#176 Why I dislike religious institutions

I don't know how it is in other parts of the world. I don't care to follow religion but I seem to remember that in the 1960s in Australia the Presbyterian and Methodist churches combined to form the United Church. But apparently some old vestigatives of Presbyterian Church survived 

In a submission to a government enquiry into discrimination in schools, the Presbyterian church submitted that a gay student would not be an appropriate person to be a school captain. Of course most other religious schools held similar hateful views. No gay or dyke teachers at our school! Must be of our religion. No living in sin. It went on. 

The church owns five schools in Melbourne. Its schools are run by boards of governors and the most prestigious school, Scotch College, 'almost' immediately disassociated itself from the submission, describing itself as an inclusive school for all without discrimination. The church may own the school but does not control it.

Which century are we living in? I can't believe such a submission would come from the Presbyterian Church in modern Australia. What a disgrace. 

Meanwhile the gay captain of the Church of England Melbourne Grammar School eloquently speaks out. This lad will go on to be a huge benefit to society. 

https://www.theage.com.au/national/i-m-melbourne-grammar-s-school-captain-and-i-m-gay-the-presbyterian-church-would-have-me-sacked-20230418-p5d1b8.html  

The Presbyterian Church of Australia has declared its right to refuse school leadership opportunities to students based on sexuality or premarital sexual activity. This comes in response to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s review of discrimination laws.

The Church has reasoned that, in the case of discriminating against students based on sexual preference, gay students “would not be able to give appropriate Christian leadership in a Christian school which requires modelling Christian living”.

I write this as captain of Melbourne Grammar School. I write this as someone who is gay, a fact about myself which I cannot change. I also write this as someone confused – surely “modelling Christian living” is not well exemplified in the practice of exclusion or discrimination?

The Christian faith is built on the example Christ set in his life. His revolutionary compassion, so radical then as it still is now – care for the outcasts, the lepers, the unclean – inform the values of Christianity and direct the moral constitution of the Church. Jesus shocked the established powers of his time, his love the instrument of a legacy which left a world faith developing in its wake.

His example leads me to wonder what Christ would make of this situation. If he was confronted with a body of young people – all, to remind the Presbyterian leaders, made in the image of God, in the imago dei – would he divide them and cast inequality among their ranks?

Would he tell a portion of them they could not lead their friends, simply because those they love are of the same sex? Well, Jesus did not condemn the adulterers, did not avoid the pariahs, and surely would not deem some more capable of Christian living than others because of the details of their sexuality.

I see nothing particularly Christ-like in telling a child that, because of some unchangeable fact about their identity, they cannot have a recognised position of respect among their peers. To be honest, what I do see is irrationality.

The beauty of my generation is its widespread, gentle disinterest for sexuality. My peers know I am gay and they do not much care, just as they do not much care that others are straight or of other sexualities. This strength in character, this security of identity, is characteristic of the best leaders, and the Presbyterian Church of Australia has a chance to demonstrate it too. Unfortunately, the current absence of such a positive and healthy outlook is harming both the place of organised religion in the modern world and the safety of adolescents.

Not in modern Australia. But here I am, a student, writing an open letter to a group of adults who have lived a good deal longer than I have, and my intention here (at the risk of sounding quite bold) is to educate. I ask the Presbyterian Church of Australia to withdraw their response which outlines the right to discriminate among children and adolescents based on sexuality or sexual activity.

Firstly, it is a violation of the privacy of students and a rather clumsy attempt at preserving a worldview now thankfully frowned upon. Secondly, it is the most remarkable antithesis to the true Christian values (the central commandment “love thy neighbour as thyself” should be the directing maxim here).

And, thirdly, this desire to discriminate among young people is plainly unsettling. The sexuality of students is not something which should be the subject of so much scrutiny – as Stephen Fry once pointed out, the stricter branches of the Church often like to brand homosexual people as exhibiting unnatural sexual attitudes, though it is not the gay community which displays an unhealthy obsession with the regulation, repression and restriction of sex, rather the shoe is on the other foot there.

I am very lucky – I am secure in myself; I attend a school which values all its students equally. Yet so, so many children do not yet have this same confidence. The influence of the Presbyterian Church of Australia in declaring the right to discriminate against students based on sexuality is therefore mightily dangerous to some of the most vulnerable in our society.

Those people behind this submission to the ALRC need to exhibit the compassion which their faith is built on, as do the other religious groups which have submitted similar requests.

Organised religion is a powerful force for positivity. Those groups which tarnish the name of spirituality by using it to justify prejudice do a disservice to all people of faith, and they endanger all those who fall under their care.

Daniel Cash is Melbourne Grammar’s school captain.