I’ve said before there are some things that should stay in the ‘only in America file’.



Today I’m writing from Washington DC where I’ve had the privilege of meeting with people focussed on preserving religious freedom – something ironically under threat in the ‘land of the free’.



[caption id="attachment_34103" align="alignleft" width="300"] Members of the House Armed Services Committee listening to Christian and Jewish leaders expressing concerns about the suppression of religion in the US military.[/caption]



I’ve just come from the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill, across the road from the Congress, where three Christians and a Jewish Rabi were making the case for religious freedom in the US military.



The white Acropolis-styled Rayburn Building is where many Congressmen and Congresswomen have their offices. Its cavernous hallways also lead to imposing committee hearing rooms with tiered seating to elevate the elected people.



The House Armed Services Committee convened today’s hearing to hear from the religious leaders about the growing instances of intimidation and suppression of faith in the US military.



The Family Research Council’s Director of its Centre for Religious Liberty, Travis Weber, a lawyer and a former US Navy test pilot, told the committee Bibles were removed from navy lodges because of fears they were causing offence.



[caption id="attachment_34105" align="alignright" width="300"] Retired US Army Colonel Ron Crews testifies today about double standards which forced a Christian article off an airforce website but kept an atheist's article on line.[/caption]



He said an air force cadet had been singled out and targeted for expressing his Christianity on a white board.



I later learned he had written a scripture verse.



I wonder if an obscenity scrawled on a unit white board would have caused such a fuss?



Ron Crews, a retired US Army Colonel, is now the executive director of Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty.



In his testimony he told of a Christian airman who had written of his faith in Jesus Christ on a military website, only to have it ordered taken down.



But an airman’s article telling how proud he is to be an atheist remains online.



“The double standards must stop,” Colonel Crews told the hearing.



Congress had recently passed a law affirming religious freedom in the military, but the religious leaders were able to point out that the will of Congress was being ignored.



One of the reasons I am in the US is because it is about five years ahead of us in the battle for religious freedom.



But the signs are ominous in Australia, as ACL supporters would know given the battle in Victoria for the right of Christian schools to determine their hiring policy, as opposed to a court.



We can’t bury our head in the sand and assume aggressive secularists won’t start going after Australia’s fine military chaplains.



ACL is committed to doing its best to ensure that some things remain in ‘the only in America’ file.

[caption id="attachment_33017" align="alignright" width="361"] From left: Attorney-General Robert Clark, Education Minister Martin Dixon and Andrew Ronalds MP at the briefing[/caption]



Earlier this week, ACL’s managing director Lyle Shelton and Victorian director Dan Flynn were invited to attend a government briefing for Christian leaders across Victoria to discuss the issues of faith and freedom in the state.



The event was aimed at clarifying the Coalition government’s position on freedom of expression and religion, which has come under question by some Victorians in the past few weeks.



Victoria’s Attorney-General Robert Clark, Education Minister Martin Dixon and Liberal MP for the Eastern Region Andrew Ronalds took questions from a group of around 70 Christian leaders about issues pertaining to religious freedom and expression, particularly in regards to religious education in public schools.



Mr Ronalds opened the briefing by discussing the importance of religious freedom, and that every parent has the right to choose whether their child participates in the Special Religious Instruction (SRI) program.



Mr Dixon spoke of his commitment to freedom of religion, his support for the SRI program and for allowing students the freedom to engage in lunchtime religious activities. He also supported the continuation of the school chaplaincy program in Victoria.



The Attorney-General addressed the state’s Equal Opportunity Act, which currently allows for religious organisations, particularly Christians schools, to appoint staff of their faith and ethos.



The government ministers then took questions from the audience on issues of concern to Christians.



ACL recently launched a campaign to reverse a ban on prayer groups and lunchtime Bible studies outlined in the SRI program policy.



[caption id="attachment_33019" align="alignright" width="333"] Attorney-General Robert Clark addresses Christian leaders[/caption]



Thousands of emails were received by Victorian members of parliament urging the government overturn the ban.



Late last month, Mr Dixon announced that he had directed his department to withdraw the elements of the policy that were the subject of the complaint.



You can read more about the details of the issue here.

Dan Flynn is the ACL's Victorian Director. In this interview with the ACL's Katherine Spackman he talks about a new ministerial directive signed by the state's education minister which bans bible studies or prayer groups in public schools. Listen to the interview below and check out the Make a Stand campaign to learn more about the issue and how you can respond.

The US Supreme Court has delivered its decision in the Hobby Lobby case, ruling that the store does not have to provide abortifacients as part of its health care coverage. Requiring the store to do so violates the owners’ religious freedom.



The case also involved another company, Conestoga Wood, owned by the Mennonite Christian family the Hahns. The ruling applies to both companies.



Under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “ObamaCare”, companies were required to provide health care coverage which included contraception. This included several types of contraception that cause the destruction of a fertilised egg, including the “morning-after pill”.



The Hahn family and the owners of Hobby Lobby, the Green family, refused to provide these types of contraception. They argued that forcing them to provide the contraception violated their religious liberty, and that this liberty is protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).



The RFRA was passed in 1993 and protects a person’s right to exercise their religion free from a substantial burden.



The Court accepted these arguments, allowing Hobby Lobby and Conestoga to abstain from covering abortifacient contraception in its health care coverage.



The case, Burwell v Hobby Lobby, is a small but significant win for religious freedom in America, and will be an important precedent for a number of similar cases involving companies owned by Christians. The case will also affect a number of other cases making their way through the court system involving not-for-profit organisations.



Justice Kennedy said in his judgment:

In our constitutional tradition, freedom means that all persons have the right to believe or strive to believe in a divine creator and a divine law. For those who choose this course, free exercise is essential in preserving their own dignity and in striving for a self-definition shaped by their religious precepts. Free exercise in this sense implicates more than just freedom of belief. It means, too, the right to express those beliefs and to establish one’s religious (or nonreligious) self-definition in the political, civic, and economic life of our larger community.

There can be no more fundamental principle in a free society than the freedom of citizens to act in accordance with the faith. This includes more than a freedom to belong to a particular religious community. It also includes the freedom to manifest one’s faith in the wider society, including in political, civic, and economic life.



Read on for more details, and for links to further analysis.







In a 5-4 decision, the Court made several important points:



1. The RFRA covers for-profit corporations.



The RFRA protects the religious liberty of “persons”, and a key question was whether Hobby Lobby is a “person” for the purposes of the RFRA.



All parties in the case agreed that the RFRA covered certain non-profit corporations. The Court in this case decided that it also covers for-profit corporations, at least “closely held” corporations. A “closely held” corporation is one owned by a small number of investors and typically includes family-owned businesses such as Hobby Lobby.



As Justice Samuel Alito explained in his judgment, the RFRA

employed the familiar legal fiction of including corporations within RFRA’s definition of ‘persons’, but the purpose of extending rights to corporations is to protect the rights of people associated with the corporations... Protecting the free-exercise rights of closely held corporations thus protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them.

2. The government did not use the “least restrictive means” of achieving its goal



A government can infringe upon religious liberty only if there is a “compelling government interest” and only if it uses the “least restrictive means” for doing so.



The Court did not consider whether there was a “compelling government interest” to mandate that companies provide abortifacient birth control to their employees. It did, however, decide that the government could use means which are less restrictive of religious freedom. In deciding this, the Court pointed out that the government already provides exemptions to non-profit corporations, evidence that exempting corporations from the mandate does not undermine its purpose.



3. The government cannot decide what a person’s religious convictions are



The government argued that the Greens and the Hahns should have no objection to providing abortifacient contraception. The Court dismissed this argument, Justice Alito saying:

It is not for the Court to say that the religious beliefs of the plaintiffs are mistaken or unreasonable.

This is perhaps the most significant part of the judgment from a religious liberty point of view. The Court is upholding the intent of the RFRA, which is to protect the free exercise of religion. The RFRA itself upholds the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.



 



The Court was divided along ideological lines, fairly typically for cases of this sort. Liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented, with Justice Ginsburg authoring a 35-page dissenting judgment. The conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito were joined by Anthony Kennedy, who often makes the deciding vote when the court is divided.



For more detailed analysis, see these links:



Article by Ryan T Anderson from the Witherspoon Institute.



Analysis from Professor Mark Rienzi, a lawyer who argues similar cases with the Becket Foundation.



A clear explanation of the main issues by Napp Nazworth from the Christian Post.



Click here to read the Supreme Court's judgment.

Anglican Bishop of South Sydney Robert Forsyth recently gave an address at the Centre for Independent Studies on religious freedom and religion being a public good. He spoke to the ACL's Katherine Spackman about why religion is not just a private matter in this 15 minute radio interview.

MEDIA RELEASE



24th June 2014



The Australian Christian Lobby has welcomed the release of the Sudanese Christian woman, Meriam Ibrahim, who had been sentenced to death by hanging for converting to Christianity.



ACL Managing Director Lyle Shelton said Meriam's case had captured the attention and hearts of over a million people around the world. Mr Shelton thanked the thousands of concerned ACL supporters who emailed the Sudanese Ambassador and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.



Mr Shelton said he was pleased to see Ms Bishop join British Prime Minister David Cameron, US Secretary of State John Kerry and the European Union in condemning the sentence imposed last month.



“The international pressure on the Sudanese government was immense as was the grassroots pressure from ordinary people in Australia and around the world who emailed and signed petitions."



Mr Shelton said religious freedom was under enormous pressure in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East and it was important for the international community to stand with those being persecuted for their faith.

ends



ENDS

In the last week, ACL has been quoted in the media on issues such as gambling, abortion, surrogacy, religious freedom, and the federal budget. See below for links to mentions in the media.



On gambling:

• ABC News - Government pushes ahead with Logan greyhound racing track despite community opposition 



• ABC Radio - Logan greyhound track faces growing opposition

On religious freedom:

• Christian Today Australia - Religious freedom in Australia to be tested as Christian Youth Camps case goes to High Court 

On surrogacy:

• Christian Today Australia - LNP must act to stop fabrication of kids' birth certificates, says ACL



• Star Observer - Historic first for Queensland fertility arrangements

ACL's Managing Director Lyle Shelton also spoke to Justin Smith on 2UE radio this week about religious instruction.



In this week's Politics InFocus, ACL's Lyle Shelton comments on why the howls of protest over the 2014 federal budget remain strident. Watch the interview below.







Budget 2014: an overblown response? from InFocus on Vimeo.



ACL's Victorian Director Dan Flynn had a letter to the editor published in the Herald Sun this week about abortion in the state:

In the last week, the ACL has been quoted in the media on issues such as religious freedom, overseas aid, and legalising brothels in the Northern Territory. See below for links to mentions in the media.



On freedom of religion:

• Christian Today Australia - Religious freedom eroded in the court decision on a Christian youth camp

On legalising brothels in the Northern Territory:

• NT News - Deputy Chief Minister David Tollner says it's time to open the conversation about legalising Northern Territory brothels

On overseas aid:

• Christian Today Australia - $20 million for Syrian children a step in the right direction but more needs to be done 

On Easter Monday, ACL's Managing Director Lyle Shelton spoke with 3AW's Brett McLeod about why Easter Monday is a public holiday (he didn't know!) and about the significance of Christ's resurrection to Christianity.



Mr Shelton also spoke about the slogan on the Wicked Campers vans "Fat girls are harder to kidnap" in this week's Politics InFocus. Watch the interview below.







"Fat girls are harder to kidnap": Free speech or abuse? from InFocus on Vimeo.

The Australian Christian Lobby said it’s a sad day for religious freedom with the Victorian Court of Appeal’s decision to dismiss a Christian youth camp’s appeal to be exempted from an instance of discrimination, necessitated by its religious beliefs.



The Victorian Court of Appeal handed down its decision on April 16, upholding the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal’s ruling that Christian Youth Camps (CYC) had discriminated against an organisation by refusing to allow it to hire the campsite because the purpose of the organisation’s project conflicted with CYC.



ACL’s Victorian Director Dan Flynn said the Equal Opportunity Act (EOA) made provision for religious organisations to be exempt from discrimination if it was necessary for them to express genuine religious beliefs or principles.



“This case shows that equal opportunities triumph religious freedom which is a concern to the ACL. Christian Youth Camps and it’s employee, Mark Rowe, were fined for refusing a booking when, according to the dissenting judge, Justice Redlich, they were compelled to do so by their religious beliefs concerning marriage, sexuality and sexual orientation,” he said.



In Justice Redlich’s judgement he said it was important religious organisations retained the freedom to act on their religious beliefs in the marketplace.



“Justice Redlich judgement emphasises that if the religious exemption is restricted by judges this frustrates the very purpose of the exemption which is to protect religious freedom,” Mr Flynn said.



In his judgement, Justice Redlich quoted from the book Religious Freedom in the Liberal State.



T]he broad right to ‘practice’ or ‘manifest’ (to use the wording of the European Convention on Human Rights) one’s religion or belief would seem to embrace a huge variety of activity if one takes the view — as many religions do — that all life is inspired by or generated by faith and belief. The most mundane of human behaviours can be ‘spiritualized’ and take on a religious connotation. One is practising one’s religion when one eats, drinks, works, plays and gardens, as much as when one reads scripture, prays or meditates. In Christianity, ‘the righteous will live by faith’, ‘everything that does not come from faith is sin’, and ‘whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God’. On this view there is no activity which is not generated by one’s obedience (or disobedience) to God. Countless schools, hospitals, orphanages and shelters have been run by religious organizations as part of their religious mission. Running a café, gymnasium or bookshop could equally be part of one’s religious calling.



Mr Flynn said that he hoped human rights lawyers in Australia would study the decision of Justice Redlich to better understand the intended scope of section 77 of the Equal Opportunity Act.



“Justice Redlich has made a critical contribution to Victorian human rights jurisprudence by articulating the principle that religious belief may give rise to an obligation of obedience to that principle in the commercial sphere,” he said.



“CYC was acting in good conscience in not accepting the booking when it realised the proposed event conflicted with its own organisational values and beliefs,” he said.



Jusict Redlich’s judgement can be read via this link. Read from section 439 onwards.



Background



In 2007 Cobaw Community Health Service's Way Out project contacted Christian Youth Camps (CYC) facility to make a booking at the Phillip Island Adventure Resort and refused the booking.



In a 2010 ruling, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found CYC had discriminated against the group and ordered it to pay $5000.

MEDIA RELEASE



For release: Wednesday April 16, 2014



A dissenting judge in an anti-discrimination case against a Christian youth camp has warned that religious freedom is being eroded.



The Victorian Court of Appeal today dismissed an Appeal from a VCAT decision in 2010 which ruled that Christian Youth Camps had discriminated against Cobaw, a group for same-sex attracted youth, in the provision of accommodation. The Victorian Court of Appeal President Chris Maxwell & Justice Marcia Neave (the majority) ruled that discrimination (pursuant to Part 3 of The Equal Opportunity Act 2010) had taken place and that the refusal by CYC to provide the accommodation was not covered by any of the religious exemptions to the EOA.



However, Section 77 of the EOA provides that:

Nothing in part 3 applies to discrimination by a person against another person if the discrimination is necessary for the first person to comply with the person’s genuine religious beliefs or principles

Contrary to the approach taken by VCAT & the majority, Justice Robert Redlich decided that s.77 is an exemption available to a corporation and that CYC and its employee Mark Rowe, who refused the booking, were taking steps necessary to comply with their genuine religious beliefs that promotion of homosexuality was wrong.



The Australian Christian Lobby’s Victorian Director Dan Flynn welcomed Justice Redlich’s dissenting judgement saying it was important religious organisations retained the freedom to protect their ethos.



“The dissenting judgement of Justice Redlich correctly states the balance between the competing rights of equal opportunity and religious freedom. His judgement emphasises that if the scope of the religious exemption is read down by judges this frustrates the very purpose of the exemption – which is to protect religious freedom,” Mr Flynn said.



“Justice Redlich has made a critical contribution to Victorian human rights jurisprudence by articulating the principle that religious belief may give rise to an obligation of obedience to that principle in the commercial sphere.



“The clear sighted conclusion that once CYC became aware of the particular purpose for which the campsite was to be used was contrary to their beliefs or principles, they were compelled by those beliefs to refuse to allow their camp site to facilitate such a purpose.”Mr Flynn said that he hoped human rights lawyers in Australia would study the decision of Justice Redlich to better understand the intended scope of section 77 of the Act.