A little over a year ago, Australia overwhelmingly voted yes to same-sex marriage in a bitterly drawn out postal survey. Now, the political and religious class are seeking revenge at their historic loss in the name of ‘religious freedoms’.

Dear Prime Minister Scott Morrison,

I am writing to you in reference to the Ruddock religious freedom review which was leaked by Fairfax last week* (the very one your government has woefully failed to release for eons and continues to bicker over without leading the narrative). I have grave concerns on the matter which I feel compelled to express my reservations. As an active participant in democracy and a gay Christian, it is incumbent on me to frankly express such misgivings that are summarily described as detestable discriminations masqueraded as ‘religious freedom’.



At the beginning of your prime ministership, you exhorted your troops to love. This message was to apply nationwide without exception, you passionately declared. Yet it seems this love has evaded a minority group which have been kicked around mindlessly by your team as a political football, dragged to fend for themselves in a distasteful postal survey thanks to the dinosaurs in your party who were so off the mark on the ‘base’ and now, publicly debated, yet again, on whether they should exist in society as normal beings.



A little over a month ago you preached this message of love which ushered in a new theme for the political class. One that you said “brings a country together” but you have now divided; a love that could only be real if you “love all Australians” but you have cherry-picked the ‘who’ for political expediency; one which mattered not if you were “an Australian who came last week” but surely mattered if you were a gay Australian who came out yesterday. Mr Morrison, your very words hold you guilty of failing the pub test on the measure of love for country.

For many LGBTIQ+ young people, the inaction, political opportunism and inept leadership shown by you and your team last week, caused immense angst, fear and trauma for us while it reinvigorated a tumultuous ‘us v them’ war which was demonstrably present in the postal survey. Rather than releasing the long-awaited report you allowed others to fill in the void with hyperactive hysteria, unfounded fears and free-range to run a mighty Armageddon theme to protect their pseudo religious freedoms while sacrificing vulnerable Australians on the altar of political survival. It is nothing short of abominable.

You have no idea how it has touched on a sensitive nerve for me and many others, the horrors it has unleashed on us and the traumas it has brought to the forefront.

Fear-inducing exclusions sanctioned by state and church for gay students needs to end.

Prime Minister, for those of us raised in faith-based schools (like me) we were tortured and terrified to be normal, we were told in no uncertain terms in chapel that being gay meant we would be hated, despised and rejected by God and man (and lo, this malevolent furore feeds this ugly beast which we have tried to quell, daily) and that we would mightily struggle to succeed as hell is our fate and failure our portion. There were no gay models in schools, there were no support networks and certainly such behaviour is not rare as the Tasmanian tiger as some would have you believe. Let me tell you, this should make your skin curl and it certainly isn’t letting kids be kids as you argued recently.

Where do you think we could go? Nowhere. Just hide in fear. God and state are pitted against us and there is none to defend, protect or love us.

That the nation had to even countenance a debate on whether gay students must be expelled, or staff denied work at a school is an indictment on your rudderless leadership. It should be a no-brainer that people are hired on merit and students are educated in schools without exclusion. But you squabbled, squirmed and squealed all week that you had to be dragged, seemingly unwilling, to the sensible centre — to save your shambolic government in a by-election. You could not even utter the words gay students as if it would defile you. Mr Morrison, we have a name, please use it.



This dehumanising of gay and lesbian young people helps explain why we have an attempted suicide rate five times higher than heterosexual youth. And, as we struggle to find our sexual identity in a society geared to heterosexuality, in the religious school’s context, a community that often shuns us. It is a mockery of the $52 million funding you announced to Headspace to support mental health services for young people while you chalk up time in office at the expense of those at the coalface.

Mr Morrison, you have jettisoned us pandering to the religious right, creating solutions for non-existent problems (of which the review rejected same-sex marriage could undermine religious freedom admitting there was scant evidence to support such laughable claims) and are blinded to the real struggles of LGBTIQ+ Australians to remain in the top job.

At the height of the strawberry debacle, you moved quickly to update the law to punish those you described as economic terrorists. There was no review, no sitting-on-hands for months on end or secret hearings but swift action, political stunts and the kitchen sink thrown at the issue to ‘fix’ it. Yet at a pivotal intersection in our nation’s history, at a time where leadership is key and moral terrorists abound, you have shown you couldn’t run a chook raffle.

The three-word slogan you should adopt as a party needs to be, ‘It’s human rights, stupid’.

It’s time to call-out such ‘religious freedoms’ as evils dressed up as protections for faiths.

I had placed a submission in the Ruddock religious freedom review and had hoped your government did not have a tin ear on the matter or pre-determined responses, yet it seems I am very wrong. The 20 recommendations leaked by Fairfax are indeed troublesome to any sane person and though you were dragged kicking and screaming to safeguard gay students from expulsion, I hope you see that discrimination cannot magically be acceptable for adults, that is, gay staff at any workplace. This monstrous cruelty enforced upon us must come to an end.

This great country of ours is made richer with diversity, tolerance and justice and such laws are inhumane, seriously out-of-date and a stain on our nation’s history. For as Martin Luther King says, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Prime Minister, there is nothing remotely Christian about such exclusionary behaviours, proposed recommendations or naked hatred but only blasphemy, strangeness and incompatibility to the nature of God; there is nothing Australian or egalitarian in pitting one group over another again and again; there is nothing to be gained by ruffling the feathers of trauma, feeding the narrative of hate and inflicting unimaginable pain, at times, deadly, on gay people; and nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping you finally being a leader with a spine.



Yours faithfully,

Abanob Saad

*This letter was sent to the PM on October 16 2018*