Same-sex marriage push threatens religious freedoms

The aggressive push to legalise same-sex marriage in Australia is threatening our fundamental religious freedoms.

Just last week, 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 the gay rights lobby to ‘not jump to conclusions about the perpetrator’, it borders on fanciful to suggest 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, the gay rights lobby has engaged in a systematic campaign of censorship, vilification and character assassination against public opponents of same-sex marriage.

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 was forced to resign from the Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission.  The professor’s so-called 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 by the gay rights lobby.  Shortly after, he resigned.

This culture of censorship is infiltrating the left-wing media, which is brazenly 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.

And just last Monday, 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.

Given that the ABC and SBS are both taxpayer-funded public broadcasters with the charter responsibility to present ‘many points of view’, it is concerning that they have instead opted to censor any content critical of the gay rights agenda.

The same-sex marriage debate is being wielded by the gay rights lobby and our public broadcasters to undermine our fundamental freedom of thought, conscience and religion – a freedom protected by no less than the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In contrast, the European Court of Human Rights has expressly ruled that same-sex marriage is not a human right, as so-called ‘marriage equality’ advocates would have us believe.

It is therefore concerning that sectional interests are riding roughshod over inalienable rights protected at international law.

This is where the Shorten-Plibersek bill 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 flimsy rhetoric of the gay rights lobby that any opposition to same-sex marriage is bigoted discrimination that should be censored, silenced and outlawed.

The gay rights lobby will do whatever it takes to legislate same-sex marriage, even if it means stripping our faith communities of their fundamental right to religious freedom.