all the words and colours

Ten Major Artists:

Wong Wong & Lulu

Pepper examining himself before commencing a self-portrait

Pepper’s self-portrait

Tiger the spontaneous reductionist

Misty goes off the wall

Minnie, the abstract expressionist

Minnie’s Reindeer in Provence, 1992.

Smokey painting after an hour in the catnip patch

Smokey at work

Ginger’s Stripped Bare Birds, 1992.

Princess, the elemental fragmentist

Basically, the exposure draft of the Coalition’s marriage equality bill (which is unlikely to ever come to a vote, given that they’re refusing to do anything without a plebiscite) allows exemptions to anti-discrimination law for:

Religious ministers in solemnising marriages;

Civil celebrants;

Religious organisations in providing goods and services (like renting out venues).

Religious ministers can already refuse to solemnise marriages and already have access to exemptions to federal anti-discrimination law, so it’s not the end of the world to be explicit about how the Marriage Act and the Sex Discrimination Act interact, so that everyone concerned can be clear in their legal rights. (Even if it feels icky to specifically refer to same-sex relationships, rather than just relying on the general exemptions for marriages that don’t conform to a minister’s religious requirements. They haven’t bothered to be specific about a minister’s right to refuse to solemnise a marriage for a divorcee, for example, even though that divorcee’s rights have the same protection as an LGBTQ person’s under the Sex Discrimination Act. That said, this issue is one of symbolism rather than legal rights.)

In contrast, to me, it’s the second and third points that are really a problem, because they do broaden the freedom of civil celebrants and religious organisations to discriminate against same-sex couples and trans people (especially nonbinary trans people) who are marrying.

Civil celebrants aren’t tied to a religious organisation–they’re ordinary people who’ve received authorisation from the government to confer a government-issued status, and who at best shouldn’t be treated differently from other people who are selling a service to the public. Practically speaking, there’s not a huge difference between a celebrant officiating a wedding and a caterer providing canapés–and there’s not a huge difference between refusing to cater a wedding and refusing to cater a commitment ceremony or engagement party, and there’s not a huge difference between any of those things and refusing to serve LGBTQ people altogether. I hate raising a slippery slope argument, but this exemption absolutely comes from logic that it’s okay for ordinary people providing goods and services to the public to refuse to provide those goods and services to LGBTQ people if they disapprove of our sexualities or gender identities, and we’ve already won that argument with regard to anti-discrimination laws. I hate to see that wound back.

Similarly, religious organisations who provide goods and services to the general public (as opposed to only adherents of their own religion) shouldn’t be exempted from normal anti-discrimination law principles just because some of those members of the public are in a same-sex relationship or because a member of the couple is non-binary. We’re not talking about religious services or anything like that–we’re talking about (for example) renting out a venue that they already make available to the public for whatever purpose, including members of the public who aren’t necessarily followers of their faith or who are celebrating things that aren’t necessarily permitted by that faith. (And where something is truly against the faith of a religious organisation, they already have access to an exemption from anti-discrimination law. They don’t need this to protect their religious sensibilities if renting a venue to LGBTQ people is so terrible.)

Note that both these exemptions in the draft bill (purportedly for religious sensibilities) only apply where “the refusal is because the marriage is not the union of a man and a woman”. They don’t apply to other situations where the couple marrying don’t comply with the celebrant or religious organisation’s faith requirements. They’re not permitting religious organisations to refuse to rent a venue to divorcees or people from other religions or people of no religion–the exemption only applies to weddings between same-sex couples and/or where at least one partner is nonbinary. That’s not to say that any of those other sorts of discrimination would be acceptable, but just to say that the contrast makes really, really clear that the motive here isn’t a general religious freedom: it’s absolutely about giving a legal okay to discrimination against LGBTQ people specifically. It’s not about religious freedom–it’s about saying that homophobia is acceptable.

I mean, the question of this particular exposure draft is probably academic. The Coalition aren’t going to allow it to come to a vote, anyway. Still, it’s worth noting the problems with this draft bill, because there eventually will be a draft bill that parliament passes into law–and it’s useful to know in advance what we do and don’t want it to contain.