(Image: EPA/Salvatore Di Nolfi)

There’s nothing more ecumenical than gay panic, is there?  

I say “gay” because it scrolls better than LGBTIQ+ panic, but it’s the whole picnic basket of gender and sexuality questions which roil our religions so much that they are constantly at the centre of intractable social controversies.

This week we have two hot topics: the female Muslim footy player who decided to sit out the AFLW Pride round because of her religion’s position on LGBTIQ+ people, and the Brisbane Christian school which is requiring parents to sign an enrolment contract confirming that “homosexual acts” are immoral and “offensive to God”, and which acknowledges that their children will be expelled if they decline to identify with their “biological sex”.

The footy player is Haneen Zreika, a poster child for diversity as the first Muslim woman in the AFLW and a strong advocate for inclusion. Her statements haven’t spelled out precisely why she declined to wear a jersey with a rainbow on it, but it seems clear she wasn’t able to reconcile doing so with Islam’s strictures on homosexuality (it’s an abomination). It’s also clear that she found it a very difficult conflict to reconcile, and did her best to achieve that with minimal harm to anyone.

The school — Citipointe Christian College, a Pentecostal operation — has been rather more strident. The “statement of faith” in its enrolment contract comes straight from the church’s constitution. It lists homosexual acts along with adultery, bestiality, incest and paedophilia as practices that are “sinful and offensive to God”, and states that “God created human beings as male or female”.

These are standard tenets of most Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious sects, with ample biblical/koranic support. Within mainstream religions, they’re not controversial beliefs.

It is not coincidental that we are seeing more frequent bold expressions of the more problematic aspects of these principles. They reflect the collision point between two irreconcilable perspectives: the right to be, and be accepted without discrimination as, whatever gender (or non-gender) and sexuality you are or identify as; the right to believe that gender and sexuality are fixed at birth and any deviance from that is a one-way ticket to hell.  

Rather than argue which of these positions is correct, we need to consider which should be given priority over the other. That is the only way a society and its laws can navigate such conundrums.

Zreika asserted the right to refuse her labour to her employer on the grounds of not acting inconsistently with her faith. If her club or the AFLW tried to sanction her for doing so, she would say that was discriminatory and wrong.

Citipointe is likewise only asserting its beliefs, seeking to promote and protect them by ensuring that its students (and their parents) are fully on board with them. To a suggestion that it should not do so, it would claim the protection of religious freedom, and point out that nobody is forced to attend its school.

For the LGBTIQ+ players in Zreika’s club and the AFLW, and the LGBTIQ+ community more widely, Zreika’s act could only be read as a statement of her belief that their truth is false. That’s quite confronting, much as Zreika has been at pains to avoid any collateral harm.

For any LGBTIQ+ kids at Citipointe, there’s a more direct and hurtful message.

It all reminds me of Sally Rugg on Q&A back in 2019 on a panel which was politely discussing whether she, a lesbian, would be going to hell: “As if these words don’t mean things, and they don’t do things.” Of course they do. They hurt.

So I think, well, wouldn’t it be nice if people didn’t keep telling LGBTIQ+ people, by words or actions that they’re doomed, or non-existent, or both? Particularly when a person’s gender or sexuality has absolutely no consequence for anyone else?  

But that world doesn’t exist; the Bible and Koran say what they say, unchangingly, and people of religion will continue to believe that the world is binary and straight. And they will continue to insist on their right to assert and act on that belief, regardless of the consequences for others.

Society is not ready to condemn the religious belief set regarding LGBTIQ+ people, as we have previously condemned the religious practice of female genital mutilation or the religious practice of burning witches. This form of bigotry is not considered sufficiently harmful for that.

Which means that LGBTIQ+ people are required to continue to wear the slings and arrows that keep coming their way. We see no alternative, or rather we can’t face up to it.

That’s where our society’s priority lies: with religious belief over and above LGBTIQ+ dignity. It’s a choice.

Do you think LGBTIQ+ people deserve better? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.