So recently it was announced that churches could continue to 'discriminate' and only hire people who hold the same religious convictions as they do to work for them.

This is surely mostly a big debate about nothing. The reason it is heated is because churches and their associated organisations wont hire gay people and the law says this is ok. Melbourne's flagship paper, The Age, has been pretty biased against the church on this one (what's new?). Here are all of the recent articles, I could find, that they've published on the issue. I've categorised them into Anti-church and Pro-Church by which I mean Anti the right for a church organisation to discrimate on the basis of faith or pro that position:

Anti-church: A Betrayal of Faith: The Bishop of Gippsland writes one of the worst articles I've ever seen from a Bishop. Totally hopeless and he'd be doing everyone a favour if he resigned and never spoke in public again.

Hulls lack of courage leaves discrimination entrenched: Editorial piece slamming the churches position.

Government bows to religious right: news article which is totally biased

Church can reject gays, single mums: news article which is... also totally biased. It includes this lovely quote from Rodney Croome (a Tasmanian gay activist), "the right to employment and education is more important than pandering to religious prejudice."
Hang on Rodney, the church isn't saying gay people can't have jobs or get educated. Just that they won't employ them. Surely when the gay lobby hire someone they ask if they believe in the cause?? If I went for a job to work with them and said, by the way I don't agree with you I wouldn't be hired. I'm then discriminated against because of my religious views. Why is it fair for you to do it but not the church?

Balancing religion and rights, the case against discrimination: More of the same from The Age opinion pages.



Pro-church:
Why the Bishop is wrong on faith and rights: A response to that hopeless Bishop's article I mentioned earlier.

Freedom of religion is also a basic right: This article begins with, "Telling a church or a mosque it can't employ people who share its ethos is a bit like telling the Labor Party it must employ Liberals." Hurrah!

Plus there were also some Letters to the editor with 1 pro and 2 anti.

(NOTE: These were all I found when searching theage.com.au with the word discrimination so I might have missed one or two but I think it's a pretty complete list)

Anyway apart from a clearly biased paper. Here are some of my other thoughts:

First of all, churches are still allowed to preach the Gospel and so I can't see why a gay person would want to work for an organisation that says you're lifestyle is opposed to God's plan for the way humans should relate to each other. So that's why I can't really understand why they are so upset about this. It's like I said earlier about me working for the gay lobby. I don't want to and they would never employ me because of my religious beliefs. I'm happy to be discriminated against in that case where we clash ideologically.

Secondly, Jim Wallis makes an interesting point in a recent article on this subject of discrimination. He talks about the difference between providing services and receiving them. He says you should be able to select people who agree with your organisational beliefs but then not discriminate against who receives your services, that is a church based group that finds people jobs should still find gay people jobs but shouldn't be forced to hire someone who totally disagrees with their position. (The first "Pro-Church" article I list argues along similar lines to this!)

I think my view would be similar to Jim Wallis and co.