When Paul Keating started to lose the economic debate to John Howard in the 1990s, he would notoriously crank out the debates about the Republic or the Flag in an attempt to distract the media. After all, the middle class media loves nothing more than a discussion about their own utopian dreams of their personal version of a perfect future.

 

Whilst Keating’s media distractions were frustrating, they were at least harmless. No one’s lives or rights were being used in a cynical piece of political manipulation.

 

The same cannot be said for the chosen distractionary causes of the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews: LGBT rights.

 

You know that Daniel Andrews is feeling the political heat right now, because in this week’s Parliamentary session he is introducing not one, but two Bills designed to show his support for gay and transgender causes. His cynicism in exploiting the lives of minority groups in order to change a media narrative is as herculean in size as it is contemptable.

 

Observers of Victorian politics will have noticed that Daniel Andrews does not seek to progress LGBT rights to improve society, or bring society together, but as a brazen political wedge against anyone that opposes him. This week’s Bills are nothing more than an exercise in divide and conquer, and I for one resent having important issues that affect the gay community used in such a manner.

 

Parliament will this week debate a Bill to remove religious exceptions for religious schools and bodies from the Equal Opportunity Act. This is a complicated and nuanced issue, but it will not be presented as such; instead, it will be presented in absolutes. You are with us, or you’re a troglodyte. You support the Bill, or you’re homophobic. Debates of these tones do nothing to improve acceptance of LGBT issues in the community. In fact, Daniel Andrews is creating exactly the sort of intolerant and division debate that opponents of a same-sex marriage plebiscite say that process will create, and has clearly forgotten that only the Sith deal in absolutes.

 

Rights are a construction of humanity, and they evolve as the collective wisdom and understanding of humanity evolves. This means that occasionally rights that might appear at first to be absolute will come into conflict, and society has to debate and balance those conflicting rights.

 

In 1996, Australia had a debate about the conceptual right of citizens to own firearms, versus the abstract right of a society to be as free as possible from gun violence. Neither right existed anywhere in our law, yet a public debate was had, and a balance reached, which leaves our community better off, especially when contrasted with the tragic results arising from the absolutist approach taken to the codified right to bear arms in the United States.

 

One of the longstanding freedoms we have valued in Australia is the freedom to practice your religion, and to celebrate your faith, provided you do so within the law. Within Australia, faith based schools – Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, etc – are an important part of our education system, and are valued by the parents who send their students to those schools in part because of the values that are imparted beyond simply teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Indeed, these are values that many secular schools seek to emulate.

 

It is therefore surely reasonable for the school to require any employee, in their interactions within the school community, to display a respect for the values of that school. Not a private adherence to them – what anyone does in their own private lives remains their affair – but a respect for them within the workplace.

 

Let me say bluntly, as a gay man I don’t feel that my rights or welfare are threatened because teachers at a Catholic school are asked to adhere to Catholic values, any more than I feel threatened by the weekly service at the local Mosque preaching Islam. Their faith is a personal matter, as it does not hurt me.

 

Let me say further, as a former student of an Anglican school, I am very comfortable that the overwhelming majority of the staff at any such school would always put the welfare of a student first, and have genuine processes in place to manage the welfare of LBGT students at those schools.

 

(Where this is not the case, this Bill will not address the issues. At all. And it is conceited to pretend that they will.)

 

In other words, I do not put my freedom to be an openly gay person above the freedom of another to practice their religion. By all means, I will happily use my freedom of expression to debate with others when gay rights and church dogma come into conflict, but I do so seeking to respectfully engage in an argument on merit, not by using the law to crush the alternative view.

 

More pragmatically, if I want to express the view that gay people should be allowed to marry, and that their marriages would not impinge upon the lives of others not supportive of them, then I cannot in good conscience condemn a religious school for what they say within their own community which does not affect me.

 

Tolerance must be mutual, if it is to be valued.

 

So far this year we have seen Daniel Andrews wade into the Federal issue of the same sex marriage plebiscite, asking the Prime Minister to break an election commitment (this from a Premier that justifies spending $1.1 billion to not build a road on the basis of refusing to break election commitments), to distract from Victorian issues.

 

His apology to the victims of past laws criminalising homosexuality was a neat political gesture, but displayed the partisanship of omission as he failed to acknowledge that it was the Hamer Government which decriminalised homosexuality in Victoria, and the Napthine Government which expunged those records.

 

The problem is not that the Premier raises these issues, but that he raises them for naked partisan gain, and in creating an “us vs them” environment, ends up doing more harm than good.

 

Most notably, this week’s proposed amendment to the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Bill, which has been rushed out just as accusations of the Premier’s bullying style are starting to bite, creates so many loopholes, and bypasses any chance for community debate, that an opportunity for a real community discussion about transgender issues will be lost in the tumult of wedge politics. It is a wasted opportunity to move the community on these issues.

 

If Daniel Andrews really cared about advancing LGBT issues he would stop exploiting these issues as a political distraction, and using them as political wedges, and start working with all sides to have a debate about improving the rights of some, without harming the rights of others.

 

I won’t be holding my breath.