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Off-topic: Climbers who believe in Jesus 5-Feb-2011 At 11:09:13 PM harold

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On 5/02/2011 rodw wrote:
>On 5/02/2011 harold wrote:
>>Plenty of atheists trying to push/enforce their beliefs:
>>Just last year in Victoria legislation was almost passed to stop religious
>>organizations or schools from employing people on the basis of their
>beliefs.
>>Kind of pointless having a church or christian school run by athiests.
>Can you link a website etc about this..first i heard of it? But if its
>much like what came up in NSW not long ago its more about a teacher can
>teach science no matter what religion he is...so why wouldnt you employ
>him. If any organisation gets public funding they open the gates to towing
>the line in regards to equality due to the source of that money..ie the
>general public.

I have strong beliefs in freedom of religion and freedom of association.

I was referring to a review in Victoria in 2009 of the exceptions in the Equal Opportunity Act where state anti-discrimination laws don’t apply, particularly religious exceptions for churches, religious bodies and religious schools. This basic gist of it was that the review put forward options to remove many of these exceptions so that for example a Christian school could be forced to employ atheist teachers and a Muslim school could be forced to employ Christian teachers etc.
There was some heavy lobbying which forced the government to mostly keep the exemptions. Some news article from the time below.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/government-bows-to-religious-right-20090926-g76u.html

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/pursuing-the-churches-over-human-rights-is-contradictory-20090728-e02j.html?page=-1

Sure you can teach science no matter what religion you are, but I will quote from Peter Costello "Parents who choose to send their children to a Christian school have a reasonable expectation that the child will get a Christian education. How could the school fulfill its obligation to the parents if it is required by law to employ non-Christian or anti-Christian teachers to provide it? If the law demands this you might as well close down the concept of a Christian school - which might be what some of the critics intend."