Over the past 500 years one of the great advances of Western culture is the revolutionary notion of tolerance. Tolerance is a hard-won virtue. Throughout history, most societies have adopted a “convert or die” approach.

But Christian denominations eventually learned how to live peacefully with each other and with other faith traditions. After centuries of bloodshed and quarrels, Christians generally rub along quite cheerfully.

As a reminder of that harmony, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, recently appeared before a committee of the New South Wales parliament to critique the Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill. He was representing both Catholic and Orthodox bishops.

Joint action like this would have been unusual a hundred years ago, and almost inconceivable two or three hundred years ago. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio, which emerged from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was the classic expression of religious tolerance in early modern Europe. A loose translation of the Latin is: your king’s religion will be your religion. All the king’s subjects were free to practice any religion they liked -- as long as it was the king’s religion. Tolerance, such as it was, was a zero-sum game. The mere presence of dissenters or heretics was thought to threaten the stability of the state. Only one religion could be tolerated.

With the growing power of the LGBTIQA+ movement, are we in danger of reversing the gains of centuries and returning to a zero-sum conception of tolerance?

The Bill has been drafted by Independent gay MP Alex Greenwich. He successfully helped to engineer the passage of bills decriminalising abortion and legalising euthanasia in the state of NSW. His Equality Bill seeks to extend the religion of unfettered autonomy to all corners of society.

In truth, “equality” is a misnomer. “Equality” connotes tolerance of other approaches, opinions, and religions. Greenwich’s version of equality seeks to impose acceptance of his dogmas on dissidents.

The most aggressively intolerant section of the bill will make it impossible for schools and other organizations to sack people who do not accept the organization’s ethos. A boys’ school would not be able to dismiss, for instance, a teacher who returned from the Christmas break as a transwoman.  Cuius regio, eius religio.

As Archbishop Fisher told the committee: “We sympathise with all efforts to discourage or forbid unjust discrimination against LGBT people but there is a troubling anti-religious undercurrent in the bill. For example, the bill proposes to remove the few existing protections for religious institutions from anti-discrimination lawfare, including schools, healthcare, aged care, welfare & pastoral services, while offering no protections at all for individuals of faith.”

Parents select schools which promote the values that they want for their children. A transwoman teacher would certainly disrupt the transmission of those values in the eyes of Christian parents. The so-called Equality Bill is actually discriminating against them and forcing them to accept Greenwich’s faux religion. We are moving back to the 17th century. 

After the Peace of Westphalia, Catholics in Protestant countries or Protestants in Catholic countries had three options. They could practice their faith in secret, hoping to evade the vigilance of the authorities. They could convert. Or they could migrate. English Catholics went underground. English Puritans fled to New England; French Huguenots moved to England, Holland, and America.

Similarly, at the moment, parents who don’t like woke schools can “migrate” – send their children to a more congenial school. Under the Equality Bill, they will effectively be forced to conceal their views or to jump onto the bandwagon.