Of course, it is the Christians who are in the cross-hairs. First, we had Louise Milligan on the ABC’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!

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.

DISCRIMINATION

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.

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.

FREEDOM

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 now come 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.”

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.

TRASHED

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.”

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.