner of Capital Parties, Madlin Sims, claims that she first asked her brother who also worked in the business to phone Madeline and ask her to take down the profile picture. When she refused, Sims terminated her relationship with the company (she was not technically fired because she was an independent contractor, billing Capital Parties through her own ABN). Sims explained her decision in two separate social media posts:

Advertising your desire to vote no is, in my opinion, hate speech. Voting no is homophobic. Advertising your homophobia is hate speech. As a business owner I can’t have someone who publicly represents my business posting hate speech online….

As a business that works with children of all kinds, we have a responsibility to working with vulnerable people and having someone who is out and proud about their beliefs (which are statistically proven to have horrible effects on young people in the gay community) is a risk for the wellbeing of the children we work with….

We have gay staff members. We entertain at parties where the children of gay parents attend. We entertain at parties where gay children attend.

The Hack reports Madeline’s response as follows:

Madeline said she was not homophobic, that she had many gay and lesbian friends and respected their views and loved them "as people".

"If I'm attending a party and dressed up as Minnie Mouse and the child there is same-sex attracted I'm going to love that child like I would any other child," she said.

She also said her views was based on concern for children - similar to the arguments in the Coalition for Marriage's “Vote No” TV ads, she said same-sex marriage would lead to more 'Safe Schools' sex ed programs. She said it would "change the way things are done in school" and "the way kids are adopted into same-sex families”.

"I love everyone, I'm not a hateful person at all”, Madeline said.

"I wish that everyone could have equality - I do believe everyone should have equality but to vote yes, to me, is something I can't do. I cannot do it.”

There certainly seems to be case to be made that Madeline has been the victim of an injustice and that Madlin Sims has overreacted. It is worrying that the employment arrangement between them (which creates the fiction that Madeline was self-employed) prevented her from taking any action on this injustice, and better legal protection may have resulted in her receiving some compensation.

However, it is also worth looking at this from the point of view of the freedom of conscience afforded to Madlin Sims and her business under the ICCPR.

• Religious freedom includes freedom to express and act on beliefs, whether religious or non-religious.
• Religious freedom includes the right to educate children in accordance with that religion or belief.

Arnold-Moore, Benson and Sneddon all argue that this right logically leads to the right of religiously-based schools to educate children in a way that is consistent with the faith of their parents. This means that these schools need to be free to employ staff throughout their organisation (including non-educational roles such as gardeners and cleaners) who subscribe to that same faith.

Yet this is precisely the right that Madlin Sims asserts in defence of her actions. She states an ethos of inclusion, particularly inclusion of people in same-sex relationships and children who are same-sex attracted. She wants people working in her business to faithfully embody this view, and doesn’t want people who express the opposite view in the business because that will compromise the ethos and expose children to views she regards as damaging.

It is impossible for us to argue for the right of religious schools to employ religious staff and not, at the same time, argue for the right of non-religious organisations with responsibility towards children to employ staff who reflect their values. But we need to think about the trajectory this would place us on. Madeline could, perhaps, decide to exercise her religious freedom by going into the children’s party business herself, employing other Christians who she can be confident will support a traditional view of sexuality and marriage. Their main customers would probably be Christian families. Meanwhile, Madlin Sims will continue to run her party business using staff who are comfortable with marriage equality, running parties for families who are similarly inclined. Our schools could take a similar trajectory, and over time our community would become increasingly divided along this fissure. We would have fewer opportunities to interact, less understanding of one another, more opportunities for misunderstanding.

Is this how, as Christians, we want to live out our mandate to be the embodiment of Christ in this world? Or do we want to draw closer to our neighbours in love? If it is the latter, then we need to find more constructive ways to bridge the divide between us and to live at peace. Which brings me to the Porteous case.

Archbishop Porteous and Martine Delaney

This case appears as Case B in Arnold-Moore’s list, and as Case 6 in Sneddon’s. Arnold-Moore describes it as follows:

…complaints against dissemination of or preaching of standard Christian doctrine under Tasmania's very broad provisions prohibiting causing offence or insult.

In Tasmania, a booklet outlining the Catholic position on same sex marriage distributed by a Catholic Archbishop to parents of Catholic school students was held by the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner to be a possible violation of anti-vilification legislation. The matter proceeded to a conciliation session but was eventually abandoned many months later by the complainant.

Sneddon discusses the case in stronger terms:

These complaints tie up the Christian speakers for many months in a secret conciliation process, with the threat of a later tribunal hearing and an award of compensation if they don’t reach a conciliated outcome. Effectively, this use of anti-vilification laws enables people on one side of a disagreement to intimidate reasonable speakers on the other side by subjecting them to the time and legal costs of defending their viewpoint in a government commission.

There is a good deal in these descriptions of the case that needs to be challenged. The first and most important is the notion that the aim of the complaint was to stop the Catholic Church from disseminating ‘standard Christian doctrine’ or ‘reasonable and moderate statements of traditional Christian teaching’.

Martine Delaney, the transgender activist who brought the complaint against the Catholic Church in Tasmania, talks about it in these terms:[6]

Delaney told BuzzFeed News she did not take issue with the church distributing its teachings on marriage. Rather, she objected to the "offensive" way the booklet referred to and treated same-sex relationships.

Delaney took particular offence at a line in the booklet reading: "Messing with marriage is, therefore, also messing with kids". She said it was "incredibly offensive" and suggestive of sexual abuse.

"Right across Australian society, this phrase, 'messing with kids', is commonly used to discuss and imply the sexual abuse of children", Delaney wrote. "Its use here appears to be an insidious attempt to offend, humiliate and insult the standing of all same-sex couples raising children.”

During the conciliation process that resulted from the case, Delaney presented a version of the Catholic Church’s booklet with her suggestions for how it could be revised to remove the offence.[7] It suggests that in place of the words ‘messing with marriage, therefore, is also messing with kids’, the booklet could read, ‘messing with marriage, therefore, is also placing the wellbeing of children at risk’. Significantly, the suggested edit doesn’t suggest at any point that the church endorse same sex marriage or same sex relationships. For instance, it continues to include this statement, as slightly modified by Delaney but essentially retaining the original message:

In saying that other friendships are not marriages, the Church does not seek to demean those other friendships or the individuals concerned, but merely to clearly state our belief that marriage is the covenant of a man and a woman to live as husband and wife, exclusively and for life, and open to the procreation of children.

Delaney, as evidenced by both her words and her suggested edit of the booklet, is trying to find a way the church can continue to express its traditional teaching without giving unnecessary offence to LGBTIQ people. I am not a Catholic theologian so am unable to judge whether her edits retain a correct understanding of Catholic teaching, but the purpose of conciliation is to enable Delaney to discuss this face-to-face with Archbishop Porteous and, if possible, reach a mutually agreeable solution.

In describing this process, Arnold-Moore is fairly neutral but Sneddon takes a very negative view that I have often heard from other Christians. In using the word ‘secret’ rather than ‘confidential’ and suggesting the process is used to ‘intimidate’ rather than to resolve a genuine issue, Sneddon creates the sense of something sinister and oppressive. His comments about time and cost also seem exaggerated given how these bodies work, and fail to recognise that the complainants devote similar time and resources to the case. I wonder how he thinks such issues should be resolved in a diverse and democratic society.

Equal Opportunity Tasmania, the body that handles these cases, reports that it received 147 complaints in 2016-17, with the largest category of complaints being to do with disability discrimination. Of these, 59 were rejected after initial assessment, 49 were resolved through conciliation and only 15 proceeded to a formal tribunal hearing. The process is also relatively informal, and reasonably educated and articulate disputants can navigate the process without legal assistance – only 12 complainants, and 37 respondents, had legal representation.[8]

This type of process seems to me to be quite consistent with Christian teaching. In Matthew 5:25-26 Jesus says, ‘Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny’. Tasmanian anti-discrimination law, like similar laws around the country, enshrines this approach in its formal processes. Litigation and tribunal hearings are seen as a last resort and are used sparingly. The system is strongly oriented towards assisting parties in a dispute to reach a negotiated solution, keeping the costs for both parties down so that the process itself does not become a punishment.

Martine Delaney and Archbishop Porteous participated in two conciliation sessions at which Delaney presented her revised version of the booklet along with a proposed joint statement agreeing to standards of conduct during future dialogue. Porteous presented his own suggested joint statement expressing regret about the misunderstandings that had taken place. They were unable to reach agreement and Delaney withdrew her complaint when she realised they were getting nowhere.[9]

Of course the system is far from perfect. It seems unreasonable for it to have taken eight months to hold two meetings. Both Delaney and Porteous appear to have left the process dissatisfied with the lack of resolution and the time taken.[10] Yet the process allowed a way for both of them to discuss their differences in the presence of a neutral facilitator, and to at least begin to build a relationship of mutual respect.

In summing up my reflection on this case, two questions occur to me to put to my fellow Christians. Firstly, at what point does faithfully holding to Christian teaching shade into mere intransigence? It is clear that in using the phrase ‘messing with kids’ the church was not intending to suggest that LGBTIQ parents are paedophiles. They were simply trying to express a view in simple, colloquial English. So why would the Archbishop refuse to give ground on this matter when Delaney suggested it was capable of that reading? Why not remove the cause of possible misunderstanding? Christians are quick to deny that they are homophobic and state that they love and respect LGBTIQ people. Yet if they are immovable in practice it is hard for LGBTIQ people to see this as more than just empty talk. As James says, ‘faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead’.

And this leads to my second point: what obligation does love place us under when we face such clashes? How can they be resolved in a way that furthers the Kingdom of God? To put it in terms of human rights law, what happens when various rights are in tension? Arnold-Moore in particular explains this point clearly:

Signatory states may not prevent a person from holding and expressing religious belief that would, in practice, deny others their own freedom of religious belief, freedom from slavery or even right to life; however, signatory states may prevent an individual from manifesting that belief by coercing someone to join a religion, enslaving, killing or even threatening to kill them.

Yet all three Zadok authors would set this bar quite high. If we are to live according to love, rather than merely upholding the law, surely we should do better than this. For instance, Ian Benson talks about ‘offensive speech and the need to define this tightly so that “Hurt Feelings” do not become equated with “Hatred”’. Yet his detailed explanation includes under the category of ‘hurt feelings’ a situation in which gays were called ‘sodomites’ and the speaker said they were ‘out to get your children’.

Why, I ask myself, would a Christian be seeking the right to speak in this way about other people? I find myself reminded of James’s teaching on watching our words: ‘Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless (James 1:26). Yet so often I hear Christians brazenly asserting the right to speak offensively about others. Surely we are called to be better than this!

And so, we come neatly to the third case.

Dr Pansy Lai and the Coalition for Marriage

Dr Lai’s case appears as Case F in Arnold-Moore’s appendix, where he describes it in this way:

Dr Pansy Lai was the subject of a petition, which gained 5,000 signatures, calling for her deregistration as a doctor due to her comments about same-sex marriage and Safe Schools in a 'No' campaign TV commercial.

This story refers to an incident that took place at the height of the 2017 campaign leading up to the Australian Marriage Survey. The main ‘no’ campaign was run by the Coalition for Marriage. This group was fronted by Lyle Shelton, then of the Australian Christian Lobby, and was supported and funded by a number of churches. They took on a difficult task, mounting opposition to a change they knew to be widely supported in the community.

The Coalition could, perhaps, have focused its energy into a positive promotion of the benefits of traditional Christian marriage, as attempted for example by Emma Wood in the same Papers Supplement as Arnold-Moore’s paper[11]. Instead they chose the strategy that has been successful in so many Australian referenda – a scare campaign.

The centrepiece of this campaign was a series of TV/video advertisements in which a number of women talked about their fears of what would happen if same sex marriage was legalised. These fears revolved around what might subsequently happen in children’s education. Dr Lai appeared in the first and third of these. In the first she is shown saying that, ‘When same sex marriage passes as law overseas, these type of programs become widespread and compulsory’, a reference to programs like Safe Schools[12]. This ad also features a woman suggesting that her son was told it would be OK to wear a dress to school, and another saying ‘kids in year 7 are being asked to roleplay being in a same-sex relationship’. In the third ad Dr Lai appears with a slight variation on her message: ‘changing marriage overseas has meant that these programs become compulsory and parents have no rights to opt out’ followed by a message on a blackboard saying ‘gay marriage = gay sex education’[13].

Following the release of these advertisements, a petition was placed on GetUp’s ‘CommunityRun’ petition platform calling for the revocation of her medical registration. The petition was not endorsed by GetUp – CommunityRun is an open access platform. After receiving complaints, GetUp removed the petition from the site. They explained to the ABC that, ‘while the organisation was opposed to a same-sex marriage survey, it condemned personal attacks against individuals on either side of the campaign’.

Although 5,000 people signed the petition before it was taken down (not a particularly large number for an online petition on this and similar sites), there was never a genuine threat to her registration. The medical registrar was not investigating her or asking her to show cause, the AMA strongly defended her right to practice and it is difficult to construe anything she said in these advertisements as compromising her ability to practice medicine. However, in the same ABC article she reports other personal attacks:

Dr Pansy Lai has told the ABC she and some staff at the medical clinic where she works had been threatened since she appeared in a Coalition for Marriage advertisement calling for a No vote in the upcoming same-sex marriage survey.

"There was one comment that says they were going to turn up at my practice and that I had better bring security”, Dr Lai said.

She said receptionists at her clinic "had to cop some really terrible phone calls; people have been swearing at them and threatening physical harm".[14]

Such threats are, of course, in themselves criminal and it’s a shame that someone should be subjected to them for participating in a public debate, whatever others may think of their views. Such attacks are not the exclusive property of any one side in this debate. Madlin Sims also describes ‘a barrage of death threats and abusive messages calling her “skank, whore, b**ch, putrid, s**t”’ after the publicity about her sacking of Madeline.[15] No-one should be subjected to such treatment.

Nonetheless, our revulsion at this sort of behaviour should not lead to us ignoring the other side of the story. Dr Lai would no doubt assert that she is not homophobic and it is only fair to assume that if a LGBTIQ person came to her practice they would receive as good medical care as anyone else.

However, it is hard to make the same defence of the Coalition for Marriage. In choosing to mount a scare campaign the Coalition for Marriage committed itself, almost by definition, to the path of promoting homophobia. What else could a scare campaign about same-sex relationships do? Its centrepiece advertisements barely discussed marriage at all. They neither made a case in favour of traditional marriage, nor identified any positive harm that would arise from the granting of same-sex marriage. Instead, they portrayed this measure as part of a wider agenda, the aim of which is to seize control of children’s education in order to indoctrinate them with a pro-gay message. To put it crudely, ‘the gays are out to get your children’.

Is it any wonder, then, that the campaign and its participants should be on the end of an angry backlash? If it draws harsh words from me, a straight Christian male, imagine how a gay or lesbian person would see it. Imagine how Martine Delaney, a trans woman who found the phrase ‘messing with kids’ offensive, would have felt watching these videos. Reflect back, in the light of this, to Madlin Sims’ reaction to one of her contractors identifying with this campaign. As Jesus says, ‘with the measure you use, it will be measured to you’ (Mt 7:2).

What this campaign shows more than anything else is how little awareness some parts of the church have of how to live in a diverse society. It preached to the choir while failing to appreciate its impact on the very people the vote most concerned. Instead of reaching out in love it urged us to build a wall of fear. As a consequence, it courted not merely opposition but anger and resentment.

Conclusions

Robyn Whitaker, in the same issue of Zadok Perspectives, comments as follows.

Suddenly, many conservative Christians find themselves on the losing side of a debate, often for the first time in their lives (at least since abortion).

Yet the response is not to cry ‘persecution’ at the first sign of disagreement nor to embrace an ‘us’ and ‘them’ approach that digs in defensively and perceives difference as attack.

Claiming there is a ‘war’ on Christianity…does not foster the dialogue needed to be able to discuss important issues with nuance, compassion and intelligence.[16]

None of the submissions published by Zadok use the language of war and persecution. All make valid points about the weakness of protections for human rights in Australia, including the right to freedom of religion, and identify some potential risks to this freedom. Nonetheless, at a more fundamental level they still reveal this ‘us’ and ‘them’ mindset.

This can be seen in the three case studies examined here. All three are presented by Arnold-Moore (and the first two also by Sneddon) as ‘challenges to religious freedom’. Yet a closer look shows that only the first appears to be a potential case of religious discrimination, and that all three provide pathways for us to think about our own place as Christians in a diverse community, about what it takes to genuinely love someone who strongly disagrees with us about something important.

To summarise the key messages:

• The Capital Parties case reminds us that, if we claim a right for ourselves, we must also allow it to others. Furthermore, we must think through the consequences of everyone behaving as we want to behave, and ask ourselves if the resulting community is what we really want.
• The Porteous/Delaney case reminds us to distinguish between our core teachings and the words we use to express them, and to be mindful of the impact of our words on others. It also reminds us to listen genuinely to our critics, and to engage confidently in the formal avenues our legal system provides for us to do so, rather than to default to ‘fight’ mode when called to account.
• The case of Dr Lai reminds us that in the pursuit of an immediate goal it is easy for us to forget what should be obvious – that we should treat others as we would like to be treated. If we forget this basic rule of love we can go badly wrong and should not be surprised when we experience blowback.

It is comparatively easy to love those who are like us, and this is the least we should do. However, we are called to more than this. Jesus says: ‘If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Mt 5:46-48).

This is a hard ask and we will often fall short. But this is what the gospel is all about. We won’t ‘make disciples of all nations’ by battening down the hatches and protecting our position, but by reaching out in love and compassion.

Jon Eastgate has a 30+ year career in human services, community development and social policy. He lives in Brisbane, worships at St Andrews Anglican Church South Brisbane and blogs from time to time at paintingfakes.blogspot.com.

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