Everyone deserves to live, work and study without fear of discrimination or harm.
Yet, loopholes in our law continues to allow religious organisations to discriminate against LGBTIQA+ people in who they hire and serve in education, health, housing and other essential services.
Being LGBTIQA+ doesn’t stop a person from being a great teacher or from needing essential community services, so why should our state laws?
Closing loopholes in our anti-discrimination laws that allow religious institutions to fire, not hire and discriminate against us in education, health and community services was the second most important issue to LGBTIQA+ South Australians who took our Vision for SA Pride 2030 survey with 85% of participants rating this as extremely or very important.
We know that 75% of LGBTIQA+ young people in Australia will experience harassment because of their identity. This has devastating consequences for the mental health of our LGBTIQA+ young people, with LGBTIQA+ teens experiencing suicidal ideation at a rate more than five times higher than non-LGBTIQA+ people in this age group.
When our laws allow religious schools to tell LGBTIQA+ young people that it’s not OK to be themselves, we allow the mental health of our young people to suffer.
With LGBTIQA+ South Australians continuing to face discrimination on a daily basis, we need to protect the equality and safety of LGBTIQA+ people under South Australian law.