Crikey readers have no faith in religious discrimination laws

Sam Chung writes: Equating the proposed federal religious discrimination bill with other protected categories is textbook false equivalence.

When the Racial Discrimination Act was passed in 1975 there was widely accepted discrimination against non-white people. When the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1984 there was widely accepted discrimination against women and girls. When the Disability Discrimination Act was passed in 1992 there was widely accepted discrimination against people with disabilities. When the Age Discrimination Act was passed in 2004 there was widely accepted discrimination against older people.

When the religious discrimination bill was proposed, faith-based groups had enjoyed decades of blanket and automatic exemptions from most anti-discrimination laws and had successfully held the country hostage until we had an unprecedented popular vote on the civil rights of LGBTQIA+ people.

Dee O’Loughlin writes: The call for religious anti-discrimination laws is predicated upon discriminating against those who do not fit their particular belief system.

Religious schools benefit immensely (and unfairly) from the public purse while seeking to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ students and teachers who are an integral part of our population. Religious hospitals such as Calvary, who again are supported generously by public funding, avoid providing services that do not meet their religious beliefs.

We are entitled to have varying beliefs and even express them in virulent and cruel speech, but not actively to promote physical violence. That is as far as it should go.

Janet Holmes writes: Regarding the merits or otherwise of having religious discrimination laws, it occurs to me that the attributes for which we already have anti-discrimination laws (gender, age, disability, race) are innate human characteristics — characteristics that people have no choice in having. Religion, on the other hand, is not innate, but rather a matter of personal conviction or choice.

This is probably the crux of the dilemma — trying to reconcile conflicts that arise when trying to strike a balance between things that are innate vs things that we elect to believe.

If we start having laws that you can’t discriminate against things people believe, where would that stop? What about political beliefs, or beliefs in atheism, or agnosticism, or tooth fairies or Santa or UFOs? I think it’s much better to just ditch the whole idea of having such legislation.

Jock Webb writes: I want a freedom from religion bill. Get these bible thumpers out of public influence. Seriously though I think religions should be able to discriminate in contravention of our laws as long as they immediately repay all government monies and get their hand out of the public education pocket. We have no business funding them to break the secular law.