For a moment last week, a Mandurah private school found itself in the national media spotlight after it banned a little girl from speaking of her father’s sexuality.
The child had spoken in class of her father’s relationship with a man. The principal said the school was unable to support the father’s “world view”; the father withdrew the child.
“A same-sex world view is not congruent with our Christian world view,” Foundation Christian College principal Andrew Newhouse said.
The school has been condemned by many for its stance, and supported by a few.
The few supporters asked: “Why did a gay man enrol his child at a Christian school?”
The answer is simple: the father enroled his child in a Christian school because he and his family were Christian.
He subscribed to the Christian values the school outlined in its marketing material, which did not anywhere include a ban on a “same-sex world view”, whatever that weak euphemism really means.
But this statement was in the school’s sales puff: “The pressure of the media has created what we sometimes call ‘politically correct thinking’. This thinking can result in a loss of freedom of expression and a failure to think critically in some key areas of life. Christian schooling can make a significant contribution to the intellectual life of our society by challenging such uncritical thinking.”
What rank, self-serving hypocrisy for a school that muzzles a child and her family for discussing the father’s sexuality and political beliefs.
This is not religious freedom, as some supporters have claimed, it is the opposite.
What about the family’s right to free religious thought and expression? This child has been shunned from a State-funded religious education and excluded from a religious congregation.
If this is a “Christian world-view” it is rightly condemned.
But to many in our community, it’s hardly Christian at all.
Follow Nathan Hondros on Twitter: @nathanhondros
