According to elements within the Australian Labor Party, Christian schools are rife with pro-life beliefs and homophobic teachings.

This appears to be the view of one West Australian MP, Dave Kelly.

‘The Telethon Kids Institute’s recommendations read like the exact opposite of what is presented in a homophobic religious school,’ wrote Kelly, in a piece arguing for the removal of religious freedoms in hiring practices.

‘All this is legal because in WA our Equal Opportunity Act has exemptions for religious schools. When the Act passed in 1984 it was a leader in making discrimination illegal in a whole range of areas. But to get the legislation through the conservative Upper House of State Parliament the religious exemptions had to be included.

‘Forty years on the religious exemptions have well and truly passed their used-by date. They need to go and should go when WA’s Attorney General introduces legislation this year to give effect to recommendations made following the recent review of the Equal Opportunities Act.’

Kelly hinted in his February 23 piece for the West Australian that Christian schools contained anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.

‘These [homosexual] kids at religious schools can be subjected to teachings that say who they are is the work of the devil, or that being gay will send you to hell,’ wrote Kelly.

Christian schools, Kelly implied, were hurting kids and staff by singling out homosexuals to impose homophobic values and beliefs on them.

‘Some cases make the news, but in most cases staff and students, knowing they have few legal rights, just live in fear of being caught and go quietly when found out.’

The Labor MP’s source for this is a rather benign, solitary statistic provided by Telethon Kids, an institute affiliated with Perth Children’s Hospital.

‘10 per cent of students identify as something other than heterosexual,’ he said.

Without citing relevant examples of any actual harm done to this 10 per cent, Kelly’s article, filled with clichés, and stereotypes, doubled down.

‘In 21st-century Australia, religious belief should never be a blank cheque to hurt others. There are many parts of the world where religious beliefs mean homosexuality is illegal and even punishable by death.’

I find it interesting that Kelly expresses this sentiment, given his Twitter account is full of support for Gaza and UNRWA. The first is an extreme Islamic government among the worst in the world in the treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals, and UNRWA has been accused of having its employees involved in rape, murder, and hostage-taking during the October 7 attack. Surely they deserve some of the criticism the Minister levels at Western Christian schools?

Ignoring the 2013 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Kelly concluded:

‘Religious organisations, like any other organisation in Australia, should always be expected to be accountable for their actions rather than simply hide behind a blanket claim of religious belief.’

On this basis, he wants to water down key 1984 religious freedom exemptions in the WA Discrimination Act.

Labelling freedom of religion ‘outdated’, Kelly’s LGBTQ+ utopia seems to be a land of private schools subsumed into the failing state system, differing from their public counterparts in name only instead of their religious teachings chosen by parents.

Responding to Kelly in a press release, Darryl Budge, the Western Australian Director of FamilyVoice Australia, described Kelly’s piece as ‘statist’.

‘Dave Kelly should recognise freedom of choice, even if it doesn’t suit his own political agenda,’ Budge countered.

‘Independent education must be different to state schools, and that requires the freedom to promote different values.’

Budge then explained:

‘Teachers who seek employment in faith-based schools know full well what those institutions represent and are hired because they agree to those values and agree to live accordingly.’

Budge is right.

Kelly’s argument is largely hypothetical. There is no tangible evidence to back it up.

Additionally, his ‘can be’ when talking about Christian schools subjecting kids to abuse, doesn’t mean they are.

Teaching biological facts supported by the Bible is not ‘hate speech’, nor could it be reasonably considered ‘homophobia’.

Christian schools teaching kids anthropological facts, in light of God’s objective moral standard, isn’t ‘heteronormative oppression’.

Neither is 2,000+ years of widely accepted truths about the importance and beauty in the created order of man for woman, woman for man.

The priority of Christian schools is to educate, not indoctrinate.

Some of us believe kids need to be inoculated against the propagandist view of the world, equipped with faith and thinking tools: logic, theology, and civics. (See C.S Lewis’ ‘Abolition of Man’.)

Christian education, grounded on faith-seeking understanding, has been, for centuries, a line in the sand against evil.

I’m sure the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion agenda would prefer Christian schools to hire left-wing activists, not educators. Perhaps the dissent of Christian schools from the Cultural Marxist distortion taking hold in the West has painted them as ‘evil’…

Could it be that the Minister does not truly believe in diversity? Diversity of thought, that is.

Under his proposals for Western Australia, no one will be allowed to teach evidence-based viewpoints that conflict with the accepted narratives of PRIDE and its protected political class.

Forced to hire employees to meet an equity quota, Christian schools will be robbed of their uniqueness.

Bureaucratic bullying will replace freedom of speech with LGBTQ+ approved speech, and educators will be monitored closely by the thought police.

The Minister’s case for getting the Attorney General to exclude Christian (and other religious) schools from protections for religious freedom, is dangerously inconsistent.

I approached Kelly about this on Twitter, to no avail.

Anticipating criticism, his West Australian piece implied that the lack of consistent evidence, was because ‘oppressed’ LGBTQ+ identifying individuals and staff at Christian schools feared their heteronormative oppressors.

So, we just have to take his word for it and in doing so end the livelihoods and liberty of devout faith-based education all based on misguided altruism.

That’s quite the call, and not one the West Australian Attorney General should bother to entertain.

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This article was first published at Caldron Pool.

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