Right to refuse gay weddings protects against other discrimination, inquiry told

Jan 25, 2017 by

by Paul Karp, Guardian:

The government’s marriage equality bill specifies that ministers of religion would be able to refuse same-sex weddings because otherwise it risks creating a right to refuse weddings based on disability or race, the attorney general’s department has revealed.

The department warned a Senate inquiry into the government’s same-sex marriage bill exposure draft that removing a provision allowing ministers to refuse gay weddings could create a host of unintended consequences.

The government bill contains a section that allows ministers of religion to refuse to solemnise a marriage that is not a union between a man and a woman.

In their submissions various LGBTI rights groups and the Law Council of Australia questioned why this provision singled out ministers’ ability to refuse a same-sex wedding.

The attorney general’s department’s assistant secretary of the civil law group, Andrew Walter, explained that the purpose of the provision was “to confine what would otherwise be a broader exemption than currently exists in anti-discrimination law”.

Under the current law, ministers are allowed to refuse weddings but are still governed by discrimination law that means they cannot do so on certain grounds.

Walter explained that exemptions for religious practices exist in the Sex Discrimination Act but not in the disability or racial discrimination acts.

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