Hundreds of former and current pupils have written to headmasters and headmistresses calling for end to discrimination

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

More than 1,000 current and former students from Anglican schools have written to their principals asking them to give up “the right to discriminate” against LGBT students and teachers.

On Wednesday, it was revealed that 34 Anglican schools in greater Sydney had written to the federal education minister, Dan Tehan, demanding protection of their right to sack gay teachers or expel gay students.

The government had previously promised to remove the right to expel students but the letter from schools, dated 25 October, asked for the exemptions to remain.

In response, students have begun a letter-writing campaign of their own asking for tolerance from their former principals.

An open letter to the 34 schools had amassed 1,000 signatures by Thursday afternoon. It had signatures from students from 27 different schools, including Abbottsleigh, the Kings School, Sydney Church of England Grammar, Trinity Grammar and Barker College.

“School is meant to be a place of development, open expression and trust,” it says. “If LGBT staff are to be discriminated against due to their sexuality, they will have live in fear that they will lose their job if they are to be themselves. Living like this is not humane nor in any way acceptable.”

Max Loomes, a former student of St Luke’s Grammar School in Sydney, organised the open letter.

“The students and majority of the teachers at my former school were loving, open-minded and would not have condoned this sort of action,” he told Guardian Australia. “[The letter] appears to be an executive decision from higher up in the schools.”

Emma, a former student of Abbottsleigh school, said she had written personally to her headmistress.

“For a school that was so focused on service, kindness and compassion, to have this as an official statement – it goes against all the values of the school. I’m doing this because I know there are girls going to school today who are queer who are feeling like their school could do something wrong by them.”

Emma said she was raised Anglican, but in a church independent of the Sydney diocese, where LGBT people were welcome.

“The reason I am so angry and upset, is because it was such a good school. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world … [but] a gay teacher had to pretend her partner was her assistant. The lasting effects of the way Christianity was used in that school still trouble me to this day.”

An exemption in the federal Sex Discrimination Act allows religious schools to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Laws in most states including, NSW and Victoria, contain similar exemptions but Tasmania prohibits schools from discriminating against teachers.

In their letter to the minister, the 34 schools said the debate had been blown out of proportion.

“The debate has been polemicised as the right to expel gay students, with little evidence that this occurs, and the right to dismiss gay staff members, again with little evidence that this occurs,” it read.

“The current exemptions, however clumsy, in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 are really the only significant legal protections available to schools to maintain their ethos and values with regards to core issues of faith.”

But students said the letter itself sent the message that being gay was wrong.

Natalie Cranch, a former student at St Luke’s, said she felt “incredibly sad” when she saw her principal had signed it.

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“I felt incredibly sad that it seems an institution I had spent so much time in and dedicated so much energy and passion to never had my best intentions at heart,” she said.

“If you say you are never going to use these powers, then what is the point of wanting to have them just in case?

“The real impact of this isn’t that students are going to be asked to leave the school, it is that students are going to be feel unsafe. It’s that girls who are being bullied at school for being gay or ‘weird’, their bullies are going to feel a bit more vindicated.”

A student, who chose to remain anonymous, from Arden Anglican School in Sydney said the letter made her feel “guilty and angry that I went to that school”.

“I identify as gay and while I myself have been lucky enough to grow up in an accepting family and I didn’t experience anything particularly homophobic at school … it sends a message that it is a negative thing to be gay.”

She said her year group had begun drafting a letter to their principal as well. At Abbotsleigh, a school-specific petition to rescind their letter had 670 signatures by midday Thursday.

Cranch also said that her year group had been supportive of the push against the letter.

“I felt a huge amount of fear that other students in my year group would react badly if they knew I was queer in any way. However, now that we have left school and continued conversations about LGBTI rights, I realise that my peers are incredibly accepting and that a shocking number of them are also queer.

“I have realised that it was the school administration that fostered an environment that was toxic for LGBTI students. Whether or not this was intentionally done, it was a pervasive culture. Feeling that you are not safe for years at a time has unimaginable consequences for a person.”

On Thursday the ACT chief minister, Andrew Barr, and his justice minister, Shane Rattenbury, released details of new legislation to close exemptions for religious schools. Under the proposed bill only discrimination on the basis of “religious conviction” will be allowed.

The bill will prohibit religious schools from discriminating against teachers and students on the basis of sexuality, gender identity, race, pregnancy or intersex status