Sadly the euphoria that greeted the arrival of gender neutral marriages in Australia was not shared by everyone.

Lyle Shelton gets more media mentions than all three leading yes campaigners Read more

Many of the Anglicans must be pretty sore at tipping $1m down the drain in a futile attempt to hold back the tide. Evangelicals of other stripes also would feel chiselled that their investment in the traditional marriage campaign has returned no bankable dividends.

Lyle Shelton from the Australian Christian Lobby is groping for relevance and has been reduced to sending a “God bless” message to John Howard via Twitter.

Lyle Shelton (@LyleShelton) Thanks Mr Howard. God bless you & Janette this Christmas. pic.twitter.com/V75Zgy4Bxh

Miranda Devine is unhappy because people are being mean to Shelton with uplifting social media messages such as “Eat shit Lyle”.

In fact, Shelton is on the look out for fresh dangers to religious freedom, such as the rise of gender fluid theory studies at universities and the lingering evils of Safe Schools.



We have Philip Ruddock’s report to look forward to early next year, so religious freedoms remain smouldering on the stove. The former Liberal Party minister, along with Rosalind Croucher from the Human Rights Commission, former federal court judge Annabelle Bennett and Father Frank Brennan are charged with deciding “whether Australian law adequately protects the human right to religious freedom” and if not, what should be done on each.

It’s a strange business, but conservatives only furiously latched onto religious freedoms when the postal survey became a reality – as though same-sex couples gaining rights meant that religious people would lose them.



Senator Dean Smith’s legislation on marriage equality actually contains more than enough protections for religious freedom.

The new law creates a special category of “religious marriage celebrant”, which includes people who are not ministers of religion but who are free to refuse to marry same-sex couples if their religious beliefs get in the way. Ministers of religion retain the right to refuse to marry people if the marriage conflicts with their beliefs, “or in order to avoid injury to the susceptibilities of their religious community”.

So a minister may be supportive of marrying people regardless of their sex or gender, but can refuse to do so if others in the church are upset about it. The right of refusal even extends to ministers who are “confused” about ambiguities in their religious doctrines.

Our law societies drag their feet on marriage equality | Richard Ackland Read more

Organisations with a religious connection will be able to refuse to provide halls or function venues, goods and services if the refusal conforms to their religious doctrine, tenets or beliefs, “or is necessary to avoid injury to the feelings of their religious communities”.

Existing exemptions under the Sex Discrimination Act are extended to specifically include protections for ministers of religion, the new category of religious marriage celebrants, defence force chaplains and organisations with a religious connection that supply goods, services or hiring facilities.

In other words, the Sex Discrimination Act gives full effect to the religious exemptions contained in the amended Marriage Act. Senator Dean Smith’s explanatory memorandum lays out all the exemptions.

These wide exemptions allow the churches and religious people to continue to engage in bigoted and discriminatory homophobic practices, as long as they are accompanied by a suitable amount of holy water.

The discrimination exemptions specifically apply to gay, lesbian or intersex people, but happily do not extend to discrimination on the basis of race or colour.



Yet these protections for religious freedom are not enough for some editorialists and fervent believers.

A raft of more vehement “religious” exemptions didn’t make it through parliament, including the creation of shield protections for those who act upon or express traditional views about marriage, and extending the sanctuary beyond religious affiliation to those with a “conscientious belief” that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

Where to next in the religious freedom battle is unclear. Maybe the Ruddock committee will have something to say about Safe Schools and bigger exemptions for commercial cake bakers, flower arrangers, event managers, hire car drives, chefs and so on.

In fact, it is the same lack of clarity about the alleged gaping hole in our freedoms that sank the ideological campaign to defenestrate section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act on specious “free speech” grounds.

The United States Supreme Court is struggling with that issue at the moment and there are some first amendment contentions around the difference between a custom-made cake and a ready-made cake, quite apart from the even more taxing distinction between free speech protections for bakers as opposed to chefs.

It seems the Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, who “speaks through his cakes”, is quite happy for homosexual couples to consume the ready-made version of his wedding confections, but not the custom-made varieties, which is where his expression flowers most spectacularly.

His lawyer has attempted to make some hapless distinctions, saying that tailors do not speak through the clothes they make, nor chefs through the food their prepare.

“Whoa,” said Justice Elena Kagan in response to this argument. “The baker is engaged in speech, but the chef is not engaged in speech?” The agonising decision is reserved and in the meantime it is giving headaches to some big legal brains.

Like the “free speech” campaign we saw around 18C, the cause of “religious freedom” is lifted holus-bolus from the prayer book of the Republican party in the United States.

In America, religion is ferociously jammed down everyone throats. It even finds a place in the Trump administration’s tax reforms that seek the repeal of legislation that has prevented churches and religious organisations campaigning for political causes to date.

There are those jaw-dropping incantations from American politicians that would be regarded as laughable by most Australians. For instance Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, recently changed the composition of the agency’s independent scientific advisory committees, allowing for more industry and political representation and fewer scientists.



'A really happy morning': first same-sex couples register intent to marry in Australia Read more

Pruitt made the announcement of these changes, saying: “In the book of Joshua, there is a story about Joshua leading the people of Israel into the promised land after Moses passed away. And Joshua says to the people of Israel choose this day whom you’re going to serve ...”

Roy Moore, the former Alabama chief justice who was defeated in his run for the senate, believes that drive-by shootings are a consequence of the teaching of evolution.

Christopher Massie (@chrismassie) Wanted to share a video of Roy Moore in 1997 arguing that kids commit drive-by shooting because they are taught evolution in school: "They're acting like animals because we've taught them they come from animals." pic.twitter.com/YoHZXKfpAl

Australians are bewildered by this industrial scale religiosity – even though we have similar constitutional protections, both keeping the state out of the establishment of religion or limiting religious observance. Our section 116 references some of the requirements in the US first amendment.

For Australia to adopt America’s religious fervour and the associated protection of some truly whacky ideas will require quite a bit of persuading.

Actually, there are strong grounds for a campaign to counter the expansion of religious freedoms and to reduce the ones that already exist.

When you consider the hateful, cruel, bitter and downright false contribution of some religious voices during the recent same-sex postal survey, why would anyone want to give these institutions more open-ended “freedoms”?

There is a long and sorry history of churches meddling in society’s freedoms and undermining citizens’ human rights and private lives.

Quite apart from the earth being flat, in living memory we have had everything from hotel and retail trading hours organised according to church dictates, restrictions on scientific and medical research, laying down rules about women having children and not having children, and telling everyone that God disapproved of divorce – all of which is invariably accompanied by lashings of fire and brimstone.

Then there are the endless taxpayer dollars allocated to prop up church schools and school chaplains, many of who are filling children’s heads with all sorts of feudal nonsense.

And there is the staggering assumption by church leaders that they had the freedom to act outside the law and protect priests and others who engaged in criminal sexual assaults on children.

Enough, already. It’s unthinkable to extend the “freedom” of churches when they have so conspicuously abused the freedoms they already have.

