The current campaign to rid the country of Christian schools is reaching a crescendo. Once again, the rainbow/atheist ideologues have managed to unite the Catholics and the Protestants, not to mention the Jews and the Muslims as well. No small feat.
Of course, it is the Christians who are in the cross-hairs. First, we had Louise Milligan on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners railing against the fact that Catholic parents would send Catholic children to Catholic schools to be taught Catholic values and doctrines by Catholic teachers. The nerve of them!
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/media/2023/01/louise-milligans-latest-anti-catholic-frolic/
Now we have the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) interfering in the free choices of free citizens and legal entities. Or at least they are attempting to. The two contentious recommendations canvassed in a recent paper on discrimination in schools are as follows:
make discrimination against students on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship status, or pregnancy in schools and other religious educational institutions unlawful, by removing exceptions currently available under federal law.
protect teachers and other school staff from discrimination on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship status, or pregnancy, by removing similar exceptions.
https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/adl-cp-2023/
They wish to “protect” the employment rights of homosexuals, basically. I wonder where these paragons of anti-discrimination were during the campaigns to drive the Covid-unvaccinated from the workforce. I guess, as an employer, you can plead “Covid safety”, but not religion, when choosing who you employ. It is funny who the elites choose to defend. It is another (disguised) step in the inexorable march of militant sexual liberation through the institutions.
Central to the whole debate is the notion of “discrimination”. Religious institutions that insist on employing people who adhere to the faith professed by the establishment are said to be discriminatory when they do this.
I am a great fan of discrimination. It is something all smart people, and quite a few dumb ones, do. Every day. Reflexively. To be termed “discriminating” used to be a compliment. For mine, it still is. Every member of a leftist echo chamber discriminates. They only talk to themselves. The Greens Party discriminates. They would, for example, not have me as a member or candidate. Creating special jobs for Aborigines only is a blatant form of discrimination. Quotas for women in politics is another. Universities (still, I believe) require a certain ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) for entry. (I remember, when RMIT University dropped its Engineering ATAR by twenty points, the economist Judith Sloan saying that, personally, she would rather that bridges were designed and built by engineers with an ATAR of 80 than with 60. You get the point). Notwithstanding Groucho Marx, who didn’t want to join any club that would have him as a member, clubs require people to have certain interests or attributes in order to join. What about single sex schools? Women’s groups? Men and women only change rooms? (I think these still exist, at the time of writing). Yes, discrimination is everywhere, purposeful, welcome and sensible.
I was always taken with the great Theodore Dalrymple’s 2007 book, In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas. The Amazon summary describes it thus:
Today, the word prejudice has come to seem synonymous with bigotry; therefore the only way a person can establish freedom from bigotry is by claiming to have wiped his mind free from prejudice. English psychiatrist and writer Theodore Dalrymple shows that freeing the mind from prejudice is not only impossible, but entails intellectual, moral and emotional dishonesty. The attempt to eradicate prejudice has several dire consequences for the individual and society as a whole.
https://www.amazon.com/Praise-Prejudice-Necessity-Preconceived-Ideas/dp/1594032025
There is, upon reflection, nothing remotely controversial about this. Prejudice – having a preconceived idea about something or someone based on whatever – is synonymous with personal freedom. As Dalrymple points out in the book, it was only when prejudice became associated with “racism” – the great sin of the age – that it became controversial. Then, when racism became embedded in the zeitgeist, other forms of perceived victimhood and offence-taking came on board the bandwagon as well. Hence, we come now to the homosexual and transgendered “victims” of Christian and other religious schools and cognate institutions.
Another great defender of discrimination is the late Sir Roger Scruton. And he was maligned for it, in life and in death, by the Guardianistas of this world. Scruton stated:
We discriminate between people on grounds of their height, their age, their strength, their virtue, their looks. Just when is this an injustice? And if it is not an injustice, when would it be justifiable, in the interests of public policy, to prevent it? It seems to me that the anti-discrimination legislation with which our Western jurisdictions abound has gathered momentum without any real attempt to answer those questions.
… THIS, IT SEEMS TO ME, shows what is really at stake in these disputes. They are not about human rights, or about the perennial conflict between liberty and equality. “Non-discrimination” clauses are ways of smuggling in vast moral changes without real discussion. Their open-ended nature, and the vagueness of their application, renders them almost immune to reasoned rebuttal. There is no knowing, from one year to the next, which of our ways of discriminating between people will be ruled out in the next extension of the law.
https://spectator.org/non-discrimination/
The actual primary purpose of a (say) Christian school is to impart its faith, and where denied the right to do so in the ways they choose, the State is denying their very reason for being. It is also about basic parental rights, of course. As John Steenhof has argued:
The outcome of this review will be nothing short of catastrophic for these schools, which prioritise the Christian faith in their ethos and operations, and to that end are staffed by those who share and are firmly committed to that mission. Parents choose these schools for that very reason.
… It boils down to this. Many Christian schools would simply have no reason to remain in business. The only ones to thank the government would be the activists who wanted these outcomes, rather than the broader Australian public, and certainly not state and territory governments which will have an immense but avoidable problem dumped on them. All in the name of tolerance and inclusivity.
Indeed. Christian schools trashed. Parental rights obliterated. Already stretched State public education systems swamped by tens of thousands of new students.
But there is another issue here, as anyone unfortunate enough to have suffered the modern labour market, the dictatorship of corporate human resources departments and the glib cliches of the job recruitment process will know. The core objective of just about every recruitment process these days is not about skills and experience, but cultural “fit”. The candidate chosen is the one who will fit in best. And by fit in, it isn’t so much with your fellow team members but rather with corporate culture. That is what organisations want. Call the successful recruits yes men, if you will.
According to one human resources blog:
Culture fit refers to the congruence between the values and behavioral norms of a company and a candidate or employee. Simply put, when a candidate’s core values, actions, and goals match those of the company, there is a culture fit.
… It is critical to assess culture fit during the hiring process. The skills and experience of a candidate will be of secondary importance if they don’t get along with anyone at the company.
https://gethppy.com/company-culture/the-importance-of-culture-fit-for-sourcing-the-perfect-candidate
Sheer common sense, you might think. Moreover, identification with the employer’s values makes for happy workers!
It is the key to employee engagement, performance and productivity. Employees who identify more with their company are happier, experience greater job satisfaction, are more committed, perform better and are more likely to stay with their organisation. That is why cultural fit is important (emphasis in the original).
Let that sink in. “That is why cultural fit is important”. So, alignment between institutional values and employees is not only non-controversial. It is preferable. Ideal, even. Unless you happen to be a religious school seen as taking on gay power. Suddenly wanting your people to align with your core values is verboten.
This argument is not one put by management literature fringe dwellers. Here is the bible of modern management, the Harvard Business Review:
Culture fit is the glue that holds an organization together. That’s why it’s a key trait to look for when recruiting. The result of poor culture fit due to turnover can cost an organization between 50-60% of the person’s annual salary, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). But before the hiring team starts measuring candidates’ culture fit, they need to be able to define and articulate the organization’s culture – its values, goals, and practices – and then weave this understanding into the hiring process.
https://hbr.org/2015/07/recruiting-for-cultural-fit
Then there is SEEK:
Every workplace, business or organisation has a culture – whether we’re fully aware of it or not. This kind of culture is made up of the shared values, attitudes and behaviours of employees and leaders.
Making cultural fit part of the hiring process can help guide you towards the right candidate, says SEEK's Resident Psychologist Sabina Read.
https://www.seek.com.au/employer/hiring-advice/how-important-is-cultural-fit-now
So, it turns out that faith-based schools that hire on the basis of fit with their Christian (or other religious) values are simply following best recruitment practice. For which they may well be put out of business, if the ALRC and its fellow travellers get their way.
The people pushing the ALRC line never employ rational arguments. They rely on the use of hard and soft power. A moment’s reflection suggests that all of these efforts to reduce so-called discrimination are essentially about power and not rights. About the re-alignment of power groups in society, about capturing the commanding cultural heights. About the elimination of rival cultural power (the religious remnant). About upending tradition. About dominating the public square. About silencing those who just will not come along with us. Hang on a minute. Isn’t cancel culture … well … discriminatory? So, these people are irrational AND hypocrites.
It is the groups’ identities that matter, not the “rights” of some hypothetical individual qua individual. The powermongers of sexual (especially gay) liberation and their cheer squads do not give a toss (definitely no pun intended) about whether someone feels uncomfortable in a Christian school. We are all meant to “affirm” a certain lifestyle. While those demanding affirmation proceed to chase the rest of us out of public existence.
Just so long as we know what the game is.
Paul Collits
17 February 2023
Brilliant. I would have liked to have used sone these arguments in my questionnaire answers. There is still time to make a submission or to their questionnaire.
To tell the truth I am so tired of it all, I think it may be kinder that all those b**tards running the show should just nuke it all (everything). One might say just stop reading all the online content but unfortunately once you go down the rabbit hole it is dastardly hard to climb back out! Once the eyes are open they stay open and widely.
Covid, dioxin, ebola, earthquakes, tsunamis, chicken flue, religion, LGBT etc...........just get it over and done with . Put us out of our misery.