Religious Discrimination Bill: Word Games Reveal Culture War Inside Australia’s Biggest Churches
starobserver.com.auBy Dr Luke BeckThe Religious Discrimination Bill plays word games to address hurt feelings rather than provide sensible protections against religious discrimination.
In doing so, the bill exposes the culture war within Australia’s biggest religious groups, and runs into constitutional problems.After the marriage equality vote in 2017, then PM Malcolm Turnbull offered conservatives a religious freedom inquiry as a consolation prize.
The inquiry found that Australia doesn’t have a religious freedom problem, but that a federal law banning discrimination on the ground of religion should be added to existing federal anti-discrimination laws.This proposal didn’t really address the concerns of conservative religious leaders.
Conservative religious leaders have seen their cultural influence and social status wane in recent decades, having regularly been on the losing side of emotional political debates.So the Religious Discrimination Bill, now in its third version, tries to do two things at once.
