Citipointe Christian College is embroiled in controversy because it has a Christian enrolment policy.
During the same-sex marriage campaign, gay activists like Tony Abbott’s sister, Christine Forster, rejected concerns Christian schools would lose freedoms if marriage was de-gendered.
As a spokesperson for Australian Marriage Equality, Forster said in a 2017 debate with me on Sky News:
“Religious institutions and schools are free and are protected by our existing legislation and our constitution to teach their beliefs. That will not change because same-sex couples can get married.”
But statesmen like John Howard knew at the time she was wrong and his calls for protections for freedom of religion before changing the definition of marriage went unheeded by the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Fast forward four years and Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College is in the eye of a media storm about its Christian enrolment policy.
The school and its principal, pastor Brian Mulheran, are being chased by an angry rainbow lynch mob armed with a change.org petition.
A small group of emotional children, activists, parents and even one of the school’s now former teachers have been given a mainstream media megaphone to blast the Christian college for its “heartless” and “bigoted” enrolment policy.
There is no room for nuance in this debate, let alone for standing up for the freedoms Christine Forster said with a straight face would not be affected.
The narrative is simple. Bible-believing Christians are mean people who beat up upon trans and gay kids.
This of course is untrue but what is true is that they hold a different sexual ethic and view of gender that is religiously motivated and backed up by science.
But for faithful Christians, nothing before or since same-sex marriage has changed.
Jesus of Nazareth, Moses who led the Jews out of Egypt and Paul of Tarsus all taught a sexual ethic that was uncontroversial until the last five minutes of western history.
What has changed is the tolerance for Christian sexual ethics to be promoted publicly and taught to children in Christian schools and churches.
It’s not just Christians who believe that boys are boys and girls are girls and who would prefer their children were not inducted into accepting homosexual concepts at school.
Millions of mainstream Australians feel the same but a creeping totalitarianism, backed by flawed anti-discrimination laws and a change to the Marriage Act, is having a chilling silencing affect.
Yesterday an angry Queensland Education Minister, Grace Grace, encouraged people to take Citipointe Christian College to the Human Rights Commission.
Labor clearly doesn’t see a place for Christian, Muslim or Jewish schools which teach the scientific view of biology and the Abrahamic faiths’ ethic of marriage and family.
The emotivism, with no thought given to kids who might later regret having their breast or genitals cut-off, is piled on the Citipointe Christian College for its “transphobia”.
“I have to let those queer kids know that there are Christians out there that love them and aren’t hiding behind Bible verses and are letting them know that they are safe with me,” former Citipointe parent and English teacher Helen Clapham Burn told Channel 10’s The Project.
No one on The Project’s panel asked her about the long-term side effects of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones.
But if we stop and think, something we’re not very good at these days, who is being more compassionate to children?
The people who seek to help kids be comfortable with their bodies or the ones who lead them to the door of the gender clinic for experimental treatment?
Pastor Mulheran should be free to stop a boy wearing a dress to the school formal. It’s a bad influence on the younger kids.
If a kid and their parents want to promote transgenderism and homosexuality, they should form their own school for this purpose.
It’s a free country, or at least it used to be.
Instead, rainbow activists use a biased media and flawed legal system to ramp up the pressure on a Christian community to bend to their unscientific view of biology and their alternative sexual ethic.
That is not tolerance and it is not what Forster promised voters as they were about to vote to trash the gender diversity of marriage.
The Christian community and our Christian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, need to step up and support Citipointe against this confected but vicious attack on freedom of religion.
Where is the LNP, the political party supposedly of freedom of religion and speech?
If Citipointe Christian College can’t enrol students and employ teachers who agree to uphold the Christian view of marriage and gender, that is the end of Christian education in Australia.
Maybe that’s the aim.
Lyle Shelton is Director of Campaigns and Communications for the Christian Democratic Party. To keep in touch with Lyle and the CDP, sign up here.