Privileging prejudice: the threat and opportunity posed by the movement for 'religious freedom'

Just as the federal government and High Court helped overturn Tasmania's anti-gay laws in the 90s, the "religious freedom" movement wants Canberra to now step in and overturn the progressive laws Tasmania adopted in the wake of decriminalising homosexuality.

Indeed, some advocates for religious freedom have explicitly drawn that parallel.

In a "Freedom for Faith" submission to the Ruddock review, written by Prof Patrick Parkinson, Parkinson cites the Keating Government's 1994 sexual privacy law, that was specifically designed to overturn Tasmania's anti-gay laws, as a precedent for a religious freedom law.

I imagine the irony that a quarter of a century later a religious freedom law might now bring LGBTI equality states like Tasmania to heel was not lost on Prof Parkinson or his colleagues.

All the states will be losers if a positive, unqualified right to religious freedom is enacted because it will potentially cap their capacity to protect their citizens from discrimination.

But Tasmania has most to lose.

Have no doubt that after working hard for three decades to turn Tasmania around, my colleagues and I will not let the Island's landmark LGBTI human rights laws be dismantled by Canberra.

Turning the threat of the "religious freedom" movement into opportunity for real change

To stop the "religious freedom" movement steam rolling LGBTI human rights, supporters of LGBTI equality must do two things.

The first is to call out the religious freedom movement for what it really is, one of the 21^st century's greatest threats to an inclusive, plural, equal and free society.

I was deeply disappointed that the postal survey Yes campaign opted not to challenge the "religious freedom" narrative during the postal survey.

With the resources available to it, the Yes campaign could have alerted Australia to the dangers this movement poses without denting support for marriage equality.