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‘The battle of the church’: Religious laws and injustices of LGBTIQ freedoms
The LGBTIQ community is fighting a “battle at the level of the church”, especially when this battle extends into laws governed by religious freedoms, according to former Justice of the High Court of Australia Michael Kirby.
Naomi Neilson
This was one such message from Mr Kirby, at a recent book launch hosted by Herbert Smith Freehills. The new book, “From Sodomy Laws to Same-Sex Marriage”, looked at the history of LGBTIQ injustices.
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Justice Kirby said Australia should be wary of the draft Religious Freedom Bill, brought to light by Attorney-General Christian Porter, as it was not “drafted by friends”.
“I think we have to watch the Religious Freedom Bill with the greatest of care because that has not been drafted by friends or allies,” Justice Kirby said. “It has been drafted by people that want to go back to the binary division, fixed by penis and vagina.”
“[It will also] give a free kick to religious freedoms without a balance or counterbalance of protection of LGBTIQ freedoms and I hope that the debate will identify the injustices of that and that we start to see some steps back on it.”
These same injustices were present during the same-sex marriage postal vote in 2017 and in the “powerful forces in the government that hoped for a different outcome”.
Justice Kirby said he has been opposed to the postal vote and disagreed with people who expressed how “wonderful” the results were. He saw it first as a source of stress for young LGBTIQ people who “suddenly discovered how hated they were in society”.
“I didn’t think 40 per cent of people in Australia voting against marriage equality in this secular country with a constitution, in my opinion, forbids imposition of the sacramental form of marriage – that was simply extending a civil right to other citizens and evidence strongly supporting the value and utility of that right – was such a good result,” he said.
He said this attitude still exists in this country and improved people to speak out against this kind of behaviour, especially when it exists at a government level. Particularly, this will extend over the next few weeks and months as Australia debates the new bill.
“To all those who are allies, I express thanks,” Justice Kirby said. “Most of us, virtually all of us, have come from heterosexual families and in those families, most of us and many of us, have found real allies who can see through their love of us the cruelty and injustice and unkindness of the old laws, and it’s wonderful to have such friends.”
In Justice Kirby’s capacity as co-chair of Human Rights Institute of International Bar Association, he visited the Vatican to implore they decriminalise same-sex activity. He said that although the Pope was unavailable at the time, he made progress with the next most senior official of the Vatican, who would take the issue to the Pope.
One such issue that has emerged from the church is their attitude toward transsexual-identified people. Justice Kirby said they “get a hard time often from the gays, but they get a very hard time from the Roman Catholic Church”.
“They get that hard time because of the notion of civil law that you have to go back to natural law, and natural law is based on the binary division of human beings with penises and vaginas. And by that standard of nature you are fixed forever and you must fulfil that role,” Justice Kirby said of these attitudes.
“This is the natural law of teaching and that is what the church has said in its latest publication. It is totally opposed to transition surgery and to different bathrooms and other benefits for trans people. The battle at the level of the church is not over.”
