Religious and gay Sydney teacher tells Q+A she was fired due to her sexuality – ABC News

Just hours after Prime Minister introduced the religious discrimination bill to Parliament,  a teacher has echoed calls for Scott Morrison to also ensure gay school teachers and students are protected, telling Q+A she lost her job because she was homosexual.

The law Mr Morrison introduced on Thursday seeks to protect Australians who make “statements of belief” from existing state-based discrimination laws, but only if those statements do not “threaten, intimidate, harass or vilify a person or group”.

But audience member Stephanie Lentz told Q+A on Thursday night she had been fired from her English teaching job at a Sydney Christian school earlier this year because she came out.

Ms Lentz identifies as both a member of the LGBT community and a member of the Anglican faith but said the former had, in January, cost her her job.

She did not identify the school directly.

“I worked at a Christian school teaching English from 2017 to 2019 and I loved it,” Ms Lentz said.

“I really enjoyed the colleagues and the relationships with students, but in January this year the school fired me.

“They fired me because they disagreed with me that you can be Christian and also live true to the biological realities of your sexuality or gender.”

Q+A host Stan Grant asked Ms Lentz if she believed she was fired “because you were gay or because you could no longer teach the ethos or the doctrine of that school? Had you offered to do just that”.

Loading

She responded that she had.

“I had offered to promote the school’s ethos on sexuality,” she said.

“Obviously, notwithstanding things that I believed would be harmful to the students, but I did offer to back the school’s position on a lot of things.

Her allegations sparked a passionate debate on Q+A against the backdrop of the bill that Mr Morrison, who holds his own strong religious views, introduced to Parliament.

Anglican Pastor Michael Jensen was asked how freedom of sexuality and freedom of religion could coexist and how situations like Ms Lentz’s could be resolved without jobs being lost under the proposed new legislation.

“It’s complicated,” Pastor Jensen said.

“What we’ve got to do in an open society is got to make room for different types of view, different types of expression.”

Under Mr Morrison’s proposed legislation, religious schools and organisations would be allowed to give preference to and prioritise the employment and enrolment of people from the same faith, but the institutions would have to have a clear public policy that explained how religious views would be enforced.

Mr Jensen defended the right for religious institutions to employ who they like based on belief structures.

“The current legislation that’s before Parliament deals with belief,” he said.

“It deals specifically with an issue of whether you sign up to a belief statement or not, rather than saying anything about someone’s identity or their behaviour.

“In particular it deals with that, but because there are difficult cases it does not mean that we shouldn’t promote the freedom of religious groups and religious institutions to be able to employ who they want to employ reasonably and with clarity about their doctrinal statements and positions.”

Ms Lentz said it was troubling that some people in the Christian community no longer believed she “belonged” there because of her sexuality.

Pastor Jensen, however, said that was the right of the community to have that discussion.

“That’s an issue for the Christian community to talk about and for you to contribute to that particular theological debate,” he said.

“But the issue at law is whether there is freedom for a particular community to express its identity in that particular way too, isn’t it?”

‘No-one should have to go through that’

Asked for his thoughts whether job losses like Ms Lentz’s would happen more under the proposed legislation, NSW MP for Mackellar Jason Falinski offered an apology to Ms Lentz before giving a vague answer spruiking the right to freedoms for all. 

“What you’ve gone through, no-one should have to go through that,” Mr Falinski said.

“What I would say though about this legislation is that as a liberal, a philosophical liberal, the role of the state is to maximise the freedom of individuals wholly consistent with the freedom of others.

“The role of any government is to ensure that those things are protected because if our nation is to mean anything, people need to be free to express themselves within that context.”

Asked for his viewpoint, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr, who is homosexual, made a pitch for her to teach in Canberra and labelled her sacking discrimination.

“To Steph’s question, I’m just so sorry to hear that. That’s terrible,” Mr Barr said.

“Come and teach in Canberra. You are really welcome in our city.

“We will value you for who you are and the wonderful professional skills you could bring to our education system.

“I’m sorry you’ve been discriminated against. It’s terrible and shouldn’t happen.”

Addressing the wrong election promise?

One of the more controversial elements of the proposed law, the so-called “Folau clause”, was cut from the bill that was tabled in Parliament.

In 2019, Israel Folau was sacked by Rugby Australia (RA) for a series of anti-homosexual social media posts, the last of which claimed hell awaited homosexuals along with drunks, adulterers, thieves, liars, fornicators, atheists and idolaters.

In the storm that followed, Folau tweeted about having “the fight of his life” on his hands in regard to his career and right to express himself.

Loading

In the end, Folau and RA came to a settlement but he has not played rugby union in Australia since.

The Q+A panel discussed people airing views that are grounded in religious beliefs but are potentially harmful to others.

Melinda Cilento, chief executive of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, was asked how workplaces might deal with religious views aired in the workplace environment if the bill was passed.

“You’re already seeing businesses and business groups reflecting they’re not sure how this plays out and how they’re going to deal with this and what the implications for them are as they deal with the laws and the regulations of this,” Ms Cilento said.

Either way, Folau and Ms Lentz have both lost their jobs, raising the question of where Australia stands on freedom of speech.

Journalist and documentary maker Yaara Bou Melham said this bill should not have been a priority for the government in the first place.

Loading

When it was suggested that the religious discrimination bill was an election promise that Mr Morrison made three years ago, Ms Bou Melham said the government had been dragging its heels on other promises.

“He [Morrison] said he would bring in a federal integrity commission three years ago also,” Ms Bou Melham said to applause from the audience.

“Bridget Archer, the Tasmanian Liberal MP crossed the floor today to support an independent proposal for a federal ICAC of sorts.

Under pressure over the issue, Mr Falinski finished the show by saying there would be a federal commission against corruption, but he declined to set a date.

“We will do an integrity commission and an independent commission against corruption,” he said.

Watch the full episode on iview or via the Q+A Facebook page.

Favorite