Faith leaders and women’s rights activists are sounding the alarm. Victorian politicians are soon set to debate and vote on new anti-vilification legislation. Religious groups and women’s sex-based rights advocates are rightly concerned. The omnibus legislation, if supported in its current form, would radically redraw the state’s anti-vilification framework. It seeks to abolish the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act introduced by the Bracks government, establish civil offences within the Equal Opportunity Act for vilification on the grounds of race, religion, disability, gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association, and insert offences for serious vilification into the Crime Act. The proposed changes would also lower the bar for civil and criminal vilification offences, increase the maximum penalty for serious vilification from six months to five years in jail and introduce a new “genuine political purpose” defence for people accused of inciting hatred. Faith leaders such as Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli raised concerns that proposed changes could impact religious freedoms.
Comensoli has met with Attorney General Jaclyn Symes to express the church’s concerns. “Attempts to lower the threshold of what constitutes vilification must not stifle genuine discussion and acts done in good faith, particularly the sharing of religious beliefs by people of faith,” he told The Age. “The current proposals include highly subjective elements that risk limiting legitimate religious speech while the religious purposes defence is not sufficiently clear.” Other groups are also sounding the alarm in the severe restrictions that could be imposed on the ability to speak about faith and truth. Australian Christian Lobby Victorian director Jasmine Yuen said the proposed changes had “sent a shockwave” through the Christian community. “My fear is that preaching and teaching in Christian schools and churches on anything regarding biblical sexual ethics and God’s creation of biology could be considered hate speech if someone feels it is offensive to them.” Bronwyn Winter, a spokeswoman for Australian Feminists for Women’s Rights, which campaigns for the sex-based rights of women, welcomed the inclusion of sex as a protected attribute to give women and girls legal recourse against sexualised vilification.
But she said women could themselves be at risk of being criminalised if they defended sex-based rights at the expense of trans rights. Women’s Rights Network Australia, which also campaigns for women’s sex-based rights, was blunter in its submission to the government about the law changes: “We believe that if this Bill passes, it will be weaponised by trans activists against women.” This is already playing out in NSW with a Binary spokesperson facing two hearings next year for ‘vilification’ after identifying and objecting to males playing in female football leagues. There are serious concerns surrounding the Victorian laws, as lies are being legislated and we could face threats of legal action for merely stating the biological fact that humans can’t change sex.
Source: Binary
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