LGBTQ people in Australia who work at religious schools have no protection from anti-discrimination legislation, and they fear the federal religious discrimination bill is about to make things worse.
Steph Lentz won’t be going to heaven. At least that’s what the Covenant Christian School told her in December as it prepared to sack her after she came out as lesbian.
Lentz was a devoted English teacher at one of Australia’s growing number of small, low-fee Christian schools, and hers is just one of many stories of discrimination against LGBTQ teachers dismissed or pushed out of their jobs, or pressured to remain silent about their sexuality by school policies and employment contracts.
Her sacking was perfectly legal under state and federal laws, which give religious organisations including government-funded evangelical schools exemption from anti-discrimination legislation.
“There’s too much pain, and too many lives are being negatively impacted,” says Patterson, who is not LGBTQ.
“I’m from South Africa. This is what apartheid was – it allows you to be discriminated against with a legal basis.”
“This discrimination is being funded by the taxpayer in the 21st century when broader society has said ‘this is not acceptable’.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/steph-le...58gzv.html
Steph Lentz won’t be going to heaven. At least that’s what the Covenant Christian School told her in December as it prepared to sack her after she came out as lesbian.
Lentz was a devoted English teacher at one of Australia’s growing number of small, low-fee Christian schools, and hers is just one of many stories of discrimination against LGBTQ teachers dismissed or pushed out of their jobs, or pressured to remain silent about their sexuality by school policies and employment contracts.
Her sacking was perfectly legal under state and federal laws, which give religious organisations including government-funded evangelical schools exemption from anti-discrimination legislation.
“There’s too much pain, and too many lives are being negatively impacted,” says Patterson, who is not LGBTQ.
“I’m from South Africa. This is what apartheid was – it allows you to be discriminated against with a legal basis.”
“This discrimination is being funded by the taxpayer in the 21st century when broader society has said ‘this is not acceptable’.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/steph-le...58gzv.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"