Victoria's Attorney-General Rob Hulls has decided that religious groups should remain exempt from many of the state's anti-discrimination laws. Is Hulls pandering to the Christian Right? asks Luke Williams.

Until very recently, Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls has not had a happy relationship with Christian groups in his state. He has a bad habit of calling the Christian far-Right “doomsdayers” and perhaps an even more fatal habit of approving laws that decriminalise abortion and improve access to IVF for lesbians and single parents.

Last month, he announced (and here) that religious groups would still have the right to hire and fire on the basis of sexuality, marital status and gender under proposed changes to the Equal Opportunity Act.

While the exemptions will be narrowed (it will no longer be lawful for religious groups to discriminate on the basis of things such as disability, age or race), his proposal is really a crucial concession to some key religious groups on the touchstone issue of school students and their sexual morality.

Schools want their teachers to be good role models. Christian schools also want their teachers to uphold Christian values.

Take for example, a school teacher at a religious school in the Victorian suburb of Box Hill, who complained this year to a legal service after being told by the principal she could not be promoted because the students knew she had divorced her husband and remarried.

The school was acting lawfully, religious groups have had a blanket exemption from all of the state’s statutory anti-discrimination laws since their creation in the 1970s.

An employee can be hired or fired by a religious group for just about anything — being single, having children, being a Christian, not being a Christian or for their sexual orientation.

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Following a strong campaign from community groups and the Equal Opportunity Commission, the state Labor government ordered a review into the controversial laws late last year. Hulls put a parliamentary committee (the Scrutiny of Act and Regulations Committee, SARC) to work and made an immediate call for public submissions.

The reaction from religious groups was fierce.

Immediately, the review was framed by influential religious groups as a secularist attack on core religious beliefs and launched a massive public relations campaign. Christians wrote to MPs, newspapers and each other.

The unifying issue was undoubtedly schools and the moral conduct of their employees.

When the SARC committee published its Options Paper in March, nearly all the submissions it received related to two of the 53 exemptions under review — those for religious groups and in particular, religious schools.

Four-hundred and fifty of the 500 submissions were from Christians supporting the exemptions.

Free2believe — a multi-denominational group created to lobby parliament on religious exemptions — set-up its website at the start of the year so visitors could send in an automated submission straight to the committee in a few “simple steps”.

Free2believe’s director told Crikey he thinks the site was responsible for facilitating more than 200 submissions. (They have a similar function remaining on the website for sending a letter to an MP)

There’s some indication that the highly organised lobbying exercise may have been — at least to a degree, a success.

The usually Left-leaning Hulls jumped in before the release of the committee’s parliamentary report to announce the government’s planned changes to the act (released on the day of the AFL grand final so it wouldn’t get as much attention).

The question is exactly who in the now very fractured religious-Right Hulls was trying to appease with his proposal.

For starters, the ALP obviously had traditional churches in its sights, its closest adviser throughout this process has been the Catholic church and it was its Archbishop who was the first to publicly support the proposal.

However, it’s probably equally fair to say Hulls is probably not terribly concerned with what the religious far-Right think of him or his government (groups such as the Salt Shakers, the Australian Family Association and Catch the Fire were not invited to the public hearing in August).

But, the important third factor here is the large numbers of swinging evangelical voters who live in Victoria’s most marginal seats, the majority of whom live in Melbourne’s suburban Bible belt.

According to Phillip Hughes, the director of the Christian Research Association: “The bible belt starts around Camberwell and extends out to Blackburn, Box Hill, Burwood, Mt Waverley and Mulgrave. These are places with the highest number of churches and church attendance in Melbourne.”

“Christians in this area also tend to take their religion much more seriously than the average Anglican or Catholic. Christians who live in the Bible belt are more likely to have an evangelical style.

“They go to church, actively recruit and practice their religion a lot more. Very high numbers attend Baptist and Pentecostal type churches in those areas.”

Evangelism is often hailed as third-way for Christianity — a kind of middle-ground between fundamentalist and liberal theologies.

However, on approaches to s-xual morality, evangelicals and fundamentalists are often inseparable.

The data indicates evangelical Baptists and Pentecostalists are almost twice as likely as their Anglican and Catholic counterparts to believe that pre-marital sex, homosexuality and pornography are always wrong.

Now, the important thing for Labor is three of its most marginal seats sit within this Bible belt.

Take, for example, the marginal seat of Burwood (ALP by 2.2%) — home to Australia’s largest Baptist church — the self-branded Crossways is a massive, contemporary building and podcasts it’s sermons on its website.

Like many of the churches in the area, it is entrepreneurial, it has its own unique branding and the denomination is not immediately clear.

Many of these religious groups are also now starting to offer services usually provided by business or government. Their influence in their local communities should not be underestimated.

Take the very-hip LOMAH (short for the Biblical reference Land of Milk and Honey) cafe in Labor’s most marginal seat of Mt Waverley.

It’s linked to the Syndal Baptist church-run Karinya Services, which offers services for Christians from conflict resolution to disability and corporate services and psychotherapy. The Syndal Baptist church is known for its strong sense of social justice and conservative approaches to sexuality.

One working group of the church focuses on issues such as “poverty, slavery, fair trade and the Millennium Development Goals.” Yet its counseling service still treats homosexuality as a mental illness and encourages gay conversion therapy.

The Bible belt is also home to two marginal Upper House electorates. Labor holds just 19 of 40 seats in the Legislative Council. Ten of those sit within and around the belt — currently seats divided evenly between them and Liberal.

As far for the anti-discrimination exemption, in the fragmenting world of the Christian Right — matters of sexuality still have the power to unite and politicians know it.

Labor may not have specifically targeted the evangelicals with its decision to keep key exemptions in the act, but the spin-off approval was surely in their sights.

Evangelicals have traditionally been swinging voters who tend to vote on moral issues. While they swung to Liberal during the Howard years, the evidence now shows large numbers swung to Labor at the last federal election.

“There are a number of evangelicals who have a strong social justice bent on their Christianity.” said Hughes.

“More and more of them are developing Left-wing approaches to social issues like poverty and the environment, while remaining conservative on moral issues like abortion, pornography, pre-marital sex and the like.”

It could even be the sign of a new progressive evangelical movement better adapted to a changing global-political landscape and the ideology of the ALP.

And if you’re an evangelical who believes that sex outside heterosexual marriage is a potential path to hell, you don’t want it condoned or even mentioned in schools. If anything, some Christians still believe students should be taught that homosexuality and pre-marital sex are never OK.

Take Adrian Rowse, a young Evangelical who runs his own ministry. He tours schools, youth seminars and runs support groups for “sexually broken” young people.

His main message is that homosexuality is a mental illness and it therefore can be treated and overcome. He does much of his work around the marginal Liberal seats of Kilsyth, Ferntree Gully and Box Hill.

Recently, as a role model, he gave a talk to 12,000 high school students at a Christian conference. Take this testimony from one 17-year-old, who now feels he can overcome his gay feelings with a combination of therapy and prayer:

… While battles with these issues are constant and horrible to endure, age has not only helped me see that my walk with God can improve, but that I can use that improvement to help others in similar painful situations.

Role models, it seems, should really make the big difference in who you and do not sleep with — a probable vote decider for a crucial bloc of voters in some very marginal seats.

Luke Williams is a former ABC JJJ Hack presenter.