2018/22: Should religious schools be able to exclude LGBTI students and teachers?
Introduction to the media issue
Video clip at right: On October 10, 2018, 9 News televised a detailed report on the recommendations of the Ruddock review regarding the rights of religious schools to exclude LGBTI students.What they said...
'Because faith-based schools are religious communities, they need...to be able to insist on adherence to the codes of conduct that they reasonably believe are required by the faith'
Professor Patrick Parkinson of the University of Sydney
'LGBTIQ+ people have a lot to contribute to our...schools. To deny our students access to amazing teachers is surely a greater assault to ''decency'' than what these teachers are doing in the privacy of their own homes'
Comment made by a gay teacher working in a religious school
The issue at a glance
On October 9, 2018, the recommendations of the Ruddock Review (officially known as the Religious Review Expert Panel) were leaked to the media.
Among the Panel's recommendations were that the exemptions currently granted under federal anti-discrimination law, allowing religious schools to discriminate against homosexual students and teachers, be clarified and retained.
The leaked recommendations provoked an uproar as they highlighted the current capacity of religious schools to exclude LGBTI students and teachers. With regard to students, this is a power that is very infrequently used and which politicians, the media and the public at large appear either to have largely ignored or been unaware of.
The Labor Opposition immediately condemned these recommendations, focusing particularly on the apparent power of religious schools to expel students on the basis of the sexual orientation, however they also defended the right of LGBTI teachers to be employed within religious schools. The full text can be accessed at
On December 13, 2018, the government announced that it had accepted fifteen of the twenty recommendations made by Ruddock Review. The remaining five would be further examined; these included the recommendations relating to the exclusion of LGBTI students and teachers by religious schools.
The debate has revolved primarily around the rights of LGBTI students to be accepted within religious schools in Australia; however, the question of the employment rights of LGBTI teachers within religious schools will be revisited in 2019.