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A religious freedom case that has the potential to go all the way to the High Court made the news recently, and it has potential to impact all faith-based schools and institutions in the country.

According to a variety of media reports, Myka Sanders is a male teacher at a Melbourne Catholic high school who identifies as non-binary.

The school has known this about Sanders for a couple of years, and Sanders’ employment continued, even though Sanders demonstrated small acts of activism.

“I was told off for having pride stickers on my laptop and for handing out stickers to students who wanted them,” Sanders told one media outlet.

However, the school and Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) reportedly drew the line at Sanders’ request to use they/them pronouns and to be referred to as Mx rather than Mr, and so now MACS is being sued for discrimination.

Clash of Worldviews

While some might judge Sanders’ demands to be insignificant, it has big implications.

To comply with Sanders’ request, the school would have to instruct students taught by Sanders to refer to him as Mx, rather than “Sir” or “Miss”, as is common courtesy for high school students addressing a teacher.

This is a problem because it would require a Catholic school to instruct students to say something inconsistent with Catholic anthropology and with Sacred Scripture.

“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them,” we read in the very first chapter of Genesis. (Gen 1:27)

While some, perhaps many students, might be comfortable with such a change, I expect there would be at least a small percentage of students who would feel uncomfortable with it, including those who want to live and speak the truth, and in accordance with their Catholic faith.

What happens if those students refuse to change their language and continue to call Sanders “Sir” or “Mr Sanders”? Would the school be forced to discipline those students, giving them detention or threatening them with expulsion for not using a teacher’s preferred name and pronouns?

Would the school be left in the bizarre position of having to punish Catholic kids in a Catholic school for speaking in accordance with Catholic teaching, just to avoid an anti-discrimination claim?

Would the school have to tell the families who choose Catholic schooling for their kids that they can no longer assume their kids will be educated in the Catholic faith, or at least not be forced to say or do anything that contradicts it?

Should a teacher who identifies as non-binary have a right not only to continued employment in a faith-based school, but also to require every person at the school to conform to their beliefs?

Or has all of this gone a bit too far?

Free to Leave

To my mind, this is the wrong fight for the so-called equality movement to have picked.

For years, they have been lobbying for changes to anti-discrimination laws to make them more restrictive on Catholic schools and institutions.

They continually raise the spectre of kids being expelled and teachers being sacked for who they are. Despite the relentless rhetoric, these lobby groups haven’t been able to find any such case, and so instead, they have a teacher who has kept their job and was simply asked to behave in accordance with the beliefs of the school while at the school.

That seems reasonable to me, and the same would go for any workplace, faith-based or not.

As former Prime Minister John Howard told The Catholic Weekly last year: “It’s very simple. You have a perfect right, if you are running a Catholic school or an Anglican school, if you’ve got a teacher who is kicking against the fundamentals of the religion, you’ve got a perfect right to say, ‘Wish you well, God bless you, but get a job somewhere else.'”

I think he makes a lot of sense. And I think the High Court will think so as well.

Bring it on.

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Republished with thanks to The Catholic Weekly. Image courtesy of Adobe.