Executive Summary

This paper outlines some of the implications of same sex marriage. One of these is the accelerated legal and cultural damage to freedom of speech, conscience and religion for those who support traditional marriage. That issue is not just about forcing ministers to conduct weddings or bakers to bake cakes for same sex weddings. It is mainly about protecting individuals and organisations, schools and charities from being discriminated against by governments (Federal, State, Territory and local), persons or businesses just because those individuals or organisations hold or express a view in favour of traditional marriage. Robust protective laws are needed for those individuals and organisations, schools and charities. Such laws are not currently within the Coalition or the ALP’s understanding of “religious freedom protections” but need to be if a YES vote is not to create ongoing division.

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The mantras ‘all belong’, ‘inclusion and respect’ espoused by Airbnb have been undermined by a new pledge the online accommodation provider is compelling all users sign.

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Human Rights Law Alliance Director Martyn Iles speaks with Australian Christian Lobby Managing Director Lyle Shelton about the recent Ashers Bakery defeat in Northern Ireland.

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The compulsion by law of Christian bakers in Northern Ireland to decorate a cake with a same-sex marriage political slogan is the latest example of the intolerance of those pushing for marriage to be redefined in law.

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MEDIA RELEASE



Monday, 24th February 2014



ACL has released an exclusive video interview with Tasmanian Liberal Leader Will Hodgman about his position on issues of concern to Christians in the lead up to the state election.



ACL’s Tasmanian Director Mark Brown said Labor Premier Lara Giddings declined the opportunity to be interviewed but has said she would supply a written response to the questions.



Mr Brown said the 20 minute interview is available to watch on www.tasvotes.org.au.



“Mr Hodgman gives his position on a number of issues including unemployment, education, abortion, marriage, anti-discrimination, gambling, sexualisation of society and health,” he said.



If elected in March, Mr Hodgman gave an undertaking to amend anti-discrimination legislation to allow for a general exemption so faith-based schools would have the freedom to select staff and students who shared their ethos.



“On the issue of abortion, Mr Hodgman has indicated his concern at the legislation passed late last year which infringed on a doctor’s right to freedom of conscience,” Mr Brown said.



Mr Brown said ACL was providing opportunities for Christians to make an informed vote this election with its Strong Economy, Strong Communities Breakfast event tomorrow and Meet Your Candidate Forums being held around the state over the next two weeks.   



“Tomorrow’s business breakfast will discuss the importance of a strong Tasmanian economy to strong Tasmanian families and communities with economist Professor Ian Harper, local innovator and business strategist Professor Jonathan West, and Mission Australia’s Noel Mundy,” he said.



“The five Meet Your Candidate Forums provide an opportunity for people to meet their local candidates and understand the values and ideas that they’ll bring to the job if elected,” he said.



The website also has a conscience vote history table of current sitting MPs showing how they voted on issues including surrogacy, marriage, adoption, abortion and euthanasia legislation in the past three years.



Mr Brown said the majority of Tasmanians identify themselves as being of the Christian faith.



“Elections are a good time for Christians to positively influence society through electing people of good character who share their desire to see a more moral, just and compassionate society,” he said.



Mr Hodgman’s interview and other election resources are available at www.tasvotes.org.au.

ACL is urging Victorian supporters to participate in the current push to protect doctors conscience in Victoria in light of recent events surrounding Dr Mark Hobart.



Dr Hobart drew attention in the state earlier this year after refusing to provide a referral for a couple seeking a sex-selection abortion.



He is currently being investigated by the National Medical Board for breaching Section 8 of the Abortion Law Reform Act, which states that a practitioner who has a conscientious objection to abortion "must refer the woman to another registered health practitioner in the same regulated health profession who the practitioner knows does not have a conscientious objection to abortion."



Doctors Conscience and other pro-life groups are calling on the Victorian government to reform Section 8 to protect freedom of conscience for all Victorian healthcare workers.



Earlier this month, Doctors Conscience circulated a petition for Victorians supporting an amendment to the Act, which is expected to be tabled in the parliament in the coming weeks.



Although the petition has now closed, you can still show your support for freedom of conscience by signing this petition at change.org. 



You can also watch Professor Greg Craven's speech at the 'Freedom of Conscience' dinner last month by clicking on the YouTube video above. Professor Craven is the Vice-Chancellor at the Australian Catholic University.

All Victorians are encouraged to attend this year's March for the Babies (MFTB) on the 12th of October.



MFTB was established with the assistance of pro-life groups throughout Victoria in response to the passing of radical legislation in 2008 - the Abortion Law Reform Act - which eliminated all legal protection for Victorian children until birth.



This means that a woman can obtain an abortion after 24 weeks and until the moment of birth, if any two medical practitioners confirm the abortion is appropriate. Reasons includes not only life and health issues, but "social circumstances" as well. Such provisions have created an environment of abortion on demand in the state.



MFTB's goal is to see this legislation overturned, and to express to the government their disapproval at failing to protect the fundamental right to life of every unborn child, as well as protecting freedom of conscience for Victorian health care professionals.



ACL's Victorian Director Dan Flynn had an opinion piece published about Victoria's abortion law and the MFTB event in Online Opinion after last year's event, which saw around 3,500 participants. Read the piece here.



Make your stance against this extreme abortion law by participating in the March:



When: Saturday 12th October 2013



Where: meet at the corner of Spring St and Wellington Pde, Melbourne



Time: 1pm



Wear: Pink or blue to show your support



Email: [email protected] for all enquiries



To find out more, please visit the official March for the Babies website or download the brochure here.

ACL's Managing Director Jim Wallace has had an opinion piece published in Sight Magazine entitled Religious Freedom - Why We Must Defend It.



See below for a copy of Mr Wallace’s opinion piece.



In this fast paced world in which we live many of our wives will expect their men to be at risk of dying from heart attack.  Mine has a different fear.



Beside our bed is a pile of my bedside reading. A dangerously tottering pile of, at last count, up to 96 partially read books, that she is sure will fall and kill me before the year is out.  But my great disappointment is that I fear her concern is more the likelihood of suffering collateral damage in what seems I must admit, my inevitable end.



But one of the books is of Historic Speeches – which I hasten to add I was not plagiarising for this piece.  And I was struck to see that the very first speech in the book was by Moses, as he returned from Mount Sinai to deliver the Ten Commandments to the Hebrews.



But even more striking is what the secular author of the book said in his foreword to it.



“At Mount Sinai he revealed the Ten Commandments, an extraordinary code of conduct distinctively different from anything then known in the ancient world.  The Mosaic Law emphasised humility, sympathy for the poor, the widowed and the oppressed, considerations that were low in the priorities of other nations;...”



I suppose a better student of history wouldn’t have thought twice about this, but I did, and decided to look at what those other societies were like.  It’s difficult to find information on issues such as treatment of the poor, but the better reported attitude to human sacrifice gives a pretty good idea of the nature of them.



Human sacrifice was practiced  widely in the ancient world by the Ethiopians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Canaanites, the Scythians, the Egyptians, and of course by the Africans and peoples of the then undiscovered Americas and the Britons. 



We know from the book of Kings that when the King of Moab saw the battle going badly for him, he called forth his eldest son, the crown prince, and had him sacrificed by burning alive on the parapets of the city to usage the gods.  Sacrifice of the first born was also prevalent.



But now nearly three and a half thousand years later, after these God given rules first started to transform societies and even more of course with the death and resurrection of Christ, there are people who not only want to constrain their moderating effect on human nature, but eliminate it. 



If they’re bent on evil they have good reason for it of course, because there is plenty out there that needs to be moderated by Godly influence and values.



For instance we may not sacrifice children on altars – but we leave them to die – as many as 50 after failed abortions annually in Victoria alone.  And certainly we kill up to a 100,000 per year by successful abortions, and we have just given our highest national honour to a man in Peter Singer who believes we should be able to kill them as late as two years old.  When they’re at an age that we can be sure they won’t be a burden to parents through some unwanted or inconvenient disease or disorder – a distraction always difficult to accommodate in our busy modern life.



Who is going to represent the case of the voiceless babies in this increasingly utilitarian world if freedom of religion is not protected? Because speaking on this does offend a lot of people when we have so many abortions in Australia each year, and you’re not allowed to offend.



On what basis will the situations of those doctors be represented, who by legislation are currently forced to refer patients to abortionists in Vic for instance; or even worse still participate in abortions, if freedom of religion and conscience are not protected as a legitimate basis for their objection.



Then again, if we are likely to be heading to the economic hardships of Greece in the long term as David Murray has said recently, who will represent the case for continued generosity to the world’s most vulnerable, if the only voice allowed into the debate is that of self interest. 



Perhaps when even more of the community has a self interest in not giving aid there will be even more momentum to silence religious freedom and conscience than in the current debate on same sex marriage, which has a very small active constituency.



Our social licence to speak into society is values based, not science or reason based.  It’s foundation in our faith gives consistency and humanity in a domain that will otherwise quickly default to self interest, convenience and utility.



We see this clearly already in debates about abortion, euthanasia, eugenics and many more – they become arguments about convenience and utility without a faith input.



If today we are supposed to see freedom of religion and conscience  constrained or at worst removed because the incompatibility  of a faith perspective with the homosexual or atheists’ agenda – what agenda will find its restriction equally attractive tomorrow and to what end.  To what end for what evil?



Surely we have seen clearly enough in even recent history that the suppression of religious freedom is the first step in the reduction of humanity.



Some commentators put the deaths under atheist communism as high as a hundred million people including 65m in China and 20m in the Soviet Union.



Our concern for religious freedom and freedom of conscience today should not be for their effect on us, or the church – but the effect on humanity when the light of the Gospel in all its forms through churches, in education, and through advocacy is limited by law. The effect on humanity that is what we must be concerned for.



I must admit that we, the Church have I think been slow to respond to this issue and perhaps to our great discredit, then only when it knocks on our own front door.



For millions of Christians and indeed other mainly minorities this is a daily reality.  Our brothers and sisters in Christ have been persecuted to a degree that lead Bishop Anthony Fisher to say recently and I am sure rightly, that this current era of history supersedes all others for its persecution of Christians.



Indeed in ACL we have been attempting to intervene for nearly a year now in the case of an Afghan Christian, a pastor, who is literally being hunted across north India by Muslims who are determined to kill him for not just his own conversion, but his pastoring of other converts.



Recently we were advised that website’s now carry a reward of R1m for his death.  We still can get no action on the case out of UNHCR.  The reaction – it’s just another case.  Death for your beliefs is so common place overseas, that its imminent reality can’t galvanise the UNHCR into action.



We need as a Church to get more active on the atrocious abuses being occasioned against vulnerable Christians overseas.  But the reality is that we must also deal with the problem of religious freedom at home, in this secular society



I do want to make clear though that for me, this is not an issue of restricting others’ rights to freedom of faith and conscience.  I do not sit here insecure in my beliefs, doubting of my God, to the degree that I’m seeking other faiths the be restricted.



Certainly they must be limited by the normal strictures of the law.  In this regard the laws interest in the riots in Sydney recently was whether anyone had in the first instance a permit to demonstrate and then whether they committed violence of affray or incited others to. Not that it had a religious purpose.



Freedom of religion and conscience has to be available fully to all people of faith.



But it must guarantee that equally, and equally with other beliefs not always declared as religious beliefs.



In the last two weeks I have been made aware of two cases of people being called into work as the result of complaints made by outside callers about their views.



One is a young man who is a frequent author on a popular web based opinion site.  He writes on many different topics, but did an article on same sex marriage – disagreeing with it.



Someone tracked him down by googling his name to his place of work and reported him, citing the company’s diversity policy.



In another unrelated case, a woman who is an employee of a major bank had her appointment title listed on a Christian Business Persons’ website of which she was a member.  Someone obviously objected to the fact that somewhere on this website there was an endorsement of traditional marriage.



Again I guess we call them a “troll” contacted the bank, claimed again the fact that the bank had a diversity policy and the person was called in.



Now I really am sorry that each of these cases is pursuit by a homosexual activist it would seem – but I’m only telling the story.



These examples are the start of what we already know happens with even more frightening effect overseas – and remember we are talking about people being harassed in this case for holding a view that reflects the law of the land on marriage!



We have seen the chaplaincy providers harassed all the way to the High Court because a single atheist objected to the presence of chaplains in schools which well over 90% of their principals had rated as extremely valuable.



We now have the Greens and gay activists announcing in Tasmania that children are to be taught on the homosexual life style throughout the primary school curriculum.



Now last time I looked Freedom of Religion included the right for parents to determine that their children will be educated in their faith and its values.  But I will be interested to see if the parents of Christian children are allowed to remove their children from this part of the curriculum – certainly they are not in Massachusetts.  This is because gay marriage is enshrined as equal to marriage in law, making it discriminatory to remove even a kindergarten equivalent child from the reading of the King and King – a story of two princes who meet, fall in love and live happily ever after.



We have even had cases overseas of it being proven unlawful to pray for people either publicly or privately without their permission.



My concern is that we are beginning to create in our laws, vulnerabilities for churches, church organisations and people of faith without considering the effect on freedom of religion and conscience, when it is very plainly there to be seen around the world. 



There are abundant examples around the world of this unreasonable militant atheism or gay activism and their clear intent to pursue the Church and people of faith – and yet we continue to pass laws that create vulnerabilities – and this despite religious freedom and freedom of conscience actually being fundamental human rights.



This is a hugely important subject and one on which the church cannot afford, for the sake of the Gospel, to be caught napping at the altar.



 



 

 On 10 October 2008, the Victorian Parliament passed the Abortion Law Reform Act, one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world. This law eliminated all legal protection for Victorian children until the moment of birth.



The March for the Babies Committee was established with the assistance of representatives from leading pro-life groups throughout Victoria and on 10 October 2009 organised the first march to commemorate the passing of the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 one year earlier. In remembrance of this shameful day, we gather to March for the Babies who never see the light of day in Victoria.



The march occurs each October on or around the 10th, calling for the repeal of the law which allows babies to be killed right up until the moment of birth and is the most extreme in the Western world.



Together we express our profound disapproval at our Government's failure to:

• Protect the fundamental right of life of every person in our State.



• Offer real help to women in crisis pregnancies and other who have suffered through abortion.



• Allow freedom of conscience for our health care professionals.

Our goal is to overturn this terrible law and provide full legal protection to our most vulnerable Victorians.



Please join us as we march in this peaceful witness to life from Treasury Gardens to Parliament House and hear inspirational speakers and music with a message of courage and hope.



**Please note: above content written by March for the Babies Committee**



Details of this year's march:



When: Saturday 13th October 2012



Where: Treasury Gardens (starting at the south-west corner — Spring Street and Wellington Parade), Melbourne



Time: 1pm



For more information, please visit the March for the Babies website.

ACL's Managing Director Jim Wallace has had an opinion piece published in Eternity Newspaper entitled Church must decide on whether it can remain silent.



See below for a copy of Mr Wallace's opinion piece.



The successful defence of marriage in the Federal Parliament has been blamed by same-sex activists on a host of reasons with no more substance than their arguments for marriage.



Of course the fact that the Coalition didn’t allow a conscience vote is prime among these, when even in a free vote it would have failed in the Lower House. But the hypocrisy of this claim runs much deeper.



Less than a year ago both major parties were committed to the biological reality that marriage is between a man and a woman. And it was only the very lack of a conscience vote for left union delegates at the Labor National Conference that put this truth under threat.



It is to Labor’s shame that it would be as hypocritical as to hound Abbott for the lack of a conscience vote in the Coalition, when the majority of the Australian Labor National Conference were not given free votes on it themselves.



It was here too that the tactics of demonisation so evident in this campaign, first surfaced. Highly respected Labor figures like Joe de Bryun were heckled and mocked with the skilful orchestration of Rainbow Labor. A tactic same sex activists have repeated to empty the public space of alternate voices here, just as they have overseas.



With a deftness that can only come from well resourced intent, it successfully labelled any opponents with the hate language of “homophobe”, “bigot”, “gay haters” and “propagators of hate”, when all the time they were the only ones in the debate using such language.



It simply defies reason and any sense of impartiality in the media at large, that the church, which comes to its position on marriage from a love of children and the desire to see them grow and flourish in the biological identity which by God’s grace they are created, should be accused of any motivation but love. Certainly at ACL that is our sole motivation, we would not by our very motivation in Christ, use the language of which we have been accused.



But this tactic has worked well for these activists overseas of course. Amsterdam’s Chief Rabbi was sacked and a Spanish Catholic Bishop threatened to be charged with hate speech for simply exercising both their freedom of religion and conscience by voicing their faiths’ positions that marriage is between a man and woman – something that should not surprise a church which knows that the world rejects truth.



However it is the effect on individuals of this tactic which is most shameful, with gay activism increasingly prepared to pursue dissenting voices to their professional and personal ruin.

A Canadian sports commentator was recently fired for tweeting “I believe in the TRUE meaning of marriage”. And in one of the saddest cases, America’s most successful Olympic gymnast Peter Vidmar was stripped of the honour of being chef de mission for the 2012 Olympics team by gay activists vitriol at his prominent support of marriage.



The next round of this debate must be conducted in a way that the merits of opposing views can be put forward without fear of public demonisation.



We must also ask ourselves whether the automatic default to conscience votes on difficult issues is really appropriate. The conscience vote has traditionally been for life issues, but should its use be so generally applied that in the end parties won’t have to tell us where they stand on any moral issues at elections, as if morality is a private matter with no public consequences.



It is the immorality of our legalised prostitution which drives the demand that causes some 800,000 women and girls to be trafficked across borders every year in a tragic trade netting criminals thirty two billion dollars annually. And the greed Christ taught as immoral, that drives an unfunded future debt in the West that has it caught in a spiral of immediate excessive gratification that will not only effect its own future generations, but will increase its blindness to the inexcusable inequality in a world in which those God loves die daily of starvation and preventable illness.



A conscience vote also exposes individual parliamentarians to the direct lobbying of individuals. This would be attractive if the process hadn’t been poisoned by gay activism to mean isolation by fear of public demonisation. This is a combination not helpful to democracy, but toxic for it.



But perhaps the biggest question to come out of this whole debate on marriage is for the church itself.



It must decide whether in a world replete with examples of this unreasonable gay activism using same sex marriage to relentlessly pursue the church and its very freedom to preach the Gospel it can remain silent and cowered. But more importantly, do we have the freedom to deny God’s very purpose for marriage, and if we do, what of Christ do we deny next?