Seeking clarity : how Christian organisations manage rights to religious freedom and non-discrimination for LGBT+ employees

<p dir="ltr">This thesis examines the experiences and practices of Christian-affiliated schools and social services organisations as they manage the intersection of religious freedom and LGBT+ employee non-discrimination. The study is based on new and comprehensive national evidence from the leaders of Christian organisations and is framed by two key backgrounds. The first background is the emergence of a new phase in relations between religion and state centred on vigorous debates over religious freedom. Religious freedom debates gained new prominence and discursive form around the culmination of public contests over the recognition of legal same-sex marriage, which passed into law in 2017. Conservative Christian groups drove a new campaign to protect religious freedom, amid which the right of non-discrimination for LGBT+ employees in religious organisations was a central area of dispute. The second background is that, by international standards, Australia is unusually reliant on religious – and especially Christian – organisations for government-funded services in education, social welfare, aged care and health care. These types of Christian service providers employ over 400,000 staff, more than the federal government or all local governments combined. Yet unlike private or public <i>non-religious </i>service organisations, many Christian organisations operate under legal exceptions that permit discrimination against LGBT+ employees. In this context, recent federal legislative proposals to protect religious freedom have attracted public controversy and caused political division over concerns about increased discrimination against LGBT+ employees. Christian advocates counter that without their desired reforms religious service providers face threats at a nearly existential level.</p><p dir="ltr">This study adopts a qualitative method, using data gained from interviews with forty-six senior leaders of forty-three Christian organisations operating across the nation. Organisations represented a broad spectrum of denominations, theological views and operated across the gamut of discrimination regimes (which vary between States and Territories). Interviews inquired into the expression of religious freedom and the nature of the organisation’s employment system as it relates to LGBT+ employees. Interviews also sought the views of senior leaders on the recent religious freedom debates. As the organisation is the primary unit of analysis, the thesis draws upon theory from the sociology of organisations (or ‘neo-institutionalism’), known as ‘institutional logics’. Institutional logics is a theoretical perspective designed to explain the behaviour of organisations, such as how and why they structure their employment systems. Institutional logics enables me to consider institutional forces on faith-based organisations at different levels, including at a societal level; from local regulatory regimes; and at the internal organisational level. Crucially, institutional logics offers a theoretical framework for understanding how religious institutions, such as churches and religious authorities, influence affiliated organisations. Institutional logics provides a way to explain how organisations respond to conflicting signals in their institutional environment, and why an employment structure is deemed appropriate by the organisation.</p><p dir="ltr">This study makes the following four findings. First, a legal right to discriminate against LGBT+ employees is neither desired nor required by the majority of Christian organisations. Many organisational leaders rejected LGBT+ discrimination because of the organisation’s religious values and identity. Second, a discrete group of Christian schools hold theologically conservative beliefs that result in discrimination against current and prospective LGBT+ employees. These schools operate a distinctive employment system that provides ways to exclude prospective LGBT+ employees and dismiss existing employees. This employment system appears largely unaffected by legal measures designed to reduce discrimination. Third, a significant group of organisations affiliated with the large and influential Catholic and Anglican denominations experience conflicts over how to recognise the right to LGBT+ employee non-discrimination. Tensions develop from the ideological opposition of conservative church authorities and allied actors to LGBT+ inclusion. This third point leads to a fourth finding: conservative Christian institutions create (often implicit) conditions that impair the rights to LGBT+ non-discrimination and religious freedom in their affiliated organisations. Religious freedom is impaired as conservative authorities suppress the expression of views and/or actions which are seen to undermine a conservative ideology on gender and sexuality.</p><p dir="ltr">Efforts by Christian authorities to defend a conservative ideology on sexuality and gender are advanced in recent religious freedom campaigns. While these conservative religious freedom advocates purport to protect Christian organisations and suggest that their reforms would have negligible impact on LGBT+ employees, this study finds these claims to be specious. Instead, most leaders of Christian organisations in this study were critical of the conservative-led religious freedom campaign and many held that the proposed reforms would likely harm their organisation and its LGBT+ employees. Furthermore, my analysis of the institutional dynamics facing Christian organisations suggests that enacting the religious freedom reforms supported by conservative Christian authorities would exacerbate existing tensions in many of the organisations. The minority of organisations supportive of such reforms would likely face heightened scrutiny over the legitimacy of their conduct in relation to LGBT+ employees. Additionally, the proposed reforms offer little benefit even to supportive Christian organisations, which like all organisations in this study, reported no practical limits on their religious freedom to employ under existing anti-discrimination laws. In a majority of Christian organisations in this study, and likely similar religious bodies, conservative-led reforms would lead to institutional tensions, poorer employment outcomes and more discrimination for current and prospective LGBT+ employees. Instead, Christian organisations and their LGBT+ employees will benefit if anti-discrimination laws are clarified for all stakeholders in a manner consistent with general community expectations.</p>