"Christians and LGBTQ+: discrimination and discourses of religious freedom" - Doug Ezzy (UTAS)

This is part of the 2024 Religion & Society Online Seminar Series that takes place on the third Wednesday of the month at 12pm (Sydney time). It is convened by Cristina Rocha & Kathleen Openshaw (Western Sydney University) 

Abstract

This paper examines the attitudes towards same-sex relationships among Christians in Australia, drawing on a national representative survey, and a nonrandom national survey. I argue that conservative Christian church leaders are using discursive practices of religious freedom to support governmental techniques and institutional privilege within religiously affiliated educational contexts to constitute conservative sexual subjectivities among the general Australian public who work in and attend these schools.  I also argue that this conservativism draws on a discursive practice of othering difference, rather than engaging constructively with diversity.

Bio

Douglas Ezzy PhD is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He is lead investigator of the Australian Research Council Discovery project “Religious freedom, LGBT+ employees, and the right to discriminate”. He is a co-investigator on the Canadian “Nonreligion in a Complex Future” project lead by Professor Lori Beaman.  His books include LGBT Christians (2017, with Bronwyn Fielder), Sex, Death, and Witchcraft (2014), and Teenage Witches (2007, with Helen Berger).