Many eyes have turned to a case being argued in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), concerning a campsite run by the Christian Brethren. They refused to hire it to a community health program (WayOut) for gay and lesbian teenagers run by the Cobaw Community Health Service.
The Victorian Equal Opportunity Act (1995) generally excludes discrimination on the grounds of race, gender and sexual orientation, but does provide exemptions for choices within religious bodies (such as decisions over whom to ordain), and to comply with a 'person's genuine religious beliefs or principles'.
It is undeniable that many Christians believe homosexual acts are not in keeping with their faith, although there are shifts going on, as is evident in the wider Anglican Communion. It is far less clear, however, that there is any element in Christian faith that would ever justify being inhospitable, or denying provision of goods and services, to homosexual persons.
Christian Brethren run the Philip Island Adventure Resort as a facility that seeks public clients; it is not simply a Church camp. They promote its use for corporate events without indicating that they would run ethics tests over company policies, or otherwise vet the content of clients' programs, before accepting bookings.
The parties in the dispute have offered different accounts of just how the planned WayOut event was described to the camp manager. But it seems clear that the Christian Brethren will argue that hosting a group which explicitly accepted homosexuality is incompatible with their beliefs, and in effect identical with 'promoting the homosexual lifestyle'.
Many conservative Christians professedly take a 'hate the sin, love the sinner' approach to homosexuality. Some, I am sure, practice what they preach and are genuinely concerned to be welcoming and supportive of gay and lesbian people who come to church.
The line seems to be crossed for them however when an event or community is understood to accept homosexuality itself, as in this case. People can be accepted up to a point, but to accept them as gay or lesbian is equated with 'promotion' of homosexuality. The debate in the Anglican Communion has involved the crossing of similar lines; the ordinations as bishops of Gene Robinson and more recently of Mary Glasspool have been seen to make their lives potentially models for others.
I can't help but think here of the most powerful parable about hospitality in the Gospels, that of the Good Samaritan. In it, Jesus answers the question 'who is my neighbour?' by telling the story of a man robbed and assaulted, who is ignored by a priest and a levite, the religious functionaries of his time, but is rescued and taken to a safe haven by a Samaritan.
The Samaritans were, in the eyes of Jesus' Jewish contemporaries, heretics or marginal types, whose worship of God was actively wrong because it dismissed the true Temple in Jerusalem in favour of their local shrine. Jesus, an observant Jew, clearly endorses the classic Jewish view of the Samaritans' error (see John 4:22).
It is remarkable then that Jesus takes the clear risk of using an unrepentant Samaritan as the embodied answer to the question 'who is my neighbour'.
Of course this does not mean that Jesus agreed with the Samaritans. It suggests he might have cared less about the risk he might 'promote' Samaritanism than about the need to promote an ethic of unconditional acceptance. It suggests Christians and others in the community might be called to take risks for the marginalised, rather than religiously to carry our orthodoxies with us down the other side of the road, ignoring those in need, lest we 'promote' something we disagree with.
Gay and lesbian youth are at greater risk from suicide and mental illness than from their own sexuality. They are at greater risk from religious and other forms of exclusion than from their own sexuality. It would be good for religious people to stop seeking refuge behind exemptions, and show that their contributions to such young people could be rather more than the law requires, instead of much less.
Associate Professor Andrew McGowan is Warden of Trinity College, The University of Melbourne. He blogs at Andrew's Version and Royal Parade Diary.