CV NEWS FEED // Archbishop Julian Porteous of Tasmania (Australia) could face legal prosecution over a letter that he wrote and circulated to Catholic school students statewide.
According to a May 13 ABC news report, the letter, which LGBTQ+ activists are calling “transphobic” and “homophobic,” condemned “radicalised transgender lobby,” abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and the “woke” movement.
“What we are now witnessing in our Australian society is the imposition of certain ideological positions on social and moral questions by means of legislation,” Archbishop Porteous wrote in the letter, adding:
Over the last 30-40 years we have witnessed an organised campaign to overturn the traditional Christian understanding of sex and sexuality in western society. This activist work culminated in the 2017 change to the legal definition of marriage to allow same sex couples to marry, following a public plebiscite.
ABC’s report stated that Independent Tasmanian MP Kristie Johnston, whose child attends one of the Catholic schools and received the Archbishop’s letter, expressed concern that it “breaches” Tasmanian anti-discrimination laws.
Johnston stated in the report that the Archbishop’s letter was “nothing short of hateful speech,” adding:
Where the Catholic education system receives government funding, then I’m very concerned that we have government funding going to a school or to a system which condones this kind of breach of anti-discrimination laws.
Archbishop Porteous expressed in his letter that parents who were unhappy with the views upheld by Catholic schools were free to send their children elsewhere. The Archbishop wrote that if parents initially accept the Catholicity of a school, only to later decide that their views are at odds with those of the Church, “then it would only make sense they should seek an alternative educational institution more aligned with their views.”
Tasmanian Greens parliamentary leader Rosalie Woodruff stated in the report that she would be weighing next options in response to the letter, which she asserted is “clearly a breach of, in our view, anti-discrimination laws.”
